State Ceremonial,Court Culture and Political Power in Early Modern Denmark, 1536-1746

In early modern Europe the court of a prince was many things: the household of a prince, a point of contact between the ruler and the elites, a cultural trendsetter, a focal point of patronage and an important institution of regional and international politics. In short, the court had many functions. In this article the focus is on the main lines of development in the court culture of early modern Denmark, from the Reformation (1536) until early Absolutism. Certain structural changes are highlighted and an attempt is made to explain them in political terms. As a prelude, I offer some theoretical reflections on the meaning of court culture in general and ceremonial culture in particular. Let me say from the outset that I have found my inspiration mainly in German and American historical scholarship, which for the past twenty years or so has witnessed a continuous and fruitful debate on the early modern court.     

Short notices

Bonnafous, A., Plassard, F., and Vulin, B., eds., Circuler Demain (DATAR/Éditions de l'Aube, 1993), 191pp., 95R, ISBN 2 87678 126 3

Dioudonnat, P.‐M., Les 700 rédacteurs de ‘Je suis partout’ 1930–1944 (Sedopolis, 1993), 107pp., 240F., ISBN 2 904177 16 7

Furet, F., Revolutionary France 1770–1880 (Blackwell, 1992), 630pp., £40.00, ISBN 0 631 17029 4

Hainsworth, P., ed., The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA (Pinter, 1992), 320pp., £45.00, ISBN 0 86187 790 X

Macchia, G., L'Ange de la nuit. Sur Proust, trans, from the Italian by Marie‐France Merger, Paul Bédarida and Mario Fusco (Gallimard, 1993), 269pp., 130F., ISBN 2 07 072885 4

McPhee, P., A Social History of France 1780–1880 (Routledge, 1993), 347pp., £12.99 pbk, ISBN 0 415 01616 9

Prost, A., ’Les Anciens Combattants’ and French Society 1914–1939 (Berg, 1992), 152pp., £29.95, ISBN 0 85496 672 2 (hbk), £9.95, ISBN 0 85496 337 5 (pbk)

Service d'Information et de Diffusion du Premier Ministre, La politique de la France, aoÛt 1991‐juillet 1992 (La Documentation française, 1993), 165pp., 70F., ISBN 2 11 002915 3

Teich, M., and Porter, R., eds., The National Question in Europe in Historical Context (CUP, 1993), 343pp., £40.00, ISBN 0 521 36441 8 (hbk), £13.95, ISBN 0 521 36713 1 (pbk)     

The Shadow of Napoleon

A number of critics have drawn attention to the increased number of violent women in film, media and literature and to the apparent collusion between women and violence in women's own fiction. This article examines three autofictional works by Duras, Hyvrard and Cixous to see to what extent, and in what ways, these ‘textes de sang’ rewrite and rework incidents of violence in the individual and the family, of self-mutilation and imperialism, and of illness, grief and mourning. In each case, a variety of narrative techniques is employed which enable the writer to engage with, and emerge from, identities affected by violence. In all three cases, the violent fracturing of identity into ‘je/s' and ‘elles' is co-opted into a strengthened authorial voice and a new, uncollusive persona.     

Diffusion patterns of violence in civil wars

Much of the current conflict literature attempts to explain the occurrence of violence as the result of determinants exogenous to the conflict process. This paper takes a different approach and analyzes how violence in civil wars spreads in space and time, drawing on earlier work on micro-diffusion of violence in criminology as well as high resolution conflict data. Two general scenarios are distinguished in our analysis: the relocation and the escalation of conflict. Relocation diffusion corresponds to a shift in the location of violence, whereas escalation diffusion refers to the spatial expansion of the conflict site. We argue that unconventional warfare in civil wars without demarcated front lines should primarily lead to the second type of pattern. We describe an extension to a joint count statistic to measure both diffusion types in conflict event data. Monte Carlo simulation allows for the establishment of a baseline for the frequency of contiguous conflict events under the assumption of independence, and thus provides a significance test for the observed patterns. Our results suggest that violence in civil wars exhibits patterns of diffusion, and in particular, that these patterns are primarily of the escalation type, driven by the dynamic expansion of the scope of the conflict.     

The mediatisation of war in a transforming global media landscape

Before the rise of digital new media technology in 2002, ‘old’ media at its heart displayed a fundamental division between sender and receiver, a division which for a long time had structurally, materially and politically conditioned the nature of the relationship between ‘old’ media and war. Within the recently emerging digital new media technology, however, this age-old separation between sender and receiver has been eroded. Thus, alongside traditional media platforms, an entirely new form of media technology has arisen. This development has transformed the hitherto multipolar nature of the old media landscape and has led to a heteropolar global media landscape, in which the relationship between media and war has been altered. By exploring how digital new media poles are forming and old media poles are evolving, this article examines how this seismic shift in the global media landscape requires a redefinition of the understanding of the nature of the relationship between media and conflict today.     

Toward Historical Ethnography: Notarial Records and Family History in the Middle Ages

One can easily use nineteenth-century tithe data of England and Wales in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze a range of subjects, for example, land use, productivity, land ownership, or tenancy. Making the tithe data GIS ready, on the other hand, is a nontrivial matter. The tithe data consist of two main types: spatial, that is, the tithe map, and nonspatial attribute data linked to the map. The tithe therefore has the characteristics of a GIS, albeit in paper form. The author outlines the process of creating the structures for building a data repository that allows the storage and dissemination of both tithe schedules and maps in a single GIS-ready system. The author chose Oracle to host the repository. The Oracle Spatial module allows storage of both spatial and attribute information. Oracle also provides the means of serving data to users via the Internet.