Transactions of the Royal Historical Society: Volume 14


Book Description

The Transactions of the Royal Historical Society publish an annual collection of major articles representing some of the best historical research by some of the world's most distinguished historians.




The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe


Book Description

This text provides an introduction to the history and institutions of the Ottoman Empire and presents a claim for its inclusion in Europe, as opposed to being apart from it due to its many cultural differences.




Ottoman Dress and Design in the West


Book Description

“This amply illustrated, attractive book is valuable for dress history scholars . . . [an] ideal textbook for courses on clothing and cultural history.” —The Journal of Dress History Ottoman Dress and Design in the West is a richly illustrated exploration of the relationship between West and Near East through the visual culture of dress. Charlotte Jirousek examines the history of dress and fashion in the broader context of western relationships with the Mediterranean world from the dawn of Islam through the end of the twentieth century. The significance of dress is made apparent by the author’s careful attention to its political, economic, and cultural context. The reader comes to understand that dress reflects not simply the self and one’s relation to community but also that community’s relation to a wider world through trade, colonization, religion, and technology. The chapters provide broad historical background on Ottoman influence and European exoticization of that influence, while the captions and illustrations provide detailed studies of illuminations, paintings, and sculptures to show how these influences were absorbed into everyday living. Through the medium of dress, Jirousek details a continually shifting Ottoman frontier that is closely tied to European and American history. In doing so, she explores and celebrates an essential source of influence that for too long has been relegated to the periphery.




Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe is an interdisciplinary collection of 24 essays which brings together leading international scholarship on Hakluyt and his work. Best known as editor of The Principal Navigations (1589; expanded 1598-1600), Hakluyt was a key figure in promoting English colonial and commercial expansion in the early modern period. He also translated major European travel texts, championed English settlement in North America, and promoted global trade and exploration via a Northeast and Northwest Passage. His work spanned every area of English activity and aspiration, from Muscovy to America, from Africa to the Near East, and India to China and Japan, providing up-to-date information and establishing an ideological framework for English rivalries with Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands. This volume resituates Hakluyt in the political, economic, and intellectual context of his time. The genre of the travel collection to which he contributed emerged from Continental humanist literary culture. Hakluyt adapted this tradition for nationalistic purposes by locating a purported history of 'English' enterprise that stretched as far back as he could go in recovering antiquarian records. The essays in this collection advance the study of Hakluyt's literary and historical resources, his international connections, and his rhetorical and editorial practice. The volume is divided into 5 sections: 'Hakluyt's Contexts'; 'Early Modern Travel Writing Collections'; 'Editorial Practice'; 'Allegiances and Ideologies: Politics, Religion, Nation'; and 'Hakluyt: Rhetoric and Writing'. The volume concludes with an account of the formation and ethos of the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846, which has continued his project to edit travel accounts of trade, exploration, and adventure.




Before Orientalism


Book Description

Table of contents




The Sultan and the Queen


Book Description

The fascinating story of Queen Elizabeth’s secret outreach to the Muslim world, which set England on the path to empire, by The New York Times bestselling author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps We think of England as a great power whose empire once stretched from India to the Americas, but when Elizabeth Tudor was crowned Queen, it was just a tiny and rebellious Protestant island on the fringes of Europe, confronting the combined power of the papacy and of Catholic Spain. Broke and under siege, the young queen sought to build new alliances with the great powers of the Muslim world. She sent an emissary to the Shah of Iran, wooed the king of Morocco, and entered into an unprecedented alliance with the Ottoman Sultan Murad III, with whom she shared a lively correspondence. The Sultan and the Queen tells the riveting and largely unknown story of the traders and adventurers who first went East to seek their fortunes—and reveals how Elizabeth’s fruitful alignment with the Islamic world, financed by England’s first joint stock companies, paved the way for its transformation into a global commercial empire.




Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East


Book Description

An exploration of early modern encounters between Christian Europe and the (Islamic) East from the perspective of performance studies and performativity theories, this collection focuses on the ways in which these cultural contacts were acted out on the real and metaphorical stages of theatre, literature, music, diplomacy and travel. The volume responds to the theatricalization of early modern politics, to contemporary anxieties about the tension between religious performance and belief, to the circulation of material objects in intercultural relations, and the eminent role of theatre and drama for the (re)imagination and negotiation of cultural difference. Contributors examine early modern encounters with and in the East using an innovative combination of literary and cultural theories. They stress the contingent nature of these contacts and demonstrate that they can be read as moments of potentiality in which the future of political and economic relations - as well as the players' cultural, religious and gender identities - are at stake.




Diplomatic Cultures at the Ottoman Court, c.1500–1630


Book Description

In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman court in Constantinople emerged as the axial centre of early modern diplomacy in Eurasia. Diplomatic Cultures at the Ottoman Court, c.1500-1630 takes a unique approach to diplomatic relations by focusing on how diplomacy was conducted and diplomatic cultures forged at a single court: the Sublime Porte. It unites studies from the perspectives of European and non-European diplomats with analyses from the perspective of Ottoman officials involved in diplomatic practices. It focuses on a formative period for diplomatic procedure and Ottoman imperial culture by examining the introduction of resident embassies on the one hand, and on the other, changes in Ottoman policy and protocol that resulted from the territorial expansion and cultural transformations of the empire in the sixteenth century. The chapters in this volume approach the practices and processes of diplomacy at the Ottoman court with special attention to ceremonial protocol, diplomatic sociability, gift-giving, cultural exchange, information gathering, and the role of para-diplomatic actors.




Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th-18th Century)


Book Description

This volume deals with the history of the Ottoman-Polish political and diplomatic relations, and with the role and function of international treaties in early modern Europe, especially in the contacts between the Christian and Muslim states. The extensive introduction consists of two parts: Part I examines diplomatic problems concerning "capitulations" (‘ahdnames), demarcation protocols (hududnames) and other Ottoman and Polish documents related to peace. Part II provides a chronological survey of the Polish-Ottoman relations covering the years 1414-1795, and then follow the texts of 69 documents composed in Turkish (rendered in a Latin transcription), Polish, Latin, Italian, and French. Turkish and Polish texts are provided with English translations. 32 documents preserved in originals are published in full facsimiles as well. The publication is enriched with bibliography, directory of geographical and ethnic terms, index and 3 maps.




The World Encompassed


Book Description

In this authoritative study, first published in 1981, Geoffrey Scammell traces the course of European expansion between around 800 and 1650, during which time the world known to western Europeans was enlarged in a way unparalleled before or since. The book takes a broad historical perspective, linking the classic age of European expansion to its medieval antecedents. The Norse reached North America in the tenth century, Italian missionaries and traders were established in China in the high Middle Ages, and during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in some of the greatest voyages ever made under sail, Iberian explorers crossed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and established footholds in the Americas, Africa and Asia. This is a stimulating and perceptive study, based on wide-ranging research, which makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the influence of empire on both colonial and metropolitan societies.