Hasil untuk "Modern history, 1453-"

Gianfranco Bertone, Dan Hooper

Although dark matter is a central element of modern cosmology, the history of how it became accepted as part of the dominant paradigm is often ignored or condensed into an anecdotal account focused around the work of a few pioneering scientists. The aim of this review is to provide a broader historical perspective on the observational discoveries and the theoretical arguments that led the scientific community to adopt dark matter as an essential part of the standard cosmological model.

Anthony Kaldellis

Anthony Kaldellis offers the first narrative in sixty years of the siege of Constantinople in 1453, an event that marked the end of the Roman empire. The reconstruction of events is detailed, following a day-by-day basis when possible, and is grounded in the testimony of eye-witnesses who left gripping accounts in Latin, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Turkish. Constantinople was still a vibrant center of learning, worship, commerce, and information. The book sketches the shared world of Italians, Turks, and Romans that was thrown into crisis by Mehmed II’s decision to conquer the City. Kaldellis weighs the strategy and options of attackers and defenders, and proves that the defense was hardly a lost cause. The defenders knew what they were doing. They risked their lives, but it was not their intention to become martyrs. Instead, it was the sultan who was scrambling to neutralize a seemingly impregnable defense. That he did so was a testament to his ingenuity and tenacity. The final chapters trace the fate of the vanquished, their captivity, and how some were ransomed. It also weights the impact of the City’s fall on the conquerors, the conquered, and world history. 1453 was not only a symbol for the passing of the Middle Ages and the onset of modernity. It changed the nature of the Ottoman empire and redirected the transmission of cultural legacies, especially of classical scholarship. The fall of Constantinople was a nexus of converging pathways between east and west, medieval and modern, ends and beginnings.

Carina L. Johnson, Macabe Keliher, Kaya Şahin

Rituals display, legitimize, and sometimes question existing power relations in public settings. At the same time, recent research has shown that ceremonies and rituals help various actors and groups establish and re-establish their roles in social and political systems. Indeed, rituals construct new power relations rather than merely re-affirm previously existing ones. As such, they constitute new social realities and establish new social contracts, fostering debates about political authority, religious belief, cultural identity, tradition, and history. The articles gathered in this volume draw on this latter strand of scholarship. They take political ritual as constitutive of political and social relationships and explore its relevance at a particular time and place, drawing larger conclusions about the social and political environment. Together, they investigate the work of ceremonies and rituals, with a particular focus on the early modern period.

William Deringer

In the 1610s and 1620s, a new computational technology took hold in England: printed mathematical tables for compound interest and discounting (“present value”) problems. Historians of finance and accounting have long recognized these paper tools as predecessors of essential modern techniques like “discounted cash flow.” Yet the history of these tables remains hazy. What did early seventeenth-century users do with them? Who used them? Why did they appear when they did? This article turns to one obscure but influential text—Ambrose Acroyd’s Tables of Leasses and Interest (1628)—as a guide to these questions. Two key facts emerge. First, despite the prominence of similar calculations in financial applications today, these early tables were not confined to England’s nascent financial sector. Rather, their foremost use related to agricultural property, specifically in assessing certain payments (“fines”) landlords charged tenants for farm leases. Second, among the leading “early adopters” were institutions of the Church of England. Amidst the inflation of the early modern “price revolution,” bishops, cathedrals, and colleges confronted a complex of economic, political, and social pressures. Mathematical tables like Acroyd’s emerged out of long-running conflicts between church landlords and tenants over how to determine just and reasonable fines on church lands. Discounting tables were thus not tools of instrumental rationality evincing a new capitalist mentality, but tools of social accommodation and products of the era’s “economy of obligation.” This early modern tale offers a vivid example of how and why one community turned to a mathematical algorithm to resolve conflicts about fairness.

C. McNamara

In the twentieth century, many Catholic authorities prioritized the suppression of scandal over the punishment of criminal priests, and the church now faces an even greater scandal as the extent of this coverup becomes known. While the specific situation may be new, the church’s aversion to scandal is not. This article connects the contemporary situation to the struggles faced by the Counter-Reformation Church regarding scandal. Applying sociological and anthropological theories of scandal, it argues that an institution whose authority is threatened (like the church in both eras) will almost inevitably become scandal averse. Building on the work of Dyan Elliott using theology and legal history, it argues that in Reformation Europe, the church had a particular need to suppress scandal, using methods Elliott demonstrates had been developed over centuries. Finally, using social historical methods it examines the disciplinary strategies of Gregorio Barbarigo, bishop of Padua from 1664 to 1697, chosen because of his unusually lengthy tenure, devotion to reform, extraordinarily detailed records, and sainthood. By examining over a thousand investigations undertaken by Barbarigo, analyzing his responses to a wide range of abuses, and presenting four case studies of repeat offenders, the article demonstrates both the rationale for and the weaknesses of the Catholic Church’s preferred disciplinary strategy. From a historical perspective, this demonstrates that scandal and its management was yet another obstacle to early modern Catholic Reform. Connecting this to the contemporary church can help us better understand the complex motivations and moral ambiguities of institutions like the Catholic Church.

G. Gerasimov

The purpose of the article is to find out the capabilities of public versions of modern artificial intelligence in the field of creating historical texts, their quality, theoretical orientation and the possibility of using them as a tool for historical research, as well as auxiliary material for students and anyone interested in history. To achieve the goal of the study, a comparison was made of texts on historical topics created by domestic (GigaChat from Sberbank) and foreign (ChatGPT 3.5 from OpenAI) artificial intelligence. Analyzing the test results, it was noted that both AIs make factual errors, including crucial ones. A comparison of foreign and domestic AI showed that the knowledge base used is much wider and richer in ChatGPT 3.5 from OpenAI, so it gives more detailed, extensive and balanced answers. GigaChat from Sberbank, as well as ChatGPT 3.5 from OpenAI, «adheres» to mainly liberal views on Russian history, which is explained by the predominance of Western liberal theories in domestic historical literature, used as an AI knowledge base. Assessing AI responses in general, the author believes that both versions of artificial intelligence give a mostly negative assessment of Russian history. The author considers it inappropriate to recommend both AIs for use by schoolchildren and students as an auxiliary tool for studying Russian history.

Gisela Manzoni

Reseña de Jacinto Cerdá, Negras tormentas. La FORA anarquista en la ciudad de Buenos Aires (1930-1943), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Grupo Editor Universitario, 2023, 133 pgs.

Ofelia Rey Castelao

Álvaro Casillas Pérez

Como consecuencia del conflicto mantenido con el Imperio otomano durante el siglo XVI, la Monarquía hispánica desarrolló un servicio de espionaje para obtener información sobre cualquier decisión o actuación política y militar de su adversario que pudiera dañar a sus reinos a través de Hungría y del mar Mediterráneo. Sin embargo, los espías incluyeron también en sus informes noticias sobre otras acciones que no afectaban directamente a sus intereses, ocurridas en espacios alejados de sus fronteras. En este artículo se ha partido de estas fuentes para examinar dos campañas navales que tuvieron por objetivo enfrentar el expansionismo de la Corona de Portugal en el océano Índico, la primera en 1532, finalmente no realizada, y la segunda en 1538, que culminó con el asedio de Diu. Con ello, se ha pretendido completar el cuadro ofrecido por la historiografía y las crónicas del momento, sobre todo respecto a la preparación de ambas expediciones. Además, se ha reflexionado sobre las causas que explican la mayor o menor aparición de avisos con esta temática en la documentación analizada.

A. Grant

This article assembles the evidence for the presence of Greek refugees in early modern Scotland. These refugees came in two distinct waves: one in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and another in the seventeenth century. In both periods, inter-regional religious networks brought Greeks to Scotland: in the first phase, these were structured around the church institutions of the Latin West; in the second, they followed ecumenical interest in Protestant Northern Europe. The wanderers were mostly clergymen. This movement of refugees, alongside the capture of Scots by North African corsairs, linked Scotland with the distant Ottoman world.

Morna O'Neill

Queen Victoria published her first Highland memoir in 1867, a sentimental narrative of royal life dedicated to Prince Albert entitled Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands. In response to the popularity of this edition, the publisher Smith, Elder and Co. released a lavishly illustrated edition in late 1868 to capitalize on the Christmas gift book market. It featured seventy-nine illustrations after works by various artists and photographers. When scholars have turned their attention to the Queen’s journal, they have produced rich and sophisticated discussions of gender, monarchy, and celebrity, especially as they relate to royal domesticity in the Scottish Highlands. Yet these readings have rarely extended to the illustrated version of the text. This article will consider the conjunction of monarchy, the Scottish Highlands, and illustrated print culture in the illustrated Leaves through two different types of images: steel-plate engravings after watercolours by the artist Carl Haag and wood engravings after watercolour sketches of Highland games by the Swedish artist Egron Lundgren. Each positions the male Highlander as a central figure in constructing the dynamic of royal family life, sovereignty, and empire. Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose have recently explored what it meant for the British to be ‘at home with the Empire’, asking ‘was it possible to be “at home” with an empire and with the effects of imperial power or was there something dangerous and damaging about such an entanglement?’. In the course of this article, I argue that these illustrations constructed the male Highlander as a site of familiarity within the bounds of the nation, while simultaneously signalling his otherness and proximity to the more far-flung reaches of empire. As a result, Leaves is as much about empire as it is about domesticity, even as it eschews direct references to current events of the period that directly threatened both. 

Michael T. Saler

Xiuli Xu

ABSTRACT After the People’s Republic of China was founded, a system of Marxist historiography was soon established in modern Chinese history studies. Researchers began to conduct a systematic collection of historical records and made outstanding achievements in many fields of study. During the Cultural Revolution, academic research was brought to a standstill: there were few publications in modern history studies. When the country entered a period of reform and opening-up in 1978, modern Chinese history studies witnessed unprecedented prosperity: there was a breakthrough in the single-line narration of political and revolutionary history and in the use of a single theoretical methodology. Researchers have made outstanding achievements and developed modern Chinese history studies into a mature subdiscipline of historiography.

Victoriano Gaviño Rodríguez

Book review

Unnur Birna Karlsdóttir

This article focuses on the ideas behind the introduction of reindeer to Iceland, how the Danish authorities played a role and the attitudes that prevailed among Icelanders towards this new species in Icelandic nature. The Danish authorities had reindeer exported from Finnmark in Norway to Iceland in the late eighteenth century. They adapted to the Icelandic environment and grew in numbers, except for the first imported little flock, which seems to have died out soon. The idea of bringing reindeer to Iceland came from a few Icelandic officials, who asked the Danish authorities for support. The reindeer kept themselves in the remote heaths and highlands in the districts where they roamed free from the beginning. Nevertheless, in harsh winters, they fled the highlands and came down to the lowlands to graze. This caused frustration among farmers, who complained to the authorities and demanded permission to hunt reindeer to defend their grazing land and obtain reindeer meat for their households.

W. Wood, J. Bourke

Pain is a defining feature of the human experience. We have all, at some point in our lives, felt physical or emotional discomfort that fits under the broad umbrella of ‘pain’. Though the phenomenon of pain is universal, the ways it is experienced, perceived and conceptualised are shaped by the wider social, cultural and political milieu. The characterisation and articulation of pain is profoundly influenced by gender. In some historical and contemporary contexts, the female body has been associated with heightened sensitivity of various types. At other times, female bodies have been singled out for their ability to bear extreme pain, especially during childbirth. In a 1932 American survey published by the Journal of Social Psychology, 70 per cent of physicians and dentists believed that women were superior to men in withstanding pain.1 Even at the end of the 1980s, a British study commissioned by the drug company that made Nurofen found that 75 per cent of people agreed that women were ‘better able to tolerate pain than men’. Interestingly, the generalisation was held to be correct by 86 per cent of women compared with only 64 per cent of men.2 Representations of male stoicism – or the perceived lack thereof – in the face of physical and emotional discomfort have also been powerful images in a range of national and historical contexts. In particular, men’s experience of and responses to wartime suffering have tended to convey powerful messages about national as well as personal character, the ‘rightness’ of the cause, and the ‘valour’ of manliness itself. In brief: women and men have long been thought to experience bodily sensations, including pain, in a variety of culturally and historically specific ways. And in both past and present contexts, it matters whether a person has been categorised as male or female. In recent decades, medical researchers have attempted to delineate the multifaceted impacts of gender, in addition to sex, on individual pain experiences. In a 1993 editorial published in the American journal, Pain, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researcher M. A. Ruda posited that ‘with the emphasis on equality of the sexes that occurred in the 1980s, it has not been politically correct to suggest that men and women are different’. Ruda nonetheless asserted that ‘we all know that men and women are different!’ and went on to argue that the time had come for further study of the physiological and psychological ‘gender issues that relate to pain’.3 Though social scientists

Melvin Gallardo Márquez

El artículo tiene por objetivo reconstruir las actividades políticas y gremiales desarrolladas por el dirigente chileno Luis E. Recabarren en el Partido Socialista y en el movimiento obrero argentino, durante su residencia en Buenos Aires, entre 1906 y 1908. Recabarren gozó de un seguimiento de La Vanguardia por su importante trayectoria en el movimiento obrero chileno entre 1904 y 1906. Al autoexiliarse en la Argentina, sus objetivos eran estudiar en profundidad la doctrina socialista, conocer la estructura y organización del PS, su actividad política y su inserción en el movimiento obrero y, a través de esta experiencia, vincular al movimiento obrero chileno con el movimiento socialista internacional.

Yuan Yin

The Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, founded in 1949 and in the same line as those history institutions established in Yan’an earlier, was the first national institut...

K. Blackburn

C. Sellers