Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 43853 items

Maps have been a part of human culture since the days of scratching on cave walls, and this richly illustrated…
history chronicles the road from simple diagrams used to avoid danger to the complex, navigational charts used today. Displaying an array of historic atlases and a variety of cartography styles, this book allows young readers to test their map-reading skills while discovering the intricate beauty and the wealth of information held within. Geographical concepts are spotlighted through an assortment of guided activities--including finding the elevation of hills, plotting a course with a magnetic compass, creating three-dimensional land models using a contour map, and performing a plot survey. Drawing the conclusion that the study of geography and maps is crucial to understanding an ever-changing planet, this handbook discloses the ways in which technological advances in cartography can further discussions on climate change, warfare, environmental conservation, population growth, and other timely topics.
Exploring Outremer Volume II: Studies in Crusader Archaeology in Honour of Adrian J. Boas (Crusades - Subsidia)
By Rabei G. Khamisy, Rafael Y. Lewis, Vardit R. Shotten-Hallel. 2023
This collection is published in the Crusades Subsidia series in honour of Professor Adrian J. Boas, an archaeologist, historian and…
scholar who has contributed widely and significantly to the study and teaching of the Middle Ages. Professor Boas’ research encompasses the archaeology of the Latin East, military orders with particular emphasis on the Teutonic Order, material culture, architecture and medieval art, historiography, and not least, the Crusades and the Latin East. Exploring Outremer Volume II is a collection of 15 original essays by the leading scholars in the field on the history and archaeology of the Latin East. It covers aspects dealing with the history, archaeology, architecture and function of several castles and fortifications in the Latin Kingdom, and presents new studies on the material, including pottery, numismatics and many other finds. In addition, it includes a chapter dealing with landscape archaeology. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Duchies of Edessa and Antioch, as well as the Crusades and Crusading Orders.
The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation
By Andrew Wilson. 2022
As in many postcommunist states, politics in Ukraine revolves around the issue of national identity. Ukrainian nationalists see themselves as…
one of the world’s oldest and most civilized peoples, as “older brothers” to the younger Russian culture.Yet Ukraine became independent only in 1991, and Ukrainians often feel like a minority in their own country, where Russian is still the main language heard on the streets of the capital, Kiev. This book is a comprehensive guide to modern Ukraine and to the versions of its past propagated by both Russians and Ukrainians. Andrew Wilson provides the most acute, informed, and up-to-date account available of the Ukrainians and their country. Concentrating on the complex relation between Ukraine and Russia, the book begins with the myth of common origin in the early medieval era, then looks closely at the Ukrainian experience under the tsars and Soviets, the experience of minorities in the country, and the path to independence in 1991. Wilson also considers the history of Ukraine since 1991 and the continuing disputes over identity, culture, and religion. He examines the economic collapse under the first president, Leonid Kravchuk, and the attempts at recovery under his successor, Leonid Kuchma. Wilson explores the conflicts in Ukrainian society between the country’s Eurasian roots and its Western aspirations, as well as the significance of the presidential election of November 1999.
The Keith Papers: Vol. I
By W. G. Perrin. 1927
George Keith Elphinstone, Lord Keith (1746-1823) was a Scottish naval officer who entered the navy as a penurious midshipman towards…
the end of the Seven Years War. He had a long career at sea, during which he missed taking part in any major battle, but held major commands throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (except 1807-1812). He is chiefly known for his skill in commanding very large fleets, often spread over a very wide area, and for the consequent prize money which made him the richest naval officer of his day. He also gained a reputation for being very keen on acquring it. These three volumes only represent a small fraction of the documents in Keith’s very large personal collection of letter and order books and loose documents in the National Maritime Museum, which occupies 124 foot of shelf space. The first document in this volume is dated 1771, and the first half covers Keith’s career as a promising captain in the American Revolutionary War. He took part in the operations off Florida in 1778 and at the capture of Charleston in 1780 in which he distinguished himself by his navigational skill, and by good relations with the army, which was to mark the rest of his career. The second part of the volume deals with Keith’s role in the occupation of Toulon in 1793, a small section of Lord Howe’s tactical memoranda in 1793-4, but the greater part is devoted to the operation which first bought Keith to the attention of the British public, the capture of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch in 1795-6.
The Private Papers of John, Earl of Sandwich: 1771-1782, Vol. IV
By G. R. Barnes, J. H. Owen. 1938
The Fourth Earl of Sandwich was First Lord of the Admiralty (for the third time in his long career) from…
1771 to 1782. Blamed by the Whig opposition for many of the disasters of the American War, he was additionally loaded by 19th-century Whig historians with the false image of a corrupt libertine.It was the publication of these volumes of his correspondence and papers (then in the family home, now in the National Maritime Museum), covering the years 1771 to 1782, which restored his reputation as a conscientious and imaginative naval administrator and reformer, especially of the dockyards and of the timber question. Without entirely rescuing his status as a strategist, they showed very clearly the weaknesses at the heart of the North administration which damaged its handling of the war, and undermined Sandwich’s efforts.A fifth volume intended to cover his handling of naval patronage was overtaken by the war.This volume is from 1781 to 1782. The planned fifth volume was never completed.
Dubrovnik: A Mediterranean Urban Society, 1300–1600
By Barisa Krekic. 1997
This second volume of the author’s studies opens with a new survey of the recent historiography of Dubrovnik, and also…
contains four items specially translated from Serbo-Croat. The first part deals with aspects of daily life in this Mediterranean city, including analyses of the differing attitudes of the patricians and lower classes, and the position of the authorities with regard to homosexuals and Jews. The following articles consider Dubrovnik’s international role, on the one hand as a maritime state and in relation to Venice, and on the other in terms of its participation in the interaction of Latin and Slav cultures in Renaissance Dalmatia.
The Barrington Papers: Vol. I
By D. Bonner-Smith. 1937
Samuel Barrington (1729-1800), a son of the first Viscount Barrington, entered the Royal Navy in 1740. He was posted in…
1747 and eventually was promoted to Admiral in 1787.Papers in the possession of Barrington’s collateral descendants form these two volumes and cover his naval career. They comprise order books (1747-71), a private letter book (1770-99), his journal and three bound documents relating to the Leeward Islands command (1778-79), some loose correspondence, and printed matter: the general sailing and fighting Instructions, two signal books, and instructions. None of Barrington’s public letter books survives.This includes Barrington’s negotiations at Tetuan to release British subjects held by the Barbary corsairs, and his cruising off the coast of Guinea where some Royal Navy captains had been personally profiting from commercial dealings including the transportation of slaves.Commanding the 60-gun Achilles, he served from 1757-59 off the coast of France, in 1760 under Captain the Hon John Byron destroying the fortifications of Louisbourg in North America, and in 1761 under Commodore Augustus Keppel in the operations against Belle-Île. From 1762 until the 1763 Treaty of Paris, he commanded the 74-gun Hero. From 1768, when he again took to sea, until 1778 when he received his flag, he saw service in the dispute with Spain over the Falkland Islands (1771) and in the Channel.
The history of the economic contacts between Asia and Europe dates back to at least the early years of the…
Common Era. But it was only after the overcoming of the transport technology barrier to the growth of trade between the two continents following the discovery by the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century of the all-water route to the East Indies that these contacts became regular and quantitatively significant. The Portuguese were joined at the beginning of the 17th century by the Dutch and the English East India companies. The Europeans operated in the Indian Ocean alongside the Indian and other Asian merchants with no special privileges being available to them. The present collection of essays by Professor Om Prakash first deals with the Indian merchants’ participation in the Indian Ocean trade on the eve of the Europeans’ arrival in the Ocean. The subsequent essays include a discussion of the Portuguese involvement in the Euro-Asian and the Indian Ocean trade. Attention is then turned to the trading activities of the Dutch and the English East India companies. The volume also contains essays on textile manufacturing and trade as well as on coinage and wages in India. The concluding essay deals with trade and politics in the province of Bengal.
Dr Heywood’s second volume of collected papers in the Variorum series brings together fourteen studies published between 2000 and 2010.…
They represent two of the main strands of his interests during the past decade: the era of Ottoman history dominated by the ministerial family of Köprülü; and the maritime history of the ’post-Braudelian’ Mediterranean, in the later 17th and early 18th centuries. Aspects of the Köprülü era under examination in Part One include the shifting chronology of the Çehrin campaign of 1678; a study of the role of renegades in Ottoman service, linked in this instance to the Venetian betrayal of the Cretan fortress of Grabusa to the Ottomans in 1691, and a study of the reorganisation of the Ottoman state courier service in 1696, together with three studies of English diplomacy at the Porte during the ’Long War’ of 1683-99. In Part Two maritime and Mediterranean themes predominate. Four papers revolve around the complexities of the English maritime and commercial presence in Algiers in the decades before and after 1700, and two examine the Ottoman maritime frontier in the western Mediterranean and in the Aegean in the same period. The volume concludes with a look at the daily (and mainly maritime) uncertainties in the life of the French community in Cyprus at the turn of the eighteenth century, and an examination of the emergence of Fernand Braudel’s intellectual involvement with Ottoman history, down to the publication in 1949 of his epochal study of the Mediterranean in the age of Philip II.
The papers collected in this volume focus on the sources for reconstructing the history of the third to fifth centuries…
AD. The first section, 'Historiography', looks at a small group of chronicles and breviaria whose texts are fundamental for our reconstruction of the history of the third and fourth centuries, some well known, others much less so: Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome, the lost Kaisergeschichte, and Eutropius. In this section the goal in each case is a specific attempt to come to a better understanding of the structure, composition, date, or author of these historical texts. The second section, 'History', presents a group of historical studies, ranging in time from the death of Constantine in 337 to the vicennalia of Anastasius in 511. In these papers the keys to the conclusions offered arise from a better understanding of the literary sources - particularly chronicles and consularia -, an understanding of the evolution of historical accounts over time, or the employment of sources that are either new or unusual in these particular contexts: consular fasti, coins, papyri, and itineraries.
Concord and Reform: Nicholas of Cusa and Legal and Political Thought in the Fifteenth Century (Variorum Collected Studies #709)
By Morimichi Watanabe, Thomas M. Izbicki. 2001
Nicholas of Cusa is known as one of the most original philosophers of the 15th century, but by training he…
was a canon lawyer who received his degree from the University of Padua in 1423. The essays in this book analyse his legal and political ideas against the background of medieval religious, legal and political thought and its development in the Renaissance. The first two pieces deal with the legal ideas and humanism that affected Cusanus and with some of the problems faced by 15th-century lawyers, including his friends. The central section of the book also discusses how he reacted to the religious, legal and political issues of his day; Cusanus as reformer of the Church is a theme that runs through many of the essays. The final studies look at some of Cusanus' contemporaries, with special emphasis on Gregor Heimburg, the sharpest critic of Cusanus.
Music, Science, Philosophy: Models in the Universe of Thought
By Jamie C. Kassler. 2001
This book stresses the interrelatedness of knowledge by extricating models that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. For example, science can…
find models from the technology and semantic field of music, music can find its models from the technology and semantic field of science, and each domain may be guided by a philosophical or metaphysical principle - thus, the title of the book. But the book itself is structured as a mirror image of its title. Chapters 1-6 provide instances of the role of music in such domains as epistemology and logic, as well as in the early modern sciences of developmental biology, continuum mechanics, anatomy and physiological psychology, whereas Chapters 7-10 provide instances of what some other domains of knowledge have given back to the philosophy and theory of music.
Image and Imagination in Byzantine Art (Variorum Collected Studies #866)
By Henry Maguire. 2007
The twelve studies contained in this second collection by Henry Maguire are linked together by a common theme, namely the…
relationship of Byzantine art to the imaginary. They show how art enabled the Byzantines not only to imagine the sacred events of the past, but also to visualize the invisible present by manifesting the spiritual world that they could not see. The articles are grouped around the following five topics: the depiction of nature by the Byzantines before and after iconoclasm, especially in portrayals of the earthly and the spiritual Paradise; the social functions and theological significance of classical artistic forms in Byzantine art after iconoclasm; the association between rhetoric and the visual arts in Byzantium, especially in contrast to the role played by liturgical drama in western medieval art; the relationship of the visual arts to Byzantine concepts of justice and the law, both human and divine; and portrayals of the two Byzantine courts, the imperial court on earth and the imagined court in heaven. The papers cover a wide range of media, including floor and wall mosaics, paintings in manuscripts and churches, ivory carvings, coins, and enamel work.
Studies in Renaissance Grammar
By W. Keith Percival. 2004
To what extent can one speak of 'the Renaissance' in terms of grammar: did the medieval curricular subject grammatica survive…
into the Renaissance unchanged or was it transformed by the pedagogical programme of the humanists? The studies collected here focus on this question and trace the development of humanistic approaches to grammar. The first section consists of essays on the general characteristics of grammar in the period and on its connections with rhetoric. The following parts are devoted to three major grammatical writers: Guarino Veronese (1374-1460), Niccolò Perotti (1419/1420-1480), and Antonio de Nebrija (1441/1444?-1522). There is finally a section dealing with other figures, such as the famous Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457). Professor Percival focuses throughout on widely disseminated textbooks, beginning with the earliest attempt at a humanistic rejuvenation of grammar, the brief 'Regulae grammaticales' of Guarino Veronese (c. 1418), followed by Perotti's comprehensive 'Rudimenta grammatices', published in 1473 by Rome's first printers, and finally Nebrija's commercially successful 'Introductiones Latinae' (Salamanca, 1481). Nebrija's textbook proved the longest-lived, but Perotti's was also an international best-seller, going through many editions in several countries.
The studies collected here centre on the social and economic life of medieval Germany, within a broader European context. The…
first three articles engage the day-to-day workings of rural society: literature, verbal attack and the language of mediated settlement of conflicts lead to a nuanced view of social hierarchy, in which the meek too have a say. The next group examines some major elements of rural life, dealing with technology, resources, ecology, transport, communication and credit. In the second part, the author focuses on the life of the Jews in Germany, first charting the process of settlement of Jews in Germany, the dynamics of social stratification and household composition, and the impact of economics and persecution on settlement patterns. A case study uncovers the motives and steps that led up to the expulsion of the Jews of Nuremberg in 1498. These themes are followed up into the early modern period, when German Jewry mostly came to live a village life. The last studies deal with the economic history of medieval European Jews, including professions other than moneylending, and with the function of women in economic life.
Politics and Institutions in Capetian France
By Elizabeth A.R.Brown. 1991
The nine essays in this volume by Elizabeth Brown deal with the development of representative institutions and monarchial power in…
Capetian France. One topic covered is that of the evolution of central assemblies, with case studies of the assemblies held between 1316 and 1321 illuminating the impact of theory on practice. A second topic is that of the moral implications of fiscality and of the attempts by French monarchs to regulate their policies by the teachings of moral philosophy. A particular theme is the Capetians’ insistence on reform as a central theme of good government, and their successes and failures living up to their principles. The articles also examine the realm’s reactions to the monarchy’s ideals and principles, emphasizing and attempting to account for the differences in attitude to government on the part of the ruler and ruled that distinguished medieval France and England.
Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine (Variorum Collected Studies #900)
By Paul E. Walker. 2008
The thirteen studies in this volume explore critical problems in Fatimid history and historiography, many specifically focused on the content…
of doctrinal writings produced by the Ismaili supporters and agents of this caliphate who worked on behalf of the dynasty both within the empire and outside. Several concern issues in disputes that separated the various factions of Medieval Islam and served to distinguish the Ismailis from the rest, often branding the Fatimids with the charge of heterodoxy. Others deal with the consequence of Shiite rule over a largely non-Shiite populace. Yet others involve the relationship between religious ideology and the administration of government. Among the themes featured in this collection there are separate investigations of institutions of learning, of succession to the imamate, the da`wa, the judiciary, relations with the Byzantines and with the Abbasids, and works on heresiography, doctrines of time and the accusation that the Ismailis upheld the metempsychosis of the human soul. The latter topics help to situate the Ismailis, and hence the Fatimids, within the broader context of Islamic thought.
The Private Papers of John, Earl of Sandwich: 1771-1782, Vol. III
By G. R. Barnes, J. H. Owen. 1936
The Fourth Earl of Sandwich was First Lord of the Admiralty (for the third time in his long career) from…
1771 to 1782. Blamed by the Whig opposition for many of the disasters of the American War, he was additionally loaded by 19th-century Whig historians with the false image of a corrupt libertine.It was the publication of these volumes of his correspondence and papers (then in the family home, now in the National Maritime Museum), covering the years 1771 to 1782, which restored his reputation as a conscientious and imaginative naval administrator and reformer, especially of the dockyards and of the timber question. Without entirely rescuing his status as a strategist, they showed very clearly the weaknesses at the heart of the North administration which damaged its handling of the war, and undermined Sandwich’s efforts.A fifth volume intended to cover his handling of naval patronage was overtaken by the war.This volume is from May 1779 to December 1780.
Courts and Courtiers in Renaissance Northern Italy (Variorum Collected Studies #779)
By Stephen Kolsky. 2003
The extraordinary cultural Renaissance in the northern Italian courts of the late 15th and early 16th centuries is the subject…
of this volume. It starts with Baldessar Castiglione's Book of the Courtier (1528) which encapsulates this sense of renewal: his experiences at court and their subsequent rewriting form the backbone of the work. The author then addresses questions of biography, gender, genre, and the varied roles of the courtier, expanding the perspective of Castiglione's text to include the lives and writings of other courtiers and patrons. What was it like to be a courtier? What were the problems associated with such a lifestyle? The importance of women in court circles is also highlighted in studies of one of the most notable of female patrons Isabella d'Este (1474-1539) and of the theoretical developments in writing about gender, stimulated by such women. Stephen Kolsky's analysis of both well-known and comparatively obscure texts brings out the diversity of practices that constituted court society and their centrality to our understanding of the Renaissance.
Society and Culture in Early Modern England (Variorum Collected Studies #768)
By David Cressy. 2003
The common theme of this selection of articles by David Cressy, published over the last twenty-five years, is the linkage…
of elite and popular culture and the participation of ordinary people in the central events of their age. The collection also traces a development in historical style and method, from quantitative applications using statistics to qualitative telling of tales. Seven essays under the heading 'Opportunities' explore problems of education, literacy and cultural attainment within the gendered and hierarchically ordered society of Elizabeth and Stuart England. Eight more under the heading 'Passages' examine social and cultural interactions, kinship, migration, community celebrations, and rituals in the life-cycle. The collection brings together a coherent body of research that is much cited in current scholarship and continues to shape the agenda for the social and cultural history of early modern England.