Received from Dr. Lorenzo Bondioli (Cambridge), Dr. Michele Campopiano (York), Dr. Paolo Tedesco (Tübingen) Before Capitalist Hegemony Workshop: 9th-10th December 2022, SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Overview This workshop seeks to re-launch the concept of Mode of Production as a heuristic tool assisting us in addressing a central epistemological problem of the historical discipline: how are we to approach past societies in their immensely varied historical specificity, and how are we to address the relations they entertained with each other? The debate on Modes of Production contributed to redefining the methodology of social and economic history since the late nineteenth century, and in spite of its biases and shortcomings, was key to the framing of pioneering global-historical and comparative approaches, from Samir Amin’s unequal development, to Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system analysis, Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People without History, and John Haldon’s The State and the Tributary Mode of Production. The welcome flourishing of global narratives de-centring Europe and disputing many tenets of an old Eurocentric narrative of globalisation, makes the old challenge even more daunting. Historians are thus called to draw meaningful connections between profoundly different societies; at the same time, the cultural turn has […]

by Dr. Cathleen Sarti (Balliol College, Oxford) Workshop Three: Affinities and Administration This workshop on Affinities & Administration of Royal Women in Premodern Europe closed a workshop series conducted virtually during the pandemic. Going online enabled us to keep the conversation on resources and revenues of royal women, started in a core team around 2018, going, and – even more important – to include much more and much more widely spread scholars than usual. In this third workshop, scholars from England, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Australia were able to share their research. The audience also joined from their homes all over Europe, Australia, or North America. In the first two workshops on lands and resources the importance of administration and networks for royal women – be they empresses, queens, electresses, duchesses, or princesses – were discussed. This third workshop now put the spotlight on “queen adjacent”-actors, as Nicola Clark (Chichester, UK), one of the presenters, called them. Monarchical rule, despite the name, was a joint effort, and royal women were often particularly good in making use of formal and informal connections. Royal female households, consisting of administrative personnel, ladies-in-waiting, household staff, and family members. Discussing cases from various European realms […]

by Dr. Charlotte Backerra (Göttingen) Workshop Two: Resources The workshop on ‘Resources’ was the second of three virtual workshops of the international project Examining the Resources and Revenues of Royal Women in Premodern Europe. In this project, we are focused on the economic means and agency of royal women, such as empresses, queens, and other sovereign rulers or consorts, from different medieval and early modern countries such as Bohemia, England, France, Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Portugal, or Spain. The workshops, held in 2021 and early 2022, connected researchers from all over the world who presented sources and case studies relevant to the specific topics of each workshop. For the second workshop from 8-9 September 2021, the general themes were dower, dowry, and accounts. Generally, the resources of a premodern woman and especially consort were based on marriage contracts and inheritance certificates. In most marriage contracts, dower, dowry, widerlage, morgive, and pin money were specified. Sources on financial inheritance are testaments and inventories, which allow us to trace inheritances given to a woman, for example by her mother, father, brothers and sisters, or members of the wider family. Resources consisted of lands, monetary income, and material possessions. In terms of lands, the […]

by Dr. Katia Wright (AGC Museum, Winchester) Workshop One: Lands On 19 and 20 May 2021, scholars gathered together online from across the globe to attend a workshop regarding the question of royal women’s lands. This was the first of a series of workshops organised by the Examining the Resources and Revenues of Royal Women in Premodern Europe project, which analyses the economic revenues and agency of royal women across Europe. These workshops, which culminated in a conference in September 2022, marked phase one of the project, and were designed to highlight key areas of ongoing research and to raise questions regarding royal women’s finances and resources. This initial workshop focused on lands and landownership as nearly all royal women from queens to duchesses, empresses to princesses, had access to some form of landed income across their lifetimes. The papers presented at the workshop covered a wide range of areas and time periods across premodern Europe and highlighted key issues to be addressed in the following workshops and important questions for the project to answer. ‘Lands’ covers a vast subject surrounding queenly resources, which overlaps with the majority of royal women’s finances across premodern Europe. All women received income from […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Prof. Alice Rio (King’s College, London) has moved from the position of Publications Editor to become co-editor of the journal with Prof. Matthew Hilton (Queen Mary College, London). Our thanks to Prof. Alex Walsham (Emmanuel College, Cambridge) for her service to the Society as co-editor. Prof. Walsham will be continuing her service to the journal as a member of the editoral board.

Received from Dr. Camile Cole (Jesus College, Cambridge) and Dr. Peter Hill (Northumbria) Key Details Ottoman Political Economies, All day event, 14 Oct 2022 – 15 Oct 2022, Castlereagh room, St John’s College / SG1 Alison Richard Building, hosted by CRASSH Programme Summary The Ottoman empire ruled a vast expanse of territory over six centuries. It was closely integrated into global trade networks and encompassed multiple forms of production, lifeways, and interactions between humans and non-human nature. The Ottoman state and its diverse subjects were constantly engaged in negotiating the allocation of resources, labour, and power. They developed sophisticated modes of producing wealth, collecting and withholding revenue and profits, labouring and directing labour, and defining property and the economic through law and custom. The past few decades have seen growing interest in global history, the history of capitalism, and the political economy of the post-Ottoman Middle East. Yet the question of the Ottoman world’s relationship to concepts of ‘economy’ or ‘capitalism’ has been little studied and seldom theorised since the cultural turn among historians. What role did Ottoman spaces, actors, and resources play in the construction of global capitalism? Where and when did this occur within the empire’s wide geography […]

by Joshua Newmark and Sophie Turbutt (University of Leeds) This symposium, kindly sponsored by both the Past & Present Society and the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (Arts & Humanities Research Council), began as a relatively straightforward suggestion from our PhD supervisor, Professor Richard Cleminson, to put together a few papers or workshops around the topic of anarchism in Spain. This topic is something of a minor specialisation within the University of Leeds, where members of both the School of History and the School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies have maintained a small ‘Iberian Anarchism Research Group’ within the Centre for the History of Ibero-America. We decided not only to go for a more ambitious full-day conference, but also to truly engage with the ‘Iberian’ aspect and involve people working on Portugal, despite both of us focusing on Spain in our own research. Professor Pamela Beth Radcliff (University of California San Diego) very kindly agreed to be our keynote speaker, meaning we had the participation of one of the world’s foremost historians of modern Spain for what had been envisaged as a small gathering of postgraduate students. We also wanted a hybrid event, so as to combine […]

by the Past & Present editorial team

by Dr Victoria Leonard, (Coventry University and Institute of Classical Studies, London) The conference, ‘Orosius Through the Ages’, was a long time coming. Although the vision for a unique event to bring together scholars on Paulus Orosius and his Historiae adversus paganos developed in 2015, months of planning saw the event sadly postponed because of the pandemic. After an extended absence of in-person events, it was wonderful to meet again with colleagues physically at Senate House in London, albeit following measures to try to keep us all safe. We were so pleased to make the event more inclusive and diverse by hosting the conference online for speakers and delegates not in the room, enabling knowledge exchange about Orosius and the reception of his Historiae between participants in countries far beyond the UK. The conference featured 22 speakers over three days, including keynote presentations from Elizabeth M. Tyler, Professor of Medieval History at the University of York, and Peter Van Nuffelen, Professor for the Cultural History of the Ancient World at Ghent University. Prof. Van Nuffelen spoke on ‘Orosius the Historian: Historiographical Traditions and Treading the Line’. Prof. Tyler spoke on ‘Orosius, Universal History and the Making of Imperial England: From […]

by Dr. Genji Yasuhira (University of Utrecht/Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) In my article ‘Transforming the Urban Space: Catholic Survival Through Spatial Practices in Post-Reformation Utrecht’, which recently appeared in Past & Present No. 255, I discuss how Utrecht’s Catholics sought spaces to live as Catholics under Protestant rule. Following an equally unexpected and exciting encounter with early modern Dutch history, I decided on Utrecht’s Catholics as a case study for my dissertation, moving from Kyoto to Utrecht in 2015. From the time I first set foot in the city, I was impressed by the historical materials still existing there, from written documents and artworks to buildings and streets. In adopting the narrative style of a ‘tour guide’ for my article, I sought to reflect on my experiences walking through Utrecht’s narrow streets while imagining what seventeenth-century life would have been like. Here I would like to take my readers on another virtual urban tour to discover the traces of early modern Catholic survival in Utrecht’s urban space today. As luck would have it, my article has been published in an important memorial year for the city. On June 2, 2022, Utrecht began celebrations for its 900-year anniversary. […]