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Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
What did Europe owe Spain in the eighteenth century? This infamous
question, posed by Nicolas Masson de Morvilliers in the
Encyclopedie methodique, caused an international uproar at the
height of the Enlightenment. His polemical article 'Espagne', with
its tabloid-like prose, resonated with a French-reading public that
blamed the Spanish Empire for France's eroding economy. Spain was
outraged, and responded by publishing its own translation-rebuttal,
the article 'Espana' penned by Julian de Velasco for the Spanish
Encyclopedia metodica. In this volume, the original French and
Spanish articles are presented in facing-page English translations,
allowing readers to examine the content and rhetorical maneuvers of
Masson's challenge and Velasco's riposte. This comparative format,
along with the editors' critical introduction, extensive
annotations, and an accompanying bibliographical essay, reveals how
knowledge was translated and transferred across Europe and the
transatlantic world. The two encyclopedia articles bring to life a
crucial period of Spanish history, culture and commerce, while
offering an alternative framework for understanding the
intellectual underpinnings of a Spanish Enlightenment that differed
radically from French philosophie. Ultimately, this book uncovers a
Spain determined to claim its place in the European Enlightenment
and on the geopolitical stage.
In the nineteenth century, the search for the artistic,
architectural and written monuments promoted by the French State
with the aim to build a unified nation transcending regional
specificities, also fostered the development of local or regional
identitary consciousness. In Roussillon, this distinctive
consciousness relied on a basically cultural concept of nation
epitomised mainly by the Catalan language - Roussillon being
composed of Catalan counties annexed to France in 1659. In The
Antiquarians of the Nation, Francesca Zantedeschi explores how the
works of Roussillon's archaeologists and philologists, who
retrieved and enhanced the Catalan specificities of the region,
contributed to the early stages of a 'national' (Catalan) cultural
revival, and galvanised the implicit debate between (French)
national history and incipient regional studies.
Long neglected in mainstream history books, the Haitian Revolution
(1791-1804) is now being claimed across a range of academic
disciplines as an event of world-historical importance. The former
slaves' victory over their French masters and the creation of the
independent nation of Haiti in 1804 is being newly heralded not
only as a seminal moment in the transnational formation of the
'black Atlantic' but as the most far-reaching manifestation of
'Radical Enlightenment'. The best known Haitian writer to emerge in
the years after the revolution is Baron de Vastey (1781-1820), who
authored over ten books and pamphlets between 1814 and his murder
in 1820. His first and most incendiary work, Le systeme colonial
devoile (1814), provides a moving invocation of the horrors of
slavery in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Its trailblazing
critique of colonialism anticipates by over a hundred years the
anticolonial politics (and poetics) of Cesaire, Fanon, and Sartre.
Translated here for the first time, Vastey's forceful unveiling of
the colonial system will be compulsory reading for scholars across
the humanities.
What was the Scottish Enlightenment? Long since ignored or
sidelined, it is now a controversial topic - damned by some as a
conservative movement objectively allied to the enemies of
enlightenment, placed centre stage by others as the archetype of
what is meant by 'Enlightenment'. In this book leading experts
reassess the issue by exploring both the eighteenth-century
intellectual developments taking place within Scotland and the
Scottish contribution to the Enlightenment as a whole. The Scottish
experience during this period forms the underlying theme of early
chapters, with contributors examining the central philosophy of the
'science of man', the reality of 'applied enlightenment' in
Scotland, and the Presbyterian hostility to the spread of
'heretical' ideas. Moving beyond Scotland's borders, contributors
in later chapters examine the wider recognition of Scotland's
intellectual activity, both within Europe and across the Atlantic.
Through a series of case studies authors assess the engagement of
European intellectuals with Scottish thinkers, looking at the
French interpretation of Adam Smith's notion of sympathy, divergent
approaches to the writing of history in Scotland and Germany, and
the variety of Neapolitan responses to Scottish thought; the final
chapter analyses the links between the 'moderate Enlightenment' in
Scotland and America. Through these innovative studies this book
provides a rich and nuanced understanding of Enlightenment thought
in Scotland and its impact in Europe and North America,
highlighting the importance of placing the national context in a
transnational perspective.
Quakers and Native Americans examines the history of interactions
between Quakers and Native Americans (American Indians). Fourteen
scholarly essays cover the period from the 1650s to the twentieth
century. American Indians often guided the Quakers by word and
example, demanding that they give content to their celebrated
commitment to peace. As a consequence, the Quakers' relations with
American Indians has helped define their sense of mission and
propelled their rise to influence in the U.S. Quakers have
influenced Native American history as colonists, government
advisors, and educators, eventually promoting boarding schools,
assimilation and the suppression of indigenous cultures. The final
two essays in this collection provide Quaker and American Indian
perspectives on this history, bringing the story up to the present
day. Contributors include: Ray Batchelor, Lori Daggar, John
Echohawk, Stephanie Gamble, Lawrence M. Hauptman, Allison Hrabar,
Thomas J. Lappas, Carol Nackenoff, Paula Palmer, Ellen M. Ross,
Jean R. Soderlund, Mary Beth Start, Tara Strauch, Marie Balsley
Taylor, Elizabeth Thompson, and Scott M. Wert.
The Quest for Forbidden Lands: Nikolai Przhevalskii and his
Followers on Inner Asian Tracks is a collection of biographical
essays of outstanding Russian explorers of Inner Asia of the late
nineteenth - early twentieth century, Nikolai Przhevalskii,
Vsevolod Roborovskii, Mikhail Pevtsov, Petr Kozlov, Grigorii
Grumm-Grzhimailo and Bronislav Grombchevskii, almost all senior
army officers. Their expeditions were organized by the Imperial
Russian Geographical Society with some assistance from the military
department with a view of exploring and mapping the vast uncharted
territories of Inner Asia, being the Western periphery of the
Manchu-Chinese Empire. The journeys of these pioneers were a great
success and gained world renown for their many discoveries and the
valuable collections they brought from the region.
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