Pre-modern Towns at the Times of Catastrophes

Pre-modern Towns at the Times of Catastrophes PDF

Author: Michaela Antonín Malaníková

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-26

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1000958647

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Covering areas in today’s Ukraine, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia, this book studies the impact of both natural and human-inflicted disasters on pre-modern towns. Various kinds of catastrophes, starting with major natural disasters such as fires, floods, earthquakes, and epidemics caused high population mortality. Others, such as protracted war conflicts, were caused by human activity and could be just as, if not more, destructive for cities, their populations and the urban economy. Crises affected not only the population as a whole, but also townsmen and women in their individual lives. Case studies of renewal and resilience in the volume illustrate that, in many cases, successfully overcoming disaster brought positive changes for urban people. The collection presents analytical research anchored in the contemporary historiographical discourse on studying social and cultural relations in urban environments in the Middle Ages and early modern period, and it incorporates interdisciplinary approaches in the forms of geography, archaeology, and literary theory. This volume is an engaging resource for students and researchers of pre-modern history, social history, and disaster studies.

Pre-modern Towns at the Times of Catastrophe

Pre-modern Towns at the Times of Catastrophe PDF

Author: Michaela Antonín Malaníková

Publisher:

Published: 2023-09

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781003323587

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"Covering areas in today's Ukraine, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia, this book studies the impact of both natural and human-inflicted disasters on pre-modern towns. This volume is an engaging resource for students and researchers of pre-modern history, social history and disaster studies"--

Nature in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times

Nature in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times PDF

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-07-01

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 3111387631

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The study of pre-modern anthropology requires the close examination of the relationship between nature and human society, which has been both precarious and threatening as well as productive, soothing, inviting, and pleasurable. Much depends on the specific circumstances, as the works by philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, and medical practitioners have regularly demonstrated. It would not be good enough, as previous scholarship has commonly done, to examine simply what the various writers or artists had to say about nature. While modern scientists consider just the hard-core data of the objective world, cultural historians and literary scholars endeavor to comprehend the deeper meaning of the concept of nature presented by countless writers and artists. Only when we have a good grasp of the interactions between people and their natural environment, are we in a position to identify and interpret mental structures, social and economic relationships, medical and scientific concepts of human health, and the messages about all existence as depicted in major art works. In light of the current conditions threatening to bring upon us a global crisis, it matters centrally to take into consideration pre-modern discourses on nature and its enormous powers to understand the topoi and tropes determining the concepts through which we perceive nature. Nature thus proves to be a force far beyond all human comprehensibility, being both material and spiritual depending on our critical approaches.

Marxism and Medieval Studies

Marxism and Medieval Studies PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-05-02

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 9004689192

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This volume is a unique publication as it examines the Marxist attitudes in East Central European historiography and archaeology for the first time, with an emphasis on the co-existence of Marxist and other methodologies between the 1950s and 1970s in the local historiographies in question. Its approach is to distinguish between pseudo-Marxism as an ideological tool on the one hand, and Marxism in the form of historical materialism as a way to interpret the medieval world on the other. Contributors are: Florin Curta, Piotr Guzowski, Adam Hudek, Tereza Johanidesová, Jitka Komendová, Jiří Macháček, Andrzej Marzec, Martin Nodl, Attila Pók, David Radek, Tadeusz Paweł Rutkowski, Iurie Stamati, Rafał Stobiecki, Gábor Thoroczkay, Przemysław Wiszewski, Piotr Węcowski, Martin Wihoda, and Dušan Zupka.

Disasters and History

Disasters and History PDF

Author: Bas van Bavel

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-10-22

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1108752381

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Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time

Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time PDF

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-08-24

Total Pages: 706

ISBN-13: 311069378X

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The notions of other peoples, cultures, and natural conditions have always been determined by the epistemology of imagination and fantasy, providing much freedom and creativity, and yet have also created much fear, anxiety, and horror. In this regard, the pre-modern world demonstrates striking parallels with our own insofar as the projections of alterity might be different by degrees, but they are fundamentally the same by content. Dreams, illusions, projections, concepts, hopes, utopias/dystopias, desires, and emotional attachments are as specific and impactful as the physical environment. This volume thus sheds important light on the various lenses used by people in the Middle Ages and the early modern age as to how they came to terms with their perceptions, images, and notions. Previous scholarship focused heavily on the history of mentality and history of emotions, whereas here the history of pre-modern imagination, and fantasy assumes center position. Imaginary things are taken seriously because medieval and early modern writers and artists clearly reveal their great significance in their works and their daily lives. This approach facilitates a new deep-structure analysis of pre-modern culture.

Catastrophe, Gender and Urban Experience, 1648-1920

Catastrophe, Gender and Urban Experience, 1648-1920 PDF

Author: Deborah Simonton

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1315522802

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As Enlightenment notions of predictability, progress and the sense that humans could control and shape their environments informed European thought, catastrophes shook many towns to the core, challenging the new world view with dramatic impact. This book concentrates on a period marked by passage from a society of scarcity to one of expenditure and accumulation, from ranks and orders to greater social mobility, from traditional village life to new bourgeois and even individualistic urbanism. The volume employs a broad definition of catastrophe, as it examines how urban communities conceived, adapted to, and were transformed by catastrophes, both natural and human-made. Competing views of gender figure in the telling and retelling of these analyses: women as scapegoats, as vulnerable, as victims, even as cannibals or conversely as defenders, organizers of assistance, inspirers of men; and men in varied guises as protectors, governors and police, heroes, leaders, negotiators and honorable men. Gender is also deployed linguistically to feminize activities or even countries. Inevitably, however, these tragedies are mediated by myth and memory. They are not neutral events whose retelling is a simple narrative. Through a varied array of urban catastrophes, this book is a nuanced account that physically and metaphorically maps men and women into the urban landscape and the worlds of catastrophe.

An Environmental History of the Early Modern Period

An Environmental History of the Early Modern Period PDF

Author: Martin Knoll

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 3643904630

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The environmental history of early modern times is a seminal and lively field of historical research. This volume offers ten concise essays that provide an overview of current research debates on a broad span of topics, such as historical climatology and climate reconstruction, coping with disaster, land use and agricultural knowledge, forest history, urbanization, the perceptions of (alpine) nature, and societal dealings with water and rivers. Taken together, the contributions establish early modern studies as a promising laboratory for new avenues in environmental history. (Series: Austria: Research and Science - History / Austria: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Geschichte - Vol. 10) [Subject: History, Environmental Studies]

Disaster Narratives in Early Modern Naples

Disaster Narratives in Early Modern Naples PDF

Author: Domenico Cecere

Publisher: Viella Libreria Editrice

Published: 2021-07-07T18:09:00+02:00

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 8833139085

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This volume deals with natural disasters in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Contributions look at a range of catastrophic events such as eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, floods, earthquakes, and outbreaks of plague and epidemics. A major aim of this volume is to investigate the relationship between catastrophic events and different communication strategies that embraced politics, religion, propaganda, dissent, scholarship as well as collective responses from the lower segments of society. The contributors to this volume share a multidisciplinary approach to the study of natural disasters which draws on disciplines such as cultural and social history, anthropology, literary theory, and linguistics. Together with analyzing the prolific production of propagandistic material and literary sources issued in periods of acute crisis, the documentation on disasters studied in this volume also includes laws and emergency regulations, petitions and pleas to the authorities, scientific and medical treatises, manuscript and printed newsletters as well as diplomatic dispatches and correspondence.

Plague, Towns and Monarchy in Early Modern France

Plague, Towns and Monarchy in Early Modern France PDF

Author: Neil Murphy

Publisher:

Published: 2024-04-24

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 1009233823

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This Element examines the emergence of comprehensive plague management systems in early modern France. While the historiography on plague argues that the plague of Provence in the 1720s represented the development of a new and 'modern' form of public health care under the control of the absolutist monarchy, it shows that the key elements in this system were established centuries earlier because of the actions of urban governments. It moves away from taking a medical focus on plague to examine the institutions that managed disease control in early modern France. In doing so, it seeks to provide a wider context of French plague care to better understand the systems used at Provence in the 1720s. It shows that the French developed a polycentric system of plague care which drew on the input of numerous actors combat the disease.