Mediterranean Urban Culture, 1400-1700

Mediterranean Urban Culture, 1400-1700

Author: Alexander Cowan

Publisher: University of Exeter Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780859895781

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Was there a distinctive Mediterranean urban culture in the early modern period? This collection demonstrates both the range of collective urban experience in the Mediterranean and the complexity of the nature of urban culture at that time.


Cultures of Empire: Rethinking Venetian Rule, 1400–1700

Cultures of Empire: Rethinking Venetian Rule, 1400–1700

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-07-27

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 9004428879

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This book investigates perceptions, modes, and techniques of Venetian rule in the early modern Eastern Mediterranean (1400–1700) between colonial empire, negotiated and pragmatic rule; between soft touch and exploitation; in contexts of former and continuous imperial belongings; and with a focus on representations and modes of rule as well as on colonial daily realities and connectivities.


Dark Mirror

Dark Mirror

Author: Sara Lipton

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0805079106

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In Dark Mirror, Sara Lipton offers a fascinating examination of the emergence of anti-Semitic iconography in the Middle Ages The straggly beard, the hooked nose, the bag of coins, and gaudy apparel—the religious artists of medieval Christendom had no shortage of virulent symbols for identifying Jews. Yet, hateful as these depictions were, the story they tell is not as simple as it first appears. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Lipton argues that these visual stereotypes were neither an inevitable outgrowth of Christian theology nor a simple reflection of medieval prejudices. Instead, she maps out the complex relationship between medieval Christians' religious ideas, social experience, and developing artistic practices that drove their depiction of Jews from benign, if exoticized, figures connoting ancient wisdom to increasingly vicious portrayals inspired by (and designed to provoke) fear and hostility. At the heart of this lushly illustrated and meticulously researched work are questions that have occupied scholars for ages—why did Jews becomes such powerful and poisonous symbols in medieval art? Why were Jews associated with certain objects, symbols, actions, and deficiencies? And what were the effects of such portrayals—not only in medieval society, but throughout Western history? What we find is that the image of the Jew in medieval art was not a portrait of actual neighbors or even imagined others, but a cloudy glass into which Christendom gazed to find a distorted, phantasmagoric rendering of itself.


Describing the City, Describing the State

Describing the City, Describing the State

Author: Sandra Toffolo

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-06-29

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9004428208

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A detailed analysis of descriptions of Venice and the Venetian Terraferma in the Renaissance, when both the city of Venice and the mainland state were undergoing fundamental changes.


The Merchant Houses of Mocha

The Merchant Houses of Mocha

Author: Nancy Um

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0295800232

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Gaining prominence as a seaport under the Ottomans in the mid-1500s, the city of Mocha on the Red Sea coast of Yemen pulsed with maritime commerce. Its very name became synonymous with Yemen's most important revenue-producing crop -- coffee. After the imams of the Qasimi dynasty ousted the Ottomans in 1635, Mocha's trade turned eastward toward the Indian Ocean and coastal India. Merchants and shipowners from Asian, African, and European shores flocked to the city to trade in Arabian coffee and aromatics, Indian textiles, Asian spices, and silver from the New World. Nancy Um tells how and why Mocha's urban shape and architecture took the forms they did. Mocha was a hub in a great trade network encompassing overseas cities, agricultural hinterlands, and inland market centers. All these connected places, together with the functional demands of commerce in the city, the social stratification of its residents, and the imam's desire for wealth, contributed to Mocha's architectural and urban form. Eventually, in the mid-1800s, the Ottomans regained control over Yemen and abandoned Mocha as their coastal base. Its trade and its population diminished and its magnificent buildings began to crumble, until few traces are left of them today. This book helps bring Mocha to life once again.


Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age

Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 769

ISBN-13: 3110223899

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Although the city as a central entity did not simply disappear with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the development of urban space at least since the twelfth century played a major role in the history of medieval and early modern mentality within a social-economic and religious framework. Whereas some poets projected urban space as a new utopia, others simply reflected the new significance of the urban environment as a stage where their characters operate very successfully. As today, the premodern city was the locus where different social groups and classes got together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in hostile terms. The historical development of the relationship between Christians and Jews, for instance, was deeply determined by the living conditions within a city. By the late Middle Ages, nobility and bourgeoisie began to intermingle within the urban space, which set the stage for dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social and economic make-up of society. Legal-historical aspects also find as much consideration as practical questions concerning water supply and sewer systems. Moreover, the early modern city within the Ottoman and Middle Eastern world likewise finds consideration. Finally, as some contributors observe, the urban space provided considerable opportunities for women to carve out a niche for themselves in economic terms.


The Market and the City

The Market and the City

Author: Donatella Calabi

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1351885952

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The early modern period witnessed the rise of a new and powerful merchant class across Europe. The Market and the City takes a comparative approach to the effect merchants and traders had on the urban history of market places - streets, squares and specific buildings - in some of the great commercial European cities between the 15th and 17th centuries. It looks at how the transformations of designated commercial areas were important enough to modify relationships throughout the entire urban context. Market places tend to be very ancient, continuing to function for centuries on the same location; but between the middle of the 14th and the first decades of the 17th, their structures began to change as new regulations and patterns of manufacture, distribution and consumption began to install a new uniformity and geometry on the market place. During the period covered by this study, most major European cities undertook the rebuilding of entire zones, constructing new buildings, demolishing existing structures and embellishing others.


Exploring Turkish Cultures

Exploring Turkish Cultures

Author: Dr Laurence Raw

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-01-18

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1443827584

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This groundbreaking series of essays offers new insights into Turkish cultures both past and present. Moving beyond the traditional binaries of east/west, Islam/secularism, and Europe/Asia, the book contains a variety of perspectives on contemporary Turkey, from actors, directors, critics and other major cultural figures. The book tries to situate these opinions in context by looking at how such perspectives are employed in different cultural spheres—education, theatre, politics and the like. Exploring Turkish Cultures contains the first major interviews published in English with prominent public figures, including actors Türkân Şoray, Genco Erkal and Nesrin Kazankaya. Other figures interviewed include film directors Derviş Zaim and documentary filmmakers Ben Hopkins, Pelin Esmer and Özgür Doğan. An extended interview with the author, translator and academic Talât Halman rounds off the interview section. Complementing these interviews are a series of essays on major Turkish films and theatrical productions, both past and present. Combining historical analysis, comment and evaluation from an author who has spent two decades living in Turkey, Exploring Turkish Cultures represents a major contribution to contemporary Turkish studies.


The Grain Market in the Roman Empire

The Grain Market in the Roman Empire

Author: Paul Erdkamp

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-11-03

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1139447688

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This book explores the economic, social and political forces that shaped the grain market in the Roman Empire. Examining studies on food supply and the grain market in pre-industrial Europe, it addresses questions of productivity, division of labour, market relations and market integration. The social and political aspects of the Roman grain market are also considered. Dr Erdkamp illustrates how entitlement to food in Roman society was dependent on relations with the emperor, his representatives and the landowning aristocracy, and local rulers controlling the towns and hinterlands. He assesses the response of the Roman authorities to weaknesses in the grain market and looks at the implications of the failure of local harvests. By examining the subject from a contemporary perspective, this book will appeal not only to historians of ancient economies, but to all concerned with the economy of grain markets, a subject which still resonates today.