Early Modern City

Published in: „Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej”, 68 (2020), 1, s. 51–68, http://doi.org/10.23858/KHKM68.2020.1.004

The topic of the article is the execution of testaments in three small towns of Greater Poland, Dolsk, Krzywiń and i Książ, in the second half of the 16th c. and the first half of the 17th c. On the basis of surviving testaments and selected records from municipal books, the author dis-cusses various actions undertaken in conformity with the codified and common law to execute last  wills.
Most  of  the  data  were  drawn  from  the  sources  from  Dolsk,  which  had  been  most  thoroughly explored by the author.
The first part of the article characterizes the persons named as executors by the testators. Those were usually people holding posts in the municipal government. There were often two executors,  sometimes  also  named  as  the  guardians  of  the  testator’s  widow  and  under-age  children.
In most cases, municipal books registered the documents that confirmed the execution of  particular  testamentary  dispositions,  e.g.  transferring  money  to  a  Church  institution,  or  movable or immovable property to particular persons; settling a debt or collecting a sum due. The time between making a testament and recording such a confirmation varied from one day to 21 years; but in most cases dispositions were carried out according to the custom, within one year.
Even though one of the major objectives of testators was to prevent domestic strife, the execution of testaments sometimes involved conflicts, when some people were disappointed by the last will or when the testator had hidden their debts. The article presents several cases of conflicts over reasons which, as can be surmised, were most common at that time. Sometimes the municipal authorities, the town’s owner or his representative annulled the bequests that had lest to such conflicts; such cases usually concerned immovable property.
The sources analysed suggest that the testator’s “life after death”, featuring in the title of the present article, could take an unexpected turn, not necessarily intended when the last will was drawn up. The examples are meant to illustrate the multitude of data available in records on testament execution and to highlight the possibility of more detailed research on selected issues, e.g. on the disposing of inherited property.

This Unit will take you through the tale of this city, which underwent remarkable changes in three centuries. It transformed from a pargana headquarter to the provincial capital of Awadh in 1775. After the British annexation in 1856, it became a major colonial centre. The revolt of 1857 and its aftermath shook the city in many ways and it underwent significant morphological changes to pacify the wrath of the colonial authentics. A major blow to its prestige came with its demotion to a provincial town when Oudh was absorbed in the North West Provinces in 1877. Finally, Lucknow was restored as the capital of the United Provinces in 1920.The region is significant from the perspective of varied changes it underwent in a short span of time.

The emergence of regional states along with their provincial capitals (Murshidabad, Hyderabad, Poona, Lahore and Srirangapatna) in the eighteenth century ushered a new beginning in the political history of India. Though these states were diverse in terms of their orientation and power base, yet they relied on the ‘broad conception of power sharing and a political economy that was geared to greater commercialization and to military contingencies’ (Subramanian, 2010: 21). The power was vested in the ownership of land and the emergence of dominant class in the form of rural and revenue intermediaries, including some commercial groups who invested in revenue farming. Historians have attested to the primacy of mercantile class in the emerging economy of eighteenth century.

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El siglo XV asistió en la Corona de Castilla a un amplio y diversificado fenómeno de creaciones conventuales femeninas promovidas por mujeres que fue muy visible en las ciudades. Se inscribió en las reformas de la Baja Edad Media y coincidió con el debate conocido como “Querella de las Mujeres”. Partiendo de la idea de que hubo un Humanismo femenino, pensado y enunciado por las mujeres en sus propios términos, en estas páginas se buscan las conexiones entre dichos fenómenos, especialmente entre las aportaciones femeninas de reforma religiosa concretadas en las fundaciones de espacios de espiritualidad y la “Querella de las Mujeres”. Para ello, se fundamenta el análisis en una ciudad concreta, Córdoba, y se delimitan cronologías y tipologías religiosas a fin de determinar sus contenidos programáticos. El objetivo último es perfilar algunas de las principales formulaciones y claves explicativas del proyecto humanista de las mujeres.

This article is concerned with the interplay between commerce and manners in early eighteenth-century Paris. It examines how the esteemed ‘cultural capital’ of Paris came to be challenged by the model of contra-cultural economic capital observed in London. Against a study of Brice’s description of Paris which de-emphasises trade outside ventures of national benefit, it highlights the incremental counter-narrative in the commentaries on London by Miege and Muralt. It traces the development of this counter-narrative from Miege’s account of trade and English prosperity to Muralt’s construction of an imitable urban model through study of the individualist English character and the socio-economic freedoms it secured.

Queens’ entries into cities became a focal point for political and ideological discourse in early modern Spain. Construed as some of the monarchy’s greatest public events, they provided numerous occasions for kingship glorification and legitimization, while overlooking its shortcomings and flaws. From a cultural perspective, they allowed for the development of complex iconographic programmes and chaotic decorative ensembles, visually staging gender relationships in the urban environment. This essay offers an overview for this type of pageantry in Spanish 16th century, through remaining literary accounts.

Las entradas de reinas a ciudades fueron un campo primordial de acción política y construcción ideológica durante la Edad Moderna española. Conjugadas como uno de los grandes eventos públicos de la monarquía, proporcionaron a ésta muchas ocasiones de glorificación y justificación a la vez que se soslayaban los puntos más débiles de la autoridad regia. Desde el punto de vista cultural, fueron ámbito para el desarrollo de complejos programas iconográficos y caóticos conjuntos decorativos, a la vez que escenarios en los que las relaciones de género se visualizaban en el entorno urbano. El presente artículo traza una panorámica de este género de fiestas en el siglo XVI español, a través de las relaciones contemporáneas.