Preliminary Programme

In the late Middle Ages and early-modern times, local and inter-regional trade in Europe were linked through trade fairs. A dense and wide-ranging network of periodically held markets ? usually held once or twice a year, more rarely up to four times a year ? had emerged on the continent after Black Death. Since fairs and annual markets flourished in particular in the 15th and 16th centuries, they promoted the establishment of a market society in which exchange was increasingly organised via markets and therefore were a pivotal element of European economic development.
Trade fair calendars that provided information about type, location, date and duration of periodically held markets and were printed in a greater number in the 16th and 17th centuries, picture very well this enormous trade boom. The proposed paper is thus dealing with the perception of time and space of trade at the time and how this perception can add to the reconstruction of the network of fairs in Europe. The knowledge about trade collected in merchant manuals, lists of postal routes, traveller handbooks and almanacs is just as important in terms of the history of knowledge as it is in terms of economic history, because the published data differs in scope and accuracy, relates to different regional focuses and is also presented in different ways.
Through the joint geographical representation and systematic analysis with the help of a geographic information system (GIS) - both of which have not yet been undertaken in historical research - of trade fair calendar data taken from a sample of contemporary prints of the 16th and early 17th centuries from the Holy Roman Empire, the Swiss Confederation, France, Italy and England, spatial configurations of European trade fair activity in the early modern period are derived. Such configurations show not only a divergent, but also a partly consistent perception of the geographic extent and interdependence of trade in Western, Central and Southern Europe, and are thus a previously unused means to reconstruct the spatial dimension of trade in early-modern Europe. (Show less)

In 1937, Father Canice, O.F.M. Cap, a member of the Capuchins Franciscans, wrote in retrospect of the origins of the Irish Civil War: ‘the Treaty signed at midnight split the country from top to bottom and plunged it into a midnight of utter despair.’ In so doing he defied the Roman Catholic hierarchy by voicing discontent and, in criticising the ‘Treaty’, he took sides in the conflict. This was not unusual for his order or for the Capuchin Annual, its periodical.
The Capuchin Annual was published between 1930 and 1977 by the Capuchin Franciscans, a male Roman Catholic order, in Dublin. Edited by Father Senan Moynihan, O.F.M. Cap until 1953 and then by Father Henry Anglin, O.F.M. Cap, it was a major cultural, literary and religious periodical of its time, representing the views of the Irish Catholic middle class. It was known for its nationalist views and its proximity to the Fianna Fáil political party, founded in 1927 by Éamon de Valera, the leader of the anti-Treaty, or Republican, side in the Irish Civil War.
The Irish Civil War (1922-1923) was provoked by a divide on the question of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921 to conclude the War of Independence (1919-1921). The divide was partly due to the Treaty enacting the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, which allowed the creation of a separate Northern Ireland state. This civil war had a major impact on post-independence Ireland in all aspect of its social, cultural and political life. While historians have argued that the event was forgotten in Irish memory, the analysis of the representations of the event in the Capuchin Annual showed that the memorial situation of this event is more complex than a simple absence.
The Capuchin Annual was digitised in 2016, allowing me to design a digital history methodology to aid its analysis. Combining corpus linguistics and history of representations, quantitative and qualitative analysis, my methodology allowed the visualisation of memorial patterns of events and figures, among other elements analysed. This paper will present some of my findings.
An aim of the Capuchin Annual during its publication was to define and shape Irish identity, a complex task in the post-Independence, and post-colonial, context of Ireland in the middle of the twentieth century. This paper will argue that the memory of the Civil War impacted this definition, and complicated the post-Independence process of creating a collective identity. (Show less)

At times, the 1978 Swedish parliamentary debate reads like an album review. Politicians repeatedly accuse each other of “playing the same old song”. This frequent criticism is more likely the effect of increasing political tension than an expression of a newfound interest in vocal performance. The accusation is used idiomatically and pertains to the repetitive content of what is being said. Nevertheless, it directs attention to the less studied question of the form and expression of political communication. Sufficient to say, already Plato acknowledged the intricate role of aesthetics within political affairs. The importance of political performance becomes all the more urgent with the gradually more extensive use of radio and television throughout the 20th century. How a politician speaks matters, and it matters even more in the age of constant broadcasting. Recent work in sociophonetics has stressed the vital role of the voice in performing distinct political identities. Yet, whilst political rhetoric receives scholarly focus, the sonic dimension of political performance remains highly underexplored. This article proposes a method to explore the verbal aesthetics of political speeches. By employing signal processing, focused on harmonic complexity, the analysis maps the different styles of melodic performance in Swedish parliamentary speeches over time.

In 1978, Swedish television became one of the first countries to broadcast live from the parliament. Canadian and English television previously experimented with the format, but with contested results. Mass media could on the one hand provide certain transparency to the parliamentary process. On the other hand, it risked transforming the political debate into a televised spectacle, affecting the performance of the politicians. Due to the extensive Swedish media archive, it is possible to return to these broadcastings to study both how, and if, the performance of the politicians changed in the first decade of televised parliament. Thus, this article explores the harmonic content and expressions in broadcasted parliamentary speeches from its inception in 1978 and through the following decade. The results provide insight into the similarities and historical development of speech melody within political groups. In doing so, the research contributes to the matter of the actual voice in the constitution of political identity. (Show less)