Cultural and Religious Exchanges between the Mediterranean and South India from Late Antiquity to the Early Colonial Times
Preliminary syllabus, work in progress
Core Class, lecture+tutorial, 4 CEU credits (8 ECTS credits)
Instructor: István Perczel (main instructor) with guest lectures by Bernhard Palme (Director of the Papyrus Museum in Vienna), George Hatke (University of Vienna, Institute of Oriental Studies) – not yet finalized, and Vasco La Salvia (University of Chieti, Italy) – finalized.
Brief course description
This course has evolved from an over two decades-long personal research and field work of the main instructor in Kerala, South India, which taught him about an interconnectedness of the ancient world, of which he had not dreamed before and, as a result, about the fallacy of European values being “the universal values.” Yet, this is the first time that he intends, with the help of his co-instructors and prospective students, to set this morale in a theoretical framework.
Thus, the course is intended to be an introduction to historical Indian Ocean Studies, with a focus on the Arabian Sea connecting the Mediterranean via the Red Sea and the Arab Peninsula to South Asia. Its inquiry starts with the story – transmitted by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and by Pliny – of the discovery by a Greco-Roman ship captain, Hippalos, of the monsoon winds, permitting a direct sail from the Red Sea to India, and will go as far as the Portuguese colonial expansion in the Indian Ocean.
Besides specific historical questions – for which please see the subjects of the individual classes – the course will also raise general questions of global history, much discussed in Indian Ocean Studies but rarely addressed in Eurocentric historiography, such as:
- Was there an economic (and cultural) “world system” in pre-colonial times, englobing Afro-Eurasia, or is the appearance of a unified world system the result of the European colonial conquests?
- How relevant is the “civilizational approach” – the supposition that the premodern world consisted in independent civilizational entities, entering in occasional contact through trade, war, diplomacy, and cultural exchange – for understanding the pre-modern Indian Ocean world?
- In connection with this question, has there been an independent European civilization, separate from other, non-European ones, such as the Islamic, the Indian, or the Chinese civilizations?
- What is the relevance of the recent concept of “cosmopolises” proposed as a replacement for civilizational entities?
- Has there been a longue-durée structural unity of the trans-Arabian Sea trade and cultural contacts and, if so, how did the rise and fall of subsequent empires modify this structural unity?
- In comparison to the other great trade route connecting Eurasia, namely the Great Silk Road, what are the structural characteristics of the trans-Arabian Sea trade routes?
- What is the reason for the subsequent formation of empires along the Silk Road, while the trans-Arabian Sea trade routes have given rise to only one empire in pre-modern history, namely the early Caliphate, soon to expand to the Silk Road?
Preliminary syllabus, work in progress
Core Class, lecture+tutorial, 4 CEU credits (8 ECTS credits)
Instructor: István Perczel (main instructor) with guest lectures by Bernhard Palme (Director of the Papyrus Museum in Vienna), George Hatke (University of Vienna, Institute of Oriental Studies) – not yet finalized, and Vasco La Salvia (University of Chieti, Italy) – finalized.
Brief course description
This course has evolved from an over two decades-long personal research and field work of the main instructor in Kerala, South India, which taught him about an interconnectedness of the ancient world, of which he had not dreamed before and, as a result, about the fallacy of European values being “the universal values.” Yet, this is the first time that he intends, with the help of his co-instructors and prospective students, to set this morale in a theoretical framework.
Thus, the course is intended to be an introduction to historical Indian Ocean Studies, with a focus on the Arabian Sea connecting the Mediterranean via the Red Sea and the Arab Peninsula to South Asia. Its inquiry starts with the story – transmitted by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and by Pliny – of the discovery by a Greco-Roman ship captain, Hippalos, of the monsoon winds, permitting a direct sail from the Red Sea to India, and will go as far as the Portuguese colonial expansion in the Indian Ocean.
Besides specific historical questions – for which please see the subjects of the individual classes – the course will also raise general questions of global history, much discussed in Indian Ocean Studies but rarely addressed in Eurocentric historiography, such as:
- Was there an economic (and cultural) “world system” in pre-colonial times, englobing Afro-Eurasia, or is the appearance of a unified world system the result of the European colonial conquests?
- How relevant is the “civilizational approach” – the supposition that the premodern world consisted in independent civilizational entities, entering in occasional contact through trade, war, diplomacy, and cultural exchange – for understanding the pre-modern Indian Ocean world?
- In connection with this question, has there been an independent European civilization, separate from other, non-European ones, such as the Islamic, the Indian, or the Chinese civilizations?
- What is the relevance of the recent concept of “cosmopolises” proposed as a replacement for civilizational entities?
- Has there been a longue-durée structural unity of the trans-Arabian Sea trade and cultural contacts and, if so, how did the rise and fall of subsequent empires modify this structural unity?
- In comparison to the other great trade route connecting Eurasia, namely the Great Silk Road, what are the structural characteristics of the trans-Arabian Sea trade routes?
- What is the reason for the subsequent formation of empires along the Silk Road, while the trans-Arabian Sea trade routes have given rise to only one empire in pre-modern history, namely the early Caliphate, soon to expand to the Silk Road?
- Instructor: Istvan Perczel