soc.history.early-modern RFD (fwd)

Dominik Wujastyk ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK
Wed Sep 30 08:19:49 UTC 1998


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 18:51:25 -0500
From: Curt Emanuel <cemanuel at accs.net>
Subject: soc.history.early-modern RFD

Dominik,

Please forward the following message to the INDOLOGY list.

Thanks,

Curt Emanuel (cemanuel at accs.net)
proponent soc.history.early-modern

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Indology Listmembers,

Enclosed below is the RFD (Request for Discussion) for a new Usenet
newsgroup, soc.history.early-modern. Please keep in mind that while your
input in the discussion is welcome and encouraged, that discussion
should take place on Usenet, in news.groups.

Curt Emanuel (cemanuel at accs.net)
proponent soc.history.early-modern

----- enclosed message follows -----

                     REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
             unmoderated group soc.history.early-modern

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a
worldwide unmoderated Usenet newsgroup, soc.history.early-modern.
This is not a Call For Votes (CFV); you cannot vote until a CFV
is posted at a future date, assuming one is.  Procedural details are
below.

Newsgroup line:
soc.history.early-modern       Early modern history worldwide, to 1800.

RATIONALE: soc.history.early-modern

Early modern history, as often defined, is an era of history in
various areas of the world which centres on roughly the 17th century
AD.  There is much disagreement about when it begins and ends, but for
the purpose of this proposal the period runs from about 1500 to about
1800.

There is much interest in early modern history on Usenet, but
currently there is no Usenet newsgroup specifically dedicated to the
topic, and discussion is often fragmented.  Both soc.history and
soc.history.moderated are appropriate.  In an eleven-day period in
May, there were 98 posts on early modern topics to soc.history, and
one or two to soc.history.moderated.  However, during an overlapping
seven-day period, there were 154 such posts to soc.history.medieval,
where they are off-topic.  Despite this fact, in soc.history.medieval,
DejaNews shows over 1700 posts just in 1998 whose subject lines
contain the keyword "SHEM", developed after planning for this
newsgroup began last year; of these, probably 300 or 400 concern the
creation of the group, but other recent discussions dealt with Martin
Luther, the movie "The Man with the Iron Mask", gunpowder weapons, the
European voyages of discovery, and early modern Southeast Asia.
Discussion on soc.history.medieval to date has shown near-unanimous
support for the creation of soc.history.early-modern.

In addition, at least one group (soc.war.us-revolutionary) covers a
subset of this period.  Others cover topics which overlap with it
(soc.history.science, soc.history.war.misc), or deal with the topic in
a different way (soc.history.what-if, soc.history.living).  Early
modern arts are discussed in humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare and
rec.music.early.  None of this traffic is likely to move to
soc.history.early-modern (in fact, very little of it is more on- topic
for soc.history.early-modern than for its present location). Still, it
is clear that wherever possible, early modern history is discussed on
Usenet, in some cases heavily discussed.  So it is reasonable to
expect a group dedicated specifically to that subject to succeed.

The existing groups soc.history.medieval and soc.history.ancient
demonstrate that unmoderated groups for specific historical periods
are viable. Soc.history.early-modern fits naturally into this Usenet
sub-hierarchy and seems its natural culmination, given that
soc.history and soc.history.moderated are already dominated by
discussion of more recent history.  The name for the period, "early
modern", while less intuitive than "ancient" or "medieval", is the
standard scholarly name, is reasonably clear, and is preferable to
several alternatives considered since discussion began last year (e.g.
"renaissance", "1400to1800", ...).

CHARTER: soc.history.early-modern

This is a newsgroup for discussion of the history of all peoples from
about 1500 to about 1800 - the era from the beginning of worldwide
contact to the consolidation of Europe's worldwide control, roughly
from the voyages of exploration to the French Revolution.

Some examples of appropriate topics include, among many other
possibilities:
 - military (artillery, muskets, firearms trading...)
 - political (absolutism, gunpowder empires, mercantilism...)
 - economic (trading companies, African slave trade, crop exchange...)
 - intellectual (Renaissance, scientific revolution, rationalism...)
 - religious (Sikhism, the Reformation, Shi`ite Persia...)
 - people (Akbar, Askia Muhammad, Cheng Ho, Galileo, Moctezuma,
   Pocahontas, Suleyman, whoever interests you ...)
 - ecological (disease exchange, deforestations...)
 - whatever other early modern topic strikes your fancy.
(Pirates!  The Taj Mahal!  <Gulliver's Travels>! ... :-)

The boundaries between this group and soc.history.medieval and any
possible modern history group, should one be formed, are intended to
be flexible.  The roots of any period reach back to the one before,
and its fruits to the following one.  It should be possible for
discussion pertaining to early-modern topics to extend both before and
after the time period defined here, in order to explore their causes
and ends. In particular, while some topics pertaining to the 15th
century or to the early 19th century are clearly early modern in
character and appropriate to this group (the Quattrocento, the Lewis
and Clark expedition), others clearly are not and should be discussed
elsewhere (the Wars of the Roses, Latin American independence), and
still others are debatable and could reasonably be discussed on either
group (the founding of Songhai, the first printing press in Persia).

Appropriate postings include discussions of appropriate topics, FAQs,
booklists, personal insight essays, announcements of new publications
and research, analyses of historical patterns, reviews of current
research and media programs, etc.

Cross-posting should usually be avoided.  Before starting a thread
posters should consider whether another group is more appropriate.  If
a topic is near the beginning of the group's period, it might do
better in soc.history.medieval; if it's near the end, it might do
better in soc.history or soc.history.moderated.  When posting about a
topic for which a more specialised group already exists - such as
Shakespeare (humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare), the American
Revolution (soc.history.war.us-revolution), music (rec.music.early),
or Mesoamerican archaeology (sci.archaeology.mesoamerican) - it is
usually best to use the specialised group.  Topics for which an
alternative history group exists - such as war (soc.history.war.misc)
or science (soc.history.science) - may be posted either there or in
soc.history.early-modern, perhaps with a pointer to direct readers of
the other group to the discussion.

Inappropriate postings include:
 - postings on "what-if" alternate history speculations (use
   soc.history.what-if);
 - postings about current events as rooted in the past (use
   soc.history or a politics group);
 - postings about re-enactment of history (use soc.history.living);
 - postings about unverifiable events and fantasy cultures (unless the
   fantasies were in fact written in the early modern period and are
   being discussed in relation to that period; otherwise, use
   rec.arts.sf.written, alt.mythology, alt.archaeology, or whatever).
 - HTML postings, which are dropped by some news servers and cannot
   be read in many news programs (use news.newusers.questions to find
   out how to turn off HTML posting and all of Usenet will thank you).

*Totally* inappropriate postings include:
 - advertisements and commercial posts, with the exception of short,
   non-hype, and infrequent (less than one per month) announcements of
   books and other media on the topic of early modern history;
 - binary files (excluding short signatures such as PGP signatures),
   which should be placed on the Web, or offered by e-mail, or posted
   to alt.binaries.pictures.misc etc.;
 - inappropriate cross-posts (usually, cross-posts to more than three
   groups total, including soc.history.early-modern).

This group is unmoderated, allowing anyone with the proper access to
participate in discussions.

This charter is subject to modification to the extent that newsgroups
named in it may be renamed or removed, or other newsgroups relevant
to early modern history may be created.

END CHARTER.

PROCEDURE:

This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes.  In this phase
of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroup
should be raised and resolved.  The discussion period will continue
for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this
proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For
Votes (CFV) will be posted by a neutral vote taker.  Please do not
attempt to vote until this happens.

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.

This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How
to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal".  Please refer to these
documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any
questions about the process.

DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD will be posted to the following newsgroups:

news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, soc.history,
soc.history.medieval, soc.history.moderated,
soc.history.war.us-revolution, humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare,
rec.music.early

and the following mailing lists:

EARLY-MODERN    Early Modern History
                (temporary list until this group is created or
                defeated)
                early-modern-request at postilion.org

SHEMPLANNERS    Planning for soc.history.early-modern
                (temporary list until this group is created or
                defeated)
                shemplanners-request at postilion.org

H-OIEAHC        Colonial and Early American History
                listserv at h-net.msu.edu
                (Note that this is an H-Net list and subscription is
                restricted.)

HABSBURG        Culture and History of the Central European Habsburg
                Monarchy and its successor states, 1500 - present
                listserv at vm.cc.purdue.edu
                (Note that this is an H-Net list and subscription may
                be restricted.)

C18-L           18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion
                listserv at lists.psu.edu

PIRATES         The history of piracy on the high seas.
                majordomo at listbox.com

EARLYSCIENCE-L  History of Science Society - Early Science Interest
                Group
                listserv at listserv.vt.edu

POST1492        History of Spanish American Contacts
RENAIS-L        Early Modern History - Renaissance
                listserv at ulkyvm.louisville.edu

GEMCS-L         Early modern culture, both eastern and western
                mailserv at vaxc.hofstra.edu

FICINO          Discussion of the Renaissance and Reformation
                listserv at listserv.utoronto.ca

MINGLIST        The Society for Ming Studies
                majordomo at colby.edu

INDOLOGY        Indology
                listserv at listserv.liv.ac.uk

SLAVERY         The history of slavery, the slave trade, abolition,
                and emancipation
                listserv at listserv.uh.edu

(The address given for each mailing list is the subscription address;
for exact details on how to subscribe it is usually best to send a
"help" command to that address.  Appearance of the RFD on C18-L will
be contingent on approval of the list-owner, who has been contacted.)

Following this RFD's appearance on news.groups, pointers to it will be
posted to the following newsgroups:

soc.history.living, soc.history.science

and full copies will be posted, with followups set to news.groups, to
the following newsgroups:

soc.history.war.misc, soc.history.what-if.

Proponent: Joe Bernstein <josephb at tezcat.com>
Proponent: Curt Emanuel <cemanuel at accs.net>
Proponent: Mark Swann <swan at sanger.ac.uk>





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