Borderlands of Knowledge in the Estado da Índia (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)

2019 ◽  
pp. 441-461
Author(s):  
Ines G. Županov
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Ultimate Failure

Indian historiography commonly treated Iberian imperial presence in South Asia in the early modern period as a precocious and unsuccessful effort before that of the British Empire. The Portuguese (and Spanish) Estado da Índia had indeed been an exemplary “borderlands” empire. However, its territorial marginality and the ultimate failure to expand did not hamper it from acquiring a prodigious “empire of knowledge.” By centering on three categories of knowledge—medico-botanical, linguistic, and historical—this article addresses the ways of knowing, collecting, and crafting information in transcultural dialogue with local communities. It focuses on mapping the major sites and intersections through which the knowledge circulated in the Portuguese imperial global networks. In addition, this article argues that these devalued, “borderlands” epistemologies inspired in important ways both British Empire and the major disciplinary fields (linguistics, area studies, history, Orientalism) engaged in reflecting on South Asia.

Jüdisch-christliche Koexistenz in den Dörfern ausgewählter Grafschaften Frankens während des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts

Aschkenas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben Stretz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Typical Picture

Jewish-Christian relations in village or small-town societies during the early modern period were framed by coexistence and conflict on three major fields of encounter: the rural economy, the practice of religion, and the social relations within the local communities. This study provides case studies of these three aspects by drawing on evidence for the two counties of Castell and Wertheim in Franconia. Analysis of three expulsion proceedings and their different outcomes allows us to add a fourth perspective to this typical picture of integration and segregation, the question of how political rule was enacted and communicated. The conditions of Jewish settlement and community life were always precarious and had to be renegotiated on a regular basis. Negotiations were influenced by the diplomatic skills of individual Jews, by the interests of the community or its leading members, of the rulers and their local representatives.

Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Katharina Grasskamp
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Maritime Networks ◽  
History Of

During the early modern period, objects of maritime material culture were removed from their places of origin and traded, collected and displayed worldwide. Focusing on shells and pearls exchanged within local and global networks, this monograph compares and connects Asian, in particular Chinese, and European practices of oceanic exploitation in the framework of a transcultural history of art with an understanding of maritime material culture as gendered. Perceiving the ocean as mother of all things, as womb and birthplace, Chinese and European artists and collectors exoticized and eroticized shells’ shapes and surfaces. Defining China and Europe as spaces entangled with South and Southeast Asian sites of knowledge production, source and supply between 1500 and 1700, the book understands oceanic goods and maritime networks as transcending and subverting territorial and topographical boundaries. It also links the study of globally connected port cities to local ecologies of oceanic exploitation and creative practices.

Un Grand Dérangement: Dreaming an Indo-Persian Empire in South Asia, 1740-1800

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 337-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Political System ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Counterfactual State

AbstractThe essay proposes a counterfactual historical exercise centered around the conquest of the Mughal empire in nothern India in 1739 by Nadir Shah Afshar, ruler of Iran. This episode, which was of enormous significance for contemporaries, has largely been neglected by more recent historians. After a survey of Nadir Shah's career and of the politico-economic conditions of the period, I propose a scenario here wherein the ruler of Iran does not return to his country (as he did), but instead participates in the articulation of a new political system, which would (in my view) have obviously been far more resistant to European ambitions than the Mughal empire turned out to be. A sketch of this counterfactual state system is provided, and the essay concludes by considering the implications of such a view for standard narratives of the 'Rise of the West' in the early modern period.

scholarly journals The European Influence on Sikh Portraiture: Representations of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Sher-e-Punjab (the Lion of the Punjab)

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsushi Ikeda ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Growth ◽  
Modern Period

Maharaja Ranjit Singh was one of the greatest patrons in the early modern period of South Asia. Under his sovereignty, local ateliers like the Imam Bakhsh workshop developed and many European artists like August Schefft and Emily Eden visited the Punjab region. His reign was also the period of economic and social growth, which fostered the spirit of Punjabi cultural identity across the Sikh Kingdom. Representations of Ranjit Singh changed significantly from his lifetime to posthumous portraits; the latter is characterized by advanced pictorial expression rather than the simply realistic technique. More development is evident in the colonial period, when the number of single portraits increased perhaps due to the import of small media like ivory and mica. Portraits of Ranjit Singh represent increasing European influence on Sikh art.

Religion and Colonization

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Lachenicht
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Jonathan Israel

For the process of European expansion and the colonial endeavors from the late 15th century to the 19th, historians of the Atlantic world have more often than not identified the imperial states as the most powerful players: the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, and English (later British). From these empires’ perspectives, colonization was also about converting the “heathen” to, first, Catholicism, and then, with the Reformation and the rise of different varieties of Protestantism, to other denominations as well. Colonization in the early modern period was as much about religious missions, about “the harvest of souls,” as it was about expanding territorial boundaries and economic resources (Lachenicht, et al. 2016, cited under General Overviews). What Lauric Henneton has dubbed the “spiritual geopolitics” of the Atlantic world (Henneton 2014, cited under Puritan Colonization Schemes) is an important feature in the conquest and colonization of the Atlantic world. While Catholic and Protestant institutions supported the imperial powers’ colonization schemes, the former had agendas of their own, which at times clashed with more worldly colonization schemes. Among the most powerful of these religious enterprises, we find next to the Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Capuchins a number of Protestant churches and communities. This is especially true for the later 17th and 18th centuries with so-called evangelical Protestantisms: Quakers, Halle Pietists, Moravians, and others. Many of these religious orders and communities had not only Atlantic but global networks that stretched from European to African, American, and Asian worlds—in the 19th century also to areas within the Pacific including Australia and New Zealand. In the early modern period, many religious minorities were heavily persecuted for their faith. Forced to migrate, a number of imperial states decided to “make use” of these religious minorities to populate their overseas colonies, to strengthen their might and prosperity. Tolerance, then, was about “suffering” the “religious other”—and about utilitarian motives that included colonization schemes (Lachenicht 2017, cited under General Overviews). Not only Sephardi Jews but also Huguenots, Quakers, Moravians, and others became—as Jonathan Israel has put it for Sephardi Jews—“agents and victims of empire” (Israel 2002, cited under Sephardi Jews and Colonization).

Lost in Translation? Constructing Ancient Roman Martyrs in Baroque Bavaria

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-828
Author(s):  
Noria Litaker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Lost In Translation

Over the course of the early modern period, parish, monastic, and pilgrimage churches across Catholic Europe and beyond eagerly sought to acquire the relics of ancient Roman martyrs excavated from the Eternal City's catacombs. Between 1648 and 1803, the duchy of Bavaria welcomed nearly 350 of these “holy bodies” to its soil. Rather than presenting the remains as fragments, as was common during the medieval period, local communities forged catacomb saint relics into gleaming skeletons and then worked to write hagiographical narratives that made martyrs’ lives vivid and memorable to a population unfamiliar with their deeds. Closely examining the construction and material presentation of Bavarian catacomb saints as well as the vitae written for them offers a new vantage point from which to consider how the intellectual movement known as the paleo-Christian revival and the scholarship it produced were received, understood, and then used by Catholic Europeans in an everyday religious context. This article demonstrates that local Bavarian craftsmen, artists, relic decorators, priests, and nuns—along with erudite scholars in Rome—were active in bringing the early Christian church to life and participated in the revival as practitioners and creative scholars in their own right.

Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Grasskamp
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Maritime Networks ◽  
History Of

During the early modern period, objects of maritime material culture were removed from their places of origin and traded, collected and displayed worldwide. Focusing on shells and pearls exchanged within local and global networks, this monograph compares and connects Asian, in particular Chinese, and European practices of oceanic exploitation in the framework of a transcultural history of art with an understanding of maritime material culture as gendered. Perceiving the ocean as mother of all things, as womb and birthplace, Chinese and European artists and collectors exoticized and eroticized shells' shapes and surfaces. Defining China and Europe as spaces entangled with South and Southeast Asian sites of knowledge production, source and supply between 1500 and 1700, the book understands oceanic goods and maritime networks as transcending and subverting territorial and topographical boundaries. It also links the study of globally connected port cities to local ecologies of oceanic exploitation and creative practices.

scholarly journals Useful To Have, But Difficult To Govern. Inns and Taverns in Early Modern Bern and Vaud

1999 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beat Kümin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Structural Aspects

AbstractThis essay examines the significance of inns and taverns in the early modern period. Drawing above all on a series of registers from the French and German lands of the Swiss Republic of Bern, the discussion is presented in two parts. A first section investigates structural aspects such as ownership, clientele, and the remarkably multifunctional character of these establishments. The second part illustrates the continuing growth in provision during the Ancien Régime and the limited impact of government regulation. It is argued that inns and taverns became the most prominent social centres in early modern local communities and that popular demand for their services prevailed over sustained campaigns to restrict numbers and discipline patrons.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Molly A. Warsh
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Feminine Beauty ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Unfree Labor ◽  
Maritime Empire

Pearls call to mind a simple, feminine beauty in the modern imagination, but this was not always the case. In the early modern period, they evoked the excitement and uncertainty of distant places and unfamiliar peoples. Pearls were one of the earliest sources of American wealth to be exploited by the Spanish and their associates in the wake of Columbus’s voyages; the Venezuelan pearl fisheries provided critical lessons in the meaning of maritime empire. The webs of free and unfree labor that produced this early Caribbean pearl bonanza embedded the Americas in global networks of migration and commerce.

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