Syllabus
This course aims to survey the geographically extensive; ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse; and politically dynamic empires of early modern Asia from a global perspective and through the eyes of their people rather than from an isolated and Euro-centric point of view that created artificial boundaries dominating the historical narratives for centuries. The course connects the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the intruding maritime empires of the Indian Ocean, and China. While there will be some emphasis on chronological developments and major historical, socio-political, and cultural events, the course is primarily organized on a thematic basis. Topics include: state and identity formation; military expansion and navigation technologies; environment and natural resources; urban and rural populations and their daily life routines; religious and ethnic minorities; and developments in science, art, and architecture.
Week I (No Class)
Thursday, September 2, 2001 – First day of classes at NYU
Week II
Day I – Monday, September 6 – Labor Day – No class
Day II – Wednesday, September 8
Theme: General Introduction – Format & Requirements of the Class
Question: What is a state, what is an empire?
In-class activity: Primary vs. Secondary Sources and their Limitations
THEME I: EMPIRE AND STATE FORMATION
Week III
Day I – Monday, September 13
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Lecture topic: Post-Mongol era and Origins/Formations of the Empires in the Middle East
Reading #1: Stephen F. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, pp, 1-9 and 48-76.
Document #1: Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. C. T. Riggs, excerpts.
Document #2: Babur, The Baburnama, trans. W. M. Thackston, pp. 327-335.
Video: Crash Course, World History #7: Mongols: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szxPar0BcMo
Day II – Wednesday, September 15
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Lecture Topic: Do states develop before or after empires form?
Reading: Biedermann, Z. The Portuguese Estado da Índia (Empire in Asia). Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. [Also available on course reserve]
Document #1: Founding of Melaka. John Leyden, Malay Annals [Sejarah Melayu]: Translated from the Malay Language, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821, pp. 88-108.
Document #2: Tome Pires, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, wrien in Malacca and India in 1512-1515 … Volume II, ed. Armando Cortesão in Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, second ser. no. XC, London: Hakluyt Society, 1944, two sections: pp. 278-289 and 268-278.
Due on Brightspace, Friday, September 17: Map Quiz.
Week IV
Day I – Monday, September 20
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Lecture Topic: the Ming and Qing dynasties, dynastic changes, the expansion of territory, the bureaucratic system, the civil service exam, legitimacy.
Reading: Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, Cambridge: University Press, 2006, Chapter 8 and 9.
Document #1: “The Yangzhou Massacre,” in Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd edition, New York: Free Press, 1993.
Document #2: “The Yongzheng Emperor Reels from the News of Disaster, 1731,” in China Marches West, 571-574.
Image #1: Maps of the Ming and Qing empires
Image #2: Images of Han Chinese scholars in the Ming dynasty. Link
Images #3: Manchu bannermen. Link
Image #4: The Qing army defeated the Khoja at Arcul, 1759. The war against the Revolt of the Altishahr Khojas. Link
THEME II: KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY
Day II – Wednesday, September 22
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Lecture Topic: Science, Technology, and Knowledge Production in Early Modern Istanbul
Reading #1: Harun Küçük, Science without Leisure, Chapters 1 and 2.
Primary Source: Eva Orthman, “The Occult Sciences at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth Century,” in The Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities, ed. by Hani Khafipour, Columbia University Press, 2019, 384-400.
Week V
Day I – Monday, September 27
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Lecture topic: Local informants and the collection of knowledge
Reading: Harold John Cook, Maers of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age, Yale UP, 2007, Chapter 8.
Document #1: Lao palm leaf text.
Document #2: Images and text from Hortus Malabaricus.
Document #3: VOC translation: hiring a Chinese doctor.
Image: Cabinets of curiosity in Rijksmuseum.
Day II – Wednesday, September 29
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Lecture Topic: Exchanges between China and Europe, Jesuits, knowledge about nature, craft, the state control of technology, knowledge and power
Reading: Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005, “An overview of the Argument” xxxi-xxxviii, 190-222. Document: Li Shizhen’s (1518 – 1593) entry on “Dragon,” in Carla Suzan Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009, 50-68.
Visual Source: Tang Ying (1682–1756) and Tao ye tu (Illustrations of Porcelain Manufacture), in Robert Tichane, Ching-Te-Chen Views of a Porcelain City (Painted Post, NY: NYS Inst. for Glaze Research, 1983), Chapter 5.
Week VI
THEME III: MARITIME CONNECTIONS
Day I – Monday, October 4
Lecture Topic: Ottoman Way of Exploration and the Indian Ocean
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Reading #1: Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, Oxford University Press, 2010, Introduction and Chapter 4
Document #1: Piri Reis Map at Topkapi Palace Link
Images: Album of Turkish Costume Paintings at NYPL. Link
Primary Source: In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Ambassadorial Reports, pp. 46-53.
Day II – Wednesday, October 6
Theme: Maritime Connections
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Reading #1: Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders: a global history of exploration (New York : W. W. Norton 2006), Ch. 6, “Girdling: Connecting Global Routes, c. 1500-1620”, pp. 193-214.
Reading #2: Manguin, Pierre-Yves. “Ships and Shipping in Southeast Asia.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Read this one very lightly.
Document #1: Willem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe, Memorable Description of the East Indian Voyage 1618-1625, trans. Mrs. C.B. Bodde-Hodgkinson and Pieter Geyl, London: Routledge, 1929, title page and pp. 19-55.
Document #2: Founding of Singapura. John Leyden, Malay Annals [Sejarah Melayu]: Translated from the Malay Language, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821, pp. 40-45.
Week VII
Day I – Monday, October 11 (No Class)
Day II – Wednesday, October 13
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Lecture Topic: explorations, maritime routes, the state, and the absence of the state
Reading #1 Sen, Tansen. “The Impact of Zheng He’s Expeditions on Indian Ocean Interactions.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 79, no 3 (2016), 609–36.
Reading #2 Wang Gungwu, “Merchants without Empire: The Hokkien Sojourning Communities,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, ed. James D. Tracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 400–422,
Reading #3 Tonio Andrade, “A Chinese farmer, two African boys, and a warlord: toward a global microhistory,” Journal of World History (2010): 573-591.
Image #1: The route of Zheng He’s seven voyages
Image #2: The Selden map of China. Link
Week VIII
THEME IV: SLAVERY / CAPITIVITY / LABOR / UNFREEDOM
Day I – Monday, October 18
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Lecture Topic: Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Kinds
Reading #1: Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, Palgrave 1996, (pp. 1-40).
Reading #2: Gülay Yılmaz, “Becoming a Devshirme: The Training of Conscripted Children in the Ottoman Empire,” in Children in Slavery Through the Ages, eds. Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller. Ohio University Press, 2009, 119-134.
Primary Source: In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Ambassadorial Reports, pp. 41-47.
Day II – Wednesday, October 20
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Lecture topic: Varieties of slavery, growth of the slave trade.
Reading #1: Mahias van Rossum, “The Dutch East India Company and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago Worlds, 1602–1795,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2020. [Also available on course reserve]
Reading #2: Slack, E. Mexico and the Pacific. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. ONLY sections “The Pacific and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, 1521–1821: First Phase of Exploration and Conquest in Asia and Mexico, 1521–1750; Acapulco and the Manila Galleon Trade.” [Also available on course reserve]
Document #1: Translation of VOC court document on slave woman’s murder.
Document #2: Memoir of Wange van Bali.
Document #3: Excerpt of laws, Liaw Yock Fang, Undang-Undang Melaka: The Laws of Melaka in Bibliotheca Indonesica, vol. 13, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, pp. 62-79.
Week IX
Day I – Monday, October 25
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Lecture Topic: different levels of freedom, master-servant relationship, eunuchs, bondservants
Reading: Jonathan D. Spence, Ts’ao Yin and the K’ang-Hsi Emperor; Bondservant and Master, Yale Historical Publications, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966, Preface, Chapter 1 and 5. Read carefully, find out and analyze the master-servant relationships in the book.
THEME V: BORDER AND BORDERLANDS
Day II – Wednesday, October 27
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Lecture Topic: Border Formation and its Actors & Maintenance
Reading #1: Palmira Brumme, Mapping the Ottomans: Sovereignty, Territory, and Identity in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Chapter 3 (pp. 75-127).
Reading #2: Eric Dursteler, Gender, Identity, and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Chapter 1 (pp. 1-33).
Images: Maps of Matrakçı Nasuh. Click here.
Week X
Day I – Monday, November 1
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Lecture Topic: Sea people as border-crossers; sea as law-bound or lawless borderland?
Reading #1: Andaya, Leonard Y. “Trade, Ethnicity, and Identity in Island Southeast
Asia.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History.
Reading #2: James Sco, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland South Asia, Yale UP, 2010 (excerpt of preface, pp. ix-xi, xiv).
Document #1: Undang-Undang Laut, in Thomas Stamford Raffles, “On the Malayu Nation, with a Translation of its Maritime Institutions,” Asiatic Researches, vol. 12, 1818, pp. 129-159
Document #2: George Earl, “Pirates on the Java Sea,” in The Indonesia Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. Tineke Hellwig, Eric Tagliacozzo, Robin Kirk, and Orin Stam, Durham: Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 173-176.
Day II – Wednesday, November 3
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Lecture Topic: Expansion, direct and indirect administration, Native Chieftains, ethnography, middle grounds
Reading: C. Pat Giersch, “‘A Motley Throng:’ Social Change on Southwest China’s Early Modern Frontier, 1700-1880,” The Journal of Asian Studies 60, no. 1 (2001): 67–94.
Document: “Miao Albums” in Victor H. Mair, Nancy Shaman Steinhardt, and Paul R. Goldin, Hawai’i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture (University of Hawaii Press, 2005),
Image #1: Illustrations of Taiwan ‘s Savage Villages (1745), “Producing Sugar”
Image #2: Illustrations of Taiwan ‘s Savage Villages (1745), “Growing Taro”
Image #3: Illustrations of Taiwan ‘s Savage Villages (1745), “Fishing” .
Week XI
THEME VI: ENVIRONMENT / NATURAL RESOURCES
Day I – Monday, November 8
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Lecture Topic: Environmental Reasons of Rebellion in the Ottoman Empire
Reading #1: Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, Cambridge UP, 2011 (Introduction, and Chapters 1, 3, and 5).
Reading #2: Alan Mikhail, “Climate and the Chronology of Iranian History,” in Iranian Studies 49/6 (2016), 963-972).
Video: Beneath Iran’s Dusty Desert Lie Ancient Water Tunnels (Qanat) Still in Use. Click here.
Primary Source: Baburnama, pp. 335-350
Day II – Wednesday, November 10
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Lecture topic: Three kinds of colony, three ways of using the environment: port city, plantation colony, and seler colony.
Reading: Lorenzo Veracini, “Introducing Seler Colonial Studies,” Seler Colonial Studies 1 (2011); pp. 1-5.
Document #1: Images of Sri Lanka and Taiwan.
Document #2: Images from Banda.
Document #3: Jan Van Riebeeck Leer to VOC, 13 May 1652, in Precis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope: Leers Despatched from the Cape, 1652-1662 ed. H.C.V. Leibbrandt, vol. 1, Cape Town: W.A. Richards, 1900, pp. 10-32.
Document #4: A Courante of Newes from the East India. (London: 1622).
Document #5: Translation of: Minutes, 6 October 1636, in H.T. Colenbrander, ed., Dagh-Register gehouden int Casteel Batavia vant passerende daer ter plaetse als over geheel Nederlandts-India, Anno 1636 (‘s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1899), 236.
Week XII
Day I – Monday, November 15
Lecture Topic: Culture and Nature, natural resources, space and people
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Reading: Jonathan Schlesinger, A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule, Stanford UP, 2017 (Chapters 1, 2 and Conclusion)
Day II – Wednesday, November 17
Lecture Topic: Gender and Law in the Ottoman Empire
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Reading: Judith E. Tucker, In the House of Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine, UC Press, 2000, Introduction, and Chapters 1, 2, and 3.
Primary Source: Lady Mary Montagu’s Leers from the Ottoman Empire
In-class activity: Video – Magnificent Century
In-class activity: How Turks depicted Women of India. Link
Due on Brightspace and on course website on Friday, November 19: Second Document Analysis
Week XIII
Day I – Monday, November 22
Lecture Topic: Gender and the construction of colonial hierarchies
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Reading: Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, UC Press, 2-10, pp. 41-46.
Document #1: Linschoten excerpt on women in Goa.
Visual sources #1: Image of market in Goa, from Linschoten.
Visual sources #2: Images of women from Linschoten.
Day II – Wednesday, November 24
NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING
Due Monday, November 26: Progress report on Final Project (one page).
Week XIV
Day I – Monday, November 29
Lecture Topic: gender, family, separation of two sexes, women’s education, gendered division of labor, womanly work, male’s anxiety
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Reading: Susan Mann, “Women, Families, and Gender Relations,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. Willard J. Peterson, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 428–72.
Document: Shen, Fu, Six Records of a Floating Life (Harmondsworth, Middlesex : New York: Penguin, 1983), Part I and Part III.
Image #1: Gengzhi tu. Link
Image #2: Ban Zhao teaching in the inner quarter, Palace Museum, Taipei. External Link
Image #3: Lotus shoes. Link
THEME VIII: IDENTITIES
Day II – Wednesday, December 1
Lecture Topic: Being/ Becoming and Conversion in the Middle East
Instructor: Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Reading: Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull, “Dealing with Identity in the Ottoman Empire,” in Living in the Ottoman Realm, eds. Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull, Indiana University Press, 2016, 1-16.
Primary Source: Rudi Mahee, “Confessions of an Armenian Convert,” in The Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities, ed. by Hani Khafipour, Columbia University Press, 2019, 11-31.
Images: Ottoman Costume Catalogs. Link
Week XV
Day I – Monday, December 6
Lecture Topic: Trading Diasporas, Religion and Trade
Instructor: Susanah Shaw Romney
Reading: Watson Andaya, Barbara. “Religion and Commerce in Southeast Asia.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History.
Document #1: Leonard Blussé, “Leers from Chinese Merchants to Batavia”, in The Indonesia Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. Tineke Hellwig, Eric Tagliacozzo, Robin Kirk, and Orin Stam (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009) pp. 165-172.
Document #2: Excerpt from the travels of Ibn Bauta. “The Maldives,” in H.A.R. Gibb, trans., The Travels of Ibn Bauta A.D. 1325-1354 vol. 4 Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, second ser. no. 178 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1994), pp. 822-846.
Day II – Wednesday, December 8
Lecture Topic: Religion, Ethnicity, Manchu, Universalism, pluralism, Tibet, Mongol, Tibetan Buddhism
Instructor: Yijun Wang
Reading: Pamela Kyle Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology, 1st ed., 2000, Introduction and Chapter 6.
Document: The Qianlong Emperor, “Discourse on Lamas,” in Max Oidtmann, Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2018), 239-244.
Image #1: The Qianlong Emperor as a Buddhist Saint. Link
Image #2: The Yongzheng Emperor in Han Scholar costume. Link
Image #3: The Yongzheng Emperor in Daoist costume. Link
Week XVI
Day I – Monday, December 13 – Last day of Fall 2021 classes
Instructor: Concluding Remarks