European History Commons^™

A Protectorate Divided: The Otjimbingue Petition And Settler Contestations Of Railway Construction In German Southwest Africa, 1897–1902, Marta Millar

Publications and Research

Supporters of the State Railway in German Southwest Africa heralded its construction as ‘the dawn of a new era for the protectorate’ (Windhoeker Anzeiger, 27 October 1898). While railways did enable the expansion of colonial communities, not all settlers wrote as optimistically about this change as did the Anzeiger’s editor. Between 1897 and 1902, familial correspondence and debates in the protectorate’s first newspaper, the Windhoeker Anzeiger, reveal how various settlers negotiated the railroad’s transformative impact on colonial society and their everyday lives. Opposition voices argued that the railroad would harm the fragile colonial economy, serving only …

Past * An Introduction To The Problem, Zelimir Zilnik, Boris Buden, New Media Center Kuda.Org, Olivera Jokic

Publications and Research

Who can know what is in the past? Is it what historians can tell us? Should we also trust what we can remember? Past • An Introduction to the Problem proposes that the problem of the past now concerns everyone. Visions of a different, brighter future defeated in the Cold War and its heated afterlives, we are being offered the past as the only horizon of possibility. And what are we supposed to find in that past? Philosopher Boris Buden considers these questions in a series of essays and conversations with filmmaker Želimir Žilnik, one of the most prominent filmmakers …

Review Of The Book Denial Of Genocides In The Twenty-First Century, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Bedross Der Matossian.

Literature And Censorship During Fransisco Franco's Dictatorship Of Spain, Adriana Cuca

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Paternal Affliction: Emotions And Masculinity Among Eighteenth-Century Italian Jewish Merchants, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

This essay focuses on the “rhetoric of paternal affliction” that late eighteenthcentury

Italian Jewish merchant patriarchs employed in letters and supplications

addressing threats to their intertwined paternal and commercial authority,

particularly when filial disobedience or apostasy was involved. I examine this

rhetoric as an emotional style that illuminates Jewish merchant masculinity.

Although the image of a suffering father seems to deviate from known early

modern models of hegemonic masculinity, within the context of the eighteenthcentury

culture of sensibility this rhetoric emphasized Jewish patriarchs’ honesty

and righteousness, beseeching male compassion and sympathy. By performing

vulnerability vis-à-vis Jewish associates, as well as …

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

The Livornese Slaves In Algiers: The Jewish Question And Political Theatre In Late Eighteenth-Century Tuscany, Francesca Bregoli, Andrea Addobbati

Publications and Research

This essay analyzes a recently discovered French play, Les esclaves livournais à Alger, authored by François Gariel in Livorno in 1786. The protagonist of the piece, which is full of allusions to contemporary Tuscan and European events and subtle references to classics of French Enlightenment literature, is a virtuous, Algiers-based Jewish merchant who preaches toleration for all peoples and religions and greatly admires the grand duke of Tuscany. Important context for understanding Gariel’s play and the Jewish question in Livorno is provided by the relocation in the 1780s of prominent Algerian Jewish families who had built their fortunes on the …

Introduction, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Lliçons Magistrals, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

No seria pianista. Jo no arribaria mai a ser pianista. L’epifania va començar a cristal·litzar poc després d’haver arribat a Salzburg el 1982 amb intencions d’estudiar-hi piano. Com el narrador de la novel·la de Thomas Bernhard Der Untergeher (si es vol, el fracassat o el mediocre), jo havia quedat psicològicament gelat per la presència d’alguns dels millors pianistes del món. En poc temps, i sense capacitat de digerir-ho —tenia vint anys escassos—, havia vist i sentit en viu Alfred Brendel, Maurizio Pollini, Claudio Arrau i Bruno Leonardo Gelber, entre altres.

Dels Territoris Tribals Als Territoris Globals: Una Etnografia Personal, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Fins i tot en aquests temps d’ara, amb autopistes i autovies i mapes al mòbil que no t’abandonen pràcticament mai, arribar als territoris tribals no és tan fàcil. Aterres a l’aeroport de Palma i agafes una de les autopistes construïdes no fa tants d’anys per un govern autonòmic voraç de projectes estrella, i enfiles cap al sud-est de l’illa. Passes per camps esqueixats per l’asfalt, amb restes de garrofers, ametllers i algun petit pinar, i segueixes els quatre carrils, un ample voral i fins i tot una carretera de servei adjacent.

Un Piano «Tòxic»: Chopin I El Seu ‘Pianino’ En Temps De La Covid, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

L'escena la podria haver escrita Proust o tal vegada Henry James en un dels seus viatges per l’Europa meridional. Hi ha grans dames, salons elegants i un piano molt especial. Hi ha, sobretot, gent ociosa.

I també, amb més coneixement de causa, hauria pogut ser un quadre de costumisme literari de Llorenç Villalonga perfilant amb sorna, distància i sang-froid la belle époque mallorquina. Fins i tot alguns dels protagonistes reals que hi intervenen, en aquest petit sainet verídic, apareixen en els llibres de l’escriptor mallorquí, com la senyora Gradolí, o, en tot cas, hi haguessin pogut aparèixer, com la comtessa …

The Influence Of China/Asia On The West, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

This chapter provides a description of cultural communication between China and Europe before 20th century. It discusses the influence of Chinese materials to Western libraries, archives and museums.

Overture: Love—Love Is A Pink Cake, Or, Queering Chopin In Times Of Homophobia, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Abstract:

An introduction to the three essays included in this section. The article highlights the right to know whether Chopin was gay and contextualizes this inquiry in a very long and pervasive historiographical tradition, essentially two-hundred years long, dedicated to examine Chopin sexual orientation, on the one hand, and on the other the more recent tradition of queering western classical music composers. The main point is not to demonstrate categorically that Chopin was “gay” (a relative, modern identity marker in any case) but rather to highlight the discourses that have presented him as unequivocally heterosexual.

Resumen:

Una introducción a los …

Invisible Strangers, Or Romani History Reconsidered, Kristina Richardson

Publications and Research

This essay proposes that the invisibility of so-called Gypsies in Middle Eastern and Central Asian historiography derives from two linked phenomena. First, the work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and North American philologists, medievalists, and ethnographers delegitimized the Strangers’ languages, along with the cultures and histories that these languages expressed. The erasure of Strangers from modern historiography was nearly total. Secondly, the category of Strangers was transformed in the wake of the Holocaust as Roma activists drew on Nazi racial categories to base Roma identity on linguistic criteria.

The Querelle Des Clés: An Episode In Francisco Frontera De Valldemosa's Exuberant Life, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

In 1858, Francisco Frontera de Valldemosa published a peculiar music theory treatise in Madrid under the title Equinotación ó Nuevo sistema musical de llaves. It has two parts. The first (pp. 11-20) is an explanation of the invention (namely, the reduction of all clefs to only three) detailing the perceived actual need for it (that is, most clefs are unnecessary, and they impede or delay the creativity of the avid music learner). The second part (new pagination, pp. 2-83) is a curious anthology of music in many genres and styles. On the left page of each spread, there is a …

L'Amic Mallorquí De Rossini, Antoni Pizà, Maria L. Martínez

Publications and Research

En tot cas, avui en dia, a pesar d'haver compost molta música, Frontera és recordat —si és que és recordat— per haver estat l'artífex de la política musical de la Casa Reial i, possiblement, com tots aquests regals atesten, per la seva estreta relació amb Rossini —i amb la Reina, és clar.

Introduction: Connecting Histories: Jews And Their Others In Early Modern Europe, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

Introduction to edited volume Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in Early Modern Europe (ed. by Francesca Bregoli and David B. Ruderman)

The Merchants At The Casino: Sephardic Elites And Leisure Time In Eighteenth-Century Livorno, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

In 1712,a casino was established in the Jewish neighborhood of the Mediterranean port of Livorno. This venue, which stayed open until 1720, appears unique, as no similar Jewish institutions have been described in comparable communities. This explores the significance of the casino for the relationship of Livornese Jewry with Tuscan culture and the state by investigating internal documents from the Livornese Jewish community (nazione ebrea) in light of analogous Tuscan institutions. By considering an episode in the relatively little studied history of early modern Jewish leisure, we gain insight into values and aspirations of members of one of …

Jewish Germany: An Enduring Presence From The Fourth To The Twenty-First Century, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Jewish Germany: An enduring presence from the fourth to the twenty-first century.

Soap From Human Fat: The Case Of Professor Spanner, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Soap from Human Fat: The Case of Professor Spanner, by Monika Tomkiewicz and Piotr Semków (Gdynia: Wydawnictwo Róza Wiatrów, 2013).

Mussolini's Dream Factory: Film Stardom In Fascist Italy, Book Review, Peter Catapano

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Cultural Cold War And The New Women Of Power. Making A Case Based On The Fulbright And Ford Foundations In Greece, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

When in the 1950s C. Wright Mills was writing about the emergence of the new power elites he paid no attention to the presence of women in its midsts. He was not entirely mistaken. Yet there is a particular intertwining of the ideologies of leadership and masculinity which serves to maintain the status quo, the privilege of an elite and perpetuate preconceptions about political agency and gender. In an attempt to go beyond available models and predominantly masculine images of the postwar America the present article accounts for women’s role in the postwar American efforts for cultural hegemony. It focuses …

"Your Father’S Interests”: The Business Of Kinship In A Trans-Mediterranean Jewish Merchant Family, 1776–1790, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Greatest Metaphor Ever Mixed: Gold In The British Bible, 1750–1850, Timothy Alborn

Publications and Research

Given the frequency of negative references to gold in British allusions to filthy lucre, it emerges as an historical puzzle that Britons resorted to biblical metaphors of gold so often in describing heaven and their aspiration to be purified in God's crucible. This article provides evidence for the prominence of these two metaphors in British religious and secular discourse between 1750 and 1850, and argues that Britons tried to resolve the resulting tensions by celebrating their uniquely abstract valuation of gold, in contrast to less "civilized" connotations of gold in Catholic and non-Christian cultures.

Teaching The French Revolution From A Global Perspective, Frank Jacob

Publications and Research

The French Revolution (1789-1799) is a process of events in world history that had a tremendous global impact. Regardless of this fact, it is, however, still rather taught in its European context. Without this revolution, it seems, Western modernity could not be the same and many countries in Europe remember the impact of the events at the beginning of the so called “long” 19th century in their national historiographies. While the First World War, called “the seminal catastrophe”3 of the 20th century by George F. Kennan (1904-2005) in the late 1970s, marks the end of this long century, the French …

Arnold Whitridge: Scholar And Veteran Of Two Armies And Two Wars, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

This is an invited blog post written for Roads to the Great War, a site dedicated to the study of the First World War edited by historian Mike Hanlon. The article discusses the life and career of Arnold Whitridge, a soldier, scholar and grandson of British poet Matthew Arnold.

This is the url:

http://roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.com/2017/01/arnold-whitridge-scholar-and-veteran-of.html

American Battleship At War: Uss New York, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

This invited blog post tells the story of the USS New York, a dreadnought built just prior to the outbreak of the First World War and decommissioned after World War II.

Review Of The Book Harmful And Undesirable: Book Censorship In Nazi Germany, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Harmful and undesirable: Book censorship in Nazi Germany.

The Jews Of Italy (1650-1815), Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review Of Muslims And Jews In France. History Of A Conflict By Maud S. Mandel, Bryan Turner

Publications and Research

The mood of European scholarship with respect to the recognition and integration of Islam is typically pessimistic. The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-Islam political parties – Golden Dawn in Greece, the Northern League in Italy, Marine Le Penn and the National Front in France, and the English defense league in Britain – have exposed a hitherto hidden or ignored under-current of resentment against foreigners. In the context of these developments, Maud Mandel’s study of Muslims and Jews in France is a welcome corrective to the dominant focus on anti-Islam in the academic literature and in the popular media. The historical …