#Geography in 1500

[useless-catalanfacts]

Did you know that the first map of the Himalayas was made in the 1500s by the Catalan monk Antoni de Montserrat, and it was so accurate that it was used by European expeditions until the 1800s?

Here's the story of a priest that was called by a Mughal emperor for interfaith intercultural dialogue and who ended up being -among other things- a royal teacher, a writer, a geographer, a fake Armenian merchant, and a prisoner.

Antoni de Montserrat was born in 1536 in Vic (Catalonia). He studied in Barcelona (Catalonia) and Coimbra (Portugal) to become a priest and joined the Jesuits. In 1574, he was sent on a mission to Goa (back then a Portuguese colony, now part of India).

The Mughal emperor Akbar was an open-minded man. He was Muslim but wanted to learn about the other religions, so he called representatives of different religions to his court in Fatehpur Sikri. In 1579, he called the Jesuits to explain Christianity, and the Jesuits sent Antoni de Montserrat. Everyone in the court -Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus- knew that the point was not to convert others, but to reach a better understanding through debate.

The Mughal emperor Akbar holding an assembly with religious men. The two men dressed in black are Jesuits. Miniature painting by Nar Singh, 1605. Chester Beautty Library.

The emperor Akbar valued Antoni de Montserrat as a great wise man and chose him to become the tutor of his second son Murâd. Antoni learned Persian (the language of the Mughal court) and accepted. He remained close to the emperor and accompanied him in the military campaign when the emperor's step-brother started an uprising in Bengala. Crossing much of Northern India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tibet on elephant gave him the perspective to draw the map.

In the end, Antoni went back to Goa in 1582. There, he wrote a book explaining what he had seen in the Mughal Empire, the cultural differences he had experienced, the political organization of these territories, and describing emperor Akbar's court. This book is called Mongolicae Legationis Commentarius, and its descriptions of the lands he has travelled include the earliest description of Tibetans known in Europe since Marco Polo and the first ever map of the Himalayas.

Antoni de Montserrat's map of the Himalayas and their surroundings, including large parts of what nowadays is India, Tibet, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Library of St. Paul's Cathedral, Kolkata (India).

This book explains cultural elements of the different cultures under the Mughal Empire and also the conversations Antoni had with the emperor about certain habits. For example, Antoni writes about how the Brahmans (upper caste Hindu priests) force widows to be burned alive in the same funeral pyre as their dead husbands, often (when the women resist) drugging them or through violence. Antoni tries to get emperor Akbar to stop this terrible tradition, but doesn't succeed. On the other hand, Antoni also tells the emperor Akbar that they should burn the "men who dress as women" who live in the emperor's court, to which the emperor bursts laughing out loud and doesn't give any consideration to. Despite their different cultural backgrounds, Antoni and Akbar were friends.

Antoni's time in the Mughal Empire ended in 1588, when the king Philip II of Castilla and I of Portugal orders Antoni and a young Spanish priest named Pedro Páez to go to Ethiopia to convince the Coptic Christian Ethiopians to get closer to the Catholic Christian Church. Then, Antoni and Pedro dressed up as an Armenian merchants to border the Ottoman Empire through Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, trying to avoid the pirates of the Indian Ocean. However, before reaching Ethiopia, they took a ship to skirt modern-day Oman, but the captain turned them in as soon as they reached land in Yemen. Then, Antoni and Pedro were taken on a camel caravan to the Sultan of Hadhramaut (Yemen), who imprisoned them until 1595 and then sentenced to galleys in the Red Sea, and later imprisoned them again. Luckily for them, king Philip paid their rescue and they were freed in 1596. With his body weakened by the galleys and the mistreatments of prison, Antoni retired to a convent in Salsette (modern-day Mumbai, India), where he died in 1600 right after having finished his map.

The Spanish priest who travelled with him, Pedro Páez, also wrote his own diary explaining what they lived. With his descriptions, we know that in Yemen Antoni and Pedro were given what he describes as a kind of herbal tea called "cahua, water boiled with a fruit named bun and which is drank very hot, instead of wine": that is a drink that was still unknown in Europe at the time, which we now call coffee.

Maybe you have heard the name Pedro Páez before, too. After accompanying Antoni to Goa, he went to Ethiopia again, successfully this time. In Ethiopia, he became the first European to reach the source of the Blue Nile.

Information sources: David Montserrat Nonó (La Mira), Sociedad Geográfica Española. If you want to read Antoni de Montserrat's book, it has been translated from Latin to Catalan and to Spanish by Josep Lluís Alay.

[malachitezmeyka]

Ah yes, Magnificent Century, or as I like to call it – “Why the fuck are the most likely Ukrainian girl and the Crimean Tatar woman speaking Russian to each other, what were the writers smoking???”

[holycosmolo9y]

Three different maps of Taprobane Island

modern Sri Lanka,

as known to the Ancient Greeks

1. Ptolemy's Taprobane

2. Ptolemy's Taprobana published in Cosmographia Claudii Ptolomaei Alexandrini (1535)

3. Taprobane in the Catalan Atlas (1375): "Illa Trapobana"

[gemsofgreece]

Hello! Do you (and other Greeks) find "Hellenic polytheism" an acceptable term for the religion worshipping the ancient Greek gods? If not, what would you want people to call it instead? I feel strongly that I would not be able to change my belief itself, but I definitely want to be respectful in what I call it and my other actions

Hellenic Polytheism should be fine. You can introduce yourself as a Hellenic Polytheist.

People have a bit of a hard time with this hell of terms (get it? he he), so I am gonna create a mini-lexicon. It's not targeted to you in specific to use all these, it's just for whoever is interested to clear this up in their minds.

A very hellenic lexicon

Hellás = 1) the official term for Greece and the only one ever used by Greeks themselves (there is no equivalent of "Greece" in Greek), 2) a historical ancient region in central mainland Greece where southeast Epirus and southwestern Thessaly meet and where a lot of Achilles' soldiers supposedly originated from, 3) the administrative region of central mainland Greece during the Byzantine Empire

Hellenic = anything Greek (like you may say "this is an american movie", that's why you can use hellenic polytheism, because it means "greek religion of many gods"). And by anything Greek, we mean ANYTHING. Care to know what the "Greek Orthodox Church" is called in Greek?

You guessed it! Hellenic Orthodox Church...! So you see, how when foreigners say some things like "i'm hellenic, hellene, hellenist" like "what hellenic are you? coffee? bank? Christian?" You know?

Hellen = the mythological progenitor of the Greeks according to Hesiod. Not to be confused with Helen.

Héllene = a Greek by descent, nationality and / or ethnicity. And if we are being totally accurate, it's a Greek male. I don't actually know how it is pronounced in English but ideally keep the last e silent. (By the way we do not pronounce that h in the beginning in all these words for the last 1500 years or so.... just saying.)

Héllenes = the Greeks, just men or mixed. The last e is NOT silent.

English does not have gendered nouns but Greek does so technically there is a seperate word for Greek women but I don't know if this is transferable to English. If we could do it in theory and by following the trasliteration style of the Hellene, it should be something like:

*Hellenís / Hellenidae or Hellenides = Greek woman / women*

Hopefully this explains why random foreigners identifying as "Hellenes" is exremely problematic.

Helladic = pertaining to the geography and territory of Hellas and whatever happens strictly within its borders

Hellenisation = spread of Greek influence and culture, it is also used for cases of Greek assimilation in ancient times

Hellenistic = 1) something being characterized by particular Greek influence, 2) referring to the era after the Classical period and before the Roman period

Hellenicá = 1) the Greek language, 2) (infrequent) Greek matters, documented topics about the Greeks

Hellenism = The complete Greek culture, civilization and nationhood, the essence of being Greek.

Hellenist = 1) a specialist in the study of Greek language, literature, culture, or history, or an admirer of the Greek culture and civilization, 2) a person who adopted the Greek customs, language and culture during the Hellenistic period, 3) now, the English Wiktionary also adds the "a follower and practitioner of Hellenic��religion" <- which one of the two??? XD, clearly following the trend of western classicist circles. In the Greek Wiktionary for the same exact term (Ελληνιστής) that last interpretation does not exist and I can guarantee you it is officially rejected. Here's why: the suffixes -ist and -ism (as well as all suffixes here) are suffixes of Greek origin and they signify that someone is something or is passionate and dedicated to something on the superlative or very very earnestly, essentially. So when someone says they are a hellenist, they are supposed to be dedicated or charmed by anything that makes something hellenic, not to be professional cherry pickers. Of course, everyone is allowed their preferences, however you can't be interested in a super specific / niche thing like a religion mostly practiced 2000-3500 years ago and simultaneously show complete disregard and ignorance on literally everything else about this civilization, history and its living people and call yourself a hellenist. It tears the word apart. By the way this is not targeted at you. You are here asking about it, wanting to do the right thing. I am referring to this thing happening in this forum that @alatismeni-theitsa 's Anon was complaining about; they obsess over the ancient religion and they hate everything Greek post the AD mark. That's not being a Hellenist. That's not a Hellenism forum. That's the exact opposite in fact. Very few people can correctly claim the term "hellenist".

BONUS: Philhellene is kind of synonym to "hellenist" and it means "friend / lover of the Hellenes and all things hellenic". But again it can surely be misused. Not all self-proclaimed Philhellenes were ones indeed. Some, like Lord Byron, were Philhellenes through and through, on the other hand.

Of course, one definitely does not have to go through what Lord Byron and other great Philhellenes of the 19th century went through to prove they are a Hellenist or a Philhellene! My point is that very very few people can correctly claim the identity of a Philhellene or a Hellenist.

Therefore, "Hellenic polytheist" is just fine.

[fatehbaz]

what does your username mean?

Cat ghost.

As child. Would go to library, to look at books about creatures, with a pen and notepad. Or sit before a television watching "nature" documentary stuff, with a pen and notepad. Was fixated on habitats. The context. Did not like to isolate an individual creature from the wider ecological community. This led to interest in geography, distribution range maps. Was aware that, in popular perception, some creatures were strongly associated with a particular place. "Lion is an African animal. Tiger is an Asian animal." Allegedly. And other stereotypes (many of them, I would later come to learn, due to chauvinism, exoticism, Orientalism, colonialism, etc.). Came across a kind of large textbook on wild cats. Saw the historical distribution maps. Only a few centuries ago, tigers were in Anatolia, the Caucasus, near the shores of the Black Sea. Was intrigued. From the middle of the twentieth century onward, the lion and cheetah were so closely associated with Africa, where like over 99% of their range was located. And yet. There remains a small remnant population of nearly-extinct Asiatic lions far away within India''s borders. And there remains a small remnant population of nearly-extinct Asiatic cheetahs within Iran's borders. And all that space, in between, where both cats were now extinct. Only 100 years ago, tiger, lion, leopard, and cheetah all lived generally near each other, still, in eastern Anatolia, near Mesopotamia, etc. And now, only a few dozen wild native cheetah remain on the entire continent of Asia.

"Cheetah". The word for this cat is from South Asia. Through Hindi, from Sanskrit.

"What happened?" I read on. Cheetahs were present within the national borders of what is now India, along with tigers, lions, and leopards. By the 1500s, there was a tradition in South Asia, where some in the Mughal aristocracy enjoyed using cheetahs as companions in sport hunting. The cats would be captured in the wild, and then trained, and then brought along on royal hunts. The cat was the star athlete, goaded into chasing down prey, for the entertainment of the hunting party. There are elaborate paintings, commissioned by Mughal courts and some now displayed in collections of European museums, depicting trained cheetah hunts. It has since been popularly said that Akbar was particularly fond of cheetahs. (Akbar the Great was the "emperor" who is credited often for consolidating Mughal state power across India, solidifying regional power by building administrative systems/structures in India ["forging an empire out of fiefdoms"] that would later eventually be manipulated and overtaken by the British Empire. According to some tellings of the historical narrative.)

Accurate or not, it was said that at any one time, Akbar possessed one thousand cheetahs. A vast royal menagerie. The names of several of the most celebrated cheetahs are still known. In some stories, when he was still young, Akbar was presented with a gift. His very first cheetah: Fatehbaz.

This disturbed me. A child, reading this book, I was upset by the idea of such a vast menagerie of wild animals. Large wild animals, with great need for food, space, enrichment. I was upset by the exploitation of captive wild animals as displays of aristocratic wealth, not just in the Mughal state(s), but also those menageires and exhibitions elsewhere, both earlier and later in time: the royal hunts of Assyrian kings, the Roman arenas, Charlemagne's elephants, European circuses.

So, as a child, I imagined that Fatehbaz resisted the captivity. Like in a daydream, a fantasy. I imagined a royal menagerie breaking free from restraint. I imagined elephants and rhinos and tigers and lions and leopards and jackals and crocodiles. I imagined the beasts attacking an emperor's court. But there are now less than one hundred cheetahs which survive in the wild in Asia. And when Mughal statecraft gave way to European statecraft, when Britain moved into South Asia, the bounty hunting specifically targeted big cats. And, meanwhile, the cats were confronted indirectly with habitat destruction, commodity crop monocultures, industrial-scale resource extraction. So I came to imagine the ghosts of cats. The ghost of a cheetah like Fatehbaz on the Indus plain. The ghost of a jaguar in the Sonoran desert. The ghost of a lion on the Mediterranean coast. The ghost of a tiger on the Amu Darya shore beyond Bukhara, where even the Aral Sea itself has vanished.

[imbellatrix]

Zhurial ("Origins") — Eldarya NE Headcanons; 🌌🪻

In my headcanons, Nevra truly loves his culture. He values it deeply and feels genuinely offended when someone disrespects it, even unintentionally.

However, if you ask him if he misses living in Yaqut, he says no. Sometimes he feels nostalgic for certain things, like a favorite childhood dish. Nevra thinks the clothing is beautiful, Yaqut itself is magnificent, the food is delicious (it's usually quite spicy, which explains his love for hot food), and some of the traditions and events are fascinating. But overall, Nevra feels free and welcomed in the South.

He says the South gives him a freedom, especially to travel the world, that he could never have in Yaqut. This is one of the reasons he doesn’t miss living in his homeland. There's also the traditional conservatism in Yaqut.

Erika had also developed an affection for Nevra's culture after listening to him talk about it extensively, despite not being familiar with it herself. Some nights, before bedtime, Nevra taught her Qutarian words and phrases, accompanied by symbolic hand gestures, a Yaqutian sign language. He taught her "Nahari," meaning "my angel." Sometimes Nevra called her that.

The gesture involved tracing a delicate curve in the air, as if drawing wings, followed by touching Erika's forehead and tracing a line to her heart, symbolizing the soul-heart connection. Finally, he closed his hands into a shell, indicating possession. This term had a feminine and masculine version; the masculine version was "Naharu," but the signs were identical. Nevra shared popular proverbs:

• "La tahlam niram qabla shurukh" - "Don't count the stars before sunrise." (Don't anticipate problems)

• "Al-nar la yuhriq bila nar" - "Fire doesn't burn without fire." (Passion needs fuel; love needs love)

• "Kahluna tazhary fī al-ghasaq" - "Kahluna blooms in twilight." The purple Kahluna flower, native to Yaqut, blooms in darkness, symbolizing resilience. It thrives in challenging conditions. This proverb uses the flower as a metaphor for love, signifying that love can emerge even in turbulent times, like war.

Erika now understood why Karenn called her that. Her surname, Calluna, was the same flower. On Earth, Calluna meant simply "purple flower," and Erika had no idea it existed in Eldarya.

Nevra often speaks to Érika in his sleep, calling out to her and asking her to stay. He also tends to speak in his native language when irritated, cursing in Qutian or muttering to himself. Sometimes, he and Karenn converse in their native tongue. On missions, when Nevra and Karenn cannot make noise, they communicate through sign language from a distance.

In Yaqut, they wear accessories adorned with green crystals. Nevra wears a collar with the crystal, just like Orgelz. Maora wears a diadem with the crystal, while Karenn has various fragments of the crystal on his collar, cord, and hairpin. This green crystal, according to Yaqutian beliefs, brings protection. These emeralds are a divine gift from Ahrakar, the Guardian God, who protects Yaqut from desert monsters, and the emerald is said to ward off death. The blessed emerald's name is Ta'riz.

Nevra's favorite place in Yaqut was the Oasis of Goddess Nilah, deity of water and fertility. He would often sneak out of class to visit the Oasis with Karenn and his two close friends, Khayuna and Thorvos.

Nevra excels in various subjects, including Mathematics, Geography, and History. His father always pushed him to learn multiple languages. However, Nevra dislikes his Native Language class. He believes Mathematics is superior because it is universal and unchanging; 1 + 1 equals 2 regardless of time or place. Native languages, on the other hand, change over time. The way people communicated in 1500 is not the same as today. This is why Nevra dislikes this subject.

The economy of Yaqut is primarily based on the trade of unique and exotic spices used in cuisine and medicine. Precious metals like gold and copper are also extracted and used in jewelry and currency. Additionally, Yaqut is known for its diverse textile production and beautiful tapestries.

Kellinroe, Nevra's father, was a wealthy and influential figure in Yaqut, serving as a trusted advisor to the clan leader. His vast fortune was built on his lucrative mining ventures, which yielded rich deposits of gold, copper, and precious gems. For centuries, Kellinroe's shrewd business acumen and strategic decision-making enabled him to corner the market on Yaqut's most valuable resources, solidifying his position as one of the clan's most powerful members.

Maora, Nevra's mother, was a woman of exceptional intelligence, elegance, and strategic wit. As the matriarch of the family, she skillfully managed the household and its vast network of alliances, leveraging her charm and diplomatic prowess to maintain the family's social standing. Renowned for her impeccable taste, Maora was the driving force behind Yaqut's most extravagant balls, showcasing her talent for bringing together the clan's elite. Her razor-sharp mind and cunning enabled her to navigate the intricate web of Yaqut's society, ensuring the family's prosperity even after Kellinroe's passing. Some whispered that her sharp mind and cunning surpass even that of her late husband, whose legacy she deftly safeguarded. With grace and poise, Maora navigated the complex politics of Yaqut, securing her family's future through her impeccable judgment and unwavering determination.

[hylianengineer]

It's been months since I visited London and I still think about it sometimes.

London is bizarre because you can go there, having never been in the UK in your whole life, and recognize landmarks from your childhood storybooks. You can know the names of the royal family members the buildings are named after, but not why you know them.

London is a city that is still very palpably the seat of one of the largest, most powerful empires in recent history. You can feel it. You can see it in the ostentatious wealth and the cultural gravity. London exists as much in myth as it does in reality, and if you grew up anywhere that was once connected to the British Empire, or even anywhere particularly globalized, you probably know that myth somewhere deep within your brain. It's weird.

Some parts of it are very beautiful and some are very disturbing and many are both at once. It's ancient and modern and touristy and messy and it's world-class museums and fast food restaurants all crammed in together.

There's no place like London - and I mean this both in the Sweeney Todd sense and the complementary one. ("There's a hole in the world like a great black pit / And the vermin of the world inhabit it / And it's morals aren't worth what a pig can spit / And it goes by the name of London!")

It's weird to think about as a USAmerican, because London isn't unique in this position as a huge, cosmopolitan, deeply complicated city - New York is another example. There is everything in New York, good and bad, but it's easier for me to overlook the bad parts presumably because I'm USAmerican and have a cultural blindspot the size of the Empire State Building. It is also a bit different I think because New York isn't the seat of US government - although, fun fact, it almost was. So it doesn't get the same reputation, the same close ties to empire - it does have them, it just hides them a bit better. I mean, it is home to Wall Street, for starters, and it attracts rich and famous people just like London does. It has its bastions of incomprehensible wealth and privilege, and also a great deal of poverty. I guess big cities are just like that - or all cities, really, but the farther up the totem pole you go, the bottom seems farther and farther away. Sorta creepy actually. I know New York's geography and landmarks even better than I know London's, but it wasn't such a shock seeing them in person because, sure, I'd never been there, but at least it was the same country. I knew plenty of people who'd been there.

Also, New York City is recent. London is bafflingly old - New York, like most of America, likes to pretend nothing ever happened there before about 1500, and nothing of consequence for at least a hundred years after that. That's bullshit, of course, but it means the dominant (colonial) cultural narrative many of us have grown up with has only four-hundred-ish years of history to work with, max. You go to London and see individual buildings much older than that. It's bizarre, as an American, not even because we don't have things that old here, but since our colonialist narrative ignores things that old, they aren't often discussed with the same sort of reverence (it's unfair and stupid but that's how it works). Like, that's stupid, all of earth is equally incomprehensibly old to us humans (don't come at me for this, geologists, I know the age of rocks is actually hugely variable but we weren't here for most of that!). Anywhere you stand on this planet has as much history as London or New York or anywhere else but we don't think about that because the cultural narratives we're told don't encourage us to think about it that way. That's weird. What momentous events happened right where I'm standing that I'll never know about?

[arkipelagic]

Trade routes, Austronesian peoples, and shared culture among Southeast Asians during the Iron Age

As many scholars have noticed, the Indianized polity of Champa [established in AD 192] in central Vietnam provides functional parallels for its Sa Huynh predecessor [until AD ~200], in that it served as a gateway to the Indianized world for the Philippines and Vietnam, and also a gateway to the Chinese world for Malaysians and Indonesians. During the Han dynasty, the Chinese historical documents Discourses on Salt and Iron (鹽鐵論) and Book of Han—Treatise of Geography (漢書.地理志) record that the Chinese exported gold and silk to the lands around the South China Sea in exchange for glassmaking materials, crystal, agate, rhinoceros horn, aromatic woods, and spices. It was also recorded that Champa people were expert traders and sailors. We can imagine that the Sa Huynh ancestors of Champa probably traded on many geographic scales, all with considerable impact on neighboring countries.

At least some pottery traditions were shared cross the South China Sea prior to the appearance of diagnostic Sa Huynh and Kalanay pottery forms. These earlier connections may have created the contacts, channels, and contexts that facilitated other networks, such as we can trace more abundantly with Sa Huynh-Kalanay.

[…] The Pre-Sa Huynh assemblages and earlier Neolithic assemblages in central coastal Vietnam reflect a certain degree of cultural relationship with the Austronesian island world to the east, commencing most likely around 1500-1000 BC, demonstrated for instance by the similar baked clay earrings from Thach Lac, Savidug, and Nagsabaran. These relationships long preceded the Iron Age arrival of the ancestral Chamic-speakers in central Vietnam, and they were perhaps correlated with earlier contacts between other (non-Chamic) Malayo-Polynesian-speaking peoples. Current linguistic knowledge derives the Malayo-Chamic languages from Borneo, not the Philippines, reminding us that people very likely sustained a number of connections without currently documented archaeological or linguistic outcomes.

The classic Sa Huynh culture of Iron Age central Vietnam expressed considerable internal variation in pottery shapes and covered a very large area, and this diversity appears incongruent with a single and tightly defined ethnolinguistic entity such as Proto-Chamic. Modern linguistic distributions, and especially the recent discovery of Sa Huynh sites in the inland regions of the Thu Bon River Valley, make it likely that both Malayo-Polynesian and Mon-Khmer populations played important roles in the development of Iron Age Sa Huynh culture. From a longer term archaeological perspective, we see in central Vietnam an in situ native Neolithic culture of northern Phung Nguyen affinity (expressed in the Long Thanh assemblage), that received putative Island Southeast Asian cultural influences from about 1500-1000 BC onwards.

In many ways, the conspicuous archaeological record of the Iron Age has distracted our attention away from the likelihood of older cultural links across the South China Sea. In fact, the Iron Age connections very likely followed much older sea-lanes and trade-routes, but new materials and attendant social practices were introduced into the long-running system during the Iron Age. New materials, such as glass, metal, precious stones and large burial jars arguably became dominant in the archaeological record, but most importantly the associated cultural practices became and remained pervasive throughout the Iron Age communities. For whatever reasons, people in widely separated locations began following many of the same cultural traditions and expressions, seen in their persistent choice of the same types of jewelry, pottery, and burial practice.

Excerpt from “Coastal Connectivity: Long-Term Trading Networks Across the South China Sea” (2013) by Hsiao-chun Hung et. al.

[worldhistoryfacts]

Jesuit missionaries were some of the first westerners to enter China in the 1500s. They made a sincere attempt to understand Chinese culture.

One of the Jesuits’ first projects was to learn Chinese in order to translate Western works into Chinese and vice versa. Here’s a page of a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary compiled by two Jesuits, Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri:

The Ming were particularly interested in the Europeans’ knowledge of geography — it was the age of European exploration, after all. Jesuits like Ricci provided the Chinese with very detailed maps of Asia:

Chinese people were just as fascinated with the discovery of the Americas as Europeans were, so the Jesuits filled them in on what was known about the lands across the Pacific:

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

[varlaisvea]

winterhold in the second era

i saw an old post about winterhold’s climate and food resources in the fourth era, and i wanted to say i’ve been writing a lot of 2nd Era (ESO) Winterhold, which is ~1500 years before the Great Collapse. so, i’ve been thinking a lot about how different the city would be in those times, and how much the Great Collapse changed the climate and geography of the area. here’s some ~headcanons about 2nd Era Winterhold

if you look at the land around Winterhold in the 4th Era, it appears that the Collapse also took out a whole bunch of the coastline east of (what’s left of) the city—much of which was probably the city itself. You can also tell that the college sat on a hill or rise—it’s significantly higher than everything else around it. The climate as it is in the 4th Era would not have been able to support a large College and bustling city. So, imo, Winterhold in the 2nd Era was protected from the worst winds off the Sea of Ghosts, situated on the sheltered side of a ridge or rolling hills. The College was on the western side, at the highest point in the city, on a hill.

obviously, though, it was still quite cold—the farmland that existed was in the eastern part of Winterhold hold, and was mostly used for hardy winter crops and short-season summer crops—pretty much just enough to feed a large city when heavily supplemented by fishing and whaling. the climate was mild enough that most residents could support some chickens or goats, a vegetable garden in the summer, and maybe grow some gourds and stuff in the fall.

The fact that the city produced just about enough food for everyone meant that most residents, including students at the college, would participate in harvests and processing catches from fisherfolk and whalers. No one wanted for food, but everyone felt they had a stake in its production—hard to take food for granted once you’ve experienced a long, dark winter in Winterhold.

The College was there first—its location was painstakingly selected based on multiple natural, mystical, and political factors. The city gradually grew around the College over the course of a few centuries.

One reason the College was built there: a natural warm spring at the top of that hill. In the 4th Era, one wonders why you’d ever build a massive, drafty stone structure at the edge of a bitterly cold sea, but it made a lot of sense when the college was built. The natural thermodynamics of the place warmed the stone walls and floors, and kept the College habitable—if still drafty— in the wintertime, and pleasantly cool in the summer months.

that’s also how they got enough water to the top of a hill to supply a whole college—there were actually bubbling springs accessible at several places on the campus, similar to the magicka wells that are still there in the 4th Era. the water springs, of course, were destroyed in the Great Collapse.

thanks to the warm spring and the strong magicka flow, the central courtyard of the college did not freeze in the winter, and could support an impressive alchemy garden, with plants from all over Tamriel.

in the 2nd Era, Winterhold College is just starting to come to prominence, having a reputation for being a place of openness and experimentation, in contrast to the Mages Guild or Shad Astula.

Nords tend to be wary of mages and magic, but over the years, the College has built itself as a part of the community—they have to, if they want a share of the harvest! About half of the student body is Nords, so the College shuts down at harvest time to allow those students to help bring in the crops. The non-native students also help with fishing and farming harvests, or other tasks like repairing equipment. All of the students are known to the residents once they’ve attended the school long enough.

By now, a good chunk of the city’s economy is centered around the College. For example, Winterhold supports several inns and bunkhouses, and has shops that import specialty food and supplies so that foreign mages can have a piece of home. For a city in the north ass of nowhere, residents are surprisingly worldly, regularly coming into contact with people from all over Tamriel (and even beyond) who come to the city for business at the College.

A small free clinic was built on the campus, so that the College’s world-class healers could be easily available to the people of Winterhold. The College also hosts seminars and classes on basic mystic topics for the residents of Winterhold. The College being so open to the community is not popular with everyone—some of the more old-school students and faculty wish for a time when mages got to stay in their mysterious wizard towers.

One of the big themes in my wip is a mage should never be sundered from the wages of their power. In the 2nd Era, the mages of Winterhold are in close contact with the wages of their power; in a magic college smack-dab in the middle of a bustling city, mages personally know the people who would be harmed if they use magic irresponsibly, or if an experiment goes wrong. In my story, mages who are sundered from the wages of their power are responsible for the Great Collapse.

[aeolianblues]

Can’t believe we got Green Day live in India within my lifetime

The way the international music industry is only now discovering that there is a market for music—and recordbreaking crowds—in India and no one realised there was money to be made until the year of our lord 2023 when we’ve been screaming ‘come to India!’ in bands’ comment sections for 2 decades is so wild to us all, but the dam gates are finally open and my mum’s been saying that the last few months feel like when Europe last realised that there were jewels and spices in India in the 1500s, she’s like ‘they’re discovering there’s money here and there’ll be an entertainment East India Company here soon’ bless her razor tongue. She’s right though, it’s been Dua Lipa, Bryan Adams, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and now everyone who played Lollapalooza in its third edition. I do think Coldplay themselves paved the way because I felt the shift after their first show in Mumbai in 2017 (well. Everyone in the world and their dog seemed to have somehow mysteriously known a friend of a friend of a friend and got a ticket that didn’t involve selling off a kidney but I was doing site clean up the morning after. Which is fine. I don’t care that much about Coldplay, and I went barrier at some of the bands who have defined my very being so I’m fine with being The Only Person On The Planet Not At Coldplay 2017).

It was a charity show, one hosted by Global Citizen, and that’s how it came about at all, because if you weren’t an established metal act, you didn’t know there was an appetite for music in India. I don’t know why people didn’t think there was, but I imagine it’s something to do with how people saw India. We couldn’t say from the inside, but an old comment from a Snapchat CEO maybe gave us some insight into their thought process: “This app is only for rich people… I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.”

Now, fellas. I think that Evan dude was just exquisitely bad at geography because Spain?? But anyway, it’s a misinformed worldview people in the west have had for decades as India quietly rebuilt without the spotlight on them. God. Alone. Knows. The less America knows about you, the better, right?

But the first Coldplay show was for the city, a test run on the scale of events: setting up stages, finding appropriate sites, security (!) and ensuring things at this scale can run smoothly. For artists, it was a taste of the dizzying heights that otherwise only international cricketers seem to now about.

So when the first edition of Lollapalooza was to come to India in 2023, not with tired names but some interesting variety on the lineup and artists like The Strokes mixing with the very DIY and underground artists who have been percolating in mini-scenes for years, it was a very good sign for a beginning. They also chose the right months to be hosting: winter is basically the only time we can justify making white people jump around under hot stage lights. 26° is as good as Mumbai can offer you (Delhi can be colder but if someone’s doing one night only, it’s going to be Mumbai. That’s changing in 2024, but 23 was the start). December and Jan are lighter in Europe and North American tour schedules compared to April onwards, I find, and Jan-Feb tends to be when artists from the northern hemisphere head towards Australia/NZ. India would be well poised to be a stopover en route Down Under.

I’m happy to see it grow. I can never ever take gigs for granted because there were a sum total of three I went for in the first 18 years of my life. But o want the next generation of Indian kids to think boring of it. I also want them to think nothing of picking up instruments, playing together and thinking that could possibly be a career. We’re not yet at that stage.

As the money pours in shows attended by anywhere from 50,000 to 1,30,000 people, as tourists fly in from all over the world to watch their favourite artists, both Indian and non Indian play at Indian venues, I want the emerging music industry to have developing Indian talent in mind. And not at Indian Idol and things like that as they’ve done for years. We already have the pipelines that will create Bollywood’s next great creators.

What I want is for the industry to create space and opportunities for independent music. Make those independent venues. Have those bars and restaurants where the music isn’t just loud, it’s live and local. Pay artists properly. Indian independent artists have to chase promoters and venues for months afterwards to get paid for their performing work.

Have spaces where kids can borrow instruments and learn. Many developed nations have music programmes as part of their schooling, and that’s where the kids are first exposed to music. A lot of young Indian kids will spend years convincing their parents to buy them an instrument. Their parents say, how do I know that you’ll stick with it? That’s a fair reason from a parent, but kids should be able to experiment without fear. Easier access to resources and instruments when they’re younger will help reduce the class barrier to music. It’s all about private lessons and your own instruments in India, and that robs kids of that crucial early period where your instrument becomes a lifelong companion. And if it doesn’t stick and they never develop a further inclination for it? That’s fine. Now they know, and reduced barriers mean that for the two kids in twenty that do stick with their instruments, this has just ensured that a future superstar was able to enter their field at all.

I want grants and schemes for artists. I wantan artist to be able to afford to live in Mumbai while they’re making music there. Create opportunities that allow musicians to pay rent while also having the time to create. Mumbai rents are not dipping below the lakhs anytime soon. Every musician already accepts they will be working full time somewhere else. If you work until 7 pm, where do you have time to write an album? I want rehearsal spaces. Band members living 50 minutes away from each other shouldn’t run out of options when it comes to practising. I want more spaces for full band practice. I want more recording studios. Sure, you can use Logic Pro on your laptop, but we can provide artists with better, surely? And you employ audio engineers and producers this way too, who do an extremely important job.

Consider live music when making noise laws. Leave space for musical events ands allow dedicated music venues to emerge without fear of losing their licenses. Incentivise restaurants having live local music. How the fuck does Goa have a healthier live music scene than Mumbai? Incentivise restaurants and bars playing local artists on their speakers rather than hearing Shape of You for the 30th time. Have a royalties system like they do in other countries. The music license a restaurant has that allows them to play music is used to pay out the registered artists they play, pouring money back into artists so they can grow.

Give Indian artists that support role. They should be opening for everyone from Dua Lipa to Bryan Adams. That’s how you create a future Lollapalooza headliner, and you know what? I don’t even mean Lollapalooza Mumbai. There’s no reason why Indian artist shouldn’t headline an international music festival in a few years’ time.

Make it easier for musicians to tour. Metal band Falgun toured Europe in 2021. They said they had played more shows there in two months than they’d played in over five years in India. Once you’ve played AntiSocial in Mumbai fifteen times, what else is there to do? Driving to shows in the next city? Pune is three hours away, but Goa is 14. If someone finds there’s an appetite for their music in another metro city, they would have to fly. We need to do something about what a headache it is to get your equipment on a flight at the moment. We also need to have more venues in neighbouring cities, so that it’s not just ‘Mumbai -> Bangalore -> Chennai -> Hyderabad -> ???? -> Kolkata -> Delhi’. Those cities are a thousand kilometres from each other, are you kidding me.

Anyway. 13 year old me is jumping up and down her teenage bedroom with her guitar slung way too low, wrist hurting from palm muting to play Basket Case, but 25 year old wants to see better. I want us to not just be an attractive and passive venue for international acts to come and put on a show. I want us to pick up some long overdue pieces. Come on, India. It’s high time we built our own independent music industry.

[whencyclopedia]

Renaissance Architecture

Renaissance Architecture originated in Italy and superseded the Gothic style over a period generally defined as 1400 to 1600. Features of Renaissance buildings include the use of the classical orders and mathematically precise ratios of height and width combined with a desire for symmetry, proportion, and harmony. Columns, pediments, arches and domes are imaginatively used in buildings of all types.

Renaissance masterpieces which influenced other buildings worldwide include St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Tempietto of Rome, and the dome of Florence's cathedral. Another defining feature of Renaissance architecture is the proliferation of illustrated texts on the subject, which helped to spread ideas across Europe and even beyond. The Renaissance style was frequently mixed with local traditions in many countries and was eventually challenged by the richly decorative Baroque style from the 17th century onwards.

Renaissance architecture was an evolving movement that is, today, commonly divided into three phases:

Early Renaissance (c. 1400 onwards), the first tentative reuse of classical ideas

High Renaissance (c. 1500), the full-blooded revival of classicism

Mannerism (aka Late Renaissance, c. 1520-30 onwards) when architecture became much more decorative and the reuse of classical themes ever more inventive.

Historians rarely agree on exactly when these changes developed and much, too, depends on geography, both in terms of countries and individual cities.

Studying the Past

The Renaissance period witnessed a great revival in interest in antiquity in terms of thought, art, and architecture. The first and most obvious point of study for Renaissance architects was the mass of Greco-Roman ruins still seen in southern Europe, especially, of course, in Italy. Basilicas, Roman baths, aqueducts, amphitheatres, and temples were in various states of ruin but still visible. Some structures, like the Pantheon (c. 125 CE) in Rome, were exceedingly well-preserved. Architects studied these buildings, took measurements, and made detailed drawings of them. They also studied Byzantine buildings (notably domed churches), features of Romanesque architecture and medieval buildings. For many Italian architects, the Gothic style was regarded as an invasive 'northern' invention which 'corrupted' Italian traditions. In many ways, then, Renaissance architecture was a return to Italy's roots, even if medieval architecture was never wholly abandoned.

A second point of study was surviving ancient texts, most particularly, On Architecture by the Roman architect Vitruvius (c. 90 - c. 20 BCE). Written between 30 and 20 BCE, the treatise combines the history of ancient architecture and engineering with the author's personal experience and advice on the subject. The first printed editions came out in Rome in 1486. Renaissance architects pored over this work, studied the emphasis on symmetry and mathematical ratios, and in many cases, even tried to build structures that Vitruvius had only described in words. Perhaps an even greater effect was that Vitruvius inspired many Renaissance architects to write their own treatises (see below).

Continue reading...

[inspofromancientworld]

Ancient Semitic-Speaking Peoples

By Rafy - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13256859

The ancient Semitic-speaking peoples lived in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region of the Afro-Eurasian continents. Some of these peoples include the Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Jews, and Samaritans. Proto-Semitic existed during the 4th millennium BCE and writing was developed by the mid-3rd millennium BCE. From there, the language developed into three identifiable language groups, East, Central, and South Semitic languages. The Eastern branch includes languages like Akkadian and Eblaite. The Central branch includes two sub branches of northwest, which includes Aramaic and Canaanite, and the southern branch, which inclues Arabic and Hebrew. Southern branch is further divided into southwestern, which includes Qatabanic and Minaic, and Southeastern, which includes Mehri and Harusi. Geographically, this language family covers from modern day Iraq through the Arabian Peninsula, and over to Ethiopia.

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1ao5pfh/what_ecological_and_biological_effects_would_the/

Exactly where the Semitic-speaking peoples originated is still a question with possible locations being Mesopotamia, the Eastern Mediterranean including the Levant and/or Arabian Peninsula, Eritrea and Ethiopia, and North Africa. The most accepted theory points to the Levant around 3800 BCE where the dialects then languages spread out from there with groups like the Phoenicians, who were renown as traders and sailors along the Mediterranean coast. The dissenting theory is that since all five or more of the other Afroasiatic family languages originated in North or Nortwest Africa, that the Semitic languages originated there as well during the late Neolithic, perhaps during the Green Sahara, which made travel in the area by foot much easier.

By Msanzl - Own work, cf. Manuel Sanz Ledesma, 'Manual de lingüística semítica', ed. Bubok, Madrid 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30681320

During the Bronze Age, Semitic languages had spread over the Ancient Near East with the earliest written record found in Mesopotamia in around 2800 BCE by the Akkadian Empire, who adapted Sumerian cuneiform to their language. From there, writing moved into the Levant and Canaan and into the Sinai Peninsula and into Anatolia, dominating the area known as the Fertile Crescent. There is no currently known evidence of the Semitic languages being spoken in North Africa or in the Horn of Africa at this time. as the Akkadian Empire expanded through the Ancient Middle East. The Eblaites begin to appear in the historical record, as well. Their language is closely related to Akkadian and also used cuneiform as its writing system. Akkadian continued to appear in writing until the 1st century AD and cuneiform continued to be used about a century longer, though the still extant Assyrians still use some Akkadian grammatical features and words

West Semitic languages begin to appear in the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet that appeared around 1500 BCE, though there appears to be earlier uses of the alphabet. With Akkadian being used in the lingua franca in the area, most of the writing that remains is in Akkadian, so writing in other languages is much more sparse than those in Akkadian, but does become more available as the 2nd millennium BCE continues. There also appears to be some snobbery among those who speak Akkadian and had a higher level of technology against the Amorites, who they called the Martu with mentions in Akkadian saying 'he MAR.TU who know no grain… The MAR.TU who know no house nor town, the boors of the mountains… The MAR.TU who digs up truffles… who does not bend his knees (to cultivate the land), who eats raw meat, who has no house during his lifetime, who is not buried after death.' This difference in technology, however, has its origin with the Akkadian speaking peoples of the Old Assyrian Empire preventing those in northern Mesopotamia from participating in the activities they complain they don't do.

By Iry-Hor - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34922151

A group of Canaanite-speaking peoples appear to have entered Egypt. They came to be known as the Hyksos by the Egyptians. They conquered Lower Egypt and became the 15th Dynasty, which ruled from approximately 1650-1550 BCE and were displaced by the Kush from Upper Egypt. They introduced technology, which included the war chariot, and intensive trade with the Canaanites. They also were recorded as having ransacked Egyptian temples and the pyramids for treasures.

The fall of the first Babylonian Empire in 1595 BCE allowed for about 300 years of other languages to develop, especially in the Levant and Canaan. Some of the people groups that developed their own language in the 14th century BCE, which were closely related to Ugaritic, a West Semitic language, included the Phoenicians, Moabites, Ammonites, and Israelites. Through the 13th to the 11th centuries BCE, multiple small states arose, including the Edomites, Hebrews (Israelites/Judeans/Samaritans), and Amalekites. These peoples spoke languages that were closely related to each other. The Philistines, who appeared in the 12th century BCE, appear to have been one of the Sea Peoples. There is little evidence of their language, but based on the pottery style they left behind, which was very similar to Mycenaen Greek pottery, their language was probably related to Indo-European rather than Proto-Sianitic.

[longlistshort]

Matisse's Jazz series at Hammer Museum

Matisse's Jazz prints at Palm Springs Art Museum with work by Ellsworth Kelly

Both Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and Palm Springs Art Museum are showing prints from Henri Matisse’s Jazz. It’s interesting to see the same work but in two different contexts based on the curation.

At Hammer Museum they are part of the group exhibition Sum of the Parts: Serial Imagery in Printmaking, 1500 to Now, on view until 11/24/24.

From the museum-

Printmaking’s capacity for serial imagery was recognized during the Renaissance in Europe and has continued to be explored by artists across centuries and geographies to creative, oftentimes experimental ends. Print publishers had a hand in issuing series, which could be conceived complete from the start, expanded from shorter sets, or even formed from existing bodies of related works. Diverse organizing principles have shaped the serial format, including pictorial narratives, iconographic groupings, formal innovations, thematic variations, and sequences measuring time and marking place, as well as structural, modular, and conceptual progressions. Importantly, the creative act itself is an open-ended serial pursuit, with each gesture, idea, and decision interacting with or informing the next.

While we can appreciate an individual print extracted from a series as a work in its own right, our visual perceptions, intellectual interpretations, and emotional responses shift when we view multiple images collectively: the whole becomes greater-or other-than the sum of its parts. New meanings surface as commonalities, patterns, or differences emerge. Selected from the collection of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, this exhibition presents prints conceived as sets or series and further considers artists’ informal serial procedures and approaches to printmaking across five centuries.

At Palm Springs Art Museum they are part of Art Foundations, which places different works together in from their collection into groups organized in different themes. Matisse is paired with Ellsworth Kelly in a section devoted to “artmaking through the angle of a given concept, with each wall dedicated to a single concept: pure color, automatic painting, text as a motif, or ready-made.”

From the museum about the exhibition-

Art Foundations explores how various art forms have been produced throughout the last two centuries. It presents a succession of artwork groupings across multiple media and disciplines, bringing together works not usually shown in the same space. Meant to be visited clockwise, each gallery provides a different angle on what we consider art, with each grouping questioning how art is made, why, where, and by whom.

This presentation shifts the lens through which we look at art, allowing us to explore gallery after gallery, the conception and the material of artmaking, and the spaces where it is created. Art Foundations brings together academically trained and untrained artists as well as visual arts, architecture, design, and glass, displaying the breadth and interconnectedness of the museum's collection.

For more on Matisse's Jazz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides detailed information on its website.

[fabiansteinhauer]

Jan Micker

1.

Jan Micker malt die Stadt, die schon dann ein Plan oder eine Karte ist, bevor sie gezeichnet oder gemalt wird, nicht erst dann, wenn sie auf Papier oder Tuch oder Wand oder Tafel erscheint. Das Bild zeigt Amsterdam, es entsteht 1652, seien wir unter Vorbehalt großzügig: 'vorher sah Amsterdam auch so aus'. Zumindest hätte man es vor der Entstehung dieses Bildes auch so schildern können, weil sowohl im Medium der Stadt diese Stadt schon vorlag, weil im Medium von Stadtansicht und Bild seit Jacobo de Barberis Ansicht der Stadt Venedig so ein Bild im Prinzip bekannt ist und weil schließlich der Inhalt eines Mediums miedienwissenschaftlich betrachtet immer ein anderes Medium ist.

Schon die Stadt selbst ist ein Plan, sie ist auch eine Institution, die instituiert.Sie lehrt oder sie lässt erfahren. Die Stadt lässt Zeit mehr oder weniger anspruchsvoll durchhalten, sie lässt (er-)warten. Sie ist eingerichtet und ausgerichtet, sie richtet ein und aus. Städte haben Protokolle, mehr noch: man kann sie selbst ein Protokoll nennen. Angel Rama spricht von der Stadt als einer lettered city, aber man kann die Stadt auch selbst als Letter bezeichnen. Die Stadt teilt ihre Orientierung mit und so hat man den Orientierungsinn schon, wenn man nur mit beiden Füßen, sogar nur mit einem Fuß in der Stadt steht. Man braucht keinen weiteren Plan, um zu wissen, wie man in der Stadt von A nach B kommt, weil die Stadt selbst schon so ein Plan und damit auch ein Protokoll ist, ab dem Augenblick, indem man die Stadt kennt und die Stadt wahrnehmen kann.

2.

Wo eine Stadt ist, da ist Raum in Ort übersetzt, da ist der Raum adressiert und da adressiert der Raum, da wird der Raum auch eng und die Wege rufen nach Beleuchtung. Wo eine Stadt ist, da ist und wird gesendet. Wo eine Stadt ist, ist Zeit in Geschichte übersetzt, da ist die Zeit bemessen, oft sogar dringlich und knapp.

Städte haben Stil und Atmosphäre, jede eine(n) anderen. Das haben sie, obwohl beides in der Stadt sich abwechselt, fußläufig wird beides schon anders, auch wenn es regnet und man nicht gerne viele Schritte geht. Dass sie Stil und Atmosphäre haben ist ein Ausläufer der Tatsache, dass Städte Plan und Protokoll sind. Man bemerkt Stil spätestens dann, wenn man mimetisch bedrängt wird, wenn Plan und Prokoll ihre Muster zum Mitmachen anbieten. Auch früher, wenn man nur mimetisch angeregt wird und die Stadt einen beflügelt, indem sie einen mitmachen wollen macht, dann bemerkt man Stil.

O som ao redor: als Klang, Geräusche oder Resonanzwellen der Nachbarschaft begreift Kleber Mendonça Filho ( der die Fragestellungen von Leuten wie Micker und de Barbari zeitgenössisch umsetzt, mit Mitteln des Kinos beantwortet und damit ein herausragender Praktiker der Übersetzung von Raum und Ort und Zeit in Geschichte geworden ist), die Stadt und was an ihr Plan und Protokoll ist. So eine Stadt kann man schon im Singular Stätte nennen. Sein Kino geht von der Stadt aus, davon, dass es sie effektiv gibt. Selbst wenn er auf's Land geht um einen Film zum Sertão zu drehen, nimmt er die Gegend als eine Stätte, an dem Raum zu Ort und Zeit zu Geschichte wird - da ist ist dann das, was auch Städte ausmachen. Sie bilden Referenzen aus. Sertão würde bei ihm dann Bacurau, klein aber oho.

2.

Jan Micker malt die Stadt aus der Vogelperspektive, wie man das aus der berühmten Graphik Jacobo de Barbaris von der Stadt Venedig kennt (diese Graphik entsteht um 1500). Micker malt aber die Schatten der Wolken mit. Den Plan, der eine Stadt ist, den begreift Micker auch als meteorologisches Phänomen. Einen Plan, der die Stadt ist, den kann man auch, wie das Protokoll, als Tracht und als Trachten der Stadt verstehen. Gründliche Linien ziehen. Micker malt hier keine Metaphysik der Sitten, er malt verschiedene physische Verhältnisse, malt eine Geographie, zeichnet Geometrie ein, liefert so noch eine Beitrag zur Meteorologie der Sitten. Weil der Begriff der Sitte eng mit der Vorstellung von Üblichkeit,Gewöhnung, Einbürgerung und Beständigkeit assoziiert wird, spricht man vielleicht besser, zumindest verfremdender und damit überraschender, aufmerksamer bis nervöser von einer Meteorologie der Trachten und des Trachtens.

[fatehbaz]

Had to organize some more of my notes.

Some recently published books on inter/transnationalism (especially Black) in the Americas (focus on disability/health and knowledge/art appropriation).

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Art, music, knowledge (and commodification):

Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power (Larisa Kingston Mann, 2022)

West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals: History, Memory, and Transnationalism (Raphael Chijikoe Njoku, 2020)

At Home in Our Sounds: Music, Race, and Cultural Politics in Interwar Paris (Rachel Anne Gillett, 2021)

La Raza Cosmetica: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Natasha Varner, 2020)

Maps of Sorrow: Migration and Music in the Construction of Precolonial AfroAsia (Sumangala Damodaran and Ari Sitas, 2023)

Queer African Cinemas (Lindsey Green-Simms, 2022)

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries (K.E. Goldschmitt, 2020)

The Geographies of African American Short Fiction (Kenton Rambsy, 2022)

Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa: Medical Encounters, 1500-1850 (Kalle Kananjoa, 2021)

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General internationalism:

Transatlantic Radicalism: Socialist and Anarchist Exchanges in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Edited by Jacob and Kebler, University of Liverpool Press, 2021)

Voices of the Race: Black Newspapers in Latin America, 1870-1960 (Edited by Paulina L. Alberto, et al., 2022)

The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 (Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, 2010)

In a Sea of Empires: Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean (Vanessa Mongey, 2020)

Anarchists of the Caribbean: Countercultural Politics and Transnational Networks in the Age of US Expansion (Kirwin R. Shaffer, Cambridge University Press, 2020)

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Caribbean:

Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean (Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, 2020)

The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras (Chirstopher A. Loperena, 2022.)

Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century (Kaysha Corinealdi, 2022)

LGBTQ Politics in Nicaragua: Revolution, Dictatorship, and Social Movements (Karen Kampwirth, 2022)

Chocolate Surrealism: Music, Movement, Memory and History in the Circum-Caribbean (Njoroje M. Njoroje, 2016)

Fugitive Movements: Commemorating the Denmark Vesey Affair and Black Radical Antislavery in the Atlantic World (Edited by James O'Neill Spady, 2022)

The Creole Archipelago: Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean (Tessa Murphy, 2021)

Freedom's Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific (Yesenia Barragan, 2021)

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United States:

Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940 (Julio Capo Jr., 2017)

The Entangled Labor Histories of Brazil and the United States (Edited by Teizeira da Silva, et al., 2023)

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (Da'Shaun L. Harrison, 2021)

Confederate Exodus: Social and Environmental Forces in the Migration of U.S. Southerners to Brazil (Alan Marcus, 2021)

Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands (Paul Barba, 2021)

Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean (Kirwin R. Shaffer, 2021)

Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Kathryn Olivarius, 2022)

West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (Kevin Waite, 2021)

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More:

Transimperial Anxieties: The Making and Unmaking of Arab Ottomans in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1850-1940 (Jose D. Najar, 2023)

South-South Solidarity and the Latin American Left (Jessica Stites Mor, 2022)

Reimagining the Gran Chaco: Identities, Politics, and the Environment in South America (Edited by Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova, Mercedes Biocca, 2021)

Modernity in Black and White: Art and Image, Race and Identity in Brazil, 1890-1945 (Rafael Cardoso, 2020)

Region Out of Place: The Brazilian Northeast and the World, 1924-1968 (Courtney Campbell, 2022)

Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia (Anadelia Romo, 2022)

Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic (Erika Denise Edwards, 2020)

Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America (Edited by Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raul Necochea Lopez, 2020)