{"title":"Reason and Experience in Renaissance Italy by Christine Shaw","authors":"John M. Najemy","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01883","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"531-532"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43201383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Historians generally portray the Irish immigrants who came to the United States, fleeing the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, as hopelessly mired in poverty and hardship due to discrimination, a lack of occupational training, and oversaturated job markets in the East Coast cities where most of them settled. Although the digitization of census data and other records now enables the tracking of nineteenth-century Americans far more accurately than in the past, scholars have not utilized such data to determine whether the Famine Irish were, in fact, trapped on the bottom rungs of the American socioeconomic ladder. The use of a longitudinal database of Famine immigrants who initially settled in New York and Brooklyn indicates that the Famine Irish had far more occupational mobility than previously recognized. Only 25 percent of men ended their working careers in low-wage, unskilled labor; 44 percent ended up in white-collar occupations of one kind or another—primarily running saloons, groceries, and other small businesses.
{"title":"“The Best Country in the World”: The Surprising Social Mobility of New York’s Irish-Famine Immigrants","authors":"T. Anbinder, C. Ó Gráda, S. Wegge","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_01869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01869","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Historians generally portray the Irish immigrants who came to the United States, fleeing the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, as hopelessly mired in poverty and hardship due to discrimination, a lack of occupational training, and oversaturated job markets in the East Coast cities where most of them settled. Although the digitization of census data and other records now enables the tracking of nineteenth-century Americans far more accurately than in the past, scholars have not utilized such data to determine whether the Famine Irish were, in fact, trapped on the bottom rungs of the American socioeconomic ladder. The use of a longitudinal database of Famine immigrants who initially settled in New York and Brooklyn indicates that the Famine Irish had far more occupational mobility than previously recognized. Only 25 percent of men ended their working careers in low-wage, unskilled labor; 44 percent ended up in white-collar occupations of one kind or another—primarily running saloons, groceries, and other small businesses.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"407-438"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46111481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Climatological data suggest that the key driver of drought in Highland Ethiopia, and in the wider Indian Ocean World, during the early 1780s was an El Niño Southern Oscillation anomaly. Ethiopia during this period—an early decade in the zemene mesafint (1769–1855)—endured considerable political instability. The lack of documentary evidence and an over-reliance on the Ethiopian Royal Chronicles has led historians to view reports of “famine” during the early zemene mesafint as indicative of severe environmental stress. A more critical reading of the Chronicles, by contrast, suggests that integrating its reports of warfare with the climatological record presents a more accurate chronology of drought severity and possible occurrences of famine.
{"title":"Droughts, Famines, and Chronicles: The 1780s Global Climatic Anomalies in Highland Ethiopia","authors":"Philip Gooding","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_01868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01868","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Climatological data suggest that the key driver of drought in Highland Ethiopia, and in the wider Indian Ocean World, during the early 1780s was an El Niño Southern Oscillation anomaly. Ethiopia during this period—an early decade in the zemene mesafint (1769–1855)—endured considerable political instability. The lack of documentary evidence and an over-reliance on the Ethiopian Royal Chronicles has led historians to view reports of “famine” during the early zemene mesafint as indicative of severe environmental stress. A more critical reading of the Chronicles, by contrast, suggests that integrating its reports of warfare with the climatological record presents a more accurate chronology of drought severity and possible occurrences of famine.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"387-405"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44296154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
consumer culture. Kwass might have elaborated more about the interrelationships to which he alludes between consumption, enlightenment, revolution, and the shaping of desires. Consumer behavior as a historical agent is not an easy topic for academic analysis, perhaps because it seems so obvious to us.We are all consumers, and we all have doubts and anxieties about our consumption choices. Indeed, consumption is the locus of everyday politics for most people today. Kwass is correct to claim that a historical analysis of how modern consumer society emerged is essential to understanding the options that now stand before us. Unfortunately, two distinct strands of analysis are essayed in this volume without being brought to satisfactory conclusions.
{"title":"Victims of Fashion: Animal Commodities in Victorian Britain by Helen Louise Cowie","authors":"Sandy M. Burnley","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01879","url":null,"abstract":"consumer culture. Kwass might have elaborated more about the interrelationships to which he alludes between consumption, enlightenment, revolution, and the shaping of desires. Consumer behavior as a historical agent is not an easy topic for academic analysis, perhaps because it seems so obvious to us.We are all consumers, and we all have doubts and anxieties about our consumption choices. Indeed, consumption is the locus of everyday politics for most people today. Kwass is correct to claim that a historical analysis of how modern consumer society emerged is essential to understanding the options that now stand before us. Unfortunately, two distinct strands of analysis are essayed in this volume without being brought to satisfactory conclusions.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"526-527"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46650655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This book does not start out well. Saller writes, “Most recent efforts do not hold up to close scrutiny and so do not demonstrate sustained growth up to the Antonine Plague” (9). Saller cites Harper in this regard, but he fails to note Harper’s 2016 article that showed real wages increasing in Roman Egypt during those years. Although wages are not strictly a proxy for the national product, rising wages are a good index of national income in an agricultural economy in which a plague did not reduce the quantity of labor. The rest of Chapter 1, which summarizes other publications about growth, seems pointless given its omission of an important source of ancient Roman economic data. Saller arrives at his main topic in Chapter 2, describing Pliny’s life and work habits, as well as a detailed description of Pliny’s Natural History and its probable readers. The chapters that follow discuss various topics in Pliny’s book. Pliny had a Stoic view of nature; he decried the damaging exploitation of the natural world. He condemned iron mining on the grounds that it could contribute to killing people. He also presented a list of power and agricultural innovations, about which Saller gives his opinions. When Saller turns to Pliny’s economics, he prefaces his analysis with the caveat, “The point is not to blame him for a lack of rationality but to show his thought was framed by different values and a bounded rationality.” Pliny’s discussion focuses on agriculture and trade. He cites my book about The Roman Market Economy, but he fails to discuss the rate of interest. Pliny the Younger—the ward and nephew of the Pliny the Elder, the subject of this book—explained to Emperor Trajan, well after his uncle’s time, that “no one wanted to borrow at 9 percent” (174). The Greeks, however, had already advanced sophisticated ideas about interest
{"title":"Pliny’s Roman Economy: Natural History, Innovation, and Growth by Richard P. Saller","authors":"P. Temin","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01875","url":null,"abstract":"This book does not start out well. Saller writes, “Most recent efforts do not hold up to close scrutiny and so do not demonstrate sustained growth up to the Antonine Plague” (9). Saller cites Harper in this regard, but he fails to note Harper’s 2016 article that showed real wages increasing in Roman Egypt during those years. Although wages are not strictly a proxy for the national product, rising wages are a good index of national income in an agricultural economy in which a plague did not reduce the quantity of labor. The rest of Chapter 1, which summarizes other publications about growth, seems pointless given its omission of an important source of ancient Roman economic data. Saller arrives at his main topic in Chapter 2, describing Pliny’s life and work habits, as well as a detailed description of Pliny’s Natural History and its probable readers. The chapters that follow discuss various topics in Pliny’s book. Pliny had a Stoic view of nature; he decried the damaging exploitation of the natural world. He condemned iron mining on the grounds that it could contribute to killing people. He also presented a list of power and agricultural innovations, about which Saller gives his opinions. When Saller turns to Pliny’s economics, he prefaces his analysis with the caveat, “The point is not to blame him for a lack of rationality but to show his thought was framed by different values and a bounded rationality.” Pliny’s discussion focuses on agriculture and trade. He cites my book about The Roman Market Economy, but he fails to discuss the rate of interest. Pliny the Younger—the ward and nephew of the Pliny the Elder, the subject of this book—explained to Emperor Trajan, well after his uncle’s time, that “no one wanted to borrow at 9 percent” (174). The Greeks, however, had already advanced sophisticated ideas about interest","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"520-521"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45653946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
principles and the sharp divisions between factions, classes, and interest groups about fact to achieve unity, curtail factions, and define ranks; about who constituted the “all” who should share in offices; about which council or which definition of the people was the “supreme prince”; and about how taxes were to be assessed and what was to be taxed. The principles no doubt rested on what Shaw calls the “core values”—justice, equality, and equity—of republican governance (4), but this fact did not prevent divergent interpretations by different social constituencies. Shaw’s subtle and discerning treatment thus merges close scrutiny of the shared idiom of republicanism with the effects on it of competing, even antagonistic, sociopolitical interests. Shaw also casts new light on Italy’s principalities. Because, she says, the “legitimacy of princely rule” was “equivocal” and not self-generated, it almost always depended either on approval by subjects (however expressed ormanufactured) or on investiture by popes or emperors. Inheritance as a buttress of legitimacy was “complicated by limited acceptance of primogeniture”—noble families often seeing themselves as “equals, rivals, even superiors” to a prince’s family—and by subject cities with their own “histories of self-government” that required princes “to come to terms” with local communities (176–177). Princely regimes lacked a “concept of the crown” as distinct “from the person of the prince,” whereas in republics the “palace” metonymically distinguished the state from the party in power (216). Principalities borrowed republican principles of legitimacy, especially approval by subjects, to bolster their ambiguous status. Shaw further demonstrates the persistence into the sixteenth century of republican values in resistance to princely rule and, after Charles Habsburg became emperor, to imperial pretensions to supreme power over all states within the old boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. Republics frequently rejected imperial attempts to station garrisons, build fortresses, and demand complete obedience and onerous subventions (276–290). Even after the loss of independence, therefore, deeply rooted republican principles protected long-standing liberties. This original and penetrating study illuminates promising new paths for the history of political ideas.
{"title":"The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food by Darra Goldstein","authors":"S. Wegren","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01884","url":null,"abstract":"principles and the sharp divisions between factions, classes, and interest groups about fact to achieve unity, curtail factions, and define ranks; about who constituted the “all” who should share in offices; about which council or which definition of the people was the “supreme prince”; and about how taxes were to be assessed and what was to be taxed. The principles no doubt rested on what Shaw calls the “core values”—justice, equality, and equity—of republican governance (4), but this fact did not prevent divergent interpretations by different social constituencies. Shaw’s subtle and discerning treatment thus merges close scrutiny of the shared idiom of republicanism with the effects on it of competing, even antagonistic, sociopolitical interests. Shaw also casts new light on Italy’s principalities. Because, she says, the “legitimacy of princely rule” was “equivocal” and not self-generated, it almost always depended either on approval by subjects (however expressed ormanufactured) or on investiture by popes or emperors. Inheritance as a buttress of legitimacy was “complicated by limited acceptance of primogeniture”—noble families often seeing themselves as “equals, rivals, even superiors” to a prince’s family—and by subject cities with their own “histories of self-government” that required princes “to come to terms” with local communities (176–177). Princely regimes lacked a “concept of the crown” as distinct “from the person of the prince,” whereas in republics the “palace” metonymically distinguished the state from the party in power (216). Principalities borrowed republican principles of legitimacy, especially approval by subjects, to bolster their ambiguous status. Shaw further demonstrates the persistence into the sixteenth century of republican values in resistance to princely rule and, after Charles Habsburg became emperor, to imperial pretensions to supreme power over all states within the old boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. Republics frequently rejected imperial attempts to station garrisons, build fortresses, and demand complete obedience and onerous subventions (276–290). Even after the loss of independence, therefore, deeply rooted republican principles protected long-standing liberties. This original and penetrating study illuminates promising new paths for the history of political ideas.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"532-534"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49542618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Land of Milk and Money: The Creation of the Southern Dairy Industry by Alan I. Marcus","authors":"Kendra Smith-Howard","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01892","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"547-549"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43017799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXXXVIII, No. 4, November 2022 Unfortunately, Civil War historians interested in education will find the volume wanting. Although the essays provide rich stories, they do not engage with recent literature on education during the Civil War era. The authors cite some recent literature produced by historians, but these sources are often cited alongside secondary works from decades ago. Their bibliographies mix secondary works with primary sources, and the parenthetical citations remind readers that these essays were written by scholars who are primarily interested in the mechanics of how institutions functioned. Engaging with historical debates, however, is not the stated purpose of this volume. Instead, the editors explain that the collection responds to calls “from fellow educational historians for a microhistorical, case-by-case examination of internal and external events related to academic persistence in the Civil War South” (p. 18). In answering this call, they have succeeded. Furthermore, they have both provided rich detail about contemporary life and illuminated sources for future research. The essays themselves are somewhat uneven. Although some remain focused on campus and local events, others veer onto the battlefield, describing the experiences of students who became soldiers. The essays might have benefited from referencing each other, pointing out similar challenges and approaches and thereby providing a more unified portrait of the shared issues that plagued administrators and faculty in wartime. Additionally, addressing the role of colleges and universities in shaping the intellectual worlds of the South’s future leaders would have further strengthened these works. For example, in the essay about Spring Hill College, coauthors R. Eric Platt and Donavan L. Johnson note that literary societies on campus produced speeches and publications relating to “the merits of secession and the Confederacy in general” (p. 93). Quoting from even a few of these essays would have provided another layer of detail interesting to scholars. By the end of the volume, the reader certainly appreciates the persistence of these southern educators but may be left to wonder about how many choices these institutions really had. Even if they did not agree with secession, what choice did they have but to invest in Confederate bonds and turn over deserters to the army? What choice did they have but to turn their campuses into makeshift hospitals and provide wounded veterans with free tuition, despite having to face dire financial consequences? These institutions persisted during this trying time but were also pragmatic about their choices. After all, whether the Confederacy won or lost, only those schools that survived could teach the next generation about what happened when Americans fought each other.
{"title":"The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered edited by Charles W. Mitchell and Jean H. Baker","authors":"Christopher Phillips","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01889","url":null,"abstract":"The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXXXVIII, No. 4, November 2022 Unfortunately, Civil War historians interested in education will find the volume wanting. Although the essays provide rich stories, they do not engage with recent literature on education during the Civil War era. The authors cite some recent literature produced by historians, but these sources are often cited alongside secondary works from decades ago. Their bibliographies mix secondary works with primary sources, and the parenthetical citations remind readers that these essays were written by scholars who are primarily interested in the mechanics of how institutions functioned. Engaging with historical debates, however, is not the stated purpose of this volume. Instead, the editors explain that the collection responds to calls “from fellow educational historians for a microhistorical, case-by-case examination of internal and external events related to academic persistence in the Civil War South” (p. 18). In answering this call, they have succeeded. Furthermore, they have both provided rich detail about contemporary life and illuminated sources for future research. The essays themselves are somewhat uneven. Although some remain focused on campus and local events, others veer onto the battlefield, describing the experiences of students who became soldiers. The essays might have benefited from referencing each other, pointing out similar challenges and approaches and thereby providing a more unified portrait of the shared issues that plagued administrators and faculty in wartime. Additionally, addressing the role of colleges and universities in shaping the intellectual worlds of the South’s future leaders would have further strengthened these works. For example, in the essay about Spring Hill College, coauthors R. Eric Platt and Donavan L. Johnson note that literary societies on campus produced speeches and publications relating to “the merits of secession and the Confederacy in general” (p. 93). Quoting from even a few of these essays would have provided another layer of detail interesting to scholars. By the end of the volume, the reader certainly appreciates the persistence of these southern educators but may be left to wonder about how many choices these institutions really had. Even if they did not agree with secession, what choice did they have but to invest in Confederate bonds and turn over deserters to the army? What choice did they have but to turn their campuses into makeshift hospitals and provide wounded veterans with free tuition, despite having to face dire financial consequences? These institutions persisted during this trying time but were also pragmatic about their choices. After all, whether the Confederacy won or lost, only those schools that survived could teach the next generation about what happened when Americans fought each other.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"540-542"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44201984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
them in his discussion of Roman economics since the use of interest was common in Rome as well. Saller closes his book with a dubious recommendation of Pliny’s Natural History as a good source of information for ancient historians. Yet, only potential readers with a particular interest in Pliny the Elder or in contemporary Roman agriculture and trade will find Pliny’s book to have much relevance for them.
{"title":"A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World by John Jeffries Martin","authors":"B. Whalen","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01938","url":null,"abstract":"them in his discussion of Roman economics since the use of interest was common in Rome as well. Saller closes his book with a dubious recommendation of Pliny’s Natural History as a good source of information for ancient historians. Yet, only potential readers with a particular interest in Pliny the Elder or in contemporary Roman agriculture and trade will find Pliny’s book to have much relevance for them.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"521-523"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49267380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We have become accustomed to the idea that we live in the “information age,” the result of an “information revolution.” Nonetheless, some have argued that every society and age has been centered around information. Dover questions both these standpoints by placing the “information revolution” in Early Modern Europe. Drawing from his admirable research about diplomacy in the Early Modern Era, he examines Europe, not simply for the purpose of comparison but rather to explore the developing interdependence of European countries. Aided by an impressive array of primary sources, Dover traces the development of Europe as a social, political, and fundamentally informational network. The book also uses numerous secondary sources in multiple languages to reveal another network, historical scholarship, which has, in recent years, like his subject, developed around information. Patterning history and combining scholarship, the book makes “information” a critical tool for understanding the Early Modern Era. Rather than fighting against accounts of the present as the information era, Dover suggests that the current age began in the Early Modern Period. He concludes that today’s transitions, particularly the decline of paper and print and the rise of orality, may be marking the end of that long “age” and the return to something analogous to the pre-paper medieval world. Hence, Dover suggests, understanding the past will help us to understand the present better, in the process reminding us of the often-overlooked etymology of revolution. In mapping these revolutions, Dover avoids simple notions of determinism. He consults Eisenstein’s Printing Press as an Agent of Change but acknowledges criticism of the determinism that she acquired from Marshall McLuhan. Although Dover portrays technology as a central factor, he insists that technology not only shaped but was also shaped by its social context, thereby revealing the recursive aspects of our need for information. Tools that people developed to mine, order, and store information also expanded, often dramatically, the informational
{"title":"The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe by Paul M. Dover","authors":"P. Duguid","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01877","url":null,"abstract":"We have become accustomed to the idea that we live in the “information age,” the result of an “information revolution.” Nonetheless, some have argued that every society and age has been centered around information. Dover questions both these standpoints by placing the “information revolution” in Early Modern Europe. Drawing from his admirable research about diplomacy in the Early Modern Era, he examines Europe, not simply for the purpose of comparison but rather to explore the developing interdependence of European countries. Aided by an impressive array of primary sources, Dover traces the development of Europe as a social, political, and fundamentally informational network. The book also uses numerous secondary sources in multiple languages to reveal another network, historical scholarship, which has, in recent years, like his subject, developed around information. Patterning history and combining scholarship, the book makes “information” a critical tool for understanding the Early Modern Era. Rather than fighting against accounts of the present as the information era, Dover suggests that the current age began in the Early Modern Period. He concludes that today’s transitions, particularly the decline of paper and print and the rise of orality, may be marking the end of that long “age” and the return to something analogous to the pre-paper medieval world. Hence, Dover suggests, understanding the past will help us to understand the present better, in the process reminding us of the often-overlooked etymology of revolution. In mapping these revolutions, Dover avoids simple notions of determinism. He consults Eisenstein’s Printing Press as an Agent of Change but acknowledges criticism of the determinism that she acquired from Marshall McLuhan. Although Dover portrays technology as a central factor, he insists that technology not only shaped but was also shaped by its social context, thereby revealing the recursive aspects of our need for information. Tools that people developed to mine, order, and store information also expanded, often dramatically, the informational","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"523-524"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42433544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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