＂Trades＂ and ＂Social Membership＂ into the Context of Feudal Friulian Society during Late Middle Ages （13th Century- 1511）

It is a very hard job for historians to keep themselves neutrals in from of the events they find during their studies. It is also difficult to notice the correlations among the different times of the history without falling in anachronistic mistakes. In fact, it is well-known that a historian must be wise and rational when he finds those correlations, because every society has its own characteristics, structures, and mentality. This brief essay focuses on the social structures in a north eastern italic region, which is called Friuli, between the 12th and 16th centuries. In the above mentioned centuries, it is possible to notice an evolution from a feudal ecclesiastical principality, ruled by prince-patriarchs, ecclesiastical institutions and nobility, to a more fluid and dynamic constitution formed by new classes which rose up in times of urban and economic development. But this development struggles to delete the old system, which persisted until the end of 18th century with the arrival of Napoleon. The transition from the Patriarch＇s power to Venice＇s dominion seems to have created two main consequences： by one hand a more bureaucratic and modem structure of the State, by the other hand a consolidation of the old connections between patrons and clients, consequence of the ＂modem＂ feudal system that consolidated its roots in the Late Middle Ages centuries.

The Suffering of the Innocent： Wartime Violence and the Common People The Case of the Great Siege of Malta of 1565

War is arguably the most extreme scenario for the exertion of violence. All warring parties suffer in one way or another but those who suffer most are usually those who least deserve it--the common folk. The paper will take as a case study one of the epic Mediterranean battles in the ongoing Christian versus Muslim conflict of the Early Modem Age. Happening in 1565, though micro in scale, the four-month engagement known as the Great Siege of Malta which was fought between the Ottoman Turkish troops and their Barbary Coast partners on the one side and the Hospitallers of the Order of St. John and their European and Maltese allies on the other side, was macro in its significance. This fierce clash left its destructive mark not only on the warring adversaries but the more so on the Maltese inhabitants who found themselves immersed in a war which was not strictly theirs but of which they were forced to endure the hardships, participate in the ongoing combat, and face the daily extreme psychological pressure and physical cruelty which are generally meted out to the defenceless and the most vulnerable in the war zone. No brutality was spared and extreme violence was the order of the day.

The Early Modern Economy of the Yangzi Delta in a New Perspective

China has experienced spectacular economic growth during the past three decades and seen some parts of the country, in particular the Yangzi Delta, swiftly converging with the developed countries in the level of economic development. This unprecedented growth has been seen as the greatest economic miracle in world history. This miracle is based on the economic performance of the Yangzi Delta in the long run of centuries. It is impossible to achieve a better understanding of the economic miracle of the delta without a better understanding of the basis created by the delta＇s economy during its long historical development, in particular in the centuries before the modern West arrived in the mid- nineteenth century. To achieve this objective, we must break free of the West-centric straightjacket and study China＇s early modern economy from a new perspective, which will be crucial to improve our knowledge of Chinese economic performance prior to the arrival of the West.

Introduction

Love has always been an important theme in Western philosophy. While early modem philosophy possesses the productive functions of power and affect, the concept of love begins to play a more crucial role as well. Nevertheless, compared with the concepts of substance, knowledge, and others, the attention that we have paid to love seems insufficient. But in the following three articles Professor Boros reveals to us the determinate dimension of love in early modern philosophy and his efforts to construct a philosophy of love.

Tales of an Open World： The Fall of the Ming Dynasty as Dutch Tragedy, Chinese Gossip, and Global News

This essay explores different seventeenth-century accounts of the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644--Chinese vernacular novels and literati memoirs, Jesuit histories, and Dutch poetry and plays--to investigate a developing notion of openness in both Europe and China. In Europe, the idea of openness helped to construct an early-modern global order based on the free flow of material goods, religious beliefs, and shared information. In these accounts, China＇s supposed refusal to open itself to the world came to represent Europe＇s Other, an obstacle to the liberal global order. In doing so, however, European accounts drew on Chinese popular sources that similarly embraced openness, albeit openness of a different kind, that is the direct and unobstructed communication between ruler and subject. This is not to say that Chinese late-Ming accounts of the fall of the Ming are the source of European ideals of liberalism, but rather to suggest that, at a crucial early-modern moment of globalization, European authors misapprehended late-Ming ideals of enlightened imperial rule so as to consolidate their own worldview, foreclosing late-Ming ideals in the process.