Martin Mares

This work analyses the public perception of the role of privateers and their transition to pirates and examines both negative and positive outcomes in various areas like diplomacy, international trade, legal, racial and gender issues. The entire topic is examined through various cases of pirates including Bartholomew Roberts, Sir Henry Morgan, Thomas Tew, William Kid, Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet, Edward Teach, Samuel Bellamy, Mary Read, Anne Bony or Henry Avery as well as historical records including letters, trials and pamphlets. Further, this essay discusses an interesting development of piracy from state-funded expeditions into utterly illegal activity driven by various reasons. Particularly the transition between legal, semi-legal and illicit separates England and Great Britain (from 1707 onwards) from other colonial powers such as France, Spain or Dutch. Despite the fact that they all issued privateering licenses and therefore they had to face similar problems connected to privateering, the outburst of piracy in the case of England was so dangerous that England (Great Britain) during the late 17th and early 18th century was called a “nation of pirates”. Hence, this work analyses both legal and practical actions against pirates in British colonies and their effectiveness after 1715. The last part of this essay is dedicated to piracy regarding an alternative way of life for disadvantaged social groups in the 17th and 18th century and contemporary negative or positive portrayal of piracy. The role of liberated “Negroe” and “Mullato” slaves is also examined throu

This paper aims to explore James Hunt's role in the rehabilitation of Dr Robert Knox's diminished reputation by a careful choice of Knox's original theories from his "The Races of Men" (1860) to establish an ideological underpinning for political agenda of Anthropological Society of London (1863-1871). Yet, at the same time, Hunt had become empowered with the reliable tool to oppose Thomas Huxley, and his fellow Darwinists' efforts to homogenise mid-Victorian Anthropology under the banner of Darwinism. That said, Hunt had to pay the steep price for such accomplishment since he had to de-radicalise core elements of Knox's racialist vision. In doing so, Hunt's orchestrated resurrection of a modified version of Knox's writings helped him to smuggle a cunningly significant number of both Knox's original and recontextualised racialist elements into a discipline of Social Darwinism. Hence, the legacy of James Hunt should not be underestimated and dismissed as a marginal contribution to further development of racism in following two decades after his death. Additionally, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how James Hunt managed to disseminate and bring into the foreground the racial theories pioneered by Robert Knox. The central goal of this paper is to analyse the process of Hunt’s intentional manipulation with original ideas developed by Robert Knox to shape them for Hunt's political purposes and consequent popularisation of an expanded corpus of racialist theory. We shall begin with a brief introduction to Robert Knox, who indeed inspired James Hunt to popularise racist views in mid-Victorian society, though Hunt later modified Knoxian racial doctrine rather unfaithfully to the original theory. In this way, this work analyses Hunt’s transition from Knox’s admirer to a populariser of broader racist doctrine including not only Knox's views but elements of racial theories of Paul Broca, George Gliddon, Samuel Morton and Josiah Nott as well. In this context, the final part of the paper follows Hunt's shift from the populariser of virulent racist ideas to a wily political manipulator, who shaped his condensed racist beliefs and methods in accordance with tightening British colonial policy to pass down an ultimate racist underpinning for an emerging wave of a new ideology characterised by an uncompromising imperialism.

Let us start with a bold statement that it is necessary to realise that many ancient scholars provided us with the knowledge that has been far beyond our imagination for hundreds of years. I hold the view that contemporary culture starts to discover that ancient philosophy is not a discipline that belongs to old libraries, but it can be instead sifted through and used to implement specific concept into our post-modern world. In this paper, I will discuss the concept of education presented by three great philosophers and true masters of this wisdom-loving discipline. It would be undoubtedly beneficial to analyse the ideas of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in greater depth to figure out what might be useful for contemporary concepts of education. I will focus on the modern use of certain educational concepts in the second part of this essay, and therefore we should start with explanation and comparative analysis of these concepts as introduced by three great masters of classical philosophy – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

One of the most essential elements helping to hold the society together is the phenomenon of the family as a basis of the functional state according to the Western and Judeo-Christian perception of functional and orderly society. Family stands undoubtedly for one of the main pillars of the contemporary society, though the meaning and significance of the concept of the family have undergone turbulent changes in most recent years. However, the contemporary family seems to be recognised as having the function not only for the society or interests of the community, but it has the function for members of such family per se. At the same time, a family still serves both as a life project and as an institution. In other words, a family is partially a product of spontaneous order, though the family also serves as an existential unit, which is defined and recognised by positive laws. Moreover, the family can also be described as a place, which is essential in its capacity to cultivate, reproduce and pass on important values and virtues. Contemporary values of the western society might be more culturally embedded and differ from country to country, though there are those such as freedom, equality, pluralism, materialism, rationality and individualism shared to some extent. Conversely, virtues are connected to philosophical concepts and seem to be universal and stable.

Since the Velvet revolution in 1989, Czech society has become vulnerable to all sorts of challenges of modern democracy and it has been clearly proved that besides corruption, Czech people struggle equally with racist and xenophobic reactions towards the Roma minority. In summary, the Roma has been forced to change their lifestyle from nomadic and seminomadic into the sedentary way of living during the Communist era in Czechoslovakia, though the rise of the capitalism in the 1990s and subsequent split with Slovakia resulted in even worse social and economic conditions for the Roma minority living in the Czech Republic. Thus a relationship between the Roma and white Czech citizens has been problematic since the 1990s after the fall of communist regime. Having established the brief overview and history of the Roma people's struggle, it is possible to race down roots of real- life obstacles that prevent the Roma to integrate themselves. However, it is complicated to understand the initial motivation to reproduce mostly negative texts and speeches full of stereotypical labels such as non-conformal, noisy, law-abiding, poor and dirty community, which is unable to live among white Czech citizens. Systematic creation of a homogenous and mostly negative image of the Roma is the primary tool to maintain cognitive control of Czech population. Following sections analyse critical discourse focused on the Roma topic from various angles including micro-analyses based on an evaluation of questionnaires and macro- analysis of the broader context in fields of socio-cultural space, access, power, media and politics.