Provincializing the history of the Ottoman Empire, this book provides a critical approach to the projects of 'modernity' that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean over the past two centuries.
...Leaving their mark on this period are; the turmoil of insurgency in Greece and Egypt, a growing intervention of European Powers in Eastern Mediterranean politics, and the unfolding of large reform projects within the administration of the Ottoman Empire. Whilst these developments have prompted enduring debates over Middle Eastern paths of transformation, the case of Cyprus has remained isolated from these discussions, something this book seeks to address.
One of the first research monographs to appear in English on Cyprus during the eventful times of the Ottoman 'long' 19th century, this book consistently seeks to provide a dialogue between source analyses and theoretical frameworks. Exploring the myriad relationships between this singular locality and the regional - not to say global - dynamics of empire, trade and social change at that time, A Provincial History of the Ottoman Empire will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in the Middle East and Modern History.
Kipling, Elgar, Mafeking Night . . . all these conjure up an image of a British society besotted with imperial pride in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact the true picture was more ...complex than this and people reacted to their empire in different ways. Many were hardly aware of it at all. This lively book is the first study of the impact of the empire on British society and culture that looks beneath the surface to find out what people really thought, with some surprising results.
In 1900 W. E. B. DuBois prophesied that the colour line would be the key problem of the twentieth-century and he later identified one of its key dynamics: the new religion of whiteness that was ...sweeping the world. Whereas most historians have confined their studies of race-relations to a national framework, this book studies the transnational circulation of people and ideas, racial knowledge and technologies that under-pinned the construction of self-styled white men's countries from South Africa, to North America and Australasia. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds show how in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century these countries worked in solidarity to exclude those they defined as not-white, actions that provoked a long international struggle for racial equality. Their findings make clear the centrality of struggles around mobility and sovereignty to modern formulations of both race and human rights.
Abstract
This article focuses on the social and intellectual world of Francis Foster Barham (1808–1871) from the late 1830s to the mid-1850s. Barham was a prolific polymathic writer and lecturer ...whose oeuvre ranged from the classics to theology to esotericism, contemporary drama and literature. Based on wide reading and his interactions with fellow transcendentalists and idealists, he elaborated his own philosophy, ‘syncretism’, a universalising system of thought with applications to political, religious and social reform. This article uses the example of Barham, his philosophical speculations, and the small groups with which he was affiliated in London and the West Country, to illuminate the trajectory of a humanistic discourse—in this case speculative metaphysical philosophy—in the life of relatively obscure people who, outside of academic and scholarly circles, interpreted ‘high’ ideas in their own way. The article suggests that there is much more to be done to understand fully the cultural and intellectual history of the humanities in modern Britain, especially in the thought and experience of lesser-known people and associations. Recovering the history of ideas through such figures, their networks, and their own terminologies can point the way to fresh understandings of the history, nature and processes of intellectual development, including its ‘freaks’ and dead-ends, as well as its manifestation in and as culture.
In the long eighteenth century, new consumer aspirations combined with a new industrious behavior to fundamentally alter the material cultures of northwest Europe and North America. This 'industrious ...revolution' is the context in which the economic acceleration associated with the Industrial Revolution took shape. This study explores the intellectual understanding of the new importance of consumer goods as well as the actual consumer behavior of households of all income levels. De Vries examines how the activation and evolution of consumer demand shaped the course of economic development, situating consumer behavior in the context of the household economy. He considers the changing consumption goals of households from the seventeenth century to the present and analyzes how household decisions have mediated between macro-level economic growth and actual human betterment. Ultimately, de Vries' research reveals the strengths and weaknesses of existing consumer theory, suggesting revisions that add historical realism to economic abstractions.
Abstract
This article revisits the relationship between women and Chartism, the British mass movement for democratic rights that dominated popular politics from the late 1830s to the 1850s. It argues ...that the opportunities for women to participate in the movement were more varied, extensive and enduring than has often been appreciated. Particular attention is paid to late Chartism (1843–52) by documenting in full, for the first time, the number of female Chartist bodies in existence. By presenting new material, based on a combing of the press and the Home Office files, the article moves on to consider the role played by Chartist women in 1848, the year of European revolution when the movement revived. It then builds on the theme of late Chartism by offering a case-study of the Women’s Rights Association (WRA). This body was established in 1851 by a group of Sheffield Chartist women to campaign for votes for women, which, it is argued here, represented the culmination of a women’s rights discourse within early Chartism. The article concludes by comparing the women’s rights discourse in early Chartism and other contemporary feminisms with that deployed by the WRA.
The gifts of Athena Mokyr, Joel
2002, 2002., 20111114, 2011, 2003-01-01
eBook, Book
"The growth of technological and scientific knowledge in the past two centuries has been the overriding dynamic element in the economic and social history of the world. Its result is now often called ...the knowledge economy. But what are the historical origins of this revolution and what have been its mechanisms? In The Gifts of Athena, Joel Mokyr constructs an original framework to analyze the concept of "useful" knowledge. He argues that the growth explosion in the modern West in the past two centuries was driven not just by the appearance of new technological ideas but also by the improved access to these ideas in society at large - as made possible by social networks comprising universities, publishers, professional sciences, and kindred institutions. Through a wealth of historical evidence set in clear and lively prose, he shows that changes in the intellectual and social environment and the institutional background in which knowledge was generated and disseminated brought about the Industrial Revolution, followed by sustained economic growth and continuing technological change." "Mokyr draws a link between intellectual forces such as the European enlightenment and subsequent economic changes of the nineteenth century, and follows their development into the twentieth century. He further explores some of the key implications of the knowledge revolution. Among these is the rise and fall of the "factory system" as an organizing principle of modern economic organization. He analyzes the impact of this revolution on information technology and communications as well as on the public's state of health and the structure of households. By examining the social and political roots of resistance to new knowledge, Mokyr also links growth in knowledge to political economy and connects the economic history of technology to the New Institutional Economics. The Gifts of Athena provides crucial insights into a matter of fundamental concern to a range of disciplines including economics, economic history, political economy, the history of technology, and the history of science."--BOOK JACKET.
The British Empire, wrote Adam Smith, 'has hitherto been not an empire, but the project of an empire' and John Darwin offers a magisterial global history of the rise and fall of that great imperial ...project. The British Empire, he argues, was much more than a group of colonies ruled over by a scattering of British expatriates until eventual independence. It was, above all, a global phenomenon. Its power derived rather less from the assertion of imperial authority than from the fusing together of three different kinds of empire: the settler empire of the 'white dominions'; the commercial empire of the City of London; and 'Greater India' which contributed markets, manpower and military muscle. This unprecedented history charts how this intricate imperial web was first strengthened, then weakened and finally severed on the rollercoaster of global economic, political and geostrategic upheaval on which it rode from beginning to end.
