Category: History

Early Modern Food Delivery?

Though it is an unhealthy attitude, I admit, I find that meals and eating really are the most annoying interruptions to my daily schedule. The options are many (making food, eating out, pizza delivery, etc.) but everything, including the eating takes time and money.

I wonder when home delivery of food (in the US, pizza seems to dominate, but in places like Japan and Korea, I get the feeling no single thing really completely dominates the very diverse food delivery market in the same way) started? It looks like the German philosopher Leibniz was doing something of this sort:

“At home, he was monarch of all he surveyed; he always took his meals alone. He had not stated times for them, and no domestic staff. He sent out to a cook-shop for something to eat and took whatever was going. Very often he slept the night in his chair, and woke up none the less refreshed at seven or eight in the morning…” quoted in Hazard, Paul The European Mind 1680-1715 (1952), p234″

1708 Nicolas de Fer on the Scandinavians

Nicolas de Fer, geographer to the French royal court had this to say about Scandinavians in 1708:

“The Swedes are an honest and courageous folk and fond of the arts and sciences. The air of their country is clear, keen and salubrious; their forests are the haunt of numerous wild and ferocious animals. The Danes are more or less the same in their manners and customs as the Swedes. The Norwegians appear to be of a simpler type, and are very frank and ingenuous.” Paul Hazard The European Mind 1680-1715 Yale U Press 1952

I had to look up ingenuous: “(of a person or action) innocent and unsuspecting. See note at GULLIBLE.” at the note under gullible it says, “implies the simplicity of a child without the negative overtones.”

Word of the day: lampadophory

Again, studying in the library together, my friend Brendan pointed out an unusual word in one of our readings for our Early Modern European Intellectual History Class. Here is a sentence from Trever-Roper’s “The Religious Origins of the Englightenment”:

It is interesting to observe the continuity…between the political radicals of yesterday and today: to see the torch, so nearly dropped from the failing hands of the last Whigs, skillfully caught and carried on by their successors, the first Marxists. This transfer of the same formula to different hands, this neat theoretical lampadophory, occurred at the close of the last century.”Trever-Roper’s The European Witch-Craze p194

The word, lampadophory, comes, according the Oxford English Dictionary, from lampadedromy, an old greek word meaning:

A torch-race; a race (on foot or horseback) in which a lighted torch was passed from hand to hand.

Why do we bless those who sneeze?

As we were studying together in the library one afternoon my friend and fellow historian Brendan pointed out a wonderful little passage from the Essays of Montaigne that he was reading at the time:

Do you ask me whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze? We produce three sorts of wind: that which comes from below is too foul; that which comes through the mouth implies some reproach of gluttony; the third is sneezing, and, because it comes from the head and is blameless, we give it this honourable greeting.Essays of Montaigne Harvard University Press, 1925. p74

I see that it has received mention elsewhere on the net, including the excellent Language Log. You can read a different translation of the whole essay, “Of Coaches” here.

Numbering the Centuries

Ok, I’ve had it. I have been quietly putting up with this nonsense since at least elementary school and what I thought was silly back then, I still think is silly now: Why do we have to use that stupid system whereby the 1900s is called the 20th century, the 1600s is called the 17th century, and so on?

Yes, yes, I understand perfectly well “why” on the technical level that things ended up like this but it’s a damn nuisance I tell you! I know it doesn’t take much mental processing to adjust been the two, but it still takes a fraction of a second in my head to switch back and forth between number dates and which “th century” it is in. If you add all those fractions of a second together, for all of humanity, just think of the number of brilliant works of literature an army of monkeys at the typewriters could have generated? Ok, maybe not that many, but still…it is really starting to bother me.

As long as you operate mainly in one or two centuries, this is really no big deal. However, for PhD oral exams I have one reading field which stretches across almost half a dozen centuries (Early Modern European Intellectual History). When you are zooming out quite far and talking about key “moments” in history where there is a significant change in the intellectual, religious, technological or economic environment, we often only commit which “[early|middle of the|late] *th century” that change took place. This part of my memory doesn’t nicely link up with the mass of events and other dates in the **** format. I would like to believe that I’m not the only one who has this problem. Although I’m surely not the first to do so, I hereby recommend that both for our own memory’s sake and for the benefit of all our future students, we completely abandon the silly “*th century” method of dating.

From now on, and until I am offered some better way of doing it, when I want to talk about the 17th century, I’ll say 1600s, and when I want to talk about the 19th century, I’ll say the 1800s. If that is not “sophisticated” enough for some people, well…to hell with them. And as for people teaching and researching history related to years 1-100 – you can sort it out yourself, it is not our problem that you are missing a digit, or two, or three.

Google Books and the Public Domain

I’m looking for an obscure 1917 book by the philosopher and Unitarian minister W. Tudor Jones called the Spiritual Ascent of Man. W. Tudor Jones is mentioned by a Japanese philosopher and pragmatist Sugimori Kôjirô in a separate 1917 book I’m looking at here today in the rare book collection at Harvard. I’m doing some research on Sugimori and I suspect he was influenced by Jones. I wanted to read the Jones book and was delighted to discover that Google books has it! How wonderful, I thought, this will save me a trip to the Divinity school library, where they have a hard copy.

Yet again Google books has showed me how powerful it has become as a tool for researchers. However, when I go to the Google Books copy and view the book, in the right hand margin it says, “Copyrighted Material” and restricts my viewing to a limited number of pages.

When I go to the copyright information at the beginning of the book, it says, “Copyright, 1917 by W. Tudor Jones” and at the bottom of the page it says the publisher is “The Knickerbocker Press, New York”

Here we have a book, copyrighted in 1917 that has been published in the United States. According to this handy chart over at the Cornell Copyright Information Center without condition all books published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain. Why then does Google deny the visitor access to the remainder of the book?

The most likely answer is that Google has some connection to the book via Kessinger Publishing, which sells reprints of rare books. Have they copyrighted their scan of the book? If you look at the Google introductory page for the book, it lists Kessinger as publishing and copyrighting the book in 2003.

Projects like Google Books and even more, the Gutenberg Project are wonderful resources for research. At Gutenberg’s archive, for example, I was able to download a full copy of a book by Jones examining the work of a German philosopher, Rudolph Euken. However, in the case of Google books, I’m annoyed to see so many books that should be fully in the public domain are showing up as copyrighted. At the Google blog entry on public domain books in Google Books they excitedly announce that you can find books out of copyright by searching for books with the tag “steam engine date:1500-1923″ That is fine and it shows up tens of thousands of books from this period. However, the book I searched is also published before 1923 but like many other books I have found published from this period on Google Books, it is “copyrighted material.” Presumably, Google will now be content to have a 2003 “copyrighted” scan of a public domain 1917 work in its collection.

Henry Luce and The American Century

I have been looking at various conceptions of internationalism and especially world federalism in early postwar Japan and for background research, the history of similar movements worldwide. One article which popped up during the course of my reading was the famous February 1941 Life magazine editorial by publisher Henry Luce entitled “The American Century.” I have heard of it before but didn’t read it until today. I have never found a more explicit expression of American exceptionalism than this article, nor a more direct call for American world domination in the name of “American ideals.”

Interestingly, before launching into its nationalist, if not boldly imperialist arguments, the article makes mention of a book by world federalist Clarence Streit called Union Now which argues for a supernational federalist government. Unlike many other world federalists during this time and after the war, Streit wanted to limit his federalist state to democracies, thus splitting the movement even before it becomes strong for a brief period in the early postwar period. Early in his article Luce says Streit’s approach, “may not be the right approach to our problem. But no thoughtful American has done his duty by the United States of America until he has read and pondered Clarence Streit’s book presenting that proposal.” (164) Luce then begins by invoking the core ideals at stake:

“in postulating the indivisibility of the contemporary world, one does not necessarily imagine that anything like a world state – a parliament of men- must be brought about in this century. Nor need we assume that war can be abolished. All that it is necessary to feel – and to feel deeply – is that terrific forces of magnetic attraction and repulsion will operate as between every large group of human beings on this planet….Tyrannies may require a large amount of living space. But Freedom requires and will require far greater living space than Tyranny. Peace cannot endure unless it prevails over a very large part of the world. Justice will come near to losing all meaning in the minds of men unless Justice can have approximately the same fundamental meanings in many lands and among many peoples.” (168)

In other words, peace and justice must be found at the level of the universal, and cannot be maintained if only a few play along. The question, of course, is how this is to be accomplished. The world federalists had one solution, the founders of the United Nations had a somewhat more limited vision, but Luce clearly has something a little different in mind. He begins by looking at the word “internationalism” He notes that the word doesn’t tell you very much by itself. Indeed Rome, the Vatican, Genghis Khan, the Ottoman Turks, Chinese emperors, 19th century England, Lenin, and Hitler all had their own kind of “internationalism” to offer.

“But what internationalism have we Americans to offer? Ours cannot come out of the vision of any one man. It must be the product of the imaginations of many men. It must be a sharing with all peoples of our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our magnificent industrial products, our technical skills. It must be an internationalism of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The contrast to those empires of old, which he is directly comparing America too, cannot be more stark:

“…Unlike the prestige of Rome or Genghis Khan or 19th Century England, American prestige throughout the world is faith in the good intentions as well as in the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the whole American people.” (169)

Throughout the article, the transmission is one way, from America to the world, for it is America who is the wellspring of virtue. No clearer expression of this can be found than here:

“…We have some things in this country which are infinitely precious and especially American – a love of freedom, a feeling for the equality of opportunity, a tradition of self-reliance and independence and also of co-operation. In addition to ideals and notions which are especially American, we are inheritors of all the great principles of Western civilization – above all Justice, the love of Truth, the ideal of Charity. The other day Herbert Hoover said that America was fast becoming the sanctuary of the ideals of civilization. For the moment it may be enough to be the sanctuary of these ideals. But not for long. It now becomes our time to be the powerhouse from which the ideals spread throughout the world and do their mysterious work of lifting the life of mankind from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist called a little lower than the angels.

America as the dynamic center of ever-widening spheres of enterprise, America as the training center of the skillful servants of mankind, America as the Good Samaritan, really believing again that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and America as the powerhouse of the ideals of Freedom and Justice – out of these elements surely can be fashioned a vision of the 20th Century to which we can and will devote ourselves in joy and gladness and vigor and enthusiasm.” (170)

Freedom, equal opportunity, self-reliance and independence are “especially American” while America has also, as by some auspicious royal marriage, come to inherit guardianship over the principles of Justice, Truth, and Charity – the “ideals of civilization.” These She will share with the world.

Does this sound familiar? I was not raised in the United States so these words are perhaps less familiar to me than many. However, more than ever, we hear echoes of such passionate idealism and frightening conceit around us in much that we read and hear. Its supporters today want a new American century and much like Luce, embrace a vision in which a benevolent and virtuous America may, through her own “internationalism” dictate her terms to the world.

Note: I’m citing from a reprint of Luce’s article in Diplomatic History 23, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 159-171

The Border Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed

When I read books or watch movies things go much faster when I don’t have access to the internet. A person, place, or event will pop up that catches my interest and I’ll end up googling it, or even more time consuming, searching for more information about it in various academic databases (MUSE, JSTOR, Lexis-Nexis, google books, etc.). For example, while eating some noodles for dinner this evening and reading the latest issue of the Economist, I got distracted looking at the flag of Singapore in an illustration and then ended up looking up the meaning of the various parts of the flag online; not believing the standard explanation of its parts and ended up trying to find alternative descriptions which told me more about the crescent in the flag. My noodles got cold.

Now I’m watching my latest Netflix movie, The Charge of the Light Brigade and while watching the movie got distracted trying to find out more about the Crimean War (Did you know the excellent Iron Maiden heavy metal song “The Trooper” is inspired by Tennyson’s poem about the famous charge?). I then got interesting in searching for more info on a curious story about the English-Scottish border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

In the Wikipedia entry on the Crimean War, there is this little note at the bottom mentioning the town:

There is a rather charming but apocryphal story, recently repeated on the BBC comedy programme, QI, that goes that when the UK joined the war, Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions declared war. Berwick-upon-Tweed is situated in Northumberland and had been long disputed by England and Scotland. When the war ended, Great Britain, Ireland and all British Dominions declared peace. The Mayor of Berwick-upon-Tweed subsequently visited the Soviet Union in 1966 to negotiate a peace settlement.

Actually, if you go to the Wikipedia entry for the town itself, there is a longer description:

There is a curious apocryphal story that Berwick is (or recently was) technically at war with Russia.
The story goes that since Berwick had changed hands several times, it was traditionally regarded as a special, separate entity, and some proclamations referred to “England, Scotland and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed”. One such was the declaration of the Crimean War against Russia in 1853, which Queen Victoria supposedly signed as “Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions”. However, when the Treaty of Paris (1856) was signed to conclude the war, “Berwick-upon-Tweed” was left out. This meant that, supposedly, one of Britain’s smallest towns was officially at war with one of the world’s mightiest powers for over a century.

The BBC programme Nationwide investigated this story in the 1970s, and found that while Berwick was not mentioned in the Treaty of Paris, it was not mentioned in the declaration of war either. So was Berwick ever at war with Russia in the first place? The true situation is that since the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 had already made it clear that all references to England included Berwick, the town had no special status at either the start or end of the war.

Nevertheless, in 1966 a Soviet official waited upon the Mayor of Berwick, Councillor Robert Knox, and a peace treaty was formally signed. Mr Knox is reputed to have said, “Please tell the Russian people that they can sleep peacefully in their beds.” To complicate the issue, some have noted that Knox did not share the authority of Queen Victoria in the arena of foreign relations, and thus may have exceeded his powers as mayor in concluding a peace treaty.

Continue reading The Border Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed

Asian History Carnival 2

Welcome to the 2nd bi-monthly Asian History Carnival. Thanks to those who offered submissions to the carnival. I think we have an excellent spread of region and time period but my choices reflect the range of submissions I received for inclusion and the limits of my own online reading. Remember, if you feel your region was neglected or that excellent postings went unmentioned, consider nominating them for the next carnival, to be held February 2nd, 2006. If you are interested in hosting the next asian history carnival, please contact me at konrad [at] lawson.net. We will post information on the next hosting at the carnival’s homepage as soon as we have a host.

And now for the postings:
Continue reading Asian History Carnival 2