Papers by Guido Abbattista
Forthcoming February 2024
Law and History Review
essential to challenging the inegalitarian and repressive components of those orders, and it is a... more essential to challenging the inegalitarian and repressive components of those orders, and it is a project to which The King's Peace makes a vital contribution.
Ego, Jan 24, 2011
This article reconstructs the expansion of Europe overseas and the multiple forms of encounters b... more This article reconstructs the expansion of Europe overseas and the multiple forms of encounters between European navigators, explorers, conquerors, colonizers, merchants and missionaries and 'other' peoples and cultures over the course of four centuries. There has always been a double aspect to such encounters. At an immediate and practical level, conquest, colonization and trade led to modes of domination or coexistence and multi-faceted transcultural relationships. In Europe, such encounters with 'otherness' led to attempts to explain and interpret the origins and nature of racial and cultural (linguistic, religious and social) diversity. At the same time, observation of alien societies, cultures and religious practices broadened the debate on human social forms, leading to a critical reappraisal of European Christian civilization.
La comunicazione scientifica è minacciata dai prezzi crescenti di monografie e abbonamenti in ser... more La comunicazione scientifica è minacciata dai prezzi crescenti di monografie e abbonamenti in serie. Un sempre maggiore divario informativo ostacola la crescita professionale, specialmente nelle sue fasi iniziali. Dall’altro lato però la tecnologia digitale semplifica e rende più accessibili i risultati della ricerca scientifica. Come e perché l'Open Access può rappresentare una valida alternativa o almeno un’integrazione alla distribuzione commerciale dei contenuti scientifici? Un gruppo di esperti internazionali discute sulla possibilità che l'Open Access sia realmente la chiave per la diffusione sostenibile del sapere scientifico, in tempi in cui i budget alla ricerca accademica sono sempre più ridotti.Scientific communication is increasingly threatened by the rising prices of books and journals’ subscriptions; while a rising information gap hinders professional growth, especially in its early stages, on the other hand digital technology makes the results of scientific re...
ISSH2019-INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INNOVATIONS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES, 2019
The aim of this presentation is to outline GSR, an innovative project straddling global history, ... more The aim of this presentation is to outline GSR, an innovative project straddling global history, digital history and cartography, and digital data visualization. Based on the premise that the history of navigation can provide effective evidence of modern globalization processes, GSR aims to apply ground-breaking JT technologies in order to answer the question: how can we represent the historical evolution over time of different types of early-modern and modern European transoceanic sea voyages on a synoptic and comparative scale? We plan to achieve this through the most advanced online IT representation techniques and drawing inspiration from important digital history projects of a similar kind
L'articolo analizza e discute le tesi di J\ufcrgen Osterhammel circa l'evoluzione dell... more L'articolo analizza e discute le tesi di J\ufcrgen Osterhammel circa l'evoluzione dell'immagine dell'Asia nella cultura europea tra Settecento e Ottocento, prendendo le mosse dal volume Unfabling the East ed evidenziando quali aspetti siano pienamente accettabili e quali necessiterebbero di sfumature e integrazion
This essays explores and discusses the recent historiography on the evolution of the British Stat... more This essays explores and discusses the recent historiography on the evolution of the British State during the eighteenth century. It underlines how historiography tends to highlight at the same time the exceptionality of the British case and its elements of affinity with the continental evolution, trying to cope with the fact that Great Britain avoided major social and political unrests at the turn of the eighteenth century. The essay ends by suggesting that the major crisis of the British State was represented by the American crisis and the end of the "old colonial system" or "First British Empire"
A discussion of recent contributions on the relationship Europe-China at the end of the 18th cent... more A discussion of recent contributions on the relationship Europe-China at the end of the 18th century until the First Opium Wa
Preface – Introduction – I. Eighteenth-Century Discourses on Chinese Law and Justice – I.1. Europ... more Preface – Introduction – I. Eighteenth-Century Discourses on Chinese Law and Justice – I.1. European Views on China in the Early Modern Period – I.2. Du Halde on Chinese Justice – I.3. Views on Chinese Law and Justice after Du Halde: Admirers and Detractors – I.4. British Views on Chinese Institutions from William Temple to Adam Smith – I.5. Contributions and Opinions in the Last Thirty Years of the Eighteenth Century – II. An End-of-the-Century Turning Point – II.1. Diplomatic Evidence: Lord Macartney, George Leonard Staunton, John Barrow – II.2. French Perspectives from the Early Nineteenth Century – II.3. Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes – II.4. Popular Images of Chinese Penal Justice – III. George Thomas Staunton and the Qing Code – IV. English Reactions to the Qing Code – V. The Qing Code in Europe and the Italian and French Editions
The article explores the problem of the comparative nature of English society, institutions and p... more The article explores the problem of the comparative nature of English society, institutions and politics with respect to continental Europe during the "long eighteenth century". It discusses the most relevant recent historiography on the subject with special reference to the question of a "British exceptionalism". It propounds an interpretation of the characters and dynamic of the political and institutional evolution of Great Britain between late eighteenth and early nineteenth century from which it appears in which particular sense it is possible to talk of an "old regime society" and of its "crisis" in Britain with respect to the rest of Europe, particularly in its continental areas
The Histoire des Deux Indes is a crucial observatory for understanding how late French Enlightenm... more The Histoire des Deux Indes is a crucial observatory for understanding how late French Enlightenment dealt with China in terms not anymore of a political and social myth, but as a problem. Diderot's contributions are partiocularly relevanto to clarify in which sense China was a problem in a global history in the eyes of the leading French Enlightenment thinkers
Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2021
ABSTRACT Between the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, as a consequence of the increasing ... more ABSTRACT Between the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, as a consequence of the increasing intercourse between China and the West, private collections of Chinese arts and crafts by European residents in China are growing. Diplomats, officials, merchants take these often-impressive collections back home to embellish residences with prestigious and attractive decoration. In the 1820s and 1830s such collections are transformed by entrepreneurs into public exhibitions or itinerant museums of Chinese material culture, for educational and commercial purpose. After introducing English Dutch and American examples, the article focuses on the case of Italian globetrotter businessman Onorato Martucci. On his return to Rome after a multi-year residence in China, he brings with him a vast assortment of Chinese objects and set up a public exhibition to promote knowledge of the Chinese world and sell the collection. The article also reconstructs Martucci’s writings as a passionate popularizer of the reality of the Chinese empire.
Uploads
Papers by Guido Abbattista
function, but also in relation to their older historical antecedents and in the variety
historical antecedents and in the variety of declinations that, well beyond the restrictive notion of the restrictive notion of 'human zoos', they took on in the world of entertainment, in overseas missionary missionary activities overseas and in the world of medical and anthropological research.
The interest aroused by the book has made it necessary a second edition, revised and enlarged, with a preface by Sandra Puccini.
The book is currently being translated by the prestigious English publisher Routledge.
Staunton’s translation and the later versions in other European languages can no longer be considered reliable tools for understanding Chinese imperial law, as demonstrated by specialized translation studies. All these translations nevertheless belong to a crucial phase of Western discourse on China’s institutions, law and civilization, which is the main reason for the present reprint and the accompanying critical essays. This volume is intended to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue and to contribute to a better understanding of institutions and the law as central to the discourse on China in comparative law and in the history of ideas and cultural history. It tries to achieve this by assuming both a European and a Chinese perspective and moving from eighteenth-century perceptions and representations to the reform initiatives and theoretical discussions that continue to this day. The final result is hopefully an enhanced awareness of the extremely important role that Sino-Western encounters and comparisons have played, not only at a cultural level in global history over several centuries, but also in today’s global politics and economics in which we are coping daily with concrete, pressing issues of reciprocal understanding in our efforts to achieve an enduringly peaceful and fruitful coexistence.
Contetnts:
- Guido Abbattista, Chinese Law and Justice: George Thomas Staunton
(1781‑1859) and the European Discourses on China in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Li Xiuqing, Nineteenth-Century Western Perspectives on Chinese Justice: An Analysis of The Chinese Repository (1832-1851) and The China Review (1872-1901)
- Zhang Lihong and Dong Neng, The Great Qing Code in Comparative
and Historical Perspective
- Marina Timoteo, Of Old and New Codes: Chinese Law in the Mirror
of Western Laws
- Giulia Iannuzzi, The Cruel Imagination: Oriental Tortures from a Future
Past in Albert Robida’s Illustrations for La Guerre infernale (1908)
The following two sections will explain the functioning of expos as "time-machines," putting forward a temporal perspective and analytical dimension that can contribute to the advancement and teaching of World History in an innovative way, also beyond the specific study and teaching object of world expos and fairs – which nonetheless remain among the most significant and fascinating phenomena of historical and historiographical globalization.
As the first part of this essay will argue, nineteenth and early-twentieth century expos and fairs visually represented the human ways of living, activities, products and achievements diversities in the historical past and future, hence presenting them in a temporal dimension. Elements of this temporal representation included the effort to reproduce ancient Greek or Roman temples and monuments, Oriental palaces, decorative details and typical settings such as harems and cafés, and, most of all, medieval streets, quarters, castles and whole villages, example not just of the pursuit of the picturesque, but of the intention to make possible the visual experience of temporality and a material, emotional and empathetic understanding of history.
Also the living ethno-expositions, through the physical presence of alien humans, put on stage historical temporality, offering to the gaze of Western observers the conflation of present savage societies and primitive or ancient societies, seen as the progenitors of contemporary societies, conveying the idea of a temporal gap – whether bridgeable or unbridgeable, depended on theories on the origins, characters and abilities of human varieties or 'races' – between a more or less primitive past and a present embodying progress and modernity: the provisional arrival point of a relentless process culminating in the scientific and technological wonders visible in other sections of the expositions. Therefore, living ethno-exhibitions cannot be fully understood without consider them as an essential part of the mechanisms, apparatuses, and discursive-performative structures that have transformed, and to a certain degree still continue to transform at the present day, the great expositions into powerful time-machines.
As the second part of this essay will further suggest, the exposition can be deciphered, in this respect, as a time machine as well as a teaching device, with significant parallels with the development of modern museums in the hierarchical organization of displays according to evolutionary paradigms, and their educational function.
With 1889's Eiffel Tower, Alva Edison's pavilion of electric light, and the Hall of Machines, the technological sublime and the thematization of the future became central features of expositions: the time machine began to be set on a date yet to come, offering the visitor "an early encounter with tomorrow." Exhibitions increasingly worked as science-fictional devices. Expos, through their richness as material objects and communicative circuits – exploiting specific treatments of space, visual representations and stagings, and the cinematic dimension of theatrical performances and the movement of viewers – embodied a sense of wonder and produced in spectators' mechanisms of cognitive estrangement which prepared the ground for the emergence of science fiction as a codified and recognizable genre.
Seminar de Historia Global Prof. Dr. Guido Abbattista (Università degli Studi di Trieste https://www.units.it/) Rotte marittime globali. Un geodatabase storico della navigazione globale (1500-1900) martes 1 de junio 2012 h 10 am -11:30 am Lima time, 5 p. m. CET
Link meet.google.com/yxk-rirj-qre