Beer was a staple of early modern diets across northern Europe and the Atlantic World. While its profound social, economic, and cultural significance is well established, little is known about the nature and quality of the drink itself, particularly its nutritional characteristics. Until now, attempts to estimate calorie and alcohol content have been monodisciplinary in approach, involving either theoretical calculations based on grain content, or a rough approximation with modern equivalents. Using sixteenth-century Ireland as a case-study, this article describes an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of early modern beer. Exploiting a rich seam of unpublished archival material, the project recreates an early modern beer, using the most appropriate ingredients, equipment, and processes possible. Scientific analysis of the finished drink offers new perspectives on beer as a dietary staple. The project is a model for integrating practical or experimental approaches into mainstream historical study, and the practice of radical interdisciplinarity. It represents the most comprehensive effort to recreate an historic beer in any context to date, bringing together historians, experimental archaeologists, agronomists, microbiologists, brewing scientists, craftworkers, farmers, and maltsters to tackle problematic questions about the past.
This historiographical review engages with recent works in British colonial and South Asian history that shed light on the emergence of the concept of “society” or the “social” in South Asia. The review explores three main areas for the study of the social concept including: scholarship on liberalism and colonial law; histories of colonial sociology and knowledge production; and materialist histories of political economy and concept formation. The review then outlines some avenues for further research, focusing particularly on questions of form, language, and translation that have largely been overlooked in existing scholarship. It suggests that while there are robust accounts of the uses of the social concept in South Asia, what is missing is a consideration of the vernacular histories of this concept, including how it came to be articulated in South Asian languages. Ultimately, the review makes the case that conceptual history must take into account both the historical transformations that produced certain concepts as well as the languages and aesthetic and documentary forms through which we come to know those concepts.
By introducing new historical and documentary knowledge into scientific circulation (8 files stored in collections 2031 (Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Northern Front) and 2067 (Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Southwestern Front) of the Russian State Military Historical Archive), a previously unexplored scientific problem was resolved - the deterioration of the quality characteristics of the counterintelligence service and, above all, the emasculation of experienced operational personnel, during the time of revolutionary upheavals in Russia.
The “Marxist library” book series of the “Znanie” publishing house is an interesting page of the history of literary publishing. In Soviet times this topic was studied one-sidedly and tendentiously, and in the post-Soviet period it was nearly forgotten. The aim of this article is to examine the history of the “Marxist Library” book series of the “Znanie” publishing house from a new perspective, to reveal the financial side of its activities and to explain the reason for the termination of this series. An important task is rehabilitation of K.P. Pyatnitsky, whose role in the “Znanie” publishing house in Soviet times was almost completely hushed up, or shown in a negative light. The scientific novelty of the article is determined by the using of new materials from the Archive of A.M. Gorky, for example, K.P. Pyatnitsky’s diary and memoirs, correspondence, financial and legal documents of the “Znanie” publishing house, which are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. As a result, the objective history of the “Marxist Library” book series is recreated and the real role of A.M. Gorky and K.P. Pyatnitsky in its activities is shown.
This article explores an important topic: the historical analysis of the origins of the Cossacks and their evolution during their formation and development. The purpose and novelty of this study lies in substantiating the hypothesis that the Cossacks migrated to Rus from Persia, beginning with the Scythian-Saka period. The work utilizes the methods of historical analysis and forecasting within the context of the systems-information approach. The author also analyzes various hypotheses regarding the emergence of the Cossacks and references to them, examines the meanings of the term “Cossack”, and substantiates the Scythian-Saka hypothesis as the basis for the emergence and development of the Cossacks. The study concludes that the Cossacks represent a unique military class with a special military-political organization known as “Russian military democracy”, which unites the military and the people. In the context of Russian history, the Cossacks are the unique phenomenon, characterized by the ability to selforganize, a special Russian worldview, an Orthodox tradition in understanding brotherhood, and a high sense of military valor.
