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81. Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations

Author:
Eric Langenbacher (ed) and Yossi Shain (ed)
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Georgetown University Press
Abstract:
Collective memories have long influenced domestic politics and especially international affairs—a fact most recently exemplified by the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The events and the memories resulting from them became powerful motivating forces for Americans almost overnight. At home, an infrastructure of commemoration quickly arose—in films like United 93 ( 2006 ); memorials including one unveiled at the Pentagon in September 2008 and the Tribute World Trade Center Visitor Center opened in 2006; and even in political campaign discourse, as at the 2008 Republican National Convention. 1 Yet, as with other collective memories worldwide, there is no consensus as to the overall meaning and lessons of September 11 over time. Instead, the continued vehemence of discussions about 9 / 11 reveals still-unresolved struggles over the construction, content, and power of the memory. What degree of prominence should this memory have in American political culture? What historical narratives are offered as explanations? Most importantly, what values and policy implications—both domestically and abroad—ought to follow?
Topic:
International Relations, Human Rights, Politics, Political Theory, and History
Political Geography:
Europe

82. Sand: The Invention of the Jewish People

Author:
Adam Sutcliffe
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The Invention of the Jewish People, by Shlomo Sand (translated from the Hebrew by Yael Lotan). London and New York: Verso, 2009. xi + 313 pages. Index to p. 334. $34.95 cloth. Adam Sutcliffe, senior lecturer in European history at King's College London, is the author of Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
New York, Europe, and London

83. Historical Poetics in Modern Greece: Reflections on Three Writers

Author:
Eleni Mahaira-Odoni
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
In his Poetics Aristotle underscores the interaction between poetry and history by assigning to poetry the task of dealing with the universal while history delves in the particular. The writers Thanassis Valtinos, Rea Galanaki and the poet C.P. Cavafy have created an imposing body of Modern Greek literary works built on the intimate relationship between history and literature. For each writer the choice of particular historical instances serves a very different purpose. Valtinos grapples with the condition of the common man/woman whereas Galanaki focuses mostly on the existential parameters of exceptional women’s lives. For C.P. Cavafy, poetry, the ultimate universal, validates his own self-exploration by means of particular historical narratives.
Topic:
History and Culture
Political Geography:
Europe and Greece

84. The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond

Author:
Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
The paper lays the theoretical and methodological foundations of a new historically-minded approach to the comparative study of democratization, centered on the analysis of the creation, development and interaction of democratic institutions. Historically, democracy did not emerge as a singular coherent whole but rather as a set of different institutions, which resulted from conflicts across multiple lines of social and political cleavage that took place at different moments in time. The theoretical advantage of this approach is illustrated by highlighting the range of new variables that come into focus in explaining democracy's emergence. Rather than class being the single variable that explains how and why democracy came about, we can see how religious conflict, ethnic cleavages, and the diffusion of ideas played a much greater role in Europe's democratization than has typically been appreciated. Above all, we argue that political parties were decisive players in how and why democracy emerged in Europe and should be at the center of future analyses.
Topic:
Democratization, Political Economy, and History
Political Geography:
Europe

85. Homeros'dan Hobbes ve Ötesine: "Güvenlik" Kavramının Avrupa Geleneğindeki Boyutları

Author:
J. Frederik M. Arends
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article examines the historical development of the concept of security in two phases. In the first phase, the word coined by the Romans as 'securitas' and accompanied from the beginning by ambivalence and religious connotations had conceded most of its territory to 'certitudo' at the end of the Middle Ages. In the second phase starting in the times of Thomas Hobbes, it became one of the paradigmatic 'great words' of the modern state. In this phase, 'security' became associated with the genesis of the authoritarian 'super state' committed to the prevention of civil war. This article starts by elaborating the connection between Thomas Hobbes and the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and proceeds by examining the usages of the concept by several contemporary authors.
Topic:
Political Theory and History
Political Geography:
Europe

86. The “Perfidious Invasion” of 1808: Ideological Disquiet and Certainty in Moratín

Author:
Jes´us P´erez Magall´on
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper revisits the afrancesados' role in Spanish historiography as well as their political positioning prior to, during and after the French invasion of 1808. Taking the famous playwright Leandro Fern´andez de Morat´ın as a case study, the paper explores his political ideas beyond established labels such as “supporter of enlightened despotism” coined by S´anchez Agesta. To this end the article reviews a variety of Morat´ın's texts, including Carta de un vecino de Foncarral a un abogado de Madrid sobre el libre comercio de los huevos, Apuntaciones sueltas de Inglaterra, Viaje a Italia, a Prologue to Isla's Fray Gerundio de Campazas, as well as Morat´ın's correspondence. The essay argues that despite his confessed social, economic and even political liberalism, Morat´ın never supported any specific form of political organization, neither absolutist nor liberal. His open skepticism locates him beyond prevailing ideologies.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Spain

87. The Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro and Napoleon's Black Legend

Author:
Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Napoleon and the European war were not the primary concerns of Brazil's inhabitants. They had their own agenda and saw the British as their mercantile competitors. Most of all they resented the 1810 treaty of alliance and the article on the abolition of slave trade. Not even a a Constitution was asked for in Brazil because Brazilians were happy enough with the presence of the royal family to think of a change in government.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Brazil, and South America

88. Mexican Silver for the Cortes of Cadiz during the War against Napoleon, 1808-1811

Author:
Carlos Marichal Salinas
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
In this essay attention is focused on the persistence of colonial loyalties despite the profound crisis at the center of the Spanish monarchy as a result of the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula. One clear indicator of colonial support can be found in the review of the numerous loans and donations collected in colonial Mexico for the purpose of assisting the patriot forces in Spain in their struggle against Napoleon. The financial contributions were considerable. Between late 1808 and early 1811, over 25 million pesos in tax monies, loans and donations were sent from New Spain to C´adiz, principal seat of patriot resistance in southern Spain.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Spain, Mexico, and Iberia Peninsula

89. Slavery, Science, and the end of the Old Regime in the Luso-Brazilian Empire

Author:
Kirsten Schultz
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper provides a preliminary examination of some of the late eighteenthcentury bases for the reception of liberalism and debates on slavery, specifically the Luso-Brazilian engagement with natural science and the work of the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences. The Academy's work most directly concerned with the question of slavery and the slave trade appealed to economic principles of utility, efficiency and productivity to identify ways to reform the practice of enslaving Africans in the interest of increasing the wealth generated within the colonial and imperial economies. Thus, even as slavery was being assailed internationally on both philosophical and religious grounds, Luso-Brazilian Academic writing insisted it was an economic rather than moral problem. At the same time, however, Academic inquiries into the question of human difference often undercut claims about Africans that were invoked elsewhere in the Atlantic world to justify the perpetuation of slavery and the slave trade. As Academic reformism thus grappled with the humanity of Africans, civilization and barbarism emerged as privileged categories of analysis for discerning the future of slavery, reasserting the moral dimensions of the institution.
Topic:
Human Rights and History
Political Geography:
Europe, Brazil, South America, and Spain

90. Staging the Revolution(s)

Author:
David T. Gies
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Spanish playwrights in the period between the French Revolution and the Spanish War of Independence became increasingly sensitized to militarization and conflict. Manuel José Quintana's ground-breaking Pelayo (1805) drew on tropes from Spain's historical past to discuss current and coming events. A new reading of Quintana's play suggests that he, among others, marked this rapidly changing cultural and political milieu with works that projected a growing nationalism and defense of Spain against the threats from north of the Pyrenees.
Topic:
Civil Society, War, History, and Arts
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Spain