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Introduction

David Wengrow

in The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction

This book explores the relationship between image and cognition in the context of the first age of mechanical reproduction. Linking these various interests is the theme of “monsters,” a term that ... More

This book explores the relationship between image and cognition in the context of the first age of mechanical reproduction. Linking these various interests is the theme of “monsters,” a term that will be replaced with “composites” to better capture the essence of what the book is interested in. The book focuses on a body of theory called “epidemiology of culture” in order to probe the boundaries of analytical fields that claim to be addressing a common problem: the unified understanding of culture as a product of both history and cognition. It considers—from various perspectives—how the distribution of composite figures in the visual record offers fertile testing ground for an “epidemiological” approach to culture, and ultimately forces a revision of some of its central assumptions. In doing so, the book offers a number of general observations about the relationship between image, cognition, and early state formation in the western Old World.Less

The Traditionalist Critique: A “Ranting and Raving Tumult”

Thomas Albert Howard

in God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide

This chapter concentrates on three distinct but related strands of Old World traditionalist disapprobation of the United States. The first focuses on British voices loyal to the Anglican Church, who ... More

This chapter concentrates on three distinct but related strands of Old World traditionalist disapprobation of the United States. The first focuses on British voices loyal to the Anglican Church, who tended to see the prevalence of ‘revivalist’, ‘sectarian’ religion in America as a consequence of the dangers of popular democracy and the weakening of rightly-constituted authority. Second, German-speaking Continental-Romantic voices are examined. Often nonplussed about a ‘history-less’ land, these voices frequently faulted the New World for its ‘lack of spirituality’ (Geistlosigkeit) and its cultural mediocrity in comparison to the spirit- and history-laden atmosphere of the Old World. Finally, the Catholic Church and its ultramontane supporters throughout Europe, roiled by revolution and anticlericalism in the 19th century, tended to view the United States skeptically as a seedbed of political liberalism and its excesses. These liberal excesses were often explained as a consequence of America's Protestant heritage and they contributed, in 1899, to the Vatican's condemnation of ‘Americanism’.Less

Michael Sandel's America

Michael Walzer

in Debating Democracy's Discontent: Essays on American Politics, Law, and Public Philosophy

The members of greedy communities do not make good citizens because they are only marginally interested in the political community; their sense of the common good is determined mostly by their ... More

The members of greedy communities do not make good citizens because they are only marginally interested in the political community; their sense of the common good is determined mostly by their religious beliefs and not by their membership in or allegiance to the state: some of them refuse, on principle, to declare their allegiance to anything as secular as a state. Immigration is an individual (or familial) decision, a free choice, which represents a break with those Old World communities whose members were, in Sandel’s exact sense, encumbered selves, that is, men and women whose obligations were given; the immigrants, once they have arrived in their new country, do not have obligations in quite the same sense. The more active members of groups (though not of the greediest groups) are also the more active citizens of the republic, the people who come closest to the civic commitment that Sandel wants to encourage–but a substantial part of what they are doing, and they probably understand it this way, is representing particular interests, bargaining for a place on “balanced” tickets, negotiating compromise arrangements, getting as much as they can from the state. Justice is a kind of recognition, and individual men and women who are recognized in their communities and empowered by them may be the most likely citizens of the community of communities.Less

Child Saving, Nation Building: The Wide, Wide World and The Lamplighter

Carol J. Singley

in Adopting America: Childhood, Kinship, and National Identity in Literature

Girls figure prominently in mid-nineteenth-century adoption fiction, as evidenced by Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (1851) and Susanna Maria Cummins’s The Lamplighter (1854). These novels, set ... More

Girls figure prominently in mid-nineteenth-century adoption fiction, as evidenced by Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (1851) and Susanna Maria Cummins’s The Lamplighter (1854). These novels, set when statutes governing adoption were still vague and reflecting the importance of nurture as articulated by Horace Bushnell, acknowledge American opportunities while acknowledging European roots. Warner’s protagonist, Ellen, pays homage to the Old World on a visit to blood relatives, the Lindsays, but ultimately affirms her commitment to the New World. Gerty, in contrast, exercises her independence in The Lamplighter but reunites with her birth father in an expression of solidarity with Old World genealogy. Both novels contribute to a sense of identity as inherited and adoptive and to a construction of nation in dialogue with but independent of England.Less

England’s New World and the Old, 1480s–1630s

Nicholas Canny

in The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I: The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century

This chapter considers how English people accommodated America and its inhabitants into their thinking during the century-and-a-half succeeding the first encounter — a subject that riveted the ... More

This chapter considers how English people accommodated America and its inhabitants into their thinking during the century-and-a-half succeeding the first encounter — a subject that riveted the attention of earlier scholars but that has been strangely neglected by recent historians of England. Those persisting in the established lines of enquiry have been primarily interested in trade, and few recent historians of early modern England have been concerned with the intellectual responses of English observers to foreign peoples and places. The limited extent to which these early English voyagers appreciated America as a New World was acknowledged in 1625 by Samuel Purchas when he stated that accounts of pre-1580 voyages were situated by him, in his multivolume Pilgrimes, with texts relating to travel in the Old World because the navigators had then been ‘sailing from and for Europe’ and spent ‘most of their time on the Asian and African coasts’.Less

Introduction

John E. Lattke

in A Taxonomic Revision and Phylogenetic Analysis of the Ant Genus Gnamptogenys Roger in Southeast Asia and Australasia (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae)

Gnamptogenys Roger is a group of predatory ponerine ants found in tropical and subtropical, mesic forested areas in Southeast Asia and Australasia, and from the southern United States to northern ... More

Gnamptogenys Roger is a group of predatory ponerine ants found in tropical and subtropical, mesic forested areas in Southeast Asia and Australasia, and from the southern United States to northern Argentina. Most species nest at ground level in rotten wood or leaf litter, but some are arboreal. Their colonies are relatively small, with at most a few hundred workers. Reproduction is generally through queens, though worker reproduction is known in some species from Southeast Asia. While many species are generalist predators, specialized diets such as millipede predation have arisen in several New World lineages. The biology of Old World species is poorly known. The last generic revision recognized 81 species, with 26 Old World species. This book presents a taxonomic revision of the species of Gnamptogenys from the Old World, shows evidence for their monophyly, and assesses their phylogenetic relationships.Less

Newish, Not Jewish: A Tale of Two Bands

Mark Solbin

in American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots

This chapter focuses on the careers of two major bands—The Klezmorim and Brave Old World—which emerged partly or wholly from the little-known California context of the 1970s. Drawing on interviews ... More

This chapter focuses on the careers of two major bands—The Klezmorim and Brave Old World—which emerged partly or wholly from the little-known California context of the 1970s. Drawing on interviews and song texts, it imagines how klezmer music evokes emotion and makes experiences of “Jewishness” reverberate with both fondness and a sense of loss.Less

The Count's Degenerate America

in Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America

Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon argued that all animals in the New World were degenerate—smaller, and less robust—than those found in the Old World. But it was hardly the fault of these New World ... More

Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon argued that all animals in the New World were degenerate—smaller, and less robust—than those found in the Old World. But it was hardly the fault of these New World creatures that they existed in degenerate form. In Buffon's mind, the fault lay with the American Indians who had long ruled the land. They had failed to conquer nature, and so the land remained wet and cold. And for Buffon, wet and cold environments led to degenerate life forms, leaving him free to make sweeping claims about the superior life forms to be found in the Old World—which, of course, included his own beloved France. The birthplace of these arguments about New World degeneracy—Buffon's massive, thirty-six-volume Natural History: General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle)—is a massive encyclopedia that was published over the course of nearly four decades (1749–1788). It was in this all-encompassing work on nature that Buffon set out his theory about degenerate animals and humans in America.Less

Cercopithecoidea

Nina G. Jablonski and Stephen Frost

in Cenozoic Mammals of Africa

Old World monkeys are some of the most common and visible components of the modern mammalian fauna of Africa, and are the dominant nonhuman primates in Africa today with respect to the overall ... More

Old World monkeys are some of the most common and visible components of the modern mammalian fauna of Africa, and are the dominant nonhuman primates in Africa today with respect to the overall numbers of species present and the number of ecological zones inhabited. What is rarely appreciated is that Old World monkeys have risen to a position of ecological dominance among primates only recently in geological time. During the early and middle Miocene, the Cercopithecoidea were well established in Africa, but not taxonomically diverse. The absence or near absence of monkey fossils from prolific early Miocene sites like Rusinga Island suggests that the animals were genuinely rare elements of the mammalian fauna at the time. The earliest African cercopithecoids belong to the Victoriapithecidae, an extinct family from the early to middle Miocene of eastern Africa that exhibit a mosaic of basal catarrhine and modern Old World monkeylike morphological features. This chapter describes the systematic paleontology of Cercopithecoidea.Less

A Last Hurrah for Old World Geographies: Fixing Space at the Paris Peace Conference

Neil Smith

in American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization

This chapter discusses the Paris Peace Conference, which resolved the diplomatic, territorial, and economic issues that provoked war. It defines the term “Old World” and notes that the Conference was ... More

This chapter discusses the Paris Peace Conference, which resolved the diplomatic, territorial, and economic issues that provoked war. It defines the term “Old World” and notes that the Conference was mostly about fixing the map of territorial possession among the nation-states. It looks at the Intelligence Section, which included Bowman, and the factual and cartographic materials it provided for the American commissioners. The territorial settlements and fixing of the borders of Poland and the Fiume/Rijeka Crisis are discussed, along with the House Affairs. The chapter ends with a discussion of the result of the conference, Bowman's dissatisfaction with President Wilson, and the cartography of ethnicity.Less

Abandoned and Adopted in a New World

Carol J. Singley

in Adopting America: Childhood, Kinship, and National Identity in Literature

The early Puritans ambivalently left England, the mother country, portraying themselves as abandoned orphans. Sustained by the belief that they were chosen people, they also emulated ... More

The early Puritans ambivalently left England, the mother country, portraying themselves as abandoned orphans. Sustained by the belief that they were chosen people, they also emulated salvation—adoption by God—by taking in others’ children. The writings of Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall demonstrate the fluidity of Puritan households and a commitment to helping children through informal and temporary forms of adoption. At the same time, however, a need for certainty and control, a fear of outsiders, and a patriarchal emphasis on genealogical continuity made early Americans suspicious of adoptive kinship.Less

The Past is Underground: Archaeology and the Search for Indian History

in History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century

The development of American archaeology across the nineteenth century roughly paralleled that of language study. American archaeology struggled to establish an identity and legitimacy for itself ... More

The development of American archaeology across the nineteenth century roughly paralleled that of language study. American archaeology struggled to establish an identity and legitimacy for itself against the developments of archaeology in the Old World. In addition, the study of Native America through objects buried underground began as a search for Indian history within the chronological frameworks of the Bible. By the century's end, while archaeology in Europe was seen as a part of the historical discipline, in the United States it became part of the largely ahistorical concerns of anthropology. And just as the development of linguistics had a profound impact on how Indian languages were studied, and thus on how their speakers were perceived, so too the path of Indian archaeology from history to anthropology led to certain ways of understanding the native past and away from others.Less

‘A Confusion of Unwashed and Shabbily Dressed People’: Nineteenth-Century Americans and Urban Britain1

Shirley Foster

in American Travel and Empire

Americans who travelled to Britain in the nineteenth century sought to explore and confirm a sense of national identity contingent upon a renewal and re-evaluation of Old World relations. America, no ... More

Americans who travelled to Britain in the nineteenth century sought to explore and confirm a sense of national identity contingent upon a renewal and re-evaluation of Old World relations. America, no longer the colonized, could now engage with the former colonizer as a means of entry into history, a source of cultural enrichment and a link with a visible past that the new continent itself lacked. This chapter shows, however, that the motherland which most Americans came to see and claim was one based on preconception and aesthetic imagining. The American visitor encountered an England incompatible with the idealized homeland of reassuring familiarity – the England of urban slums, dark industrial development, and a debased populace, alien because they had no prototype in canonical art or literature.Less

Cognition in great apes

Richard W. Byrne

in Comparative Neuropsychology

This chapter first establishes a ‘baseline’ of animal cognition, against which to compare the cognition of great apes. The proper group to use for this is the Old World monkeys, diverging from the ... More

This chapter first establishes a ‘baseline’ of animal cognition, against which to compare the cognition of great apes. The proper group to use for this is the Old World monkeys, diverging from the ape line at about 30 Ma. Then, evidence that great apes differ cognitively from monkeys is reviewed. Unfortunately, as yet the picture of cognitive differences between the various great apes is sketchy; the pattern seen in recent years is for an ability, first detected with the much-studied common chimpanzee, to be later found in other, and perhaps all, ape species. Once the genuine differences among the apes are worked out, it will be possible to trace human cognitive evolution in some detail from 14 Ma to 5 Ma, but at present this would be premature speculation.Less

Contours: Approaching Islam, Comparatively Speaking

Aisha Khan

in Islam and the Americas

This chapter examines paired polarities (West/East, Old World/New World) and common themes (modernity, progress, democracy) that both connect and divide Muslim and non-Muslim territories and peoples. ... More

This chapter examines paired polarities (West/East, Old World/New World) and common themes (modernity, progress, democracy) that both connect and divide Muslim and non-Muslim territories and peoples. It considers the implications these oppositions and commonalities have for understanding Islam as a means of agency within structures of power connected with the conquest and development of the Americas. Aisha Khan argues that approaching Islam as a medium that interlocks Old and New Worlds while contributing to the creation of new religious arenas allows comparative analysis to move beyond polarities, revealing the logics and methods by which the Americas and its constituent regions and peoples are constructed. Khan considers such key issues as how we understand the spread of religious traditions across space and time and how we ought to generalize through comparison of commonalities without losing sight of the contrasts posed by particulars.Less

“Noxious Vapors and Corrupt Juices”

in Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America

The degeneracy argument that Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon presented in his book, Natural History: General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), would be picked up and expanded by other European ... More

The degeneracy argument that Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon presented in his book, Natural History: General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), would be picked up and expanded by other European writers, who were often all too happy to buttress claims of Old World superiority. For this vociferous group—whose leading spokesmen were the Prussian clergyman Cornelius de Pauw and the French Abbé Guillaume-Thomas Raynal—Buffon's claims had not been bold enough. If the Count's arguments about climate and degeneracy applied to animals and Native Americans, then de Pauw and Raynal could see no logical reason to exclude Creoles—Europeans born in America—from the crippling effects of life in the New World. Thus, they extended Buffon's degeneration argument from animals and indigenous peoples to the more general case of Europeans and their descendants in the New World.Less

Introduction

Steven E. Sidebotham

in Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route

Berenike, a port on Egypt's Red Sea coast, is the ideal microcosm to study in order to come to grips with ancient “Old World” commerce and its impact on those who participated in it. The Maritime ... More

Berenike, a port on Egypt's Red Sea coast, is the ideal microcosm to study in order to come to grips with ancient “Old World” commerce and its impact on those who participated in it. The Maritime Spice Route was the southern land-cummaritime counterpart of the central Asian Silk Road. Berenike played an important role in the vibrant Old World global economy that bound west with east and south with north, both by sea and by land. There were a number of ports on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea that bore the sobriquet Berenike. The one examined here was named after the queen of Ptolemy I Soter, who established the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the mother of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, founder of this important Red Sea emporium.Less