B4928 - Europe and the East in the Modern Era (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students will be aware of the global dimension of Early Modern economy and society and, more specifically, of how geographical discoveries, colonialism, and capitalist expansion created a web of connections between Europe and the East. They will also show an understanding on how these relationships gave rise to - and were affected by - forms of representation that eventually came to be known as Orientalism. At the end of the course students will be able to independently engage in the critical analysis of historical sources of various kinds and to apply their analytical and critical skills in professional activities associated with the historical disciplines.

Course contents

Europe’s encounters with the East in the early modern era were anything but neutral. They were moments of curiosity, fear, misunderstanding, admiration, competition, and sometimes deep transformation, on both sides. Far from being a linear history of “progress” or “discovery,” these encounters involved violence, friendship, trade, betrayal, faith, and above all: attempts to make sense of a world that constantly challenged what was thought to be certain.

This course examines the many ways in which Europe engaged with the East -- broadly understood to include the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, as well as South and Southeast Asia -- not only through war and commerce, but also through everyday practices: eating, translating, praying, collecting, classifying, and remembering.

We will explore how Europeans responded to unfamiliar moral and cosmological systems, how they perceived plants and animals, how they constructed knowledge about other religions, and how these experiences shaped both real and imaginary geographies. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which encounters with Chinese philosophy, Indian ethics, and Islamic cosmologies unsettled European ideas of nature, truth, and divine order—sometimes reinforcing old certainties, sometimes quietly dismantling them.

We will read letters, travel narratives, conversion stories, political treatises, and botanical manuals. Sources that reflect how early modern people tried to make sense of a world both familiar and unsettling. And throughout the course, we will try to hear the voices—sometimes loud, sometimes faint—of travelers, missionaries, dragomans, captives, converts, and librarians: those who moved between worlds, and whose experiences formed a fragile and complex early modern conversation about how humans relate to each other, to the divine, and to the living world around them.

Week 1: Introduction & Frameworks

• What was “the East” in early modern Europe? (geography, empires, networks)
• Key historiographical tools: global turn, microhistory, and orientalism (Said's critique)

Week 2: Religion, Language, and Proto-Orientalism

• Emergence of Oriental studies: Arabic, Turkish, Persian
• Learning Confessional dynamics: missionaries, converts, translators, scholars
  

Week 3: Animals and Plants E

• European reactions to ahim­sā, panjrapole, animal compassion in India;
• Cartography, botanical and zoological knowledge of the East;
• Ottoman and Persian practices: bird liberation, waqf for animals Week

4: Violence, Mission, Power

• Symbolic and physical violence: iconoclasm, forced consumption, conversion
• Missionary strategies vs Islamic and Hindu practices
• Colonial governance and oriental classification

Week 5: Memory, Materialities, and Legacies

• Marginalia, fragmentary traces: books, correspondence, alba amicorum
• Re-examining Orientalism: between appreciation and appropriation
• Final reflections: how early modern encounters shaped modern global thought

Readings/Bibliography

• Urs App, The Birth of Orientalism, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
• Urs App, The Cult of Emptiness: The Western Discovery of Buddhist Thought and the Invention of Oriental Philosophy, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World, Waltham, Brandeis University Press, 2011.
• Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds, New York, Hill and Wang, 2006.
• Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010.
• E. Natalie Rothman, The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2021.
• Rudi Matthee, Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan, London, I.B. Tauris, 2012.
• Ângela Barreto Xavier and Ines G. Županov, Catholic Orientalism: Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge (16th–18th Centuries), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015.
• William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, London, Bloomsbury, 2019.
• Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics, New York, Columbia University Press, 2012.
• Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552–1610, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Zoltán Biedermann, (Dis)connected Empires: Imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan Diplomacy, and the Making of a Habsburg Conquest in Asia, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018
• Hamilton and Jan Loop (eds.), The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe, Leiden, Brill, 2017.
• Pier Mattia Tommasino, The Venetian Qur’an: A Renaissance Translation, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
• Nabil Matar, Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517-1798, Leiden, Brill, 2021
• John-Paul Ghobrial, The Archive of Orientalism and its Keepers: Re-Imagining the Histories of Arabic Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe, Past & Present, 230/11 (2016), pp. 90–111
  

Teaching methods

Teaching is based on seminar-style lectures, combining frontal instruction with collective reading and discussion of primary and secondary sources. Students are expected to engage actively with the weekly material available on the course platform (Virtuale) and to contribute to class discussions.

Close reading, comparative reflection, and historical contextualization will be central to our approach. Whenever possible, sessions will include short presentations or focused group discussions on selected texts, images, or themes.

Assessment methods

The final exam will be oral and based on the reading and discussion of two books and three articles or chapters selected from the course bibliography. Students are also expected to be familiar with the topics and materials discussed during class, including selected primary sources and slides.

The exam will test:

• the student’s ability to critically reflect on the readings,

• to make meaningful connections across texts,

• and to present ideas using appropriate historical and conceptual language.

Optional Written Essay
Students may choose to submit a short written essay (approx. 3,000 words) on a topic related to the course. This paper will be discussed during the oral exam and, if of sufficient quality, may positively affect the final grade. Topics and bibliography must be agreed upon in advance with the instructor.

For non-attending students.

Non-attending students are required to:

• prepare three books from the course bibliography (instead of two)
• plus three articles or chapters
• and are expected to engage with the broader course themes and materials made available on the online platform.

The list of readings must be agreed upon in advance with the instructor.

Exam Sessions:

Oral exams will be offered every month during the academic year, except August.

Teaching tools

The course will make use of visual and digital materials including PowerPoint presentations, high-resolution images, historical maps, and short documentary excerpts. Selected primary sources and readings will be made available through the course platform (Virtuale)

Students with learning disorders and\or temporary or permanent disabilities: please, contact the office responsible

(https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students )

as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

Office hours

See the website of Chiara Petrolini