Historical Sciences

Cilj je ovoga rada da bude polazišna točka za poznavanje i daljnje istraživanje Kumana, jedne od turkijskih etničkih skupina euroazijske stepe. Ta nomadska konfederacija nikad nije utemeljila državnu zajednicu, ali je plaćenička kumanska konjica redovito donosila prevagu u sukobima među ruskim kneževinama, u bugarsko-bizantskim ratovima, u sukobima među pretendentima na prijestolje u Ugarskoj i Srbiji te drugdje. Najviše će biti riječi o vrhuncu njihova utjecaja (1050. – 1240.), kada su kontrolirali područje od Aralskoga jezera do donjega dunavskog bazena. Gordlevski je smatrao da je proučavanje turkijskih naroda usko povezano s proučavanjem Mongola, koji su mnoge turkijske narode euroazijske stepe inkorporirali u svoje nepregledno carstvo. Jednako se tako ni srednjovjekovna povijest jugoistočne Europe ne može proučavati bez povijesti turkijskih naroda. Kumani su bili poznati po tome da su rado odvodili ljude u ropstvo, no naposljetku su i sami bili najbrojniji robovi koji su se u crnomorskoj regiji prodavali u Italiju te na Bliski i Srednji istok. Upravo je kumanski jezik ostao lingua franca u području euroazijske stepe, gdje ga i danas razumije većina turkijskih naroda. U (jugo)istočnoj Europi Kumani su se polako stopili u šareni etnički amalgam stanovništva slavenskoga, ugrofinskog i turkijskog podrijetla. U Aziji su pridonijeli stvaranju Kazaka, Uzbeka, Kirgiza i drugih turkijskih naroda. Baština Kumana upletena je u desetke europskih i azijskih nacija te je zbog toga proučavanje kumanske povijesti važno kao platforma za razumijevanje šireg okvira euroazijskih migracija te odnosâ među nomadskim i sjedilačkim društvima na tom prostoru.

The research objective is to analyse why the accounts of two missionaries who visited the same Mongol 'Other' in 1245 are quite different, despite their authors belonging to the same Christian circle. More specifically, the paper explores why Simon's report is so much more negative in its depiction of the Mongols, and the imagological and emotional impact that these representations had. My research materials include the two mendicant reports produced by John and Si-mon as well as extant scholarly discussions of various aspects of the Mongol Other, apoca-lyptic literature, and the relations between Western Christendom and the Mongol Empire in the mid-13 th century. The research innovation of the article is in the comparison of the two contemporary accounts, the elaboration of their differences in representation of the Mongols, and the analysis of their imagery from the perspective of the history of emotions. The aim of this paper is to show that in interpreting medieval European texts about the Mongols, one should combine approaches from various fields, including (but not limited to) history of emotions, cultural and literal history, anthropology, cross-cultural sociology, and others. Immediate and incorrect interpretations that the Mongols were cannibals or sodo-mites, as one could be tempted to hold from the account of Simon of Saint-Quentin, must be moderated from scholarly perspectives. These interpretations were the result of sediment layers of events in the 1240s: the violent contact of the Mongol armies with Western Chris-tendom, contemporary Christian attempts to put the newcomers into known apocalyptic frameworks, and most probably the personal trauma of the author who had been threatened with death after an inaction with the Mongols, might be explained both as a cross-cultural misunderstanding and a display of power. Research results: Comparison of the two accounts, one written by John of Plano Carpini and the other by Simon of Saint-Quentin, the contextualization of these sources within 13 th-century missionary literature, parallel analysis of the imagery, as well as reference to other contemporary texts on the Mongols, offer a sound starting point for a complex process of recreating the imagined Mongol conceived by Europeans in the late Middle Ages. This imagined Mongol consists of hundreds of reused images ranging from the Classical antiquity and biblical texts to medieval prophecies, with a power to elicit the most powerful emotions by a single reference. Subtle interdisciplinary approach is always needed to avoid misinterpretations of often highly emotional images that can bring hope or sow hatred, depending on their (mis)use.

This paper is a contribution to deepening our understanding of the relations between sedentary and nomadic peoples in medieval Europe. It interprets the images of nomads found in the European cultural imagination, particularly in medieval literary sources from areas as far apart as Britain and Constantinople.
This imaginary is the product of an accumulated culturally-processed emotional response to newcomers from the Eurasian Steppe who were often perceived as either a severe threat or as powerful military allies. The process of constructing such an image of the Eurasian nomads might seem to be a simple and natural one; however, one must not oversimplify its complexity. The reconstruction of this imagery is a joint effort made by several disciplines. This overview is intended to give the reader a glimpse into the perspectives of imagology, social psychology, cross-cultural history, and the history of emotions.

Culture and Language of Emotions: The Intertwining of Croatian Literature and Spoken Language

In order to interpret the literature of past times, scholars and students should study the elements of the contemporary culture within which the writings were created. This is particularly important when analysing emotional threads in texts, because culture shapes the way its members experience and express emotions. Even within the same culture, different times or circumstances lead to different ideas on which emotions are approved or supported, and which are regulated or suppressed. Different cultures have different views on the preferable display, duration, or intensity of certain emotions. Also, vocabularies of different languages show variations in etymology and number of lexical entries for a specific emotional state.

Technical (specialised) terminology needs to be precise; therefore, scientists put continuous effort towards keeping it up-to-date and well-defined. On the other hand, everyday language supports swift communication, and consequently uses words with less distinction, sometimes even interchangeably – especially for emotional states. In this paper, as an example, the author discusses three aspects of the (sometimes interchangeable) use of the words envy and jealousy – firstly, in the everyday language of grammar school students; secondly, in different Slavic languages; and thirdly, in literary examples.

In the last part, the author analyses intense emotional elements in a famous 17th- century South Slavic folk ballad, Asanaginica. A conflict between a married couple arising from his pain caused by a battle wound, and her shame in not visiting him – culminates in a divorce, followed by her tragic death. The difficulty posed in interpreting the protagonist’s shame is the fact that the social norms of this (Muslim/Christian) border society were too well-known to audiences at the time to be explained within a text which is already a concentrated matter of sources on at least two important issues: the status of women in this society, and the (im)possibilities of expression of their emotional life.

Speakers of many languages tend to use pairs of words such as emotion/feeling or jealousy/envy interchangeably. This paper explores the differences in the way in which the emotional states of jealousy and envy are understood (in the Croatian language ljubomora and zavist) and the influence of culture on the expression of these states. First, we establish the cultural framework that significantly shapes the experience and expression of emotional states, and summarize cognitive aspects of the two emotions. Second, we demonstrate that Croatian 19th- and 20th- century belles lettres differentiate between the two in the way it is described in sciences. Third, a psycholinguistic questionnaire was used to investigate features of the conceptual content from 209 high school students. Finally, the results were compared with the empirical corpus analysis of the linguistic constructions of emotional categories. Complementary methods used in this research show indications of an ongoing semasiological change of ljubomora and zavist in a significant part of Croatian speakers.

This paper is an outline of a wider study of Mongol customs, identities, and the cultural regulation of emotion. A valuable contribution by S. Jagchid (1988) identified some important elements in this field; Russian (such as Riasanovsky, 1929) and international scholarship in Mongol legal history has offered a sound framework for further analyses. Building upon these and recent works in the field of emotion regulation, the author hopes to contribute to a multi-perspective model of the sociocultural context of the early Mongol Empire.

Since this issue of the journal is dedicated to the discussion of entangled history from as many perspectives as possible, I will try to give a brief review of the development of scholarship in the historiographical and social sciences on this topic, and will intersperse some of my reflections and experience; these mostly concern the history of emotions and transfer history. Although I am not bound by any genre constraints, I will nevertheless try to stick to a small set of concepts such as: identities, entanglements, the epistemological unicity of knowledge. I favour cross-disciplinary entanglements and therefore strongly support also all historiographical approaches that analyse complex transfers without regard for national boundaries. The focus of my research was primarily Southeast Europe as a contact zone of the Mediterranean and Eurasian steppe worlds in a longue durée perspective. During millennial cross-cultural contacts, the exchange of people, goods, ideas, technologies, and emotions has shaped in parallel all the worlds involved in the process.

The ship is the most compelling agent of cross-cultural exchange in the sixteenth-century Mediterranean. It is a system consisting of a carefully designed physical space and natural elements, together with social, emotional, and (cross)cultural components that interact and intersect on board.
The essay suggests that a strategic juxtaposition of Renaissance ships and cities is useful: ships are smaller, but no less complex cultural units than cities. The ship has almost all the characteristics of a city, with its “urbanistic” solutions for the infrastructure, working and private spaces for officials and crew, and supplies for all of their needs. In addition, this microcosm needed to be mobile in a very unstable medium.
Ships connected and separated people, gave them new experiences, new ideas, and new identities; they were the most active agents of cross-cultural exchange in both peaceful and confrontational contacts. The mobility and confinement made them a highly dramatic and intense site of exchange.
By exploring the ship as a complex and mobile microcultural system, this essay aims to propose a new avenue for inquiry into cross-cultural exchanges in the history of art and architecture, cultural history, and the history of emotions in the Renaissance Mediterranean.