Showing papers on "Empire published in 1969"

The Italian city-republics

Abstract: Introduction 1 The legacy of power Economic changes The nascent commune 2 The population Status and occupation Growth of the town New categories and class feeling 3 Government Origins of the commune Institutions The podesta Other officials Administration Church and state The presuppositions of government Citizenship 4 Town and country The contado Administration of the contado Immigration from the contado Tenurial change in the countryside The liberation of the serfs The feudal nobility 5 External relations The role of Empire and Papacy The conduct of diplomacy Military organization Patriotism 6 Civic spirit and the visual arts Palaces and piazzas Walls Fountains Church-building Town-planning Painting the city 7 Internal divisions Nobles and magnates The Popolo Other private city organizations Guelfs and Ghibellines The ideal of concord 8 The failure of the republics Feudal power The triumph of the Signoria 9 The historiography of the City-Republics Notes and references Bibliography Historical Gazetteer Index

Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory

Abstract: Preface to the 1985 edition Preface to the first edition List of abbreviated works 1. Two journeys to utopia 2. Moral psychology 3. The empire of opinion 4. Images of authority 5. 'One nation, indivisible ...' 6. Postscript: considering Rousseau Appendix: A brief summary of the Nouvelle Heloise and Emile et Sophie ou les Solitaires Index.

A note on portuguese reactions to the revival of the red sea spice trade and the rise of atjeh, 1540-1600

Abstract: No reputable historian nowadays maintains that the Portuguese 16th- century thalassocracy in the Indian Ocean was always and everywhere completely effective. In particular, it is widely accepted that there was a marked if erratic revival in the Red Sea spice-trade shortly after the first Turkish occupation of Aden in 1538, though much work remains to be done on the causes and effects of this development. The Portuguese reactions to the rise of Atjeh have been studied chiefly in connection with the frequent fighting in the Straits of Malacca; and the economic side of the struggle has been less considered. The connection of Atjeh with the revival of the Red Sea spice-trade has been insufficiently stressed; though Mrs. Meilink-Roelofsz and Dr. V. Magalh?es Godinho have some relevant observations on this point in their recent and well docu mented works (Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago, 1500-1630, The Hague, 1962, pp. 142-46; Os Descobrimentos e a Econom?a Mundial, Vol. II, Lisboa, 1967, pp. Ill - 171). The purpose of this paper is to amplify the facts and figures which they give there, in the hope that someone with the necessary linguistic qualifications will be incited to make comple mentary researches in the relevant Indonesian, Arabian, or Turkish sources. I am not concerned here with the origins of Atjehnese-Portuguese enmity, nor with the founding of the Atjehnese empire by Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah, who conquered Daya to the west and Pedir (Pidie) and Pase to the east.1 By the time of his death in or about the year 1530, the Atjehnese had captured so many cannon from the P'ortuguese that the contemporary chronicler, Fern?o Lopes de Castanheda, averred that the Sultan "was much better supplied with

The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire

Abstract: A study of the fate of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire derives its interest from three main problems First, Manichaeism was invariably associated with Persia: to study the growth of Manichaeism in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and to trace the attitude of the Roman governing-class to its expansion, is to touch on an important sector of the cultural relations between the Sassanian Empire and the Roman world Secondly, the repression of Manichaeism in the Christian Empire was the spear-head of religious intolerance: the only Christian heretics to be executed in the Early Church were Manichees or those, such as Priscillian, on whom the accusation of Manichaeism could be made to stick Thirdly, Manichaeism was a missionary religion: its rapid expansion in the third and fourth centuries makes it the last religion from the eastern provinces to attempt to make headway in Roman society, just as its appearance in the T'ang Empire of China, alongside Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity, place it among the leading ‘barbarian’ religions that spread into an Empire which had suddenly opened to the Western World Conversely, the withering away of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire is a symptom of the growth of a new, more exclusive, more localized society, that foreshadows the embattled Christendom of the Middle Ages

French Policy and the Origins of the Scramble for West Africa

Abstract: This paper is a contribution to the current debate about the origins of the scramble for West Africa. It analyses the internal dynamics of French expansion and argues that the crucial change in French African policy occurred not in 1882–3, as commonly assumed, but in 1879–80. The policies adopted at this time, although their roots can be traced back to the governorship of Louis Faidherbe in Senegal, were distinguished by a new willingness on the part of the government in Paris to establish political as well as economic claims to West African territory, and by its readiness to bear the financial and military burdens of territorial expansion. Changes in French domestic politics or foreign relations cannot adequately account for this transition from informal to formal expansion, nor can it be explained solely in terms of commercial agitation in France or West Africa. The influence of public opinion and of colonial agents on the formulation of policy was more significant, but the crucial decisions were taken by the policy-makers themselves, and in particular by Charles de Freycinet (Minister of Public Works and later Prime Minister) and Admiral Jean Jaureguiberry (Minister of Marine and Colonies). They, above all, were responsible for inaugurating the era of French imperialism in West Africa. The new imperialism was most apparent in the drive to create a vast territorial empire in the Sudanese interior. But it was also evident in the intensification of commercial rivalries along the West African coast, and the paper argues that French actions there in 1882–3 were the continuation of policies adopted three years before rather than immediate responses to the British occupation of Egypt or to the growth of popular support for African expansion. Accordingly, the beginnings of French imperialism in West Africa are advanced as the principal cause of the scramble.

A History of West Africa: An Introductory Survey

Abstract: Beginnings the great states of the western and central Sudan wider consequences of the growth of empire and trade in the Sudan the beginnings of European enterprise European competition for trade in the Guinea coastlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the slave trade and economic change the political development of lower Guinea from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century West Africa and the campaign against the slave trade the British West African settlements, 1808-74 the Islamic revolution, and political developments in the interior, c 1770-c1890 the renewal of French activity, and the European scramble for colonies West Africa under European rule the regaining of independency

Empire and Revolution

Abstract: Review of Empire and Revolution by David Horowitz. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Paulinus of Nola and the Last Century of the Western Empire

Abstract: The part played by Christianity in the downfall of the Roman empire in the west has fascinated historians for more than two centuries. The Encyclopaedists in the person of Montesquieu opened the debate, but the latter's subtle anti-Christianity in his Considerations sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains (published 1734) was succeeded by the thorough-going attack of Gibbon who singled out Christianity as the main cause for the change and decadence in the empire's structure. Since then the debate has continued. New factors have been brought into play, such as the annihilating effect of the barbarian attacks or the sense of social injustice so graphically described by Salvian in Gaul and Spain that drove many provincials to welcome the rebel Bagaudae and the Germanic invaders as liberators from Roman tyranny. Salvian, however, was not unpatriotic. He was a far greater laudator temporis acti than Augustine and Orosius, and unlike them found positive merit in the poverty and virtue of the Old Romans. What he criticized was the heartless wealth, luxury and oppression of his own day and the failure of the Catholic clergy to do anything about it.

The Silver Currency Output of the Mughal Empire and Prices in India During the 16th and 17th Centuries

Abstract: two remarkable phenomena in European economic history, namely, the price revolution and the great influx of silver and gold into Europe from rhe Americas. Most historians have held the one to be-largely the result of the other. Though there may be considerable dispute as to the exact nature of their interconnection, and the relative scale of the bullion influx (relative, that is, to the stock of precious metal already existing in Europe), there may not be much disagreement with the view that these phenomena were not confined, in their consequences, to Europe alone. ' Surprising as it may seem, the exact contrary was implicitly assumed in much of the writing on the economic history of India ;* although as early as 1786 James Grant had referred to the effects on 17th century Indian prices of "the extraordinary influx of specie from the American mines.?" . Only in some recent writing has there been appreciation of the possibility that both the bullion influx and the rise in prices could in due course hzve extended to India from Europe.' Unfortunately, the evidence on both these points, though suggestive enough, is not statistically very satisfactory. For example, while throughout the 17th century allegations continued to be made about the enormous drain of bullion from

China's Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective

Abstract: THE American breakthrough in studies of Communist China during the last decade, despite all the difficulties of study from a distance, has given us a new capacity to ap praise Peking's shifts of current policy. At the same time, our very success in understanding short-term developments tends to foreshorten our perspective, as though Chairman Mao's new China were actually as new as he so fervently exhorts it to be. If we ask the long-term question?What is China's tradition in foreign policy??our query may provoke two counter-questions: Did the Chinese empire ever have a conscious foreign policy? Even if it did, hasn't Mao's revolution wiped out any surviving tradition? To answer these questions is easy in theory, difficult in prac tice. Theoretically, since China has had two millennia of foreign relations (the longest record of any organized state), her be havior must have shown uniformities?attitudes, customs and, in effect, policies. In fact, however, the Chinese empire had no foreign office, and the dynastic record of "foreign policy" is fragmented under topics like border control, frontier trade, punitive expeditions, tribute embassies, imperial benevolence to foreign rulers and the like, so that it has seldom been pulled to gether and studied as an intelligible whole. Again, one may theorize that Maoism is only the latest effort to meet China's problems of national order and people's liveli hood on Chinese soil: the scene, the wherewithal, even the issues are largely inherited, and the violent shrillness of Mao's attack on Chinese tradition indicates to us how difficult he has found it to break free of that tradition. But for this very reason we cannot in practice look to Maoism for a realistic definition of China's foreign policy interests and aims over the centuries. Most of the record is simply condemned and brushed aside, except as parts of it may fit into current polemics. If Peking's foreign relations have left a still potent tradition, we have to discover it ourselves.

The Concept of Empire in Western Europe from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century.

Abstract: In the Middle Ages nothing that happened was ever regarded as absolutely new; each development was seen as a renewal of a former state of things By studying the concept of empire during that period, one can understand how it caused political structures to be formed which claimed to be a continuation of the Empire of Rome

Brazilian Gold and British Traders in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract: T HE ECONOMIC REVIVAL of Portugal and her overseas empire was expected to follow the definitive conclusion of peace with Spain and the United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands in 1668-1669, but it largely failed to materialize during the next two decades. The Portuguese economy depended chiefly on the reexportation of Brazilian sugar and tobacco, and on the exportation of Portugal's own salt, wine, and fruit. These went to pay for the imports of cereals, cloth, and other manufactured goods, mostly from Northern Europe. The value of those exports never sufficed to pay for these essential imports; and the country's balance of payments problem became increasingly critical as British and French West Indian sugar production came into competition with the older Brazilian. "Who says Brazil says sugar and more sugar," wrote the planters of Bahia to the Crown in 1662. A couple of years later a visiting English seaman noted of Brazil: "The country is much abounding with sugars, which is the best sugar for the most part that is made." He added that Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Recife, "all yearly lade many ships with sugar and tobacco and Brazilwood for the merchants of Portugal, [Brazil] being a great enriching to the Crown of Portugal, without which it would be but a poor kingdom." But in 1671 the experienced English consul-general at Lisbon, Thomas Maynard, "a very stirring man on his nation's behalf," reported to his government: "All their sugars which are arrived this year, with all other commodities [which] this kingdom affords to be exported, will not pay for half of the goods that are imported, so that their money will all be carried out of their kingdom in a few years. "1 The position was aggravated by the general economic depression which was then affecting much of Western Europe, and by a decline in the

British Policy and Spanish America, 1783–1808

Abstract: ‘The liberation of South America’, wrote Castlereagh in 1807, ‘must be accomplished through the wishes and exertions of the inhabitants; but the change can only be operated…under the protection and with the support of an auxiliary British force’. The argument, familiar in political debate, was rare in official policy. Britain, it is true, had long regarded Spanish America as a source of strength for her rivals and a potential market for her manufactures. After the Peace of 1783 interest became more intense as British observers, impressed by the vulnerability of empires, claimed to see signs of rapid decline in the empire of Spain. Intelligence reports on Spanish America accumulated in government departments; plans for British attacks flowed from official and private sources; and a section of merchant opinion increased its agitation for military intervention in the area. Yet, apart from the conquest of Trinidad in 1797 and the attempted conquest of the Rio de la Plata in 1806–7, British policy towards Spanish America was diffident in its approach and vague in its intent. There were, indeed, compelling reasons why Spanish America should remain on the margin of British policy. Britain's existing European and imperial interests necessarily dominated her policy and absorbed her resources. Until 1806, moreover, existing channels of trade in Europe and the rest of the world were sufficient to take the bulk of British industrial production. And military resources were usually insufficient to release troops either from Europe or the West Indies for major operations in a new theatre of war.

Colonization and Decolonization in the Soviet Union

Abstract: Discussion of the controversial problem of the relations between the Russian people and the peoples of many different races, languages, and cultures which from the middle of the sixteenth to the end of the nineteenth century were incorporated, for the most part by force of arms, into the multinational Empire dominated by the Russians, presents many difficulties. A passionate and now long-standing polemic on this subject divides not only opponents and supporters of the Soviet regime, but also Russian communist and foreign historians. On the one side are to be found western anti-communist authors, native emigres, and even a few communist non-Russian writers; on the other, Russian or foreign supporters of the Soviet system, joined, paradoxically, by non-communist Russians who refuse to admit the existence of 'colonialism' in old Russia. According to the first group, the relations between the Russians and the native peoples since the days of Ivan the Terrible even to the present day have always been of a more or less marked colonial nature, that is, the Russians exerted political and economic pressure on the conquered peoples. Disagreement arises only on the score of which were the 'colonized' nations in old Russia and which are still 'colonized' today in the USSR. Some authors1 do not hesitate to include in one group all the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union, that is, the Slav peoples: Ukrainians and Belorussians; the Balts: Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians; the Caucasians: Georgians and Armenians, all peoples with an ancient civilization whose cultural and economic level is in no respect inferior to that of the Russians and

The Crimean War in the Far East

Abstract: The Crimean War (1854—56), as its name suggests, was fought mainly on and around a peninsula jutting out from the northern shores of the Black Sea. Names such as the Alma River, Balaclava, and Inkerman are generally conjured up at the mention of this costly conflict. Strategic planning and operations on both sides, however, were not confined to the Crimea and the Caucasus. Far from Sebastopol, hostilities between Russia and the allied powers of Britain and France erupted in the seas of Japan and Okhotsk, and in the North Pacific Ocean. Accorded relatively little attention at the time, almost forgotten today, this Far Eastern1 theatre of the war offers insights into the growing role of Europe in East Asia. Whereas in the Crimea, the Allies achieved a victory of sorts while making immense human sacrifices, in the Far East they failed in many of their objectives but without incurring a great loss of life. The tragi-comic nature of tactical operations in the Far East should not obscure the war's broader implications: (1) the advance of Russia into the Amur River basin and Maritime Provinces then part of the Chinese Empire; (2) the intensification of British anxieties regarding Russian penetration into Manchuria and Korea; (3) the growing role of Japan in international relations; and (4) the progress of cartographical knowledge through surveys conducted in response to the demands of war.

Asia and the West as Partners Before “Empire” and After

Abstract: A large number of us who are here today in 1969 remember the early beginnings of our organization. I remember particularly a small gathering of one of our earlier incarnations in John Fairbank's livingroom discussing our problems, when we were so small that Wilma Fairbank could send out the postcard notices of meetings without any secretarial help. We are now old enough to have acquired traditions, one of which is the rotation of the presidency from China to South East Asia to Japan to South Asia and then round again. By a fortunate chance the turn of South Asia falls this year on the centenary of the birth of the greatest of South Asians of modern times. Another of our traditions is that the president should deliver an address on a topic close to his own special interest—in my case the history of modern India. I am, however, going to deviate somewhat from that practice this afternoon. In closing, I shall make some suggestions which I hope all of us will keep in mind in this new era of Asian history which is now upon us.

The historians of Greece and Rome

Abstract: Our understanding of Greek and Roman civilization is in considerable measure a product of the intelligence and literary skills of its historians. Writing at different times and from different vantage points, the surviving historians illustrate the influences to which the genre was subjected in the course of its development. After Herodotus had established history as an independent form of literature, Thucydides defined its purpose and set a high standard of scientific and literary skill. Xenophon introduced new and abiding characteristics and Polybius repudiated the influences of rhetoric and drama and introduced Hellenistic qualities and an new focus - Rome. Sallust, Caesar, Tacitus and Livy among others, commented on the affairs of the Roman Republic and Empire. This book provides a survey of the historians of the ancient Greek and Roman world, exporing their surviving work, style and influences.

Turkish-Syrian relations in the Ottoman constitutional period (1908-1914)

Abstract: This study attempts to investigate Turkish-Syrian relations in the period 1908-14, and to trace their role in the origins and developnent of the Arab nationalist movement. The Revolution of July 1908 put the Ottoman Empire under the rule of the Young Turks. In 1914 the Empire entered the First World War, a step which was to bring about its ultimate defeat and destruction. During this clynamic period Turco-Syrian relations underwent various stages of development, and the effective Arab movement began. However, signs of such a movement, incoherent and half-conscious, may be seen in the literary and political writings of some Syrians throughout the second half of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth century. This is discussed in the introduction which also gives definitions of terms such as "Syria" and "the Syrians", Chapter I analyses the events between July 1908 and the counter-coup of April 1909. From those events stemmed the Syrian opposition to the Young Turk regime. This opposition grew throughout the period under consideration, and several phases in its growth nay be discerned. Chapter II deals with the increasing dissatisfaction of the Syrian Arabs with the policies of the Young Turk regime and exanines the attempt of the leading Syrians to enumerate and redress their grievances against that regime in the years 1909-12. Arab societies in Istanbul as well as the Arab parliamentary lobby played a significant, but often overlooked, role in affecting the relations of the Syrian Aarabs with the Young Turk governments. The assessment of this role is the subject natter of Chapter III. Perhaps the nost important phase of the Syrian-Turkish controversy was the agitation of the Syrians for the introduction of a decentralised form of government in their vilayets. The origins, nature and development of this agitation are investigated in Chapter IV. The attempt of the Syrians to secure their political rights within the framework of the Ottoman Empire reached their climax with the convening of Paris Congress in June, 1913. This Congress and the events following it are examined in the fifth and last chapter. The study ends with a conclusion in which some general views about the subject are ventured.