Search

Begin New Search Topic History Political Geography Europe

91. Forging Catholic National Identities in the Transatlantic Spanish Monarchy, 1808-1814

Author:
Scott Eastman
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
By 1810, with the convening of the Cortes of Cádiz, the opening of the public sphere and war threatening to tear apart the monarchy, Spaniards began to forge a new national identity and an inclusive transatlantic nation. The common cultural idiom of religion and the language of national sovereignty provided a unifying symbolic repertoire for Spanish national identities during the transition from the Old Regime to liberal ascendancy. Yet American independence severed the ties of a transatlantic Spanish monarchy and an inclusive national identity as prescribed in the Constitution of 1812. The Virgin of Guadalupe, which had been appropriated by royalists as well as insurgents during the War of Independence in New Spain, soon emerged as the symbolic image of the Mexican nation. Religious imagery that had served to unite Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic fragmented into regional identifications in the Americas, and Spain itself emerged as a sovereign nation that had broken with the Old Regime.
Topic:
Nationalism, Religion, and History
Political Geography:
America, Europe, Spain, and Mexico

92. Crown, Empire and Nation (1807-1834)

Author:
Miriam H. Pereira
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Before 1807, in Portugal the new liberal ideals had mainly an indirect influence, reflected in the enlightened elite. The wave of a more profound political change came about only in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the whole Iberian area was involved in the European wide struggle between old regime and the new liberal society and state, that was enhanced by the Napoleonic wars. Between 1807 and 1820, Portugal went through one of the most complex period of its whole History, when the British informal occupation of twelve years, followed the French invasion, short but very destructive. The Crown survived in the hands of the House of Bragança and kept Brazil and the rest of the its colonial territories for over a decade. This makes the Portuguese and Brazilian history of this period somewhat different from that of both Spain and its American colonies. It provides an interesting case for the study of the evolution of three main institutions and political concepts involved in the end of the Old Regime: the Crown, the Empire and the Nation, whose changes during this period are analysed in this paper..
Topic:
Civil Society and History
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, America, Europe, Brazil, South America, and Portugal

93. The Mongol Connection: Russia's Asian Entry into European Politics

Author:
Iver B. Neumann
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The end of the 15th Century saw what was beginning to be known as Europeans coming into first contact with the 'new world' to their West, and driving the Moor out of Europe to their South. In what contemporaneity thought of as 'the North', i.e. what we would now call the East, a less conspicuous but nonetheless highly consequential development took place. Beyond Poland, a new political entity was making itself felt in such a degree that diplomatic relations had to be sought with it. This was Muscovy, led by Ivan III. Russians shared an experience with Christians in the South Balkans and the South Iberians; they had fresh experience with being ruled by non-Christians, more specifically, by the Mongols who were based in their tent capital Saray at the Volga. I start with a presentation of Mongol and Rus' political organization at the time of the invasion in 1240, and discuss Rus' as a suzeraign system which was part of the Golden Horde empire (which was itself in the early decades part of the Mongol empire). I then ask how, once the Golden Horde fell apart and Muscovy emerged as a separate polity, Muscovy's Mongol connection coloured its entry into the European states system. My conclusion is that, since Muscovy itself chose to seek recognition among other things as successors to the Mongol Golden Horde and since it did so by dint of a number of practices that were taken directly from the Mongols, European powers were warranted in seeing Russia as a partly Asian polity. The argument is framed as a critique of the English School's proclivity for treating sequences such as these as cases of 'expansion of international society'. I attempt to demonstrate that such a perspective cannot account adequately for what should rather be treated as relations between cultures.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, Poland, and South Iberia

94. Writer Ryszard Kapuscinski: An Optimist in the Heart of Darkness

Author:
Tomasz Zalewski
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski was an exception in gaining an international following for his writings – in translation, of course. He succeeded by writing directly about the people in oppressed, poor continents. His humanity stemmed partly from his origins in Soviet-era Poland.
Topic:
Civil Society and History
Political Geography:
Europe, Poland, and Soviet Union

95. The combatants of “certain death”. The sense of sacrifice seen through the “Great War”

Author:
François Lagrange
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cultures & Conflits
Institution:
Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:
Testimonies and historical analyses often identify the experiences of the combatants of the “Great War” to sacrifices. Nothing links them, at first looks, to the defined features of voluntary death (kamikazes or suicide-bombings). However some elements allow, at the margins, for example in the frame of the French experiences of WWI, to see common traits between the discourses on self-sacrifice on the one hand, voluntary death on the other. An analysis of the conceptions of military authors before 1914 allows reconstructing their radical vision of self-sacrifice in war leading to a valorisation of “certain death”. A complementary investigation reveals, at the beginning of the “Great War”, some cases of “certain death”. Although limited in number, these borderline-cases are significant. They shall not be overlooked in the comparative approach of the different senses and practices of self-sacrifice.
Topic:
War and History
Political Geography:
Europe

96. Antiracism Without Races: Politics and Policy in a "Color-Blind" State

Author:
Erik Bleich
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Since the end of the Second World War, millions of immigrants have arrived on French shores. Although such an influx of foreigners has not been unusual in French history, the origin of the postwar migrants was of a different character than that of previous eras. Prior to World War II, the vast majority of immigrants to France came from within Europe. Since 1945, however, an important percentage of migrants have come from non- European sources. Whether from former colonies in North Africa, Southeast Asia, or sub- Saharan Africa, from overseas departments and territories, or from countries such as Turkey or Sri Lanka, recent immigration has created a new ethnic and cultural pluralism in France. At the end of the 1990s, the visibly nonwhite population of France totals approximately five percent of all French residents. With millions of ethnic-minority citizens and denizens, the new France wears a substantially different face from that of the prewar era.
Topic:
Politics and History
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Turkey, France, Sri Lanka, North Africa, and Southeast Asia