{"title":"Reporting for a King: Valois France and Europe through the eyes of ambassador Dantas (1557-1568)","authors":"Nuno Vila-Santa","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2023.010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2023.010","url":null,"abstract":"During his embassy to France between 1557 and 1568, João Pereira Dantas produced valuable reports on French events that have remained almost unnoticed. The purpose of this article is to present the major themes of Dantas’s epistolary and to invite experts on the history of France and Europe to make greater use of their contents. Additionally, this paper demonstrates the key role played by Dantas at the Valois court, by documenting his relations with Queen Catherine de Medici and King Charles IX. The study of Dantas’s epistolary, also reveals his use of France as a centre for Portuguese networks of European information. Finally, through a careful study of Dantas’s actions and a comparison to his predecessors in the French embassy, the importance of the French connection for Portugal - and, crucially, vice-versa - is made in an under-studied period of French-Portuguese relations deeply influenced by the French civil wars.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123386537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Álvaro da Costa’s journey to Persia and Turkey (1611), the ruins of Babylon, and the riddles of globalization","authors":"Saúl Martínez Bermejo","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2023.011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2023.011","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes Álvaro da Costa’s return trip from the Estado da Índia to Lisbon in 1611. The constraints of Costa’s travel allow us to discuss some common assumptions about the character and spirit of early modern travelers and to illustrate some of the limits of travelers’ observations and the peculiar modes of knowledge they displayed. Reading through the many misunderstandings and apparent mistakes that Costa introduced in his Tratado da viagem, the article also explores the complex dynamics of “discovery” and argues that early modern globalization must be understood as a manyfold process. Individuals not only disposed of different information, but they also used very diverse frameworks to interpret and make sense of such information. The article contrasts Costa’s use of older but resilient interpretative frameworks with more modern and more accurate interpretations and shows that very different perceptions about world connections coexisted during the early modern age. In particular, the article focuses on how Costa actively combined his observations of the ruins of Babylon and other cities he found on his route with previous paradigms of universal history, such as biblical theories on the historical succession of empires.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"201 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134433118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anthropology and image in colonial contexts: the scientific expedition to Spanish territories in the Gulf of Guinea (1948)","authors":"Luis Calvo Calvo","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2023.002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2023.002","url":null,"abstract":"Spanish Guinea, as the largest Spanish colonial territory in sub-Saharan Africa, was the object of scientific attention by several official Spanish institutions such as the Institute of African Studies (IDEA) and the Ethnological and Colonial Museum of Barcelona (MECB). Both were interested in describing and documenting the colony’s ways of life and sponsored the 1948 Expedition to Spanish Guinea that inaugurated other MECB study trips during the 1950s. Images, in various formats (drawing, photography, etc.), played a significant role in these investigations, becoming a major instrument to describe the colony’s past and present. In this way, it not only contributed to consolidating the Spanish colonial vision and actions but also helped to confirm, scientifically, the subordination of the indigenous populations to the metropolitan colonial power. This article presents the details of the 1948 Expedition as well as the visual record generated. Finally, some reflections are made on the role of images in this context.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133283370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Africanist anthropology during Francoism: the Bernardino de Sahagún Institute, 1939-1951","authors":"Cristina Chicharro Manzanares","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2023.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2023.005","url":null,"abstract":"With the creation of the “Bernardino de Sahagún” Institute, anthropology was put at the service of the national-Catholic values that the Francoist regime imposed on all levels of public life in the immediate aftermath of the war. Anthropological research focused on two main issues: scientific-medical issues - anthropobiology - and cultural issues - ethnology. The colonial discourse and the renewed interest in Africanist studies resulted in funding being made available for researchers to visit the African colonies under Spanish jurisdiction to carry out anthropobiological and ethnological studies.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116298524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Royal Entries in Conquered Towns. Mosques, Cathedrals and the Power of Buildings (Castile-Leon, 11th-13th Centuries)","authors":"Ana Rodríguez","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2022.016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2022.016","url":null,"abstract":"Written sources of the kingdoms of Castile-Leon describing processions and royal entries in the 11th-13th Centuries are not commonly found. The absence of such ceremonies makes it difficult to recognize the topography of power through remarkable buildings as well as the hierarchies among their ecclesiastical and secular participants. This absence prevented the kings of Castile and Leon from being seen publicly and visiting some iconic processional spots which provided the right atmosphere for the most solemn rituals in a medieval monarch’s life. King Alfonso VI’s entry into Toledo in 1085 set a new precedent put into practice by his successors during the Christian conquests of al-Andalus cities, which took place until the mid-13th Century. The transformation of the congregational mosques in the conquered cities provided a unique opportunity for victorious monarchs to display their power through the appropriation of urban spaces. The king’s central role in the ecclesiastical rituals of purification and the subsequent control over the fate of the most representative buildings allow these processions to be considered as spatial and ritual phenomena.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"120 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116578114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public Celebrations, the Other, and Emotional Responses. New approaches to the Iberian Royal entries in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period","authors":"Borja Franco Llopis, Francesc Orts-Ruiz","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2022.018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2022.018","url":null,"abstract":"Traditionally, when dealing with the study of urban celebrations in the Middle and Early Modern periods, historiography has accepted the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk to point out the magnificence and diversity of artistic expressions that were part of these ephemeral events. Without totally opposing this idea, reinforced by methodological currents such as the history of emotions, this paper aims to reflect on the concept of urban celebrations. We will provide new perspectives in the study of these performances, especially their short-lived nature, which prevented the people from having access to all the acts and messages that involved these events. To this end, we propose a new approach to documentary and literary sources, from the point of view of the analysis of the Muslim other. We study its visual representation as well as its role as a spectator and active participant, especially as a dancer or musician. This allows us to present a new methodological framework using Valencia as a case study.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132973122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The image of Spain as a tourist destination through audiovisual productions. The case of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (Zoya Akthar, 2011)","authors":"María Ramón Gabriel","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2022.026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2022.026","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies the tourist image of Spain projected by the Bollywood film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, directed by Zoya Akhtar. Released in 2011, the film is a paradigmatic example of tourism promotion of the Spanish territory by foreign audiovisual media, that identifies the country as a destination with a wide tourist offer characterized by important cultural, landscape, artistic, and gastronomic attractions. The text is divided into two sections. In the first, the tourist implications of audiovisual productions are analysed in general terms and, more specifically, the economic impact and marketing activities, as well as the shaping of geographical imaginaries, derived from film screenings. Later, this conceptual framework is applied to the specific case of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, explaining the possible correlation between its premiere and the increase in Indian visitors to Spain within the framework of the I need Spain campaign (2010-2016). Next, the film is studied as a road movie that promotes experiential tourism and generates specific geo-touristic imaginaries through landscape beauty, neo-romantic exoticism, and gender stereotypes.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131275553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Territorial Fantasies, Sexual Nuances, and Savage Energy: Orientalism and Tropicality in Eugène Delacroix and Johann Moritz Rugendas","authors":"Miguel Gaete","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2022.022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2022.022","url":null,"abstract":"In 1822, the German Romantic painter Johann Moritz Rugendas undertook his famed three-year journey across Brazil. Later, between 1831 and 1846, encouraged by Alexander von Humboldt and other Romantic artists, he would make a second trip through Mexico and South America. In 1832, Eugène Delacroix started a six-month journey to Spain and North Africa as a part of a diplomatic mission. Both artists profusely translated their travels into words and rich images of tropical America and the Orient. Their paintings and illustrations of remote lands and people became milestones in their respective careers while being prime examples of how Europe viewed and perceived the rest of the world in the nineteenth century. In hindsight, they were not only mere agents and promoters of two crucial aesthetic trends of that time: Orientalism and Tropicality but the embodiment of two ways of seeing and imagining the Others. This article places these two artists against each other, contrasting the set of ideas and cultural preconceptions resting behind a sizeable number of paintings, drawings, and illustrations of their Eastern and South American experiences. The central argument is that Tropicality and Orientalism were comparable phenomena based on similar tropes and assumptions. It brings forward recurring themes of Rugendas and Delacroix’s works, such as the eroticisation of female bodies and the linkage between South America and the East with everlasting ideas of violence, adventures, and savageness to prove such an equivalence.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124284987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When the town becomes a stage: royal entries and municipal power in medieval Montpellier (14th-15th Centuries)","authors":"Vincent Challet","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2022.017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2022.017","url":null,"abstract":"The urban chronicle of Montpellier known under the nickname of the “Petit Thalamus” (1204-1423) is the oldest one written in a vernacular language all over Western Europe; it contains the narrations of many princely, royal and even pontifical and imperial entries in the town. It allows us to question the emergence and the evolution of a ritual, not so much from the point of view of the monarchy but of the urban authorities. More than the ritual itself, the study of these narrations, compared when possible to other urban sources, reveals the process of memory selection by the consulate of Montpellier, magnifying some of the entries-especially the pontifical one made by Urbain V in 1367-and leaving some others into oblivion. It also highlights the flexibility of a civic ceremony-which can, sometimes, be turned into a mere performance deprived of political meaning-used by the magistrates to reinforce their own power on urban spaces and to inscribe their domination into the streets, the minds of the inhabitants and the memory of the community.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127207236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dancing in the Streets of Byzantine Constantinople","authors":"L. Brubaker","doi":"10.3989/chdj.2022.014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2022.014","url":null,"abstract":"This article evaluates the significance of processions in Byzantine Constantinople and the role of dancing within them. Evidence is drawn from literary sources concerning imperial, church-sponsored, guild, hippodrome and more spontaneous urban processions, as well as from material culture. Medieval Constantinople saw a large number of processions, perhaps two a week, and they traversed all areas of the city. They were noisy affairs, accompanied by chanting, acclamations and, often, musical noise, so that even when they were not directly visible, they were audible more or less everywhere in the city. Dancing was incorporated in all but liturgical processions (though it may also have been part of these, on occasion). Processions could create a sense of urban unity, or become expressions of conflict: audience participation was normal and sometimes violent. Hence one key-though unofficial-the role played by processions in the Byzantine capital was to give voice to the urban population.","PeriodicalId":359579,"journal":{"name":"Culture & History Digital Journal","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124026877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}