LENC

history

historical processes and events in reality

historigraphy

what is written down about historical events and processes (history)

historicism

• refers to a tendency to give a major importance to the historical dimension of human processes (economic, sociological…)

• belief that history has a direction and internal logic, usually progress, so that studying the past lets you understand (or even predict) where societies are headed

political modernity

• the rule of modern institutions of the state, bureaucracy and capitalist enterprise

profound transformation in the structures of governance, legal institutions and the conceptions of political authority

• separation of powers, political sovereignty, enlightened values, representative systems, universalizing citizenship and political rights

paradox of political modernity

at the same time we have

• emancipatory politics, politics to set us free, focus on enlightened values, eliminating old regimes

• a really powerful state

  • new powers to coerce and dominate

agrarian empire

1750

• 1) large, ethnically complex states, no national identity

• 2) economically simple: cultivation of land

• 3) local power elites, emperor has to negotiate with them

• 4) identities formed by class, rank and harsh hierarchy

eric hobsbawn

division of contemporary history

• Age of Revolutions — the political and industrial

• Age of Capital

• Age of Empire

• Age of Extremes

industrial revolution

a continuous and restless search for new methods of production that become standard business-practice

modern revolution

Hannah Ardent, before: cyclical, the same power structure, just a different ruler

• after: 1) sense of newness, 2) political sovereignty in the people 3) new political subjects

The Great Divergence

• historical and economic phenomenon in which Western European countries surged ahead of advanced parts of Asia (China and India) and Africa in wealth, industrialization and living standards

• bc of coal, India and China had ecological limitations

slavery

a status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership is exercised

• hardest forms of physical work, ritualistic human sacrifice or political advisors

• inheritable status, modern descent

Social Death

the condition in which an enslaved person is stripped of social, legal and family standing, treating a biologically living being as a non-person

Plantation Slavery

an economic and social system where agricultural estates rely on forced chattel slavery to mass-produce commercial cash crops — sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee — for global export

Somerset case

1772, abolished Black Slavery on English soil

Slave Trade Act of __

1807, slave trade abolish in all british colonies

when and where — first mass petition to abolish transatlantic slavery in britain

1788, Manchester

Chartist Movement

the first mass working-class political movement in the United Kingdom, active primarily between 1838 and 1848, which campaigned for democratic and electoral reform

Second Slavery

• intense renewal and modernization of plantation slavery

• systemic redeployment and expansion of Atlantic slavery during the 19th century

  • mass concentration of slave labor

  • intense capital investment, administrative tracking of labor input and product output

  • new zone of production

  • new technology

New Zones of production during Second Slavery

Brazil — coffee, Cuba — sugar, U.S. South — cotton

Nation

• a body of people united according to their own will and having certain attributes in common (ethnicity, race, common history…)

Nation-State

a state in which a unified cultural or ethnic group (a nation) holds sovereignty

external sovereignty

internal sovereignty

how a state exercises political rule over its own territory, ex. uniformly or by regional decentralization

external sovereignty

enforcing territorial integrity and jurisdiction against foreign nations