This thesis examines the visual representations of elite women, who wielded and were seen to transgress, gendered political roles through their activity in the elite socio-political spheres of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Britain. In analysing the portraits and satirical prints of this select breed of women, this study questions the common bifurcation of gender debates in existing secondary literature, which include, but are not limited to, the porosity of traditionally conceived public and private spheres, contested masculine and feminine identities, and the gendering of morals and vices. The study will explore how predominantly male artists represented these women alongside an examination of how elite women were able to manipulate and choreograph their own portrayal. As such, it will probe how these political women utilised portraiture as a crucial means of self-fashioning; and likewise how their satirical representation was routinely subjugated to the male gaze. In doing so, it will reveal the varieties, vagaries and subtleties of the political power held by women and how this could be iterated, celebrated, or criticised in the visual culture of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Britain. Four case studies form this examination. The first, argues that three women from Rockingham-Whig social networks, Lady Elizabeth Melbourne, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and Hon. Anne Damer, used portraiture as a form of self-fashioning to both celebrate their friendship and declare their burgeoning political agency. Chapter two revisits the 1784 Westminster election, to probe the theme of rivalry in satirical prints representing female canvassers. It argues that the visual vocabulary expressed in such prints pertains to wider cultural debates concerning class and gender that crucially came to a head during this political event. The third chapter introduces the dialogues between portraiture and satirical prints through its examination of the visual media that politicised Scottish Pittite hostess, Jane, Duchess of Gordon. Whilst the duchess used painted portraiture to proclaim her adherence to culturally-inscribed gender roles, satirical prints attacked her for her perceived political access, acquired through her daughters’ marriages and through her close proximity with prominent members of the Pittite government. The thesis concludes with a study of arguably the most political woman in the period of study: Queen Charlotte, consort of George III. This chapter revisits her reputation, arguing that a close examination of visual culture reveals that the queen, long thought to be an uncontroversial figure, became deeply problematic after the king’s bout with ‘madness’. In seeking to connect the visual aspects of women’s political engagement, this thesis expands on previous work in gender, social, cultural, and art histories such as those by Elaine Chalus, Cindy McCreery, Marcia Pointon, and Kate Retford to further our understanding of women’s political activity and eighteenth-century visual culture.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-21T14:49:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jamaira J Pillati.pdf: 1292288 bytes, checksum: f64fced31612faf772d3849c0621f90b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research aimed to analyze the representations of books, libraries and literate in Portugal in the eighteenth century, considering the political and cultural issues raised by Enlightenment ideas as regards the epoch. For this, the speeches produced by two Portuguese literates recognized, Manuel do Cenáculo Villas Boas Annes and António Ribeiro dos Santos were explored. Manuel do Cenáculo, the well known Bishop of Beja, was illustrated active in Pombal reform with regard to the teaching and books policies, working with the Royal Literary Censorship Board and the Literaly Board of reform at the University of Coimbra. António Ribeiro dos Santos took over the organization of the University Library at this same time and later, during the reign of D. Maria I, took over as chief librarian of the Royal National Library. From 1796 to 1798, the Cenáculo and Ribeiro kept private correspondence regarding a donation from first to the Royal National Library, under the administration of the second. The research was conducted with the correspondence established between them, as well as the catalog of the works donated to the Library. Seeking input on the concept of Chartier representations in discourse analysis methodology, in the History of Culture Writing and Reading and theoretical review about the complexity of the Enlightenment understanding of the Portuguese Empire, the research deepened on what meant the books and libraries to the ideal of State credited to literate then, of which we hope to prove, Cenáculo and Ribeiro dos Santos, are good examples. / Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar as representações de livros,bibliotecas e letrados em Portugal no século XVIII, considerando os aspectos políticos e culturais colocados pelo ideário Iluminista no tocante à época. Para isso, foram explorados os discursos produzidos por dois reconhecidos letrados portugueses, Manuel do Cenáculo Villas Boas Annes e António Ribeiro dos Santos. Manuel do Cenáculo, o conhecido Bispo de Beja, foi ilustrado atuante na reforma pombalina no tocante a políticas pedagógicas e dos livros, atuando junto à Real Mesa Censória e à Junta Literária da reforma da Universidade de Coimbra. António Ribeiro dos Santos assumiu a organização da biblioteca da Universidade nesta mesma época e posteriormente, durante o reinado de D. Maria I, assumiu o cargo de bibliotecário-mor da Real Biblioteca Nacional. Nos anos de 1796 a 1798, Cenáculo e Ribeiro mantiveram correspondência particular a respeito de uma doação do primeiro à Real Biblioteca Nacional, já sob a administração do segundo. O trabalho de pesquisa foi realizado por meio das correspondências estabelecidas entre ambos, assim como também do catálogo das obras doadas à Biblioteca. Buscando aporte no conceito de representações de Chartier, na metodologia de análise de discurso, na História da Cultura Escrita e da Leitura e na revisão teórica quanto à complexidade do entendimento de Iluminismo no Império Português, a pesquisa aprofundou-se no que significavam os livros e as bibliotecas para o ideal de Estado creditado aos letrados de então, dos quais, esperamos provar, Cenáculo e Ribeiro dos Santos, são bons exemplos.

No último quartel do século XVIII, com a assinatura do Tratado de Santo Ildefonso, diversas comissões são enviadas para a determinação local das fronteiras entre as possessões das coroas de Portugal e da Espanha na América do Sul, através de métodos astronômicos. Entre os ocupantes do cargo de astrônomo das expedições portuguesas encontram-se Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida (1753-1798), António Pires da Silva Pontes Leme (1750-1805), Bento Sanches Dorta (1739-1795), Francisco de Oliveira Barbosa (1749-?) e José Simões de Carvalho (1752-1805). Naturais do Reino, ou do Brasil, e todos formados no curso matemático da Universidade de Coimbra recém-reformada, esses homens de ciência virão posteriormente, em alguns casos, a ocupar postos importantes na administração do império; serão membros da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, ou, pelo menos, terão proximidade com integrantes das camadas mais poderosas do aparelho de Estado. Ao mesmo tempo, o reformismo ilustrado consolida em Portugal uma imagem das ciências e da instrução como elementos essenciais para um melhor conhecimento dos territórios do império, na expectativa de acréscimo da agricultura, indústria e comércio. À escala europeia, um campo científico com relativo grau de autonomia começa por sua vez a se esboçar, mas ainda são frequentes as reconversões de seus capitais específicos em capitais políticos. Esta dissertação tem como objetivo realizar um estudo prosopográfico daquele grupo de astrônomos demarcadores formados em Coimbra; esperando identificar, pela análise das suas trajetórias, as influências recíprocas entre as vinculações das personagens com os poderes políticos e suas possibilidades de consagração no campo científico / In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, after the signature of the Treaty of San Ildefonso, several delegations were dispatched to locally settle the boundaries between the South American possessions of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns, employing astronomical methods. Among the astronomers officially appointed to the Portuguese expeditions were Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida (1753-1798), António Pires da Silva Pontes Leme (1750-1805), Bento Sanches Dorta (1739-1795), Francisco de Oliveira Barbosa (1749-?) and José Simões de Carvalho (1752-1805). Born in Portugal or in Brazil, and graduated in the new mathematical course of the recently reformed University of Coimbra, these men of science would afterwards move to occupy either important positions in the administration of the empire, or become members of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, or at least gain close proximity to high-ranking agents of the state apparatus. At the same time, Portuguese enlightened reformism was consolidating an image of science and education as essential endeavors for a better understanding of the territories of the empire, in the hope of increasing agriculture, industry and trade. At the European level, a scientific field with a relative degree of autonomy was in turn starting to take shape, but reconversions of specific scientific capitals into political ones were still quite frequent. This dissertation intends to perform a prosopographic study about that group of Coimbra-educated, border-settling astronomers, aiming to identify, by the analysis of their trajectories, the reciprocal influences between the actors\' ties to political power-players and their range of possibilities of establishing a reputation in the scientific field

This dissertation fundamentally re-interprets King Frederick the Great of Prussia as military commander and military thinker, and uses Frederick to cast new perspectives on the warfare of ‘his time’: that is, of the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. It uses the methodology of cultural history, which focuses on the meanings given to human activities, to examine Frederick and the warfare of his time on three levels: cultural, temporal, and intellectual. It shows that Frederick’s warfare (at least in his youth) was culturally French, and reflected the towering influence of King Louis XIV, with Frederick following the flamboyant masculinity of the French baroque court. Frederick was a backward-looking military thinker, who situated his war-making in two temporal envelopes: broadly in the long eighteenth century (1648-1789), which was dominated by the search for order after the chaos of religious and civil wars, but more specifically in the ‘Century of Louis XIV’: the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Frederick embraced French military methods, taking inspiration from generals like Turenne and Luxembourg, employing aggressive French battle tactics, and learning his concept of ‘total war for limited objectives’ from French writers like the Marquis de Feuquières. Frederick also sought to surpass the ‘personal rule’ of the Sun King by commanding his army personally. This work shows the early eighteenth century as a liminal period, which saw the Louisquatorzean paradigm interact with the beginnings of the Enlightenment, developments in scientific methods, and the growth of the administrative capacity of states, all of which would exercise an increasing influence as the century progressed. The combination of older traditions and newer ideas placed enormous pressure on the monarchs of this period, and this was seen in Frederick’s strained relations with his generals. Finally, this work examines how ideas are created. It shows military knowledge in the early eighteenth century as the product of power structures (and often an element within them). Military command was itself an element in the assertion of political power, and Frederick depended on ‘the power of (military) knowledge’ to maintain his authority with his generals. Power, however, is negotiated, and knowledge is typically produced collectively. In the early part of Frederick’s reign, the Prussian war effort was a collective effort by several actors within the Prussian military hierarchy, and ‘Frederick’s military ideas’ were not necessarily his own.

This dissertation explores the correlation between British colonial experiences in Ireland and India c. 1650 - 1800. While the traditional characterisation of Ireland as a settlement colony and India as primarily a mercantile colony would suggest diverse imperial encounters, a comparative analysis of the two shows significant similarities. Temporal and/or geographical distances notwithstanding, the study's thematic approach reveals recurring patterns regarding the relationships between colonisers and the colonised. The six chapters of this dissertation explore different elements of empire, concluding that comparable socio-political and agrarian principles were consistently implemented in both colonies. The first chapter explores history writing as a tool of historical appropriation and indigenous reconfiguration. The second looks at escalating legal responses to colonial violence and colonial jurisdiction's role in defining social norms; the third considers the evolving forms of punishment dealt to 'deviant' colonial subjects. The fourth chapter looks at similar processes of agrarian reconfiguration that revealed broader imperial attitudes towards landownership and the fifth one elaborates on the use of visual representations of empire as propaganda tools to shape public opinion. In the final chapter, selected experiences of the Irish in India illustrate examples of colonial subjects' collaboration in imperial expansion. By adopting a more heuristic and thematic approach to colonial experiences, this study adds to the growing literature that necessarily complicates the distinctions between metropole and periphery. It challenges the use of single points of reference which have routinely privileged the accounts and experiences of Britons in the scholarly analysis of cross-cultural and imperial interactions. Blending early modern and nineteenth-century experiences with regional and global history, the chapters address the history of emotions, law, material culture, economy, and politics to argue that processes of influence and transformation were indicative of a more layered and evolutionary development in response to colonial challenges. Such experimental approaches provide a more sustained understanding of the processes of continuity and change in Britain's imperial evolution.

The eighteenth century in England has long been associated with increasing consumption, trade, luxury, and intellectual exchange. In contrast with the religiously-fueled tumult of the previous century, it is frequently portrayed as a polite, enlightened and even secularising age. This thesis questions this picture. Taking the ambiguous legacies of the so-called "Toleration Act" of 1689 as its starting point, it explores the impact of the complex and uncertain outcomes of the 1689 Act on social relations between Protestant Dissenters and members of the Established Church in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. In connecting broader legislative change with developing social discourses and the practicalities of everyday life, it demonstrates the extent to which the Toleration Act made religious questions integral to the social and cultural development of the period. As a result, it stresses not only that developing modes and norms of sociability were essential to determining the nature of religious coexistence, but also that the changing religious landscape was absolutely integral to the evolution of multiple different social registers in eighteenth-century England. It therefore demonstrates how previously disparate approaches to eighteenth-century England are mutually illuminating, creating an account of the period that is better able to attend to both religious and cultural change. With this in mind this thesis pays particular attention to the language through which contemporaries described their sociability, suggesting that they have great potential to illuminate the nature of religious coexistence in this period. Starting from the premise that the words an individual chooses are in some way both reflective and constitutive of their ways of thinking, several of the chapters that follow draw on and analyse the language contemporaries employed at the intersections between religion and sociability. The thesis as a whole suggests that doing so can give us insight into how their religious lives were socially organised, how groups were formed, bounded, and transgressed, and how that in itself fed back into the structures of sociability.

This thesis investigates the economic accountability of women in eighteenth-century England, particularly within the informal credit market. In the past few decades, substantial scholarship has demonstrated women's regular involvement in active income generation. At all levels of the economy - from servants to investors - and stages of working life - from training to retirement - women have been shown to have engaged in a far more active manner than was previously appreciated. Older narratives of working opportunities being eroded by capitalism or the industrial revolution have been significantly challenged and the continuity of women's work largely demonstrated, with women whether single or married trading under their name, sometimes with phenomenal success. However, there have been no detailed examinations of how, or even if, women were held accountable when their business was not successful and failed. This thesis examines the extents to which women were held accountable for their own failures, asserting that, to understand female business in this period, it is not merely enough to prove its continued existence. The degree and extent of female business independence must also be determined. To achieve this it focusses on the often underappreciated role that debtors' prisons played in the eighteenth-century economy. Bankruptcy, traditionally the mechanism used to examine failure and insolvency, was artificially restricted during the period to those owing over £100 and who were defined as a 'trader' by a 1571 statute. Therefore principally only the wealthier merchants went bankrupt. Debtors' prisons were much less restrictive. Anyone owing over £2 could be imprisoned indefinitely under the common law on a pre-trial basis with little guarantee that trial would ever take place. However, debtors' prisons have received little scholarly attention due to untested assumptions about their lack of effectiveness. That which exists has focussed upon conditions or reform and has broadly ignored or denied the presence of women as prisoners. Due to the lack of existing knowledge about how prisons functioned, the thesis is split into complementary sections, first exploring the prisons themselves before turning to female prisoners within them. Part One reconfigures eighteenth-century debt imprisonment from a medieval hangover to a fundamental element of the credit market. It posits that, as contemporary sales credit was substantially based upon individual reputation rather than entirely upon financial reality, it was logical that prisons focussed on the confinement of the body behind reputation to enforce informal contracts. The first chapter illustrates the hypothesis fully, demonstrating the importance of debtors' prisons over bankruptcy and court process. It also examines the hierarchy of prisons. Superior court prisons like the King's Bench and the Fleet, catering generally for higher status prisoners, functioned as an obstacle to easy debt recovery by allowing debtors to live outside in relative liberty. Much of the existing scholarship has been skewed by focus on these prisons. The second chapter tests the hypothesis through a quantitative analysis of the surviving commitment registers of the Wood-Street Compter, later the Giltspur-Street Compter (1741-1815). Analysing commitment rates, monthly population estimates, release mechanisms, length of commitment, debt averages, as well as providing indicative data on debtor occupational structure the chapter demonstrates that prisons underlined the credit system by providing the trading classes with a speedy debt recovery mechanism. Chapter Three acts as a caveat to this evidence by demonstrating the fragility of the system of debt imprisonment and that simple reforms, intended to improve the rights of the debtor, undermined the purpose of debtors' prisons by diluting indefinite confinement. It focusses on the 1761 Compulsive Clause and the schedules of debtor estates produced out of it, as well as the qualitative change to imprisonment by the imposition of term limits on those owing less than £2 from 1786. Part Two uses the knowledge that debt imprisonment was an effective and normal facet of the credit market which processed both those who had temporarily found themselves unable to meet the demands of creditors and those whose economic ventures had failed absolutely. Chapter Four, acknowledging that the very existence of female prisoners for debt has been readily denied, investigates how the women within came to be confined through prison records along with memoirs and other personal documents relating to prisoners. It questions the absolute nature of coverture, demonstrating that some married women were confined for their debts, contrary to the letter of the law. It also argues that simply because the majority of female prisoners were either spinsters or widows, this did not mean their confinement was the result of anyone other than themselves. We should see female imprisonment as an action of their being held accountable. Finally, Chapter Five examines the quantitative reality of female debt imprisonment to measure accountability over time. It shows that the female experience was not substantially different from that of men within debtors' prisons, though some degree of separation appeared after 1780 particularly in the size of the debt for which they were committed. Finally, by combining the compter data on female percentages with that of other prisons in London with limited surviving material and with nationwide data drawn from the Insolvency Acts it is able to suggest the female accountability over the long eighteenth century. It posits that female accountability and therefore economic independence, declined across the period as the number of permanent spinsters and the age at first marriage fell. While it does not suggest that the rate of business run by women declined in this period, that more of them were covered by male ownership suggests a significant qualitative change in female business's societal place.

This study of mural painting in southern India aims to change the received narrative of painting in South Asia not only by bringing to light a body of work previously understudied and in many cases undocumented, but by showing how that corpus contributes vitally to the study of South Indian art and history. At the broadest level, this dissertation reworks our understanding of a critical moment in South Asian history that has until recently been seen as a period of decadence, setting the stage for the rise of colonial power in South Asia. Militating against the notion of decline, I demonstrate the artistic, social, and political dynamism of this period by documenting and analyzing the visual and inscriptional content of temple and palace murals donated by merchants, monastics, and political elites. The dissertation consists of two parts: documentation and formal analysis, and semantic and historical analysis. Documentation and formal analysis of these murals, which decorate the walls and ceilings of temples and palaces, are foundational for further art historical study. I establish a rubric for style and date based on figural typology, narrative structure, and the way in which text is incorporated into the murals. I clarify the kinds of narrative structures employed by the artists, and trace how these change over time. Finally, I identify the three most prevalent genres of painting: narrative, figural (as portraits and icons), and topographic. One of the outstanding features of these murals, which no previous scholarship has seriously considered, is that script is a major compositional and semantic element of the murals. By the eighteenth century, narrative inscriptions in the Tamil and Telugu languages, whose scripts are visually distinct, consistently framed narrative paintings. For all of the major sites considered in this dissertation, I have transcribed and translated these inscriptions. Establishing a rubric for analysis of the pictorial imagery alongside translations of the text integrated into the murals facilitates my analysis of the function and iconicity of script, and application of the content of the inscriptions to interpretation of the paintings. My approach to text, which considers inscriptions to be both semantically and visually meaningful, is woven into a framework of analysis that includes ritual context, patronage, and viewing practices. In this way, the dissertation builds an historical account of an understudied period, brings to light a new archive for the study of art in South Asia, and develops a new methodology for understanding Nayaka-period painting. Chapters Three, Four, and Five each elaborate on one of the major genres identified in Chapter Two: narrative, figural, and topographic painting. My study of narrative focuses on the most popular genre of text produced at this time, talapuranam (Skt. sthalapurana), as well as hagiographies of teachers and saints (guruparampara). Turning to figural depiction, I take up the subject of portraiture. My study provides new evidence of the active patronage by merchants, religious and political elites through documentation and analysis of previously unrecorded donor inscriptions and donor portraits. Under the rubric of topographic painting I analyze the representation of sacred sites joined together to create entire sacred landscapes mapped onto the walls and ceilings of the temples. Such images are closely connected to devotional (bhakti) literature that describes and praises these places and spaces. The final chapter of the dissertation proposes new ways of understanding how the images were perceived and activated by their contemporary audiences. I argue that the kinesthetic experience of the paintings is central to their concept, design, and function.

This thesis examines the city of Rome as a primary context of British sociability and portrait identity during the period from 1740 to 1830. Part I considers the work of the portrait painter Pompeo Batoni. It examines the pictorial record of grand tourist sociability at Rome in the 1750s, questioning the complex articulation of nationality among British visitors, and the introduction of overt references to antiquity in the portraiture of Pompeo Batoni. It subsequently interrogates Batoni's use of the partially nude Vatican Ariadne sculpture in five portraits of male grand tourists, dating from Charles John Crowle in 1762, to Thomas William Coke in 1774. Part II of this thesis considers the realities of viewing the sculpted body at Rome, recreating the studios of sculptors Christopher Hewetson and Antonio Canova. It postis the studio space as a locus of sociability for British visitors to Rome, drawing on the feminine gaze in the form of the early nineteenth-century writings of Charlotte Eaton and Lady Murray. The final chapter moves from the focus on British sitters to examine sculpture by Antonio Canova, framing it within a wider discourse of masculinity and propriety. Thte reception of Canova's nude portrait sculpture of Napoleon Bonaparte and Pauline Borghese is considered as indicative of cultural anxieties stemming from new conceptions of gender.

No último quartel do século XVIII, com a assinatura do Tratado de Santo Ildefonso, diversas comissões são enviadas para a determinação local das fronteiras entre as possessões das coroas de Portugal e da Espanha na América do Sul, através de métodos astronômicos. Entre os ocupantes do cargo de astrônomo das expedições portuguesas encontram-se Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida (1753-1798), António Pires da Silva Pontes Leme (1750-1805), Bento Sanches Dorta (1739-1795), Francisco de Oliveira Barbosa (1749-?) e José Simões de Carvalho (1752-1805). Naturais do Reino, ou do Brasil, e todos formados no curso matemático da Universidade de Coimbra recém-reformada, esses homens de ciência virão posteriormente, em alguns casos, a ocupar postos importantes na administração do império; serão membros da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, ou, pelo menos, terão proximidade com integrantes das camadas mais poderosas do aparelho de Estado. Ao mesmo tempo, o reformismo ilustrado consolida em Portugal uma imagem das ciências e da instrução como elementos essenciais para um melhor conhecimento dos territórios do império, na expectativa de acréscimo da agricultura, indústria e comércio. À escala europeia, um campo científico com relativo grau de autonomia começa por sua vez a se esboçar, mas ainda são frequentes as reconversões de seus capitais específicos em capitais políticos. Esta dissertação tem como objetivo realizar um estudo prosopográfico daquele grupo de astrônomos demarcadores formados em Coimbra; esperando identificar, pela análise das suas trajetórias, as influências recíprocas entre as vinculações das personagens com os poderes políticos e suas possibilidades de consagração no campo científico / In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, after the signature of the Treaty of San Ildefonso, several delegations were dispatched to locally settle the boundaries between the South American possessions of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns, employing astronomical methods. Among the astronomers officially appointed to the Portuguese expeditions were Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida (1753-1798), António Pires da Silva Pontes Leme (1750-1805), Bento Sanches Dorta (1739-1795), Francisco de Oliveira Barbosa (1749-?) and José Simões de Carvalho (1752-1805). Born in Portugal or in Brazil, and graduated in the new mathematical course of the recently reformed University of Coimbra, these men of science would afterwards move to occupy either important positions in the administration of the empire, or become members of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, or at least gain close proximity to high-ranking agents of the state apparatus. At the same time, Portuguese enlightened reformism was consolidating an image of science and education as essential endeavors for a better understanding of the territories of the empire, in the hope of increasing agriculture, industry and trade. At the European level, a scientific field with a relative degree of autonomy was in turn starting to take shape, but reconversions of specific scientific capitals into political ones were still quite frequent. This dissertation intends to perform a prosopographic study about that group of Coimbra-educated, border-settling astronomers, aiming to identify, by the analysis of their trajectories, the reciprocal influences between the actors\' ties to political power-players and their range of possibilities of establishing a reputation in the scientific field