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Florence in Transition: Volume One: The Decline of the Commune
Par Marvin Becker. 1967
Originally published in 1967. With the waning of the Middle Ages, the life of the Italian polis underwent a gradual…
but unmistakable transformation. The leisurely decentralization of the medieval commune, which had its roots in feudalism, the code of chivalry, and religious faith, gave place to the tight despotism of the fourteenth century. This in turn yielded to democratized government and finally to a stricter legalistic and puritanical rule. Marvin Becker's two-volume study of Florence examines this metamorphosis and establishes its relationship to the emergence of the Renaissance state. Volume One traces the decline of the communal paideia in its political, social, and cultural aspects. Through an intensive examination of the fiscal and juridical records of the period and the documents of contemporary literature, Dr. Becker demonstrates the relationship between the death of communal ideals and the centralization of political power, and between the emergence of a strong middle class and a respect for public law. He shows the patricians discovering a community of interest with the burghers, and the vendetta being replaced by courts of law. Finally, he traces the growing ability of the Florentine citizenry to cope with crisis through the newly strengthened organs of the republic. Volume Two will discuss the establishment of Florence as a Renaissance city-state with particular emphasis on the continuum between the medieval commune of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and the centralized city of the mid-fourteenth century. A unique contribution of this volume lies in the use made of painstaking and detailed investigation of the voluminous archival resources of the Archivio di Stato of Florence—some of which have since been destroyed by the 1966 flood. In pursuit of what actually took place during communal council meetings, what legislation was passed and what rejected, Dr. Becker scrutinized tens of thousands of documents in a variety of categories, obtaining first-hand knowledge of the careers of those in power, and gaining illuminating insights into motivations and actions. Political, social, and cultural historians will find Florence in Transition, Volume One, a helpful elucidation of the dynamics of historical change and the birth of a state.Originally published in 1975. Following the vein of French historiography, many twentieth-century scholars of the French Revolution believed that the…
middle class of lawyers played a crucial role in the Revolution. In The Barristers of Toulouse, Lenard Berlanstein contends with that notion in a case study examining the response of the Toulousian legal community to the French Revolution. Using tax rolls, marriage contracts, and court records as primary sources, Professor Berlanstein argues that class interests—such as a desire to preserve their status in the cultured, conservative urban elite—led many Toulousian judges and lawyers to reject the Revolution and to remain loyal to the aristocratic Parlement. In other words, those in the legal community of Toulouse conducted themselves in ways that were consistent with other members of their social and economic class. To supplement his argument, Berlanstein's integrates methods from the New Social History movement.The Nobility of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Economic Study
Par Robert Forster. 1960
Originally published in 1960. This is a regional study of the nobility of Toulouse in the eighteenth century. The complex…
notion of class and the peculiarities of each region in France during the Ancien Régime make it difficult for historians to render a general portrait of the provincial French aristocracy. This study describes the economic interests and investments of noblemen in Toulouse. Some of their activities follow the classic pattern of "seigniorial reaction" and thus illustrate ideas posed by Marc Bloch. Others suggest that the Toulousian gentlemen were conscientious landlords. The Toulousian noble was essentially a gentilhomme campagnard, a country gentleman, in regard to his source of revenue, his outlook, and his mode of living. This book should make clear the full meaning of this expression.Walther Rathenau and the Weimar Republic: The Politics of Reparations
Par David Felix. 1971
Originally published in 1971. Walther Rathenau and the Weimar Republic examines reparations in Germany following the First World War. Financial…
reparation was the most difficult and dangerous of the conditions imposed upon Germany by the Versailles Treaty. The amount of reparations - three times the country's annual income - was beyond Germany's capacity to pay. The United States, by insisting on the payment of Allied war debts, forced the Allies in turn to insist on reparations. Postwar polemics concentrated on German aggression and war crimes, but the real issue was the damage done to the world's economic mechanism. In the end all nations suffered, including the United States.Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French Enlightenment
Par Lester G. Crocker. 1963
Originally published in 1963. Perhaps the most generative ethical question of eighteenth-century France was how to live a virtuous and…
happy life at the same time. During the Age of Enlightenment, Christianity fell out of vogue as the dominant and authoritative moral code. In place of Christianity's emphasis on sin and redemption in light of a supposed afterlife, present happiness became recognized as an appropriate end goal among French Enlightenment thinkers. French intellectuals struggled to find equilibrium between nature (a person's individual goals and needs) and culture (the political, economic, and social organization of humans for a collective good). Enlightenment discourse generated a unique cultural moment in which thinkers addressed the problems of humans' moral coexistence through the dichotomy of nature and culture. Lester Crocker addresses these questions in an overview of ethical thought in eighteenth-century France.The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1500
Par Reinhold C. Mueller. 1997
The long awaited conclusion to the magisterial Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice.Originally published in 1997. In 1985…
Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller published the magisterial Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, volume 1: Coins and Moneys of Account. Now, after ten years of further research and writing, Reinhold Mueller completes the work that he and the late Frederic Lane began. The history of money and banking in Venice is crucial to an understanding of European economic history. Because of its strategic location between East and West, Venice rapidly rose to a position of preeminence in Mediterranean trade. To keep trade moving from London to Constantinople and beyond, Venetian merchants and bankers created specialized financial institutions to serve private entrepreneurs and public administrators: deposit banks, foreign exchange banks, a grain office, and a bureau of the public debt. This new book clarifies Venice's pivotal role in Italian and international banking and finance. It also sets banking—and panics—in the context of more generalized and recurrent crises involving territorial wars, competition for markets, and debates over interest rates and the question of usury.Originally published in 1974. Focusing on a set of Jewish communities, Robert Chazan tells how, by the eleventh century, French…
Jews had created for themselves a role as local merchants and moneylenders in adapting to the political, economic, and social limits imposed on them. French society, striving to become more powerful and civilized, was willing to extend aid and protection to the Jews in return for general stimulation of trade and urban life and for the immediate profit realized from taxation. While the authorities were relatively successful in protecting the Jews from others, there was no power to impose itself between the Jews and their protectors. The political and social well-being of the Jews was, therefore, dependent on the will of the governing authorities who taxed their holdings and regulated their activities. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the position of the Jews was constantly under attack by reform elements in the church concerned with Jewish moneylending and blasphemous materials in Jewish books; these reformers were eventually devoted to a serious missionizing effort within the Jewish community. The Jews' situation was further complicated by deep popular animosity, expressing itself in a damaging set of slanders and occasionally in physical violence. Despite the impressive achievements of the Jews in medieval northern France, by the thirteenth century their community was increasingly constricted; and in 1306, they were expelled from royal France by Philip IV. Overcoming the handicap of a lack of copious source material, Chazan analyzes the Jews' political status, their relations with key elements of Christian society, their demographic development, their economic outlets, their internal organization, and their attitudes toward the Christian environment. As it highlights aspects of French society from an unusual perspective, Medieval Jewry in Northern France should be of special interest to the historian of medieval France as well as to the student of Jewish history. This story is also significant for all who are fascinated by the capacity of human groups to respond and adapt creatively to a hostile and limiting environment.Venice and History: The Collected Papers of Frederic C. Lane
Par Frederic Chapin Lane. 1966
Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England
Par Clarke Garrett. 1975
Originally published in 1975. The French Revolution generated a wave of popular piety and religious excitement in both France and…
England, where millenarians—prophets of the millennium—attempted to interpret the Revolution as the fulfillment of the predictions of Daniel and St. John the Divine. This study discusses the millenarian ideal in the context of the intellectual and religious attitudes of the time. Rejecting interpretations of millenarianism that chalk it up to class struggle or mass hysteria, Garrett stresses the interaction between politics and religion, viewing the phenomenon as the interpretation, by a varied assortment of individuals, of coincident political events in eschatological terms. Faced with a change as significant as the French Revolution, people found in the prophetic books of the Bible an understanding of what was happening to them. If the Revolution was God's will, if its development had been foretold, then surely the final outcome would be beneficial, at least for the faithful. Political events became eschatological events, and dangers and misfortunes became simply the chastisements that a fallen world must undergo before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ can redeem it. Although some of the beliefs may now seem bizarre, Garrett shows that, at the time, they attracted many followers for whom these ideas were both reasonable and respectable. Focusing on the careers of three millenarians—Suzette Labrousse, Catherine Théot, and Richard Brothers—Garrett tries to understand these prophets as persons rather than dismiss them as fanatics. Their prominence resulted from their success in transmitting a new political consciousness through familiar religious imagery. While the Revolution gave urgency and tangible reality to millenarian convictions, Labrousse, Théot, and others were convinced, well before the Revolution, that they were the bearers of divine revelations and thus welcomed the Revolution as confirmation of their own missions.Merchants, Landlords, Magistrates: The Depont Family in Eighteenth-Century France
Par Robert Forster. 1980
Originally published in 1980. A social historian of modern France, Robert Forster discovered a series of father-to-son letters that presented…
an unusual opportunity to trace in human terms the impact of institutions and cultural norms on eighteenth-century French society. From these letters and other family papers, Forster reconstructed a family biography of the Deponts of La Rochelle over four generations. Their story affords new insights into the workings of institutions—economic, religious, legal, administrative—the mentality of provincial notables, the world of Parisian high finance and salon society, and the response of a socially mobile family to the challenges of the century, climaxing in the French Revolution of 1789. Forster demonstrates how real people in an upwardly mobile family coped with their changing society, moved from overseas trade to local and then national office, managed their wealth, treated their children, and then parried the psychological shocks accompanying their ascent to status and power. It is the story not of a "class" response to abstract trends or forces identified by the historian in retrospect but of flesh-and-blood human beings grappling with day-to-day decisions and revealing a full range of human ambiguity and inconsistency. This study offers perspective on the emergence by 1800 of a new elite in France—a social amalgam of landlords, administrators, and professional men, inculcated with a national awareness and a cautious political liberalism. These were the notables who would govern France in the next century. Forster's approach, uncommon among social historians, combines narrative and analytical modes of historiography. Based on archival materials in La Rochelle and Paris, the book blends economic, social, cultural, and political history.Florence in Transition: Volume Two: Studies in the Rise of the Territorial State
Par Marvin Becker. 2019
Originally published in 1968. In the pluralistic society of the medieval commune, informal and personal ties of obligation bound men…
together. In trecentro Florence this "gentle" communal structure gradually evolved into the stricter, more centralized organization characteristic of the modern state. A growing emphasis on law and order transformed the medieval commune of the early fourteenth century into the Renaissance territorial state of the latter half of the century. Professor Becker's subject is this metamorphosis. Following his study of the declining communal paideia in Volume One, the author examines in this second volume the growing vigor of public world, as well as the attendant depersonalization and repression. He is concerned primarily with two factors that he considers the major forces producing the Renaissance territorial state and encouraging the growth of imperial government and constitutionalism: the intrusion of new citizens (novi cives) into politics after 1343 and the skyrocketing of communal debt. Thus, the author disputes Burckhardt's idea of the state as a work of art, viewing it instead as a creation of socioeconomic mobility and deficit financing. Further, in examining art and literature as symptoms of developing public culture and reactions to it, Professor Becker interprets them as indications of increased public involvement of the Florentine citizens, thus providing a sharp refutation of Burkhardt's egoistic, violent Renaissance man. The author concludes his study with a detailed description of the territorial state itself, pointing out the new relationship between citizen and polis which emerged in the early fifteenth century. These two volumes provide a compelling and challenging interpretation of a crucial period in Western history.Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice: Volume I: Coins and Moneys of Account
Par Frederic Chapin Lane, Reinhold C. Mueller. 1985
Originally published in 1985. Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller, in the first volume of Money and Banking in…
Medieval and Renaissance Venice, discuss Venice's economic achievement in terms of the complex system the city's inhabitants developed to manage moneys of account and coins. Money merchants of Venice developed a system whereby a premium attached to moneys of account acted as a stabilizing force and allowed merchants to engage in long-term trade. This system, according to the authors, helped establish Venice as a dominant city-state in international trade and exchange. This book outlines the development and success of this system through 1508. At the time it was first published, this book made a significant contribution to the history of money and economics by underscoring the large role that Venice played in the economic history of the West and the ascendance of capitalism as a structuring force of society.The Defense of Berlin
Par Jean Edward Smith. 1963
Originally published in 1963. In 1958 Nikita Khrushchev demanded that the United States, Great Britain, and France withdraw from West…
Berlin. His demands eventually resulted in the division of Germany's capital city through the building of the Berlin Wall. In The Defense of Berlin, Jean Edward Smith discusses Berlin from the time of arrangements set during the war through 1962, with an emphasis on the effect that the crisis of division had on the city.Students and Society in Early Modern Spain
Par Richard L. Kagan. 1975
Originally published in 1974. The close connection between universities and bureaucratic institutions such as church and state was perhaps first…
noticed by Max Weber. Such institutions, he observed, require a dependable source of cadres to run them. Thus, the size and composition of university enrollments are often a function of bureaucratic needs. Richard Kagan examines the dynamics of this relationship historically by racing the growth and decline of the university system in Castile, the heart of the Spanish monarchy, between 1500 and 1809. This period marked the emergence of a strong Habsburg state and a militant Catholic church, both of which looked to the universities for "educated" men. Accordingly, the universities grew rapidly, and by 1600 Castile was perhaps the best-educated kingdom in Europe. But this did not last. Jobs were increasingly filled through nepotism, causing students to abandon the universities in search of other careers. By 1700, the universities were small, backward institutions. Kagan begins by examining the nature and position of primary, secondary, and university institutions in Hapsburg Spain, concentrating on the extent and purpose of literacy. In Part II, Kagan discusses the growth and development of the ruling hierarchies in the bureaucratic world and gives special consideration to the criteria used to recruit officials. The author concludes with an assessment of the impact of bureaucratic changes in church and state on the universities of Castile. The data he collects on changes in the curriculum, the professorate, and the social and geographical backgrounds of the students are used to support hypotheses about the spectacular rise and collapse of university education in Spain, the process of modernization, the development of bureaucracies, and the crisis of the Spanish monarchy. Students and Society in Early Modern Spain demonstrates that institutions of higher learning often collapse when they become over-professionalized and fail to respond to changing conditions. Thus, Kagan provides a study of education and social change—of why educational institutions are central to a society in one century but only peripheral to it in the next. The author casts new light not only on the short lived educational revolution of the sixteenth century but also on education in other societies, both past and present.French Huguenots made enormous contributions to the life and culture of colonial New York during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.…
Huguenot craftsmen were the city's most successful artisans, turning out unrivaled works of furniture which were distinguished by unique designs and arcane details. More than just decorative flourishes, however, the visual language employed by Huguenot artisans reflected a distinct belief system shaped during the religious wars of sixteenth-century France.In Fortress of the Soul, historian Neil Kamil traces the Huguenots' journey to New York from the Aunis-Saintonge region of southwestern France. There, in the sixteenth century, artisans had created a subterranean culture of clandestine workshops and meeting places inspired by the teachings of Bernard Palissy, a potter, alchemist, and philosopher who rejected the communal, militaristic ideology of the Huguenot majority which was centered in the walled city of La Rochelle. Palissy and his followers instead embraced a more fluid, portable, and discrete religious identity that encouraged members to practice their beliefs in secret while living safely—even prospering—as artisans in hostile communities. And when these artisans first fled France for England and Holland, then left Europe for America, they carried with them both their skills and their doctrine of artisanal security.Drawing on significant archival research and fresh interpretations of Huguenot material culture, Kamil offers an exhaustive and sophisticated study of the complex worldview of the Huguenot community. From the function of sacred violence and alchemy in the visual language of Huguenot artisans, to the impact among Protestants everywhere of the destruction of La Rochelle in 1628, to the ways in which New York's Huguenots interacted with each other and with other communities of religious dissenters and refugees, Fortress of the Soul brilliantly places American colonial history and material life firmly within the larger context of the early modern Atlantic world.Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century
Par Carla Rahn Phillips. 1987
In 1625, Martin de Arana built six Atlantic warships for the Spanish crown. The author traces the ships from their…
construction through a decade of service, incorporating a history of Spain's Golden Age. This book was awarded the Spain and America in Quincentennial Year of Discovery prize.French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851
Par Ted W. Margadant. 1980
The triumphant rise of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte over his Republican opponents has been the central theme of most narrative accounts…
of mid-nineteenth-century France, while resistance to the coup d'état generally has been neglected. By placing the insurrection of December 1851 in a broad perspective of socioeconomic and political development, Ted Margadant displays its full significance as a turning point in modern French history. He argues that, as the first expression of a new form of political participation on the part of the peasants, resistance to the coup was of greater importance than previously supposed. Furthermore, it provides and appropriate testing ground for more general theories of peasant movements and popular revolts.Using manuscript materials in French national and departmental archives that cover all the major areas of revolt, the author examines the insurrection in depth on a national scale. After a brief discussion of the main characteristics of the insurrection, he analyzes its economic and social foundations; the dialectic of repression and conspiracy that fostered the political crisis; and the armed mobilizations, violence, and massive arrests that exploded as the result. A final chapter considers the implications of the insurrection for larger issues in the social and political history of modern France.Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the Republic of Venice, 1557–1789
Par Joanne M. Ferraro. 2008
This captivating history exposes a clandestine world of family and community secrets—incest, abortion, and infanticide—in the early modern Venetian republic.…
With the keen eye of a detective, Joanne M. Ferraro follows the clues in individual cases from the criminal archives of Venice and reconstructs each one as the courts would have done according to the legal theory of the day. Lawmakers relied heavily on the depositions of family members, neighbors, and others in the community to establish the veracity of the victims’ claims. Ferraro recounts this often colorful testimony, giving voice to the field workers, spinners, grocers, servants, concubines, midwives, physicians, and apothecaries who gave their evidence to the courts, sometimes shaping the outcomes of the investigations. Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice also traces shifting attitudes toward illegitimacy and paternity from the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Both the Catholic Church and the Republic of Venice tried to enforce moral discipline and regulate sex and reproduction. Unmarried pregnant women were increasingly stigmatized for engaging in sex. Their claims for damages because of seduction or rape were largely unproven, and the priests and laymen they were involved with were often acquitted of any wrongdoing. The lack of institutional support for single motherhood and the exculpation of fathers frequently led to abortion, infant abandonment, or infant death.In uncovering these hidden sex crimes, Ferraro exposes the further abuse of women by both the men who perpetrated these illegal acts and the courts that prosecuted them.Winner of the French Colonial Historical Society's Alf Andrew Heggoy Book PrizePhilip Boucher analyzes the images—and the realities—of European relations…
with the people known as Island Caribs during the first three centuries after Columbus. Based on literary sources, travelers' observations, and missionary accounts, as well as on French and English colonial archives and administrative correspondence, Cannibal Encounters offers a vivid portrait of a troubled chapter in the history of European-Amerindian relations.Dressing Modern Frenchwomen: Marketing Haute Couture, 1919–1939
Par Mary Lynn Stewart. 2008
At a glance, high fashion and feminism seem unlikely partners. Between the First and Second World Wars, however, these forces…
combined femininity and modernity to create the new, modern French woman. In this engaging study, Mary Lynn Stewart reveals the fashion industry as an integral part of women's transition into modernity. Analyzing what female columnists in fashion magazines and popular women novelists wrote about the "new silhouette," Stewart shows how bourgeois women feminized the more severe, masculine images that elite designers promoted to create a hybrid form of modern that both emancipated women and celebrated their femininity. She delves into the intricacies of marketing the new clothes and the new image to middle-class women and examines the nuts and bolts of a changing industry—including textile production, relationships between suppliers and department stores, and privacy and intellectual property issues surrounding ready-to-wear couture designs. Dressing Modern Frenchwomen draws from thousands of magazine covers, advertisements, fashion columns, and features to uncover and untangle the fascinating relationships among the fashion industry, the development of modern marketing techniques, and the evolution of the modern woman as active, mobile, and liberated.