|
|
|
CONTENTS |
VOLUME 14•NUMBER 1 |
MARCH 2003 |
ARTICLES
|
The Persian Gulf Trade in Late Antiquity
|
| TOURAJ DARYAEE |
1 |
| The following article discusses the importance of the province of Fars/Persis as an important province and the Persian Gulf as an important entrepôt. The essay seeks to demonstrate that because of the Perso-Byzantine rivalry the amount of trade on the silk roads was reduced and consequently the amount of sea trade via the Persian Gulf was increased by the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. The campaign for controlling trade in silk and spices was taken to the seas, and Persian colonies were established as far away as Sri Lanka. Administrative seals and Sasanian silver coins also indicated a lively exchange of commodities and the presence of Persians in East Asia. |
|
|
|
The Rise of Prehistory
|
| DONALD R. KELLEY |
17 |
| "Prehistory" itself had a prehistory, and it includes the early inquiries through the disciplines (or protodisciplines) of mythology, philology, ethnography, anthropology, archaeology, and especially, following Enlightenment "conjectural history," through investigations of the peoples of the New World. But it was in the nineteenth century that prehistory (Vorgeschichte, préhistoire, preistoria) emerged in its own right. This essay reviews the major nineteenth-century efforts by an international community of Scandinavian, French, German, English, and American scholars—especially archaeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and "anthropogeographers"—to establish "the antiquity of man" and, reinforced further by evolutionary theory, to give a new shape, periodization, and global reach to the study of world history. Thus prehistory was joined to the Western historiographical tradition in the search for a global perspective and a new "grand narrative" to encompass the divisive interpretations of national histories and the invidious one of the old Eurocentric and Euromorphic history. |
|
|
|
The Epochal Concept of "Early Modernity" and the Intellectual History of Late Imperial China
|
| ON-CHO NG |
37 |
| In response to the recent historiographical interests in testing the cross-cultural tenability of the epochal concept of "early modernity," this essay ponders the usefulness of the notion in Chinese intellectual history, focusing on the historical dynamics of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China. It does so by exploring three interrelated issues derived from the intellectual experiences of "early modern" Europe: the nature of knowledge, the sense of the past, and the claim of the ultimate grounds for ethico-moral values. The article concludes that late imperial Chinese thought displayed a historical trajectory quite different from that of Europe. It is thus problematic to dislodge the notion of early modernity from its European moorings and demonstrate its Chinese variety. |
|
|
|
The Culture of Culture Contact: Refractions from Polynesia
|
| I. C. CAMPBELL |
63 |
| Conventional treatments of first contact between Europeans and non-Europeans are framed within a model of either conflict or consensus. Modern Pacific historiography conventionally avoids both models and presents contact in terms of the Pacific Islanders' pragmatic rationality. This approach makes little attempt to present the European side of the encounter. Attempts by Marshall Sahlins to reconfigure indigenous behavior have not so far been incorporated into wider Pacific historiography because it appears to conflict with the established paradigm of "practical rationality." A synthesis of these approaches is possible if behavior by both Europeans and Poly-nesians is recognized as abnormal. The example of Tahiti suggests that a medial culture, a "culture of culture contact," came into existence spontaneously to mediate contact between two peoples who had no prior norms for engaging with one another. |
|
BOOK REVIEWS
| Paul V. Adams, Erick D. Langer, Lily Hwa, Peter N. Stearns, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks. Experiencing World History |
| Reviewed by DEBORAH SMITH JOHNSTON |
87 |
|
| Karl Moore and David Lewis. Birth of the Multinational: 2000 Years of Ancient Business History—From Ashur to Augustus |
| Reviewed by HANS GEORG NIEMEYER |
90 |
|
| Rudolph Peters. Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader |
| Reviewed by ABDUL KARIM KHAN |
93 |
|
| Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin, eds. Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea |
| Reviewed by AWAD HALABI |
95 |
|
| David A. Gerber, ed. Disabled Veterans in History |
| Reviewed by ROBERT L. BATEMEN |
98 |
|
| Michael Worboys. Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900 |
| Reviewed by KERRI A. INGLIS |
100 |
|
| Jose C. Moya. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 |
| Reviewed by IDA ALTMAN |
103 |
|
| J. M. Blaut. Eight Eurocentric Historians |
| Reviewed by PATRICIA ALVAREZ |
105 |
|
| David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture
|
| Reviewed by JEFFREY SOMMERS |
111 |
|
| David Scott. Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality |
| Reviewed by AFSHIN MARASHI |
116 |
|
LETTER
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|