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Author: Henning Schuler Publisher: ISBN: Category : Aleppo (Syria) Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
When German traveller Ulrich Jasper Seetzen in Aleppo sat down to write his diary in early 1805, he was upset with his landlady. "Madame Sceriman" a Maronite woman married to an Italian merchant, claimed a higher rent than Seetzen thought he had agreed to, insisting on an old contract. "This angered me so much" Seetzen wrote "that I decided at once to leave her house and look for new lodgings". Seetzen, who had been renting the apartment from Sceriman for over a year at this point, continued: "This confirms the judgement of consul Barker, that the local Levantines are without good faith and that, following the example of their despotic governments, they make avanias wherever possible." 1 Seetzen was by all accounts what one could call an "enlightened traveller", who did not want to expose an inherent depravity of the local population, but rather tried to rehabilitate them in the eyes of his European contemporaries. Yet on this day, he felt that his judgement not only clashed with reality, but also with what he had been told by the British consul. It is this kind of exchanges that I want to explore in this thesis. How did the French and British in Aleppo, in the European society of Aleppo, but also with travellers and the local population, make sense of the Levant and its inhabitants at the end of the Eighteenth Century? I want to reconstruct the intellectual environment that the French and British inhabited as Europeans in Aleppo and their thoughts and ideas about the government, the country, and the people among whom they lived. Considering the sheer extent of the sources (mostly correspondence) left by them, this is 'a narrow path through a broad field' as one supervisor once called it. In the overwhelming majority of their letters the French and British at Aleppo did not spell out their views and thoughts about the city they inhabited, but rather wrote about commercial or administrative matters. However, it is the advantage of this approach that precisely by looking at documents that are not "ethnographic" in nature, one can see how the French and British expressed their thoughts in their everyday interactions and how the language and expressions they used betrayed the view they had of themselves, as Europeans in the Levant, and of the people and country surrounding them. Of course, personal accounts or descriptions of the city and region of Aleppo written by its European inhabitants are very valuable sources that I will use as well. The protagonists of this study were a rather small but tight community of British and French merchants. Most documents were produced by a handful of individuals, which allowed me to follow their debates closely. Focusing on one place and a relatively short period of time, the last three decades of the Eighteenth Century, this study is not comparative. While the British and the French differed in some of their views and ideas, I found that they largely constituted one European community in Aleppo which coincided in the majority of opinions explored in this thesis. I thus analyse them together but point out differences when they are significant. In the following sections of this introduction, I will first give an overview of the literature that I found informative and that motivated me to write my dissertation and how it shaped my approach, and then provide some historical context on the situation of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and the Europeans in Aleppo at the end of the Eighteenth Century. In the last section I will give a more detailed overview of my sources and periodization.
Author: Henning Schuler Publisher: ISBN: Category : Aleppo (Syria) Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
When German traveller Ulrich Jasper Seetzen in Aleppo sat down to write his diary in early 1805, he was upset with his landlady. "Madame Sceriman" a Maronite woman married to an Italian merchant, claimed a higher rent than Seetzen thought he had agreed to, insisting on an old contract. "This angered me so much" Seetzen wrote "that I decided at once to leave her house and look for new lodgings". Seetzen, who had been renting the apartment from Sceriman for over a year at this point, continued: "This confirms the judgement of consul Barker, that the local Levantines are without good faith and that, following the example of their despotic governments, they make avanias wherever possible." 1 Seetzen was by all accounts what one could call an "enlightened traveller", who did not want to expose an inherent depravity of the local population, but rather tried to rehabilitate them in the eyes of his European contemporaries. Yet on this day, he felt that his judgement not only clashed with reality, but also with what he had been told by the British consul. It is this kind of exchanges that I want to explore in this thesis. How did the French and British in Aleppo, in the European society of Aleppo, but also with travellers and the local population, make sense of the Levant and its inhabitants at the end of the Eighteenth Century? I want to reconstruct the intellectual environment that the French and British inhabited as Europeans in Aleppo and their thoughts and ideas about the government, the country, and the people among whom they lived. Considering the sheer extent of the sources (mostly correspondence) left by them, this is 'a narrow path through a broad field' as one supervisor once called it. In the overwhelming majority of their letters the French and British at Aleppo did not spell out their views and thoughts about the city they inhabited, but rather wrote about commercial or administrative matters. However, it is the advantage of this approach that precisely by looking at documents that are not "ethnographic" in nature, one can see how the French and British expressed their thoughts in their everyday interactions and how the language and expressions they used betrayed the view they had of themselves, as Europeans in the Levant, and of the people and country surrounding them. Of course, personal accounts or descriptions of the city and region of Aleppo written by its European inhabitants are very valuable sources that I will use as well. The protagonists of this study were a rather small but tight community of British and French merchants. Most documents were produced by a handful of individuals, which allowed me to follow their debates closely. Focusing on one place and a relatively short period of time, the last three decades of the Eighteenth Century, this study is not comparative. While the British and the French differed in some of their views and ideas, I found that they largely constituted one European community in Aleppo which coincided in the majority of opinions explored in this thesis. I thus analyse them together but point out differences when they are significant. In the following sections of this introduction, I will first give an overview of the literature that I found informative and that motivated me to write my dissertation and how it shaped my approach, and then provide some historical context on the situation of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and the Europeans in Aleppo at the end of the Eighteenth Century. In the last section I will give a more detailed overview of my sources and periodization.
Author: Paul Stock Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0198807112 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830 explores what literate British people understood by the word 'Europe' in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Was Europe unified by shared religious heritage? Where were the edges of Europe? Was Europe primarily a commercial network or were there common political practices too? Was Britain itself a European country? While intellectual history is concerned predominantly with prominent thinkers, Paul Stock traces the history of ideas in non-elite contexts, offering a detailed analysis of nearly 350 geographical reference works, textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias, which were widely read by literate Britons of all classes, and can reveal the formative ideas about Europe circulating in Britain: ideas about religion; the natural environment; race and other theories of human difference; the state; borders; the identification of the 'centre' and 'edges' of Europe; commerce and empire; and ideas about the past, progress, and historical change. By showing how these and other questions were discussed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture, Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830 provides a thorough and much-needed historical analysis of Britain's enduringly complex intellectual relationship with Europe.
Author: Rick Szostak Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000201678 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1672
Book Description
Making Sense of World History is a comprehensive and accessible textbook that helps students understand the key themes of world history within a chronological framework stretching from ancient times to the present day. To lend coherence to its narrative, the book employs a set of organizing devices that connect times, places, and/or themes. This narrative is supported by: Flowcharts that show how phenomena within diverse broad themes interact in generating key processes and events in world history. A discussion of the common challenges faced by different types of agent, including rulers, merchants, farmers, and parents, and a comparison of how these challenges were addressed in different times and places. An exhaustive and balanced treatment of themes such as culture, politics, and economy, with an emphasis on interaction. Explicit attention to skill acquisition in organizing information, cultural sensitivity, comparison, visual literacy, integration, interrogating primary sources, and critical thinking. A focus on historical “episodes” that are carefully related to each other. Through the use of such devices, the book shows the cumulative effect of thematic interactions through time, communicates the many ways in which societies have influenced each other through history, and allows us to compare and contrast how they have reacted to similar challenges. They also allow the reader to transcend historical controversies and can be used to stimulate class discussions and guide student assignments. With a unified authorial voice and offering a narrative from the ancient to the present, this is the go-to textbook for World History courses and students. The Open Access version of this book has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Author: Raphael Greenberg Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107111463 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 433
Book Description
An up-to-date, systematic depiction of Bronze Age societies of the Levant, their evolution, and their interactions and entanglements with neighboring regions.
Author: Philip Mansel Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300176228 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 497
Book Description
Not so long ago, in certain cities on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived and flourished side by side. What can the histories of these cities tell us? Levant is a book of cities. It describes three former centers of great wealth, pleasure, and freedom—Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut—cities of the Levant region along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In these key ports at the crossroads of East and West, against all expectations, cosmopolitanism and nationalism flourished simultaneously. People freely switched identities and languages, released from the prisons of religion and nationality. Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived and worshipped as neighbors.Distinguished historian Philip Mansel is the first to recount the colorful, contradictory histories of Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut in the modern age. He begins in the early days of the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century and continues through the cities' mid-twentieth-century fates: Smyrna burned; Alexandria Egyptianized; Beirut lacerated by civil war.Mansel looks back to discern what these remarkable Levantine cities were like, how they differed from other cities, why they shone forth as cultural beacons. He also embarks on a quest: to discover whether, as often claimed, these cities were truly cosmopolitan, possessing the elixir of coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews for which the world yearns. Or, below the glittering surface, were they volcanoes waiting to erupt, as the catastrophes of the twentieth century suggest? In the pages of the past, Mansel finds important messages for the fractured world of today.
Author: Steven Heydemann Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 0472904612 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 309
Book Description
No region in the world has been more hostile to democracy, more dominated by military and security institutions, or weaker on economic development and inclusive governance than the Middle East. Why have Arab states been so oppressively strong in some areas but so devastatingly weak in others? How do those patterns affect politics, economics, and society across the region? The state stands at the center of the analysis of politics in the Middle East, but has rarely been the primary focus of systematic theoretical analysis. Making Sense of the Arab State brings together top scholars from diverse theoretical orientations to address some of the most critically important questions facing the region today. The authors grapple with enduring questions such as the uneven development of state capacity, the failures of developmentalism and governance, the centrality of regime security and survival concerns, the excesses of surveillance and control, and the increasing personalization of power. Making Sense of the Arab State will be a must-read for scholars of the Middle East and of comparative politics more broadly.
Author: Anny Gaul Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 1477324593 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 334
Book Description
Melding the rural and the urban with the local, regional, and global, Levantine cuisine is a mélange of ingredients, recipes, and modes of consumption rooted in the Eastern Mediterranean. Making Levantine Cuisine provides much-needed scholarly attention to the region’s culinary cultures while teasing apart the tangled histories and knotted migrations of food. Akin to the region itself, the culinary repertoires that comprise Levantine cuisine endure and transform—are unified but not uniform. This book delves into the production and circulation of sugar, olive oil, and pistachios; examines the social origins of kibbe, Adana kebab, shakshuka, falafel, and shawarma; and offers a sprinkling of family recipes along the way. The histories of these ingredients and dishes, now so emblematic of the Levant, reveal the processes that codified them as national foods, the faulty binaries of Arab or Jewish and traditional or modern, and the global nature of foodways. Making Levantine Cuisine draws from personal archives and public memory to illustrate the diverse past and persistent cultural unity of a politically divided region.
Author: Jean Manco Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500771820 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 519
Book Description
Incorporates the latest discoveries and theories from archaeology, genetics, history, and linguistics to paint a spirited history of European settlement Who are the Europeans and where did they come from? In recent years scientific advances have released a mass of data, turning cherished ideas upside down. The idea of migration in prehistory, so long out of favor, is back on the agenda. New advances allow us to track human movement and the spread of crops, animals, and disease, and we can see the evidence of population crashes and rises, both continent-wide and locally. Visions of continuity have been replaced with a more dynamic view of Europe’s past, with one wave of migration followed by another, from the first human arrivals in Europe to the Vikings. Ancient DNA links Europe to its nearest neighbors. It is not a new idea that farming was brought from the Near East, but genetics now reveal an unexpectedly complex process in which farmers arrived not in one wave, but several. Even more unexpected is the evidence that the European gene pool was stirred vigorously many times after farming had reached most of Europe. Climate change played a part in this upheaval, but so did new inventions such as the c and wheeled vehicles. Genetic and linguistic clues also enhance our understanding of the upheavals of the Migration Period, the wanderings of steppe nomads, and the adventures of the Vikings.
Author: Tijl Vanneste Publisher: ISBN: 9789004498235 Category : HISTORY Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This book offers an account of how merchants litigated on the basis of mercantile custom as well as specific legal procedures, using an ensemble of cases brought before the Dutch consul in Izmir in the second half of the eighteenth century.; Readership: All interested in the legal and socio-cultural tools early modern merchants had at their disposal to ensure the functioning of long-distance and cross-cultural trade. Those interested in European presence in the Ottoman Empire.