Revolts and Political Violence in Early Modern Imagery


Book Description

The first in-depth analysis of how early modern people produced and consumed images of revolts and political violence, drawing on evidence from Russia, China, Hungary, Portugal, Germany, North America and other regions.




Rebellion and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

In the seventeenth century, riots, rebellions, and revolts flared around Europe. Concerned about their internal stability, many states responded by closely observing the violent upheavals that plagued their neighbors. Rebellion and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe investigates how in this struggle for intelligence about internal discord, diplomats emerged as key information brokers and interpreters of Europe’s tumultuous political landscape. The contributions in this volume uncover how diplomatic actors interacted with rulers, opposition leaders, informers, media entrepreneurs, and different audiences in their efforts to understand, communicate, and draw lessons from the insurrections in their time. Rebellion and Diplomacy also examines how diplomats actively tried to shape the course of internal conflicts by managing the dissemination of news, supporting political factions at their court of residence, and even instigating violence. Covering different European regions from the Iberian Peninsula to Scandinavia and from the British Isles to the Carpathian Basin, the book will appeal to all students and researchers interested in early modern diplomacy, politics, and news cultures.




Coercion and Wage Labour


Book Description

Coercion and Wage Labour presents novel histories of people who experienced physical, social, political or cultural compulsion in the course of paid work. Broad in scope, the chapters examine diverse areas of work including textile production, war industries, civil service and domestic labour, in contexts from the Middle Ages to the present day. They demonstrate that wages have consistently shaped working people’s experiences, and failed to protect workers from coercion. Instead, wages emerge as versatile tools to bind, control, and exploit workers. Remuneration mirrors the distribution of power in labour relations, often separating employers physically and emotionally from their employees, and disguising coercion. The book makes historical narratives accessible for interdisciplinary audiences. Most chapters are preceded by illustrations by artists invited to visually conceptualise the book’s key messages and to emphasise the presence of the body and landscape in the realm of work. In turn, the chapter texts reflect back on the artworks, creating an intense intermedial dialogue that offers mutually relational ‘translations’ and narrations of labour coercion. Other contributions written by art scholars discuss how coercion in remunerated labour is constructed and reflected in artistic practice. The collection serves as an innovative and creative tool for teaching, and raises awareness that narrating history is always contingent on the medium chosen and its inherent constraints and possibilities. Praise for Coercion and Wage Labour Coercion and Wage Labour is a pioneering volume. It makes a well-founded break with the widespread misconception that wage labour is by definition free from coercion. The fourteen historical case studies ... lead to the conclusion that wage labourers too were subject to many forms of coercion and that usually their “freedom” was and is only relative. But something else makes this book special: throughout the text there are artistic illustrations that enter into a dialogue with the individual chapters, which in turn reflect on the images. This creates an inspiring interaction that complements the volume’s interdisciplinary nature. Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam




City of Echoes


Book Description

In Rome the echoes of the past resound clearly in its palaces and monuments, and in the remains of the ancient imperial city. But another presence has dominated Rome for 2,000 years -the pope, whose actions and influence echo down the ages. In this epic tale, historian Jessica Wärnberg tells, for the first time, the story of Rome through the lens of its popes, illuminating how these remarkable (and unremarkable) men have transformed lives and played a crucial role in deciding the fate of the city. Emerging as the anonymous leader of a marginal cult in the humblest quarters of the city, less than 300 years later the pope sat enthroned in a gilt basilica, endorsed by the emperor himself. Eventually, the Roman pontiff would supplant even the emperors, becoming the de facto ruler of Rome and pre-eminent leader of the Christian world. Shifting elegantly between the panoramic and the personal, the spiritual and the profane, this is a fresh and often surprising take on a city, a people and an institution that is at once familiar and elusive.




Uprisings in Eighteenth-Century Britain


Book Description

This study examines how the British Empire of the 18th century contained revolution by integrating opposition agents as new spaces of power opened up. Monika Barget convincingly argues that this process of constitutionalisation meant that groups from the aristocracy to religious communities, from the army to the people at large, were brought into the system in a way that balanced the obvious, serious challenges that the Glorious Revolution, the Jacobite Rebellion, the American Revolution, and Jacobin threats of the late-18th century posed to the Empire. Barget highlights the lasting political and legal repercussions of this process. The structure of the chapters, each focussing on specific agents and conflict media, also links the history of political agency and political institutions with an expanding European and even trans-continental media market.




The Cruel Radiance


Book Description

Susie Linfield addresses the issue of whether photographs depicting past scenes of violence & cruelty are voyeuristic, arguing that if we do not look & understand that we are seeing at people, rather than depersonalised acts of inhumanity, our hopes of curbing political violence today are probably limited.







The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt


Book Description

The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt charts the history of medieval rebellion from Spain to Bohemia and from Italy to England, and includes chapters spanning the centuries between Imperial Rome and the Reformation. Drawing together an international group of leading scholars, chapters consider how uprisings worked, why they happened, whom they implicated, what they meant to contemporaries, and how we might understand them now. This collection builds upon new approaches to political history and communication, and provides new insights into revolt as integral to medieval political life. Drawing upon research from the social sciences and literary theory, the essays use revolts and their sources to explore questions of meaning and communication, identity and mobilization, the use of violence and the construction of power. The authors emphasize historical actors’ agency, but argue that access to these actors and their actions is mediated and often obscured by the texts that report them. Supported by an introduction and conclusion which survey the previous historiography of medieval revolt and envisage future directions in the field, The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt will be an essential reference for students and scholars of medieval political history.




Information and Empire


Book Description

From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century Russia was transformed from a moderate-sized, land-locked principality into the largest empire on earth. How did systems of information and communication shape and reflect this extraordinary change? Information and Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1850 brings together a range of contributions to shed some light on this complex question. Communication networks such as the postal service and the gathering and circulation of news are examined alongside the growth of a bureaucratic apparatus that informed the government about its country and its people. The inscription of space is considered from the point of view of mapping and the changing public ‘graphosphere’ of signs and monuments. More than a series of institutional histories, this book is concerned with the way Russia discovered itself, envisioned itself and represented itself to its people. Innovative and scholarly, this collection breaks new ground in its approach to communication and information as a field of study in Russia. More broadly, it is an accessible contribution to pre-modern information studies, taking as its basis a country whose history often serves to challenge habitual Western models of development. It is important reading not only for specialists in Russian Studies, but also for students and non-Russianists who are interested in the history of information and communications.




Ephemeral Print Culture in Early Modern England


Book Description

Uses the collections of ephemera popular in the late seventeenth century as a way to understand the reading habits, publishing strategies and thought processes of late Stuart print culture. Cheap' genres of print such as ballads, almanacs and playing cards were part of everyday life in seventeenth-century society - ubiquitous and disposable. Toward the end of the century, however, individuals began to preserve, arrange and display articles of cheap print within carefully curated collections. What motivated this sudden urge to preserve the ephemeral? This book answers that question by analysing the social, political and intellectual factors behind the formation of cheap print collections, how these collections were used by their owners, and what this activity can tell us about 'print culture' in the early modern period. The book's central collector is John Bagford (1650-1715), a shoemaker who became a dealer of prints and other 'curiosities' to important collectors of the time such as Samuel Pepys, Hans Sloane and Robert Harley. Bagford's own rich and largely unstudied collection is afascinating study in its own right and his position at the centre of commercial and intellectual networks opens up a whole world of collecting. This world encompasses later Stuart partisan political culture, when modern parties and the 'public sphere' first emerged; the 'New Science' and 'virtuoso culture' with its milieu of natural philosophers, antiquaries and artisans; the aural and visual landscape of marketplaces, streets and alehouses; and developing practices of record-keeping, life-writing and historical writing during the long eighteenth century.