Between the Islamic and Chinese Universal Empires: The Ottoman Empire, Ming Dynasty, and Global Age of Explorations

This article studies two sixteenth-century Asian texts: Khitay namah, a Persian travelogue about the Ming dynasty written by the Muslim merchant Ali Akbar and presented to the Ottoman sultan, and Xiyu, an illustrated Chinese geographical treatise with detailed travel itinerary from China to Istanbul by the Ming scholar-official Ma Li. In addition to demonstrating the breadth of Ottoman and Chinese knowledge about each other in the global Age of Exploration, these two books, written respectively for the monarchs of the self-proclaimed Islamic and Chinese universal empires, reflect the Ottoman and Chinese imperial ideologies in an era when major world powers aggressively vied for larger territories and broader international influence. Both the Ottoman and Chinese authors recast the foreign Other as the familiar Self – Ali Akbar constructed an Islamized China while Ma Li depicted a Sinicized Ottoman world – to justify their countries’ claims to universal sovereignty and plans for imperial expansion. Like many contemporary European colonial writers, Ali Akbar’s and Ma Li’s exploration of foreign societies, their literary glorification of their own culture’s supremacy, and their imposition of their own cultural thinking on foreign lands all served their countries’ colonial enterprise in the global Age of Exploration.

VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF NATIVE AMERICANS IN COLONIAL AMERICA

The article presents some of the most common visual representations of Native Americans from the colonial period and the Age of Exploration of the Americas. Visual representations were a part of a broader colonial discourse and were based on the representational practices applied by the dominant Western European culture. After establishing a broader theoretical framework based on the post-colonial and cultural studies insights, the author singles out and analyzes several visual representations of Native Americans. The emphasis is on the Noble vs. Ignoble Savage stereotypes and tropes and how they are reflected in visual arts.

Bringing the Ottoman Order Back into International Relations: A Distinct International Order or Part of an Islamic International Society?

Long neglected in international relations (IRs), the Ottoman Empire is now getting the attention it deserves. Leaving its “Westphalian straitjacket” behind, the discipline has finally taken a keen interest in non-Western and historical cases. However, the discipline has long focused disproportionately on the Chinese tributary system and produced a large body of literature about it. Spruyt's The World Imagined presents two crucial innovations. The book, on the one hand, introduces the “Islamic international society” into the mainstream, and on the other hand, balances the dominance of the Chinese tributary system in the historical IR subfield. When Spruyt's book is read together with Mikhail's God's Shadow and White's Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean, it becomes clear that the Ottoman Empire should be treated as a distinct international order. By including another book in the debate (Casale's The Ottoman Age of Exploration), this study aims to problematize “Islamic international society” and introduce the Ottoman Empire as a distinct international order.

Hubungan Antara Perilaku Cybersex dengan Pre-Marital Sex pada Mahasiswa Universitas X di Kota Bandung

With the development of the internet that is increasingly fast and easy to access, a person or especially students, it is easier to see content that is inappropriate for viewing, such as adult advertisements, Western and local movie streaming sites that are not censored by related institutions, and also pornographic content on social media or on certain websites. On the other hand, at around the age of early adulthood or at the level of students, is the age of exploration of things that smelled of sex and consider it a matter of course, so that more and more pre-marital sexual behavior appears or pre-marital sex. There are differences in the results of research that researchers have explored, namely 6 studies that said that the two things had a relationship and 1 study said it had a weak relationship. After researchers interviewed 20 University X students, 14 of them had committed cybersex behavior with pre-marital sex. Because of differences in research and phenomena at the University X, researchers are interested in examining the relationship between cybersex behavior and pre-marital sex in University X students who are in Bandung. Respondents in this study were 122 students. The theory used in this study is the cybersex theory from Canners, Delmonico, and Griffin (2001) and the pre-marital sex theory from Duvall and Miller (2005). The correlation results show a correlation coefficient of 0.469 with a significance level of 0.000 which indicates that there is a close positive relationship between cybersex and pre-marital sex. Abstrak. Dengan berkembangnya internet yang semakin pesat dan mudah untuk di akses, seseorang atau khususnya mahasiswa, menjadi lebih mudah melihat konten yang kurang pantas untuk dilihat, seperti iklan-iklan dewasa, situs-situs streaming film Barat maupun lokal yang tidak disensor oleh lembaga terkait, dan juga konten pornografi di media sosial atau pada website tertentu. Di sisi lain, pada usia sekitar dewasa awal atau pada tingkatan mahasiswa, adalah usia eksplorasi pada hal-hal yang berbau seksual dan menganggap hal tersebut adalah hal yang biasa, sehingga semakin banyak muncul perilaku seksual pranikah atau pre-marital sex. Terdapat perbedaan hasl penelitian yang telah peneliti telusuri, yaitu 6 penelitian yang mengatakan bahwa kedua hal tersebut memiliki hubungan dan 1 penelitian mengatakan memiliki hubungan yang lemah. Setelah peneliti mewawancarai 20 orang mahasiswa Universitas X, 14 diantaranya pernah melakukan perilaku cybersex dengan pre-marital sex. Karena adanya perbedaan penelitian dan fenomena pada Universitas X tersebut, peneliti tertarik untuk meneliti hubungan antara perilaku cybersex dengan pre-marital sex pada mahasiswa Universitas X yang berada di Kota Bandung. Responden dalam penelitian ini adalah 122 orang mahasiswa. Teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah teori cybersex dari Canners, Delmonico, dan Griffin (2001) serta teori pre-marital sex dari Duvall dan Miller (2005). Hasil korelasi menunjukkan koefisien korelasi sebesar 0.469 dengan taraf signifikasi 0.000 yang menunjukkan bahwa terdapat hubungan positif yang erat antara cybersex dengan pre-marital sex.

An Interview with Giancarlo Casale

Giancarlo Casale is Chair of Early Modern Mediterranean History at the European University Institute in Florence, as well as a permanent member of the history faculty at the University of Minnesota. His new book, Prisoner of the Infidels: The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in Seventeenth-Century Europe will be released in summer 2021 from the University of California Press. Casale is also the author of award-winning Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford, 2011), and since 2010 has served as executive editor of the Journal of Early Modern History.

From Papal Envoys to Martyrs of the Faith: An Attempt in Generalization of Franciscan preaching in China in the 13th– 18th Centuries

The article is an attempt to systematize the preaching of the Franciscan order in China, starting with the papal embassies to the Great Khans who conquered the Middle Empire and founded the Yuan dynasty until the end of the 20th century. The author groups the information into several major periods, suggesting a five-stage periodization of the Franciscan presence in the Far East. A change in the preaching paradigm is noted during the 700 centuries of the fickle Minorites’ presence in China. While the first reconnaissance missions, achieving modest success in preaching to non-Chinese subjects of the Mongol emperors, were mainly diplomatic in nature, in modern times the mission, enjoying the support of the Spanish Padroado system, is purposefully concentrated on preaching work, especially among the poor segments of the population. Since the 16th century begins a change in the entire logistic paradigm of the Far Eastern missionary work. If in the Middle Ages the Pope had enough to send several barefoot Franciscans to the Tatars, then in modern times the church is already forced to reckon with the countries that divided the world, initiating the Age of Exploration, first of all, with Spain and Portugal, the two then superpowers, each of which supported their own preachers, competing for influence in India, China and Japan and giving the task of preaching Christianity an additional political dimension, laden with rivalry and intrigue. The article is a continuation of the piece by the same author, focusing on theoretical foundations of the Franciscan proselytization, published earlier [Dubrovskaya, 2020(1)].

The Mediterranean in the Spanish Imaginary During the Age of Exploration

This chapter explores the ways that late medieval Spaniards thought about the Mediterranean and the lands surrounding its shores. The chapter mentions the geographers' belief that the three constituent parts of the earth, namely Asia, Africa, and Europe, met in the Mediterranean and that the lordship of the world could only be attained through control of the inner sea. It also points out that the early expansion of primitive Christianity suggest that the Mediterranean possessed a latent religious unity. Aware of the history of the early Church in North Africa and western Asia, jurists devised arguments to the effect that Christian conquests in those regions were in fact acts of recuperation or defense. It then describes the nuances of fifteenth-century Spaniards' perspectives on Mediterranean space by demonstrating that the proximate western Mediterranean was familiar and known, while the more distant eastern Mediterranean was more exotic and often depicted as the site of fabulous wonders.