Culture & History Digital Journal

Political strategies and artistic representations: Mary of Hungary and the construction of the post-mortem image of Louis II Jagellon

Noelia García Pérez — 2023-05-11

This study analyzes how Mary of Hungary created and promoted the post-mortem image of Louis II to benefit the imperial policy of the Habsburg dynasty. To do so, reasons that led the queen of Hungary to draw up a series of representation strategies to vindicate her position as a pious widow, proclaim her legal rights over the territories of Hungary and Bohemia, and strengthen her relationship with the Hungarian monarchy will be examined. These artistic initiatives allowed her to maintain an active role in the European diplomatic scene, helping her reinforce her legitimacy as Governor of the Netherlands and to consolidate the authority of Ferdinand I against János Szapolyai.

Reporting for a King: Valois France and Europe through the eyes of ambassador Dantas (1557-1568)

Nuno Vila-Santa — 2023-05-11

During his embassy to France between 1557 and 1568, João Pereira Dantas produced valuable reports on French events that have remained almost unnoticed. The purpose of this article is to present the major themes of Dantas’s epistolary and to invite experts on the history of France and Europe to make greater use of their contents. Additionally, this paper demonstrates the key role played by Dantas at the Valois court, by documenting his relations with Queen Catherine de Medici and King Charles IX. The study of Dantas’s epistolary, also reveals his use of France as a centre for Portuguese networks of European information. Finally, through a careful study of Dantas’s actions and a comparison to his predecessors in the French embassy, the importance of the French connection for Portugal - and, crucially, vice-versa - is made in an under-studied period of French-Portuguese relations deeply influenced by the French civil wars.

Álvaro da Costa’s journey to Persia and Turkey (1611), the ruins of Babylon, and the riddles of globalization

Saúl Martínez Bermejo — 2023-05-11

This article analyzes Álvaro da Costa’s return trip from the Estado da Índia to Lisbon in 1611. The constraints of Costa’s travel allow us to discuss some common assumptions about the character and spirit of early modern travelers and to illustrate some of the limits of travelers’ observations and the peculiar modes of knowledge they displayed. Reading through the many misunderstandings and apparent mistakes that Costa introduced in his Tratado da viagem, the article also explores the complex dynamics of “discovery” and argues that early modern globalization must be understood as a manyfold process. Individuals not only disposed of different information, but they also used very diverse frameworks to interpret and make sense of such information. The article contrasts Costa’s use of older but resilient interpretative frameworks with more modern and more accurate interpretations and shows that very different perceptions about world connections coexisted during the early modern age. In particular, the article focuses on how Costa actively combined his observations of the ruins of Babylon and other cities he found on his route with previous paradigms of universal history, such as biblical theories on the historical succession of empires.

The Roman Past of three Spanish Cities as the Impetus behind the Rise of Archaeological Tourism

Trinidad Tortosa — 2023-05-11

The development of archaeology as a scientific discipline and its legislative regulation from the nineteenth century onwards have served as the framework for a series of interventions in the field of heritage. The recovery of monuments and testimonies of the past helped society to rediscover its roots, represented in certain iconic elements which in turn became symbols of identity. At the same time, the phenomenon of tourism emerged as a leisure activity associated, above all, with the enjoyment of the leisure time of the new bourgeoisie. The union of these two poles of interest, heritage and tourism, is therefore due to a demand from the society in which these activities take place. The study of the development of this phenomenon in Spain leads us to investigate three different cases: Carmona, Mérida and Tarragona, whose common link is the Hispano-Roman past. This paper analyses the confluences and particularities of these three paradigmatic enclaves in Hispanic archaeology, which are also exponents-and catalysts-of the birth and development of archaeological tourism.

The Chinese Civilizational “Threat” and White Supremacy Construction in Hawaii before Annexation

Tao Zhang — 2023-05-11

Though Americans had been considering annexing Hawaii since as early as 1851, Hawaii’s conglomerate racial composition was always a hindrance. Obviously aware of Americans’ apprehension, Hawaiian whites, or haoles, took much care to construct themselves as the indisputably dominant race in the islands. One means to that end was inventing and heroically confronting a civilizational threat from the Chinese, the biggest group of foreigners in Hawaii from the 1876 reciprocity treaty to the mid-1890s. In so doing, haoles managed to show that whites could and did overcome formidable obstacles to achieve a flourishing of their race and institutions in the island nation. This maneuver debunked anti-annexation Americans’ logic and concurred with American annexationists’ emphasis on Hawaii’s whiteness and its precariousness in the final stage of annexation debates. It was therefore one part of the Hawaii-U.S. cross-border effort at incorporating the former into the latter.

Modernisation during Franco’s regime: urban planning, traffic, and social discontent in Madrid (1957-1973)

Marcos Prados Martín — 2023-05-11

This paper focuses on the demolition of boulevards and the construction of flyovers in Madrid. These two engineering works are part of a concept of modernization based on private transport that was promoted during the 1960’s which resulted in a serious urban crisis. The concept of the “urban” is seen as a global phenomenon embedded in wider historical processes that went beyond the Spanish national background: this transformation was a result of the solutions given by traffic engineering and urban planning. These two branches of international knowledge shared a same tendency to prioritize driver’s interests at the expense of pedestrians, who were pushed out of the streets. Moreover, the reliance on private transport failed to organize communications between the center and the outskirts of Madrid, regarded as a metropolitan area. The local authorities used propaganda to legitimize its idea of modernization. However, a wave of discomfort spread across the citizens and was channeled into open criticism of the flyovers. This unease can be linked to a general rejection of the practical applications of post-World War II urban planning.

Anthropology and image in colonial contexts: the scientific expedition to Spanish territories in the Gulf of Guinea (1948)

Luis Calvo Calvo — 2023-05-11

Spanish Guinea, as the largest Spanish colonial territory in sub-Saharan Africa, was the object of scientific attention by several official Spanish institutions such as the Institute of African Studies (IDEA) and the Ethnological and Colonial Museum of Barcelona (MECB). Both were interested in describing and documenting the colony’s ways of life and sponsored the 1948 Expedition to Spanish Guinea that inaugurated other MECB study trips during the 1950s. Images, in various formats (drawing, photography, etc.), played a significant role in these investigations, becoming a major instrument to describe the colony’s past and present. In this way, it not only contributed to consolidating the Spanish colonial vision and actions but also helped to confirm, scientifically, the subordination of the indigenous populations to the metropolitan colonial power. This article presents the details of the 1948 Expedition as well as the visual record generated. Finally, some reflections are made on the role of images in this context.

CSIC scientists and scholars in Africa: visual, colonial, and scientific action

José María López Sánchez — 2023-05-11

This article deals with the role played by science, scientific institutions, and the administrative apparatus of Francoism in the construction of a particular version of Africanism. The Institute of African Studies, part of CSIC, was created by the Prime Minister through the General Secretary of Morocco and the Colonies. Together with them, a large group of Africanist (journalists, army officers, scholars) from the Institute of Political Studies manoeuvred in the 1940s to create a colonial institute from which to deploy scientific action in Africa. This was interpreted as a mission not only to justify their irredentist positions about Africa but also to reinforce the legitimacy of the dictatorial regime.

Embodying the colonial memory. White colonists and “implicated subjects” in photographs from Equatorial Guinea

Inés Plasencia Camps — 2023-05-11

Except for explicitly colonial approaches, academic research on the visual culture of former colonies tends to adopt an allegedly critical perspective towards colonial history, as a way to participate in the construction of a conscious memory that helps to transform contemporary relationships. However, for a while, the hypervisibility of colonised peoples has been compared to the lack of visibility of white colonisers in academic studies. In line with theories of cultural memory, this study examines images as critical cultural artefacts to argue that racial deidentification in images of colonial Equatorial Guinea takes the focus away from the current society of the former metropolis, and thus from its memory and its colonial responsibility. I present a theoretical approach to photographs of white people ranging from the early 20^th century to family images during the final years of colonial domination (1959-1968). These chiefly depict everyday scenes whose protagonists are apparently oblivious to the colonial context, and in which nothing seems to happen, in the same way, that their descendants, understood collectively, are enabled to ignore the colonial past and its continuities.

Africanist anthropology during Francoism: the Bernardino de Sahagún Institute, 1939-1951

Cristina Chicharro Manzanares — 2023-05-11

With the creation of the “Bernardino de Sahagún” Institute, anthropology was put at the service of the national-Catholic values that the Francoist regime imposed on all levels of public life in the immediate aftermath of the war. Anthropological research focused on two main issues: scientific-medical issues - anthropobiology - and cultural issues - ethnology. The colonial discourse and the renewed interest in Africanist studies resulted in funding being made available for researchers to visit the African colonies under Spanish jurisdiction to carry out anthropobiological and ethnological studies.

The Canary Museum: from transnational trade of human remains to the visual representations of race (1879-1900)

Álvaro Girón Sierra — 2023-05-11

“El Museo Canario” (Canary Museum) was founded in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1879. It holds an impressive collection of the pre-Hispanic past of the Canaries. El Museo Canario built an important transnational network of exchange. This was facilitated by the widespread interest in the human remains of the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the Canaries. His founder Gregorio Chil, and the Museum Board, were interested in building a regional race to represent the trans-historical essence of the archipelago’s population. This was scientifically grounded on different racial classification projects with colonial connotations. Speculation on the possible links between the archipelago’s extinct race, the Amazigh (Berbers), and hypothetical primitive European populations became popular. These debates had a material side: racial similarities and differences were exhibited, visualized, illustrated, and thus demonstrated. Lithographs of human remains circulated in Europe and beyond. These supposedly objective representations of race were published in authoritative books and scientific articles. In addition, individuals were drawn and photographed, often with the idea of showing the continuity between the aboriginal population and the current inhabitants of the archipelago. Visual representations of the dead (skulls, mummies) entered a sort of dialectic relationship with representations of the living.

Constructions of the gaucho as vagrant and idle and as a born criminal: Portraits of Juan Moreira (Argentina, 19th and 20th centuries)

Marisa A. Miranda — 2023-05-11

This article examines aspects of the discourse of power by which the figure of the Argentine gaucho was labeled as a “vagrant and idle” subject, based on the study of the archetypical Juan Moreira. In particular, the article explores analyses carried out decades after his death, influenced by the theories of Cesare Lombroso and Nicola Pende. Born in 1829 and killed at the hands of the police in 1874, Moreira became an emblematic personality of local folklore. Although his life has been the subject of extensive literary analysis, largely focused on the publication of Eduardo Gutiérrez’s novelistic portrayal, there has not been as much focus on the attempt to validate scientifically his stigmatization using the theories of these Italian thinkers. This text, therefore, explores readings of Juan Moreira carried out during the 20^th century by two doctors, José Ingenieros and Nerio Rojas. In methodological terms, triangulation techniques were used, taking as vertices the legislation in place at that time, the interpretations of his life made through his transformation into a literary and film character, and finally, the aforementioned psychodiagnostic evaluations based on the integration of hypothetical environmental and innate characteristics.

Hermann Klaatsch and his photographic representations of Australian aborigines during his scientific trip through Australia (1904-1907)

Francisco Pelayo — 2023-05-11

The German anatomist and palaeontologist Hermann Klaatsch arrived in Australia to study the aborigines in March 1904. The aim of his trip was to continue his research on the phylogenetic history of humanity and test his colleague at the University of Heidelberg Otto Schoetensack’s hypothesis that Australia was the cradle of humankind. He travelled the country’s coastline without interruption, except for a trip of a few months to Java, until May 1906. During his trip, which also included Tasmania, Klaatsch studied the aborigines from an anthropological, craniological, and material culture perspective, taking notes, making drawings, taking photographs of the natives, and compiling ethnographic collections which were dispatched to several German museums. Klaatsch made nearly 400 photographs of Australian natives and took plaster casts of the foot of an individual, owing to its atavistic anatomy. This latter generated a misunderstanding in a local newspaper that soon reached the international media, about the alleged discovery of the “missing link” in Australia. On his return from Australia in April 1907, Klaatsch was appointed extraordinary professor in anatomy, anthropology and ethnography, and curator of collections at the anatomical institute and the ethnological museum at the University of Breslau (Wroclaw, Polonia).

Introduction. Science and Visual Colonialism

Luis Calvo — 2023-05-11