Popularizing National Pasts is the first truly cross-national and comparative study of popular national histories, their representations, the meanings given to them and their uses, which expands outside the confines of Western Europe and the US. It draws a picture of popular histories which is European in the full sense of this term. One of its fortes is the inclusion of Eastern Europe. The cross-national angle of Popularizing National Pasts is apparent in the scope of its comparative project, as well as that of the longue duree it covers. Apart from essays on Britain, France, and Germany, the collection includes studies of popular histories in Scandinavia, Eastern and Southern Europe, notably Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Armenia, Russia and the Ukraine, as well as considering the US and Argentina. Cross-national comparison is also a central concern of the thirteen case studies in the volume, which are, each, devoted to comparing between two, or more, national historical cultures. Thus temporality -both continuities and breaks- in popular notions of the past, its interpretations and consumption, is examined in the long continuum. The volume makes available to English readers, probably for the first time, the cutting edge of Eastern European scholarship on popular histories, nationalism and culture.

The 'water controversy' concerns one of the central discoveries of modern science, that water is not an element but rather a compound. The allocation of priority in this discovery was contentious in the 1780s and has occupied a number of 20th century historians. The matter is tied up with the larger issues of the so-called chemical revolution of the late eighteenth century. A case can be made for James Watt or Henry Cavendish or Antoine Lavoisier as having priority in the discovery depending upon precisely what the discovery is taken to consist of, however, neither the protagonists themselves in the 1780s nor modern historians qualify as those most fervently interested in the affair. In fact, the controversy attracted most attention in early Victorian Britain some fifty to seventy years after the actual work of Watt, Cavendish and Lavoisier. The central historical question to which the book addresses itself is why the priority claims of long dead natural philosophers so preoccupied a wide range of people in the later period. The answer to the question lies in understanding the enormous symbolic importance of James Watt and Henry Cavendish in nineteenth-century science and society. More than credit for a particular discovery was at stake here. When we examine the various agenda of the participants in the Victorian phase of the water controversy we find it driven by filial loyalty and nationalism but also, most importantly, by ideological struggles about the nature of science and its relation to technological invention and innovation in British society. At a more general, theoretical, level, this study also provides important insights into conceptions of the nature of discovery as they are debated by modern historians, philosophers and sociologists of science.

Through a reassessment of phrenology, Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism sheds light on all kinds of works in Victorian Britain and America which have previously been unnoticed or were simply referred to with a vague 'naturalism of the times' explanation. It is often assumed that the scientific naturalism familiar in late nineteenth century writers such as T.H. Huxley and John Tyndall are the effects of a 'Darwinian revolution' unleashed in 1859 on an unsuspecting world following the publication of The Origin of Species. Yet it can be misleading to view Darwin's work in isolation, without locating it in the context of a well established and vigorous debate concerning scientific naturalism. Throughout the nineteenth century intellectuals and societies had been discussing the relationship between nature and man, and the scientific and religious implications thereof. At the forefront of these debates were the advocates of phrenology, who sought to apply their theories to a wide range of subjects, from medicine and the treatment of the insane, to education, theology and even economic theories. Showing how ideas about naturalism and the doctrine of natural laws were born in the early phrenology controversies in the 1820s, this book charts the spread of such views. It argues that one book in particular, The Constitution of Man in Relation to External Objects (1828) by George Combe, had an enormous influence on scientific thinking and the popularity of the 'naturalistic movement'. The Constitution was one of the best-selling books of the nineteenth century, being published continuously from 1828 to 1899, and selling more than 350,000 copies throughout the world, many times more than Dawin's The Origin of Species. By restoring Combe and his work to centre stage it provides modern scholars with a more accurate picture of the Victorians' view of their place in Nature.

Contemporary Spain and Portugal share a historical experience as Iberian states which emerged within the context of al-Andalus. These centuries of Muslim presence in the Middle Ages became a contested heritage during the process of modern nation-building with its varied concepts and constructs of national identities. Politicians, historians and intellectuals debated vigorously the question how the Muslim past could be reconciled with the idea of the Catholic nation. The Crescent Remembered investigates the processes of exclusion and integration of the Islamic past within the national narratives. It analyzes discourses of historiography, Arabic studies, mythology, popular culture and colonial policies towards Muslim populations from the 19th century to the dictatorships of Franco and Salazar in the 20th century. In particular, it explores why, despite apparent historical similarities, in Spain and Portugal entirely different strategies and discourses concerning the Islamic past emerged. In the process, it seeks to shed light on the role of the Iberian Peninsula as a crucial European historical "contact zone" with Islam.

This collection presents the first sustained examination of the nature and status of the idea of principles in early modern thought. Principles are almost ubiquitous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the term appears in famous book titles, such as Newton's Principia; the notion plays a central role in the thought of many leading philosophers, such as Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason; and many of the great discoveries of the period, such as the Law of Gravitational Attraction, were described as principles. Ranging from mathematics and law to chemistry, from natural and moral philosophy to natural theology, and covering some of the leading thinkers of the period, this volume presents ten compelling new essays that illustrate the centrality and importance of the idea of principles in early modern thought. It contains chapters by leading scholars in the field, including the Leibniz scholar Daniel Garber and the historian of chemistry William R. Newman, as well as exciting, emerging scholars, such as the Newton scholar Kirsten Walsh and a leading expert on experimental philosophy, Alberto Vanzo. The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought: Interdisciplinary Perspectives charts the terrain of one of the period's central concepts for the first time, and opens up new lines for further research.

The notion of 'history' has always been one strenuously debated by both academics and the wider population. This deeply provocative re-thinking of our engagement with the past by one of the world's leading post-modern historians takes that debate one step further. Alun Munslow re-assesses history in the light of post-modernism and other intellectual challenges which have questioned the primacy of the modernist epistemology of empiricism. In an original and stimulating vision of history that will intrigue all those seriously interested in the subject, Munslow argues that history is not only about the sources, but a literary construction. Munslow concludes that history, as a cultural narrative about the past can never tell us what the past really means. This far reaching conclusion is based on the radical idea that the content of history is defined as much by the nature of the language used to represent and interpret that content as it is by research into the sources. This suggests that history does not produce the most likely meaning of the past but rather can only generate alternative meanings. The lead volume in a major new series on historical thinking and practice, this is an accessible yet absorbing study that breaks new ground in discussing the stage history is at now, and perhaps most engagingly, the direction it will take in the future.

This engrossing book tells the story of the Florescu family, from its feudal blood ties, to the notorious 15th century figure Vlad Tepes (Count Dracula), right up to present day, touching on such diverse personalities as the Kennedys, Bill Clinton, and Michael Jackson. In the tradition of Alex Haley's Roots, Dracula's Bloodline relates a multi-generational saga through the prism of one family's narrative, from medieval Eastern Europe to the post-Communist era. The book provides an inside look at Romania's bloody and turbulent history-a mostly untold narrative that embraces the cruel Ottoman invasions, vying boyars seeking to change the political order at home, and the toppling of the Ceausescu regime. The story of each century is told through the eyes of one Florescu (or more) who had a unique perch from which to view his or her contemporary society. Florescu and Cazacu drew on research that had mostly been kept in family hands. To track the Florescu footprint down through the centuries since the 1400s, they used many sources: the Brasov archives in Transylvania, select letters, unpublished diaries, and extensive family documents that have been scattered from Europe to the United States. This fully indexed book offers many photographs from family archives, as well as a glossary of terms and titles, and a full genealogy showing the Florescu's family links to Vlad Tepes.

Economic history is the most quantitative branch of history, reflecting the interests and profiting from the techniques and concepts of economics. This essay, first published in 1977, provides an extensive contribution to quantitative historiography by delivering a critical guide to the sources of the numerical data of the period 1700 to 1850. This title will be of interest to students of history, finance and economics.

Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) was the foremost representative of the Danish-Norwegian Enlightenment and also a European figure of note. He published significant works in natural law and history, but also a very important body of moral essays and epistles. He authored several engaging autobiographies and European travelogues, a major utopian novel that was an immediate European succes, interesting satires that advocated women's education and career, and a large number of comedies. These comedies secured Holberg's status as the most significant playwright in Scandinavia before Ibsen and Strindberg. Through his extensive oeuvre, but especially through his plays, Holberg had a decisive influence on the formation of modern Danish as a literary language, something that was a self-conscious effort on the part of a man who saw himself as an educator of the public. Despite his contemporary impact at home and abroad and his ongoing popularity in Scandinavia, he remains little known in the wider world of enlightenment studies. It is the aim of this volume to revive Holberg as a major figure from a minor corner of the Enlightenment world by presenting the full variety of his work and giving it a European context.

The years between 1700 and 1900 witnessed a fundamental transition in attitudes towards science, as earlier concepts of natural philosophy were replaced with a more modern conception of science. This process was by no means a simple progression, and the changing attitudes to science was marked by bitter arguments and fundamental differences of opinion, many of which are still not entirely resolved today. Approaching the subject from a number of cultural angles, the essays in this volume explore the fluid relationship between science and belief during this crucial period, and help to trace the development of science as an independent field of study that did not look to religion to provide answers to the workings of the universe. Taking a broadly chronological approach, each essay in this book addresses a theme that helps illuminate these concerns and highlights how beliefs - both religious and secular - have impinged and influenced the scientific world. By addressing such key issues such as the ongoing debate between Christian fundamentalists and followers of Darwin, and the rise of 'respectable atheism', fascinating insights are provided that help to chart the ever-shifting discourse of science and beliefs.

Crusading was a religious movement involving papal authorization, the incentive of remission of sins, pious motivation on behalf of the individual, and the justification of holy war. Much recent historiography in this area has focused on resolving the questions of what a crusade was, and why people went on them. But crusading became a cultural and social phenomenon that changed across time and geographical space. In turn, crusading was shaped by the ways specific crusades and their participants were remembered in specific historical contexts. Moreover, crusade memory had profound effects on the cultivation of family lineage, kinship ties, national and regional identity, and religious orthodoxy. Integrating memory into crusades scholarship thus offers new ways of exploring the aftermath of war, the construction of cultural and social memory, the role of women and families in this process, and the crusading movement itself. This book explores memory as a methodological means of understanding the crusades. It engages with theories of communicative memory, social and cultural memory, war commemoration, and historical processes of remembering. Contributions explore the variety of cultural forms used in cultivating crusade memory. Material, visual, liturgical and textual objects are all reflective of crusade culture and the process of crafting its memory, and the analysis of such sources is of particular interest. This publication furthers new trends in crusade scholarship which understand the crusades as a broad religious movement that called upon and developed within a wider cultural framework than previously acknowledged. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History.

Although Kierkegaard's reception was initially more or less limited to Scandinavia, it has for a long time now been a highly international affair. As his writings were translated into different languages his reputation spread, and he became read more and more by people increasingly distant from his native Denmark. While in Scandinavia, the attack on the Church in the last years of his life became something of a cause celebre, later, many different aspects of his work became the object of serious scholarly investigation well beyond the original northern borders. As his reputation grew, he was co-opted by a number of different philosophical and religious movements in different contexts throughout the world. The three tomes of this volume attempt to record the history of this reception according to national and linguistic categories. Tome III is the most geographically diverse, covering the Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas. The section on the Near East features pioneering articles on the Kierkegaard reception in Israel, Turkey, Iran and the Arab world. The next section dubbed 'Asia and Australia' features articles on the long and rich traditions of Kierkegaard research in Japan and Korea along with the more recent ones in China and Australia. A final section is dedicated to Americas with articles on Canada, the United States, hispanophone South America, Mexico and Brazil.

The history of David's Jerusalem remains one of the most contentious topics of the ancient world. This study engages with debates about the nature of this location by examining the most recent archaeological data from the site and by exploring the relationship of these remains to claims made about David's royal center in biblical narrative. Daniel Pioske provides a detailed reconstruction of the landscape and lifeways of early 10th century BCE Jerusalem, connected in biblical tradition to the figure of David. He further explores how late Iron Age (the Book of Samuel-Kings) and late Persian/early Hellenistic (the Book of Chronicles) Hebrew literary cultures remembered David's Jerusalem within their texts, and how the remains and ruins of this site influenced the memories of those later inhabitants who depicted David's Jerusalem within the biblical narrative. By drawing on both archaeological data and biblical writings, Pioske calls attention to the breaks and ruptures between a remembered past and a historical one, and invites the reader to understand David's Jerusalem as more than a physical location, but also as a place of memory.

This volume explores in detail Kierkegaard's various relations to his German contemporaries. Kierkegaard read German fluently and made extensive use of the writings of German-speaking authors. Apart from his contemporary Danish sources, the German sources were probably the most important in the development of his thought generally. This volume represents source-work research dedicated to tracing Kierkegaard's readings and use of the various German-speaking authors in the different fields in a way that is as clearly documented as possible. The volume has been divided into three tomes reflecting Kierkegaard's main areas of interest with regard to the German-speaking sources, namely, philosophy, theology and a more loosely conceived category, which has here been designated "literature and aesthetics." This first tome treats the German philosophical influences on Kierkegaard. The dependence of Danish philosophy on German philosophy is beyond question. In a book review in his Hegelian journal Perseus, the poet, playwright and critic, Johan Ludvig Heiberg laments the sad state of philosophy in Denmark, while lauding German speculative philosophy. Moreover, Kierkegaard's lifelong enemy, the theologian Hans Lassen Martensen claims without exaggeration that the Danish systems of philosophy can be regarded as the "disjecta membra" of earlier German systems. All of the major German idealist philosophers made an impact in Denmark: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and most significantly, Hegel. Kierkegaard was widely read in the German philosophical literature, which he made use of in countless ways throughout his authorship.

Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli state. Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement's history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world.

Nationalising the Crusades contributes greatly to new and increasing discussion on the crusades and draws together cutting-edge research by numerous expert contributors that opens up new national contexts for further comparison and also offers methodological variety through dynamic case studies. This advanced text is at the forefront of current historical debate and is an invaluable source for researchers and high level students, giving them the tools and understandings needed to follow and participate in ongoing discourse surrounding the Crusades and the history of memory and modern memorialisation of the medieval period.

Nietzsche and Science explores the German philosopher's response to the extraordinary cultural impact of the natural sciences in the late nineteenth century. It argues that the science of his day exerted a powerful influence on his thought and provided an important framework within which he articulated his ideas. The first part of the book investigates Nietzsche's knowledge and understanding of specific disciplines and the influence of particular scientists on Nietzsche's thought. The second part examines how Nietzsche actually incorporated various scientific ideas, concepts and theories into his philosophy, the ways in which he exploited his reading to frame his writings, and the relationship between his understanding of science and other key themes of his thought, such as art, rhetoric and the nature of philosophy itself.

The nineteenth-century Romantic understanding of history is often confused with the longing for the past Golden Age. In this book, the Romantic idea of Golden Age is seen from a new angle by discussing it in the context of Friedrich Schlegel's works. Interestingly, Schlegel argued that the concept of a past Golden Age in the beginning of history was itself a product of antiquity, imagined without any historical ground. The Golden Age was not bygone for Schlegel, but to be produced in the future. His utopian vision of the Kingdom of God was related to the millenarian expectations of perpetual peace aroused by the revolutionary wars. Schlegel understood current era through the kairos concept, which emphasized the present possibilities for public agency. Thus history could not be reduced to any kind of pre-established pattern of redemption, for the future was determined only by the opportunities manifested in the present time.

The Disinformation Age, beginning in the present and going back to the American colonial period, constructs an original historical explanation for the current political crisis and the reasons the two major political parties cannot address it effectively. Commentators inside and outside academia have described this crisis with various terms - income inequality, the disappearance of the middle-class, the collapse of the two-party system, and the emergence of a corporate oligarchy. While this book uses such terminology, it uniquely provides a unifying explanation for the current state of the union by analyzing the seismic rupture of political rhetoric from political reality used within discussion of these issues. In advancing this analysis, the book provides a term for this rupture, Disinformation, which it defines not as planned propaganda but as the inevitable failure of the language of American Exceptionalism to correspond to actual history, even as the two major political parties continue to deploy this language. Further, in its final chapter this book provides a way out of this political cul-de-sac, what it terms "the limits of capitalism's imagination," by "thinking from a different place" that is located in the theory and practice of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Music as a Science of Mankind offers a philosophical and historical perspective on the intellectual representation of music in British eighteenth-century culture. From the field of natural philosophy, involving the science of sounds and acoustics, to the realm of imagination, involving resounding music and art, the branches of modern culture that were involved in the intellectual tradition of the science of music proved to be variously appealing to men of letters. Among these, a particularly rich field of investigation was the British philosophy of the mind and of human understanding, developed between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which looked at music and found in its realm a way of understanding human experience. Focussing on the world of sensation - trying to describe how the human mind could develop ideas and emotions by its means - philosophers and physicians often took their cases from art's products, be it music (sounds), painting (colours) or poetry (words as signs of sound conveying a meaning), thus looking at art from a particular point of view: that of the perceiving mind. The relationship between music and the philosophies of mind is presented here as a significant part of the construction of a Science of Man: a huge and impressive 'project' involving both the study of man's nature, to which - in David Hume's words - 'all sciences have a relation', and the creation of an ideal of what Man should be. Maria Semi sheds light on how these reflections moved towards a Science of Music: a complex and articulated vision of the discipline that was later to be known as 'musicology'; or Musikwissenschaft.

The philosophy of history is an area of interest not only to philosophers, but to historians and to social scientists. It has been of central importance in continental European philosophy since the late 18th century, and for the past half-century has had a significant place in Anglo-American philosophy. Interest in the philosophy of history continues to grow. This volume offers both an introduction to contemporary discussion in the philosophy of history, and a 'reassessment' of some of the major movements in the philosophy of history since the beginning of the 20th century. Including the work of leading international scholars in the field, the book presents a wide range of perspectives from different schools in philosophy, and in political and social theory, history, and the history of ideas. Traditional questions raised in the philosophy of history are explored with fresh insight - the nature of history; historical understanding; historical objectivity; the nature of the past; the psychological factors in historical explanation; the human significance of history - alongside issues which are less frequently examined including: the role of science and mathematics in history, history as a social science, and history as an art form. As history itself remains disputed ground, it is important to consider what clues history can provide for our response to issues of contemporary concern such as political realignments and economic globalisation; this volume offers important insights from leading scholars in the philosophy of history.

Bringing sophisticated philosophy to bear on real-life historiography, Values, Objectivity, and Explanation in Historiography rekindles and invigorates the debate on two perennials in the theory and methodology of history. One is the tension between historians' values and the ideal-or illusion-of objective historiography. The other is historical explanation. The point of departure for the treatment of values and objectivity is an exceptionally heated debate on Cold War historiography in Denmark, involving not only historians but also the political parties, the national newspapers, and the courts. The in-depth analysis that follows concludes that historians can produce accounts that deserve the label "objective," even though their descriptions are tinged by ineluctable epistemic instability. A separate chapter dissects the postmodern notion of situated truths. The second part of the book proffers a new take on historical explanation. It is based on the notion of the ideal explanatory text, which allows for not only causal-including intentional-but also nomological, structural, and functional explanations. The approach, which can accommodate narrative explanations driven by causal plots, is ecumenical but not all-encompassing. Emergent social properties and supernatural entities are excluded from the ideal explanatory text, making scientific historiography methodologically individualistic-albeit with room for explanations at higher levels when pragmatically justified-and atheist. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative License.

Paying special attention to Sidney's Arcadia, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Shakespeare's romances, this study engages in sustained examination of chiasmus in early modern English literature. The author's approach leads to the recovery of hidden designs which are shown to animate important works of literature; along the way Engel offers fresh and more comprehensive interpretations of seemingly shopworn conventions such as memento mori conceits, echo poems, and the staging of deus ex machina. The study, grounded in the philosophy of symbolic forms (following Ernst Cassirer), will be a valuable resource for readers interested in intellectual history and symbol theory, classical mythology and Renaissance iconography. Chiastic Designs affords a glimpse into the transformative power of allegory during the English Renaissance by addressing patterns that were part and parcel of early modern "mnemonic culture."

The name of Hippocrates has been invoked as an inspiration of medicine since antiquity, and medical practitioners have turned to Hippocrates for ethical and social standards. While most modern commentators accept that medicine has sometimes fallen short of Hippocratic ideals, these ideals are usually portrayed as having a timeless appeal, departure from which is viewed as an aberration that only a return to Hippocratic values will correct. Recent historical work has begun to question such an image of Hippocrates and his medicine. Instead of examining Hippocratic ideals and values as an unchanging legacy passed to us from antiquity, historians have increasingly come to explore the many different ways in which Hippocrates and his medicine have been constructed and reconstructed over time. Thus scholars have tended to abandon attempts to extract a real Hippocrates from the mass of conflicting opinions about him. Rather, they tend to ask why he was portrayed in particular ways, by particular groups, at particular times. This volume explores the multiple uses, constructions, and meanings of Hippocrates and Hippocratic medicine since the Renaissance, and elucidates the cultural and social circumstances that shaped their development. Recent research has suggested that whilst the process of constructing and reconstructing Hippocrates began during antiquity, it was during the sixteenth century that the modern picture emerged. Many scholastic endeavours today, it is claimed, are attempts to answer Hippocratic questions first posed in the sixteenth century. This book provides an opportunity to begin to evaluate such claims, and to explore their relevance in areas beyond those of classical scholarship.

Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period maps the intellectual formation of English plebeian radicalism and Scottish philosophic Whiggism over the long eighteenth century and examines their associated strategies of critical engagement with the cultural, social and political crises of the early nineteenth century. It is a story of the making of a wider British public sphere out of the agendas and discourses of the radical and liberal publics that both shaped and responded to them. When juxtaposed, these competing intellectual formations illustrate two important expressions of cultural politics in the Romantic period, as well as the peculiar overlapping of national cultural histories that contributed to the ideological conflict over the public meaning of Britain's industrial modernity. Alex Benchimol's study provides an original contribution to recent scholarship in Romantic period studies centred around the public sphere, recovering the contemporary debates and national cultural histories that together made up a significant part of the ideological landscape of the British public sphere in the early nineteenth century.