PhilPaine.com

15347. (Adju­tor Rivard) Chez Nous, Our Old Que­bec Home [tr. W.H. Blake, ill.A.Y. Jack­son]
15348. (Jean Pierre Waltz­ing) Étude his­torique sur les cor­po­ra­tions pro­fes­sion­nelles chez
. . . . . les Romains, vol.1
(Nel­ly Han­na –ed.) Mon­ey, Land and Trade: An Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry of the Mus­lim
. Mediter­ranean:
. . . . 15349. (Nel­ly Han­na) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 15350. (Nico­las Michel) The Indi­vid­ual and the Col­lec­tiv­i­ty in the Agri­cul­tur­al
. . . . . . . . Econ­o­my of Pre-Colo­nial Moroc­co [arti­cle]
Read more »

The above three titles are essen­tial read­ing for any­one inter­ested in the his­tory of democ­racy. When Steve Muhlberg­er and I wrote Democracy’s Place In World His­tory, Majum­dar (writ­ten in 1918) and Altekar (writ­ten in 1949) were impor­tant sources for us. The first book alert­ed us to the sig­nif­i­cance of the ancient Indi­an republics, which had become an unfash­ion­able area of study, and were lit­tle known to his­to­ri­ans out­side India. The sec­ond pro­vided a seri­ous analy­sis of them, and demon­strated con­clu­sively that they had to be tak­en just as seri­ously as the polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions of ancient Athens. Ancient India was home to many hun­dreds of city-states, ter­ri­to­r­ial states, leagues, and con­fed­era­cies, and many of these were demo­c­ra­tic, or pro­to-demo­c­ra­t­ic, in the same sense as the poli­ties of Greece. They involved far greater pop­u­la­tions, were con­tem­po­rary with the Greeks, out­lasted them, and prob­a­bly pre­ceded them. Greek trav­el­ers had no dif­fi­culty see­ing their close resem­blance to their own.

It has been very grat­i­fy­ing to see that our lit­tle essay has con­tributed to a renewed inter­est in this sub­ject. G.P. Singh’s 2003 book is an exam­ple of the renew­al of schol­arly atten­tion. It’s a com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey of the exist­ing doc­u­men­tary evi­dence, with some­thing on every loca­tion that can be con­nected to pro­to-demo­c­ra­t­ic, oligrachic, or con­cil­iar insti­tu­tions. This back­ground knowl­edge is essen­tial if any analy­sis is to take place, and Singh pro­vides up-to-date infor­ma­tion on these sources. It by no means replaces Altekar’s State and Gov­ern­ment in Ancient India, which attempts more analy­sis and inter­pre­ta­tion of the data. Altekar’s analy­sis, in my opin­ion, usu­ally hits the mark. His recon­struc­tion rings true.

Anoth­er book that was an impor­tant source for us was J.P. Sharma’s Republics in Ancient India c. 1500BC-500BC, but I haven’t reread it (I intend to). So if you have any inter­est in the republics of ancient India, start with these four books.

Nobel Prize win­ner Orhan Pamuk is the lead­ing light of mod­ern Turk­ish fic­tion writ­ing. This is one of his ear­ly nov­els. It’s extreme­ly well-craft­ed, and its qual­i­ties come through in what must be a very good trans­la­tion by Vic­to­ria Hol­brook. It’s a short nov­el, deal­ing with a sim­ple theme, with­out the pre­ten­sions and con­vo­lu­tions that are thought oblig­a­tory by cur­rent fash­ion. It’s set in the late 18th Cen­tury, and nar­rated by an Ital­ian who becomes the slave of an Ottoman schol­ar, to whom he bears an uncan­ny phys­i­cal resem­blance. With knowl­edge of each oth­ers’ most inti­mate secrets, they become able to exchange iden­ti­ties. Evliya Chelebi, the great 18th Cen­tury Turk­ish poly­math, makes a cameo appear­ance, and so does a char­ac­ter, unnamed, whom I sus­pect is meant to be Gio­vanni Pao­lo Marana, an Ital­ian author whom I dis­cuss in my Third Med­i­ta­tion On Democ­racy.

This was anoth­er delight­ful find in the Good­will book bins. Rivard’s 1914 mem­oir of life in late nine­teenth cen­tury rur­al Que­bec was once well-known, even in Europe. Rivard was admit­ted to l’ Académie françaiseon the strength of it. Yet it was writ­ten in the full-blood­ed, earthy Cana­dian lan­guage, rife with archa­ic Nor­man and Celtic influ­ence (A del­e­ga­tion from the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment, this year, was boulever­séwhen accost­ed by a pla­toon of fran­coph­o­nes from rur­al Que­bec sport­ing kilts, spo­rans and bag­pipes). Rivard was an accom­plished philol­o­gist, and like Mark Twain, a metic­u­lous observ­er of dialect. This Eng­lish trans­la­tion sort of sug­gests it, but it can’t put across the pecu­liar feel­ing of “la bor­dée de ce soir a presque abrié les balis­es”, or “c’est matin pour les lièvres”, any more than a trans­la­tor can ren­der the feel­ing of Huck Finn’s speech­es into Latin. But this trans­la­tor is con­sci­en­tious, and does a pret­ty good job.

Cor­nelius Krieghoff “Ear­ly Cana­di­an Home­stead” (1859)

Read more »