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States and elites The culture of the Ottoman period has often been analyzed by using the same criteria applied to the periods before and after it, Mamluk Egypt (1250–1517) and the nineteenth century. This is problematic for two reasons, firstly because of the very different roles played by the state in relation to culture and learning and secondly because of the role of elites in providing models and patterns of culture. The influence of the ruling class in shaping culture can change between one period and another, and can be greater at certain times than at others. When the state is centralized, the ruling class is much more likely to play a dominant role than it is in a decentralized state. The cultural production is more likely to be polished and refined when ruling classes dominate the direction that it takes, and less so when their role is reduced. When the state is decentralized, as it was during the Ottoman period, and the structures at the top are weaker, the cultural forms and patterns from below are more likely to emerge. Therefore, rather than compare this period to those before or after it, we may approach it through the larger framework of its changing social and political structures. In both Mamluk Egypt and Egypt under the rule of Muhammad 'Ali and his descendants (nineteenth century), the state was very centralized and played an active role in financing and shaping culture and in education. Likewise the ruling elites were actively involved in creating cultural models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pattern of Sino-Korean tributary relations Korea is often referred to as a model Chinese tributary state. Indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Korea's tributary relations with China in the development of Korean political institutions and higher culture. Beginning in the seventh century, when the Korean kingdom of Silla entered into an alliance with the T'ang, the Koreans became skilled at adapting Chinese institutions to their own needs. Later, the kingdom of Koryŏ (Chinese: Kao-li, A.D. 918–1392) continued this pattern of adaptation, watching closely as the Liao, Chin, and Mongol states rose in succession, and evolving forms of tributary relations with each in turn. Korea came under more direct imperial control with the completion of the Mongol conquest in 1270. Thereafter, Koryŏ princes were reared in Peking and were married to Mongol princesses, and Mongol commanderies were established at P'yŏng-yang and Ssangsŏng. During the decades of Yüan overlordship, as the Koryŏ ruling lineage intermarried with the Yüan imperial family, certain other Korean houses became powerful by marrying daughters to high Yüan officials. Over time, Korean ties to the Yüan became so important that the Koryŏ regime was ill-prepared to cope with the fall of the Yüan in the mid-fourteenth century. In many respects, the fall of Koryŏ and the rise of the state of Chosŏn in 1392 was related to the transition from the Yüan to the Ming dynasty in China, and the evolving relationship between China and Korea during the Ming period is a good example of how the tributary system served each side, both as a political tool and security mechanism, and as a conduit for trade and cultural transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employers' organisations have been around for a very long time, indeed, such organisations pre-dated the industrialisation process in Britain. Adam Smith, in his classic treatise.The Wealth of Nations, was amongst the earliest of commentators to identify the existence of semi-clandestine masters' committees. Such combinations, Smith argued, operated across a number of trades and industries, working to regulate product prices, lower wages and control working hours. The master tailors, for example, formed a number of alliances throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, ostensibly to combat industrial action by their workers, who developed one of the most militant of eighteenth-century unions. Draconian union-bashing and violent strikebreaking tactics were often resorted to by such combinations. In one dispute in 1764, 23 master tailors imported over 1,000 strikebreakers, including 230 from outside Britain. The master tailors' combination dissolved rapidly after breaking this strike. This pattern of brief, temporary, ephemeral combinations of masters to address specific industrial relations crises characterised the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rarely, during this period, were employers' associations sustained for any length of time. Presumably, in most instances, individual capitalists could effectively discipline and control their labour force without the necessity for forging wider class alliances. Nevertheless, the extent of employer organisation, even in this early period, should not be underestimated. As the work of Yarmie, Musson, Coleman and Turner has shown, formal employers' combinations dealing with labour relations existed in the cotton, printing, coal, shipbuilding, worsted, cutlery and paper trades during the period of illegality under the multifarious individual trade and general Combination Acts in the late eighteenth century and during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technical progress is a function of bourgeois money. The functions of the faculties of science in the later nineteenth century were teaching, research, and service to agriculture, industry, and government at municipal, departmental, and national levels. An extra duty of faculties, resulting from the organization of a unified system of education and the historical connection between lycée and faculty, was their time-consuming responsibility for the baccalaureate examinations, a particularly heavy burden in large towns. The examination figures for the University of Paris in 1893–4 show the problem. Fortunately a light teaching load gave the French university scientist some time for research. Probably the most striking feature of the provincial faculties of science was the development of a system of institutes of applied science, each of which was usually headed by a leading scientist interested in regional industry and agriculture. The careers of Pasteur in Lille, Schützenberger in Mulhouse and in Paris, Haller in Nancy, Sabatier in Toulouse, and the Berthelots and Le Chatelier in Paris provide a paradigm of the activity of the academic scientist whose research was intimately connected with the economic life of the region and the nation. In developing institutes of applied science and technology the University saw itself as fulfilling a vital social function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In France Cybèle has more worshippers than Christ. Higher agricultural education A perusal of nineteenth-century scientific literature, especially the journals, soon reveals the large role that science was capable of playing in agriculture and the degree to which farmers and all sorts of politicians were coming to rely on scientists to tell them how to increase production. The patron saint of French agricultural education is Mathieu de Dombasle, who opened near Nancy the first serious agricultural school in 1824. This noble failure encouraged the engineers Polonceau and Auguste Bella to found in 1828, with royal support, the more scientifically oriented Institution royale agronomique de Grignon, near Paris. In 1848 the Second Republic created a national organization of agricultural education: seventy departmental farm-schools to produce good farm workers; regional schools of agriculture; and, capstone of the system, the Institut national agronomique de Versailles. In line with policies in most western countries, the Third Republic promoted scientific agriculture on a scale unprecedented in French history. An autonomous Ministry of Agriculture emerged in 1881 from the clutches of the ministries in which it had been held captive for most of the century. Nineteen different ministers of agriculture served the forty-two governments that ruled France from 1881 to 1914. Given the composition of the Chamber of Deputies, it is not surprising that the ministry fell victim to a near monopoly by lawyers and doctors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lines of siege, 1886–89 The outlook from the savanna Although in retrospect the flurry of European diplomacy which attended the Berlin Conference of 1884–5 seems clearly designed to prepare for the European invasion of West Africa, economic and political uncertainties in Europe and indications of stiff resistance in Africa inhibited the formation of aggressive policies. In the immediate aftermath the European siege lines were strengthened, but the scale of the impending threat to African independence was still not generally predictable. Even if in retrospect it appears that external and internal pressures were producing a general crisis of authority, its local manifestations varied greatly in nature and in intensity, and it is not easy to trace this crisis to common causes. Obviously, the impact of the European economy and European power was strongest in coastal regions. Many inland kingdoms of the savanna and Sahel still knew Europeans only as isolated and powerless travellers, and they retained the preoccupations and priorities which their historical experience suggested. Bornu, for example, though affected by fluctuations in European demand for ivory and ostrich-feathers, had more urgent problems at home; the challenge which eventually in 1893 overthrew the al-Kānamī dynasty came from Rabah al-Zubayr, a well-armed state-builder from the Nilotic Sudan, who proved capable of mobilising support among over-mighty subjects of Kukawa. 'Umar b. 'Alī, Caliph of Sokoto, 1881–91, also faced difficulties in maintaining administrative control over the empire founded by Usuman dan Fodio and in enforcing the theocratic standards which justified its existence; but these were largely inherent in the attempt to hold together territories which it took four months to traverse from east to west, once the capital of charisma accumulated by the founders had become attenuated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North of the equator It has become a truism of historical writing to conceive of Africa in the course of the nineteenth century as becoming increasingly a part of, and a product of, the expansion of Europe, which, beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had integrated ever larger areas of the world into a single economic system. In attempting an overview of the state of the continent on the eve of partition – roughly over the decade of the 1870s – a large number of questions arise from a consideration of this truism. To what extent was Africa already an adjunct of an economic system dominated by Europe? What was the relationship between Africa and this European system – was it one of an equal or an unequal exchange of commodities? To what extent was Africa dependent economically, if not yet politically? What social and ideological changes were beginning to follow from this dependency? Was Africa a fruit ripe for plucking in the 1870s, was there a certain inevitability about the forthcoming imperialist carve-up, or was partition an extraneous historical occurrence forced upon a continent which had within it other options for coping with the future? There are no answers to these questions that are at the same time simple and sensible. Certainly the answers to all such queries will differ, according to the region of Africa which is under scrutiny. Even within particular regions, the situation of individual states, societies or groups of people, their relations with each other and with the outside world (especially with the European capitalist economies) varied greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far, we have examined the structures of settlement, society, and economy in eighteenth-century New Granada and have seen something of the economic links that bound the colony to Spain. However, by focusing on the character of New Granada's social and economic structures, the foregoing chapters have tended to emphasize elements of continuity and evolution within the colony, without paying much attention to the external factors that affected its development. And yet, of course, the eighteenth century saw important changes in relations between Spain and her colonies, as the Bourbon kings who inherited the Hapsburg throne sought to reverse the seemingly inexorable process of decline that Spain had suffered during the seventeenth century. Not only did the new dynasty establish a more centralized and absolutist authority within the metropolis, but, by political, military, and economic reform, it also sought to bring about what has been called the “second conquest of America.” This was not a process that began immediately or proceeded smoothly. The first reforms were hesitant in tone and uneven in application, and the great age of reform did not arrive until the reign of Charles III. New Granada, however, felt the repercussions of change at the metropolitan center early in the century, when its trade and administration were touched by Madrid's earliest efforts to reassert control over the resources of its empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of all the influences on the development of New Granada's political life during the eighteenth century, Bourbon policies are the most obvious. We have seen how, throughout the century, ministers of Bourbon monarchs sought to enhance royal authority and improve Spain's command of the region's resources, with varying degrees of intensity and success. The first conjuncture of Bourbon reform in New Granada, in 1717–23, was ineffectual, if not entirely futile. It did, however, clear the ground for a second conjuncture of administrative and commercial reorganization in 1739–40, from which New Granada emerged with a new framework for government, under the command of the viceroys, and a new framework for its overseas trade, carried by individual register-ships. Then, after a long phase of piecemeal, incremental reform, the government of Charles III inaugurated Bourbon New Granada's third and most radical reformist conjuncture in 1778, when Gálvez's new colonial program was applied to the region in the visita general of 1778–83. New Granada's political system was therefore affected by three major moments of reform during the eighteenth century. In the first, the crown reasserted royal authority, but failed to sustain its reorganization of New Granada's system of government. In the second, Madrid established a permanent viceregal government, which strengthened the networks of royal command in New Granada by installing a strong authority at the heart of the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, New Granada lacked a substantial and influential merchant class of the kind found in Peru and Mexico. In 1695, a group of some twenty merchants in Bogotá had established a consulado de comercio modeled on those of Lima and Mexico City, by contracting with the crown to pay the royal tax known as the avería, due on goods imported by the galleons, in return for the right to a self-governing mercantile jurisdiction. The Consulado of Santa Fe de Bogotá did not survive for long, however. Its members were unable to fulfill their financial obligations, and when the galleon system itself collapsed during the War of the Spanish Succession the Consulado lost its rationale. It was suppressed in 1713, reflecting the inability of New Granadan merchants to sustain an institution of this kind. Many decades then passed before a consulado de comercio was reestablished in New Granada. When the institution was revived in 1795, it was at Cartagena de Indias, the country's leading port and home of its mercantile elite. Cartagena de Indias and New Granada's commerce Although Bogotá was the headquarters of New Granada's government, Cartagena was the hub of its commerce and throughout the eighteenth century the development of a mercantile elite in New Granada was primarily associated with this port. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical description and language The documents were written in black ink on imported handmade paper which came mainly from Italy via Egypt. The sultanate must have consumed paper in considerable quantities; documents were written only on the recto, often with a wide right-hand margin, and the writing is not crabbed in an effort to save paper. In fact Dār Fūr appears to have re-exported paper further west. The documents do not conform to any standard size; the average is perhaps between 25 to 30 by 15 to 20 centimetres. The range of literary competence, from the perspective of “standard” Arabic, is very broad; II, for example, is stylistically a polished production, while XXXI has several very colloquial passages. A detailed study of the local forms and deviations can only be profitably pursued in conjunction with a study of the different forms of Dār Fūr colloquial Arabic. Over and above the occasional scribal error, there are certain consistent misspellings, for example the use of “t” for tā marbūṭa as in haḍra “presence”. Some of these errors of orthography arise from the transfer of speech habits to the written form; thus “s” for “ṣ” or “th”, “t” for “th”, and “h” for “ḥ”. Also common is a tendency to drop the alif maqṣūra. Lexically a number of usages appear in the documents, the most numerous being the topographical and botanical names which are listed in a separate index (see pp. 157–8). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period known as the ‘Golden Age of Cracow’ covered the first half of the sixteenth century and roughly coincided with the reign of King Zygmunt Stary (Sigismund the Old) from 1506 to 1548. The vigorous development of intellectual life in the city, combined with foreign contacts and a flourishing artistic life was supported by commercial prosperity. This was reflected on a larger scale within Poland, expressing itself in the wealth of the country and a favourable growth in foreign trade. Raw materials such as grain, timber, livestock, hemp, flax and potash led to a lively export trade, especially with the Low Countries and England; the production of raw materials, however, was in the hands of the propertied Polish nobility who were gradually becoming farming entrepreneurs. Here one sees the first hint of looming disaster for Cracow, which helped precipitate the city's decline. Not only in Poland but also in other parts of Eastern Europe, the nobility were taking advantage of the rural origins for raw materials such as grain and wresting control of them from urban merchants; in Poland the nobility decisively asserted its dominance over the towns which led to a steady flow of restrictions on the wealth and authority of such places as Cracow. The city also suffered from external factors; the great geographical discoveries had opened up new sea and ocean trade routes, while the old land routes, on which Cracow was so dependent, gradually diminished in importance. Moreover, following the Union of Poland and Lithuania in 1569, Cracow found itself tucked away in the south-west corner of Poland and had to cede its prime position in Poland to Warsaw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]