Decline

This dissertation argues that martial virtues and images of the soldier’s life represented an essential aspect of early Byzantine masculine ideology. It contends that in many of the visual and literary sources from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE, conceptualisations of the soldier’s life and the ideal manly life were often the same. By taking this stance, the dissertation challenges the view found in many recent studies on Late Roman masculinity that a Christian ideal of manliness based on extreme ascetic virtues and pacifism had superseded militarism and courage as the dominant component of hegemonic masculine ideology.

This paper intends to show the active participation of the
Augustan Aelia Gala Placidia on the politics of her time and the
autonomy she enjoyed when making her most important
decisions during her youth, first in Rome and later on during her
marriage with Ataulfus. Furthermore, free collaboration and the
influence of Placidia in Autaulfus’ project to govern part of the
Western Empire are highlighted as ways to move away from her
brother’s Honorius politics and to

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Indian city of Jamshedpur, this chapter interrogates the political subjectivities that distinguish different types of insecurely employed people. For recently precarious labourforces in the automotive sector, an historical experience of labour struggle and employment security allows for faith in the possibility of social improvement. By contrast, workers in the city’s scrap metal yards lack such historical reference points, and tend to doubt the efficacy of labour unions and the capacity for positive change. Drawing upon anthropological analyses of hope, this chapter critiques the concept of a homogenous class of global precariats, and describes how the daily life of labour politics is structured by popular understandings of historical process.

Shaikh Nasiruddin Mahmud, popularly known as Chirag-i Delhi, was the last great saint of the Chishti Silsilah in Delhi. He was the Disciple and the successor of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya. On the death of Shaikh Nasiruddin in 1356, it is said that Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq had a tomb raised over his grave. As popular legends around the Shaikh grew, these incited people to visit the dargah to seek answers to their problems. I have tried to understand the relationship between the Pir and the Murid through the transference of authority. Writing during the reign of Emperor Muhammad Shah, Durga Quli Khan confirmed the great popularity of the shrine despite the passage of time. In contrast to evidence of this nature, the dargah seemed to speak a different story when I visited it. Despite being located in the middle of the Chirag-i Delhi village, the dargah stood isolated from the life beyond its immediate environs, with only a few devotees present in the shrine. This was in contrast to the Dargah of his master, Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya. I have looked at the works of Simon Digby especially the Tabarrukat and Succession: Among the Great Chishti Shaykhs of the Delhi Sultanate, and of Sunil Kumar and others. Through these readings I have tried to dwell upon the questions in my mind regarding the faded popularity of Shaikh Nasiruddin in comparison with that of Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti and of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya. In this process, I'm also trying to examine the question of the transition in the veneration for the Shaikh over the centuries. I will study this through a comparison of the shrines of Shaikh Nasiruddin Chirag and Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya.

This essay analyzes the Spanish-British political debate over the right to fell logwood and for the dominion of the Yucatan. It contextualizes archival material as well as printed treatises written by Britons who were engaged in the debate and who gave origin to the ideology of the British Empire before the Union (1707). These writers were members of the Council of Trade and Plantations and of the Royal Society, and they had not only domestic interests but also direct private interests either in the West or the East Indies. John Locke is the main figure in this debate and his concept of property is revised within this new context. Locke and other fellows of the Royal Society and King's councilors argued in favor of British possession of American lands claimed by Spain. Using natural law and political and theological arguments to claim that Spain was unable to improve nature, they described the Spanish as a declining and backward empire and created a successful imperial ideology to bring domestic homogeneity and stability in turbulent times.

RESUMEN: Estudio del debate historiográfico hispano de la segunda mitad del siglo XVII, en el que se revisaron los mitos fundacionales de los territorios de la Monarquía, de cuño histórico y jurídico, y el de la propia Monarquía, de base teológica, en relación con la crisis política, atendiendo a los problemas sucesorios, que en algún caso supuso la invención del concepto “Corona de España” para salvaguardar la unidad territorial de la Monarquía en la crisis sucesoria.
ABSTRACT: Study of the Hispanic historiographical debate during the second half of the 17th century, in which the historical and legal foundational myths of the territories of the Monarchy were reviewed, as well as the theological myths of the Monarchy, in relation to the political crisis and the problems of succession, which in some cases involved the invention of the concept of "Crown of Spain" to safeguard the territorial unity of the Monarchy in the succession crisis.

Using the recently published online versions of the 1911 census of Ireland the Protestant community in County Cork before the War of Independence is reconstructed. Startling new evidence shows that more than 1/3 of the population were in fact English or Scottish and most of this group were directly connected with the huge British Military establishment based in the county. The research shows that far from 'a mass migration of native protestants' less than one in ten of this community left in the revolutionary period. The history of this period demands to be revised based on accurate information and this article provides accurate statistical analysis for scholars of the period to use.

Ein weiterer Zug seiner Originalität liegt in der Art, wie er deutsche und französische Kultur verarbeitet und zusammenführt. Ich wüßte keinen Kritiker in Europa, der mit derselben Sympathie und demselben Verständnis über Madame de Noailles und Simmel, über Marcel Proust und Max Scheler zu schreiben vermöchte.

This  article  deals  with  legitimizations  of  expansion  of  the  Anglo-British  Empire against the monarchy of  Spain during the last quarter of the XVII century  and the first of the XVIII century, and how they shaped British identity and a certain conceptions of the  Spanish.  In  the first  section  we  explain  the  arguments  through  subjects  who  used them, today categorized as pirates, philosophers and novelists, noticing their links to the highest institution of the Scientific Revolution: the Royal Society. In the second part we contextualize  the  claims  of  these  authors  in  three  Spanish-British  discussions  in  which they  participated,  and  their  relationships  with  each  other.  We  conclude  that  while  the arguments respond less to original exceptionalities than to the contexts of these debates, they forged identities and material realities derived from them

Syracuse, great Byzantine capital, seat of the 'Stratega', knew a medieval decline but became a focal point of fortified structures during Early Modern Age within the Kingdom of Sicily. This wonderful and challenged city faced a new decline at the beginning of the contemporary age. ln fact, many hopes of economic development were born in the 1950/60 with the start of a process of industrialization but actually it was a heavy failure. A new era appeared at the end of the 20th century with the urban planning, restoration and regeneration, and the final success, obtained as tourist capital of the Mediterranean. This important goal is representend by the island/district of Ortigia, connected to the main land, through two bridges. The aim of this paper is to examine the long term urban history and the different phases which followed during thirteen centuries in an "accordion city".

Bureaucratic power is a fact of life in the present political and administrative processes throughout the world. It is inherent in all administrative systems and so is the case in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Bureaucracy in J&K emerged as an offshoot of the British Colonial rule in India. The rule ended but the legacy still persists. Over-bureaucracy in the system led to the undue increase in the bureaucratic power. This excessive power became unacceptable to the common masses in J&K. The situation got aggravated due to the increasing inaccessibility of this bureaucracy and its recognition as elitism. The public in J&K, being vulnerable economically, socially and psychologically, due to the past political turmoil of two decades and undue discrimination at the hands of the central government, portrayed a feeling and attitude of awe, fear and disgust towards the rising bureaucratic structure. The bureaucracy in J&K needs to desist from rampantly using its power, which draws its vitality from the resources allocated to it. At the same time, it needs to make a judicious use of these resources. The present paper depicts the rise of bureaucratic power in J&K, with its inherent pitfalls, if used indiscriminately. This paper also portrays the probability of its decline in case the reins are taken over by the citizenry as a result of an administrative revolution.

While the political center of Egypt moved increasingly to Cairo, natural disasters (as earthquakes, droughts, and the plague), communal strife, pirate attacks, administrative reform, and economic change shattered Alexandria’s urban fabric in the late Middle Ages. The city intra muros resisted its decay tenaciously but eventually collapsed after its last important institution, the Venetian consulate, had moved to Cairo in the sixteenth century. However, Alexandria as a whole did not collapse. The neighborhood on the peninsula north of the walled city recovered from the ordeals: It grew thanks to a constant flow of immigrants, tax benefits, and the continued importance of the port. New port facilities, a new fortress, and Sufi-institutions (dating back to the thirteenth century) served as settlement cores supplying the necessary infrastructure. The peninsula became Alexandria’s new center, while the walled city decayed.

A spectre is haunting Europe: decline or even decadence. Is it so new, or the last occurrence to date of a familiar ghost? The critical distance of the “longue durée” offered by the historian or the “distant look” by the anthropologist suggest that today’s fears and doubts are not without
precedent across time and space.
The text ‘Decadence and the Phenomenon of Generations’ published in 1985 by Julien Freund is a powerful illustration of this iterative interrogation.

Le sentiment de déclin est le miroir naturel d’une nation qui prouve dans sa conscience collective le besoin, la nostalgie ou le souvenir d’une grandeur passée et surtout perdue. Cette perception de puissance ou de déclin renvoie l’inconscient collectif et n’a souvent que partiellement   voir avec la réalité (Doelnitz 1993, 59). Les Français semblent ainsi vivre dans une contradiction permanente entre une image glorieuse de leur pays projetée dans le discours politique et une autre moins reluisante de l’affaiblissement de la France qui est véhiculée dans les médias et une littérature n’hésitant pas à sonner le tocsin des ambitions françaises. Il est donc impossible d’aborder la question de la puissance française sans parler de sa face cachée, à savoir la hantise que le pays ne plonge dans une spirale infernale qui le mènera vers le déclin, voire la décadence. Cet article se propose de considérer les origines du sentiment du déclin français à la lumière d’événements historiques et d’auteurs qui ont pu donner corps à un tel discours. Il met en relief une évolution qui s’étend jusqu’aux années 1989-90 pour une raison précise : le discours décliniste actuel ne vient pas remplacer un discours plus ancien. Il ne constitue pas un phénomène ab nihilo . Bien au contraire, il en intègre les  éléments constituants. De là trois précautions liminaires. La première est le besoin de rappeler que le thème du déclin de la France est récurrent dans le débat intellectuel et politique. Il faut ensuite insister sur le fait qu’il est tout sauf neutre, car marqueur idéologique mis en avant par des acteurs aux motivations variées qui peuvent se réclamer de mouvements progressistes, conservateurs ou réactionnaires:
le binôme "déclin-puissance" est pour cette raison teinté de subjectivité. Enfin, il n’existe pas de consensus clair sur ce que devraient être des marqueurs objectifs de déclin.