81960 - HISTORY OF CULTURAL EXCHANGES IN THE MODERN AGE (1) (LM)

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

At the end of the course students will demonstrate awareness of the cultural dimension of Modern economy and society. Special attention will be given to free and forced movements of people in relation to global phenomena such as geographical discoveries, colonialism, and capitalist expansion. At the end of the course students will have acquired a fundamental knowledge of the historical foundations of cultural interactions and conflicts typical of the global age.

Contenuti

Early Modern Global Exchanges

Class 1: Introduction

Class 2: Libraries, Archives, and Oral Sources

Class 3: Visual and Material Sources

Class 4: Environment and Diseases

Class 5: Territorial Powers: European and non-European Concepts

Class 6: Institutions and Economic Networks

Class 7: Raw Commodities and Manufactured Products

Class 8: Trade, Gift Exchanges, and Ransoming

Class 9: Slavery

Class 10: Diasporas, Displacements, and Forced Migrations

Class 11: Mixed Societies and Racial Hierarchies

Class 12: Religious Conversion and Negotiation

Class 13: Eurocentrism and Museological Display

Class 14: Science, Technology, and Medicine

Class 15: Conclusion

 

The course focuses on early modern exchanges globally from a multifocal perspective. Beginning with the aftermath of the global pandemic which hit Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century it will concentrate on economic, social, environmental, and cultural history over the centuries, until the middle of the eighteenth century.

Along with thematic perspectives it will provide students with a basic knowledge of some of the most important sources of global history.

Students are required to read the literature listed below and to demonstrate knowledge of some databases and online repositories which will be described during the lectures.

 

 

 

Testi/Bibliografia

Class 2: Libraries, Archives, and Oral Sources

Markus Friedrich, Epilogue: Archives and Archiving across Cultures―Towards a Matrix of Analysis, in Alessandro Bausi; Christian Brockmann; Michael Friedrich; Sabine Kienitz (eds.), Manuscripts and archives : comparative views on record-keeping, Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter, 2018, 421-445.

Paulo de Moraes Farias, Intellectual innovation and reinvention of the Sahel: the seventeenth-century Timbuktu chronicles, in Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne (eds.), The meanings of Timbuktu, Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2008, 95-108.

Website, TANAP, The Global Archives of the Dutch East India Company: http://www.tanap.net/

Class 3: Visual and Material Sources

Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds.), The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World, Basingstoke, Routledge, 2016. Introduction. The global lives of things: material culture in the first global age, 1-28.

Kate Lowe, Visual Representations of an Elite: African Ambassadors and Rulers in Renaissance Europe, in Joaneath Spicer (ed.), Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, 2012, 13-34.

Website, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works/

Class 4: Environment and Diseases

John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier. An Environmental History of the Early Modern World, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Chapter 9: The Columbian Exchange. The West Indies, 309-333.

Monica H. Green, Putting Africa on the Black Death Map: Narratives from Genetics and History, Afriques: débats, méthodes, et terrains d'histoire, 9 (2018), https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.2125

Class 5: Territorial Powers: European and non-European Concepts

Philip Stern, ‘Bundles of Hyphen’. Corporations as Legal Communities in the Early Modern British Empire, in Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850, NYU Press, 2013, 21-48.

Lauren Benton, Possessing Empire: Iberian Claims and Interpolity Law, in Saliha Bellmessous (ed.), Native Claims: Indigenous Law against Empire, 1500-1920, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011, 19-40.

Class 6: Institutions and economic networks

Douglass C. North, Institutions, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 1. (Winter, 1991), 97-112.

Aslanian, Sebouh, The Circulation of Men and Credit: The Role of the Commenda and the Family Firm in Julfan Society, The Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient, 50, 2 (2007), 124-171.

Harris, Ron, The Institutional Dynamics of early modern Eurasian Trade: the Commenda and the Corporation, Journal of economic behavior & organization, 71 (3) (2009), 606-622.

Class 7: Raw Commodities and Manufactured Products

Anne Haour and Annalisa Christie, Cowries in the archaeology of West Africa: the present picture, in Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 54:3, 2019, 287-321.

Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge University Press, 1986. 1. Introduction, 3-63.

Class 8: Trade, Gift Exchanges, and Ransoming

Anne Haour and Ian Forrest, Trust in Long-Distance Relationships, 1000-1600 CE, Past and Present (2018), Supplement 13, 190-213.

Ralph A. Austen, Trans-Saharan Africa in World History, 2010, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Chapter 2: Caravan Commerce and African Trade, 23-48.

Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi y Catia Antunes (eds.), Religion and Trade. Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000-1900, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014. Introduction, 1-24.

Class 9: Slavery

John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic world, 1400-1680, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. Introduction and Chapter 2, 1-9 and 43-71.

Class 10: Diasporas, Displacements, and Forced Migrations

David Richardson, Involuntary Migration in the Early Modern World, 1500–1800, in D. Eltis and S. Engerman (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 563-593.

Gabriel Rocha, Maroons in the Montes: Toward a Political Ecology of Marronage in the Sixteenth-Century Caribbean: A Critical Anthology, in Cassander L. Smith, Nicholas R. Jones, and Miles P. Grier (eds.), Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology, Cham, Palgrave McMillan, 2018, 15-35.

Class 11: Mixed societies and racial hierarchies

Richard Price, The Concept of Creolization in David Eltis and ‎Stanley L. Engerman, The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420–AD 1804, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 513-537.

Tonio Andrade, A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory, in Journal of World History, 21, no. 4 (2010), 573-591.

Class 12: Religious Conversion and Negotiation

Charles Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, Chapter 6: The Transmission of Religion and Culture, 182-202.

Gabriela Ramos, The Incas of Cuzco and the Transformation of Sacred Space under Spanish Colonial Rule, in Giuseppe Marcocci, Wietse de Boer, Aliocha Maldavsky, and Ilaria Pavan (eds.), Space and Conversion in Global Perspective, Leiden, Brill, 2014, 61-80.

Class 13: Eurocentrism and Museological Display

Jenkins, Tiffany, Contesting human remains in museum collections: the crisis of cultural authority, Routledge, New York, 2011, Introduction, chapters 1 and 2, 1-53.

Robert Aldrich, Colonial museums in a postcolonial Europe, in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 2:2, 2009, 137-156.

Class 14: Science, Technology, and Medicine

Paula Findlen and Anna Toledano, The materials of natural history, in Helen Anne Curry, Nicholas Jardine, James Andrew Secord, and Emma C. Spary (eds.), Worlds of Natural History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 151-169.

Sebestian Kroupa, Stephanie J. Mawson, and Dorit Brixius, Introduction: Science and Islands in Indo-Pacific Worlds, The British Journal for the History of Science, 52 (4), (December 2018), 1-18.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

 

Students who will attend the course online are required and encouraged to submit a paper. Its subject will be discussed previously with the teacher. Alternatively, students can take an oral exam, based on 15 among the listed readings (related to at least 7-8 lectures) at their choice.

Students who will not attend the course online and want to take an oral exam are required to contact the teacher via email to define the program. It will be based on 3 among the listed readings for the course's (at their choice) and other additional references.

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Carlo Taviani