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After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, Hugh Thomas describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time, but to answer controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated.
French government officials have long been known among Europeans for the special attention they give to the state of their population. In the first half of the nineteenth century, as Paris doubled in size and twice suffered the convulsions of popular revolution, civic leaders looked with alarm at what they deemed a dangerous population explosion. After defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, however, the falling birthrate generated widespread fears of cultural and national decline. In response, legislators promoted larger families and the view that a well-regulated family life was essential for France.In this innovative work of cultural history, Joshua Cole examines the course of French t...
A transnational history of the 1720 French plague epidemic and its ramifications in port cities across the early modern Atlantic world.
The Values of Precision examines how exactitude has come to occupy such a prominent place in Western culture. What has been the value of numerical values? Beginning with the late eighteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, the essays in this volume support the view that centralizing states--with their increasingly widespread bureaucracies for managing trade, taxation, and armies--and large-scale commercial enterprises--with their requirements for standardization and mass production--have been the major promoters of numerical precision. Taking advantage of the resources available, scientists and engineers have entered a symbiotic relationship with state and industry, which in turn h...
This four-volume collection of over 140 original chapters covers virtually everything of interest to demographers, sociologists, and others. Over 100 authors present population subjects in ways that provoke thinking and lead to the creation of new perspectives, not just facts and equations to be memorized. The articles follow a theory-methods-applications approach and so offer a kind of "one-stop shop" that is well suited for students and professors who need non-technical summaries, such as political scientists, public affairs specialists, and others. Unlike shorter handbooks, Demography: Analysis and Synthesis offers a long overdue, thorough treatment of the field. Choosing the analytical m...
This volume offers a unique glimpse into a European household in 18th century India. Claude Martin was an entrepreneurial Frenchman who settled in Lucknow, capital of the rich Muslim state of Awadh (Oudh). The book presents the inventory of his houses here for the first time, together with the catalogue of books from his library. It gathers together six experts to examine Martin’s numerous possessions, and discuss his paintings, silverware, jewellery, textiles, weapons, carriages, boats and hot air balloons. His collection of scientific items imported from the best European instrument makers reveals his practical experiments with electricity and astronomy, while his buildings exploited hydraulic engineering to keep them cool. This book will appeal to readers fascinated by the introduction of Enlightenment ideas into post-Mughal India and the rise of a ‘common soldier’ to the highest ranks of the East India Company. Childless himself, Martin left money to found La Martinière schools in India and France.
Although the Information Age is often described as a new era, a cultural leap springing directly from the invention of modern computers, it is simply the latest step in a long cultural process. Its conceptual roots stretch back to the profound changes that occurred during the Age of Reason and Revolution. When Information Came of Age argues that the key to the present era lies in understanding the systems developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to gather, store, transform, display, and communicate information. The book provides a concise and readable survey of the many conceptual developments between 1700 and 1850 and draws connections to leading technologies of today. It ...
This book explores the notebooks of S. Belle, an astrologer who lived in late fifteenth-century France, as a case study of late medieval astrological practice. These notebooks combine astrological doctrine, a large collection of horoscopes, an almanac, and three complete judgements of nativities. By studying Belle’s methods, processes of learning, and practices, this book contributes to a better understanding of the internal architecture of astrology in the pre-modern world; this includes its techniques, methodologies, goals, transmission, and development throughout history. It offers an internalist view of the practice of astrology, as a counterpart to the existing research into astrology’s social and cultural impact.
Originally published in 1924, this book provides a catalogue of the original titles of the road maps and itineraries produced for the roads of Great Britain between 1570 and 1850. Fordham, who published several other books on the subject of cartography, also provides a bibliography on the history of these road books, and provides more detailed chapter breakdowns for the larger itineraries in his catalogue. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in historical maps or the history of England, Scotland and Wales.
The writings of Thomas Robert Malthus continue to resonate today, particularly An Essay on the Principle of Population which was published more than two centuries ago. Malthus Across Nations creates a fascinating picture of the circulation of his economic and demographic ideas across different countries, highlighting the reception of his works in a variety of nations and cultures. This unique book offers not only a fascinating piece of comparative analysis in the history of economic thought but also places some of today’s most pressing debates into an accurate historical perspective, thereby improving our understanding of them.