The Medieval History Journal, Volume 26, Issue 2, Page 376-424, November 2023.
The recension of Marco Polo’s Devisament dou monde—an incunable of Francesco Pipino’s Latin translation titled De consuetudinibus et conditionibus orientalium regionum—used by Christopher Columbus is one of five annotated books known to have survived from the explorer’s library. The exemplar contains in its margins copious notes and drawings attributable to Columbus himself and other members of his immediate circle. These marginalia reveal that Columbus was a highly distinctive reader of content transmitted in the Poline textual tradition. He rarely dwelt on topographic, ethnographic or historical information. Rather, he was almost exclusively concerned with material things. His notes consist of brief references either to single objects or to lists of multiple objects associated with specific places. Cross-referencing allowed him to highlight similarities and differences between the regions of the known world, as well as to organise these regions hierarchically depending on the potential value of their manufactured and natural resources to himself and his fellow Europeans. He placed particular emphasis on mineral deposits and other substances such as gold, pearls and spices that he apparently considered to have an especially elevated intrinsic value. This article examines the revision, dissemination and especially interpretation of Polo’s late thirteenth-century work at a particular historical moment in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In so doing, it draws attention to Columbus’s contribution to a shift in the relationship between materiality and cosmography that would prove to be of key importance to modern colonialism.
Category Archives: Accounting History
‘For help and comfort and to resist the enemy of God’: Greek refugees in the Burgundian Low Countries
The judgement of God and the fate of a dog: the ninth-century ordeal debate and the anonymous Song of Count Timo
Rammohun Roy and the ‘Conservative’ Overtones of His Liberal Sociopolitical Agenda
Indian Historical Review, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 248-265, December 2023.
Rammohun Roy, the liberal reformer of the early nineteenth century, and perhaps the first Indian to comprehensively embrace the ideal of modernity, encountered a volley of criticisms during his lifetime and beyond. Of all this, the twin charges, that is, his reformist project denigrated India’s ancient sociocultural heritage and he acted as an unconscious tool of the British Empire in India, have recently gathered a new momentum in the context of the changing dynamics of Indian politics. This article seeks to engage with this line of argument by examining the political, social and religious dimensions of Roy’s thought and action. It is accepted that he was inspired by the ideals of Western modernity, which, he believed, held the key to the long-term intellectual, sociocultural, political and economic development of the Indians. He also supported the continuation of British rule at least for a period of time to allow wider dissemination of these progressive values in India and to pave the way for its all-round advance. It is contended, however, that neither did he intend to undermine India’s classical heritage, nor did he favour mindless aping of the West. On the contrary, he took ample care to integrate indigenous sociocultural components into his proposed roadmap for the future. Thus, his liberal agenda had evident ‘conservative’ underpinnings that arguably put a new spin on the idea of modernity.
Rammohun Roy, the liberal reformer of the early nineteenth century, and perhaps the first Indian to comprehensively embrace the ideal of modernity, encountered a volley of criticisms during his lifetime and beyond. Of all this, the twin charges, that is, his reformist project denigrated India’s ancient sociocultural heritage and he acted as an unconscious tool of the British Empire in India, have recently gathered a new momentum in the context of the changing dynamics of Indian politics. This article seeks to engage with this line of argument by examining the political, social and religious dimensions of Roy’s thought and action. It is accepted that he was inspired by the ideals of Western modernity, which, he believed, held the key to the long-term intellectual, sociocultural, political and economic development of the Indians. He also supported the continuation of British rule at least for a period of time to allow wider dissemination of these progressive values in India and to pave the way for its all-round advance. It is contended, however, that neither did he intend to undermine India’s classical heritage, nor did he favour mindless aping of the West. On the contrary, he took ample care to integrate indigenous sociocultural components into his proposed roadmap for the future. Thus, his liberal agenda had evident ‘conservative’ underpinnings that arguably put a new spin on the idea of modernity.
Rammohun Roy and the ‘Conservative’ Overtones of His Liberal Sociopolitical Agenda
Indian Historical Review, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 248-265, December 2023.
Rammohun Roy, the liberal reformer of the early nineteenth century, and perhaps the first Indian to comprehensively embrace the ideal of modernity, encountered a volley of criticisms during his lifetime and beyond. Of all this, the twin charges, that is, his reformist project denigrated India’s ancient sociocultural heritage and he acted as an unconscious tool of the British Empire in India, have recently gathered a new momentum in the context of the changing dynamics of Indian politics. This article seeks to engage with this line of argument by examining the political, social and religious dimensions of Roy’s thought and action. It is accepted that he was inspired by the ideals of Western modernity, which, he believed, held the key to the long-term intellectual, sociocultural, political and economic development of the Indians. He also supported the continuation of British rule at least for a period of time to allow wider dissemination of these progressive values in India and to pave the way for its all-round advance. It is contended, however, that neither did he intend to undermine India’s classical heritage, nor did he favour mindless aping of the West. On the contrary, he took ample care to integrate indigenous sociocultural components into his proposed roadmap for the future. Thus, his liberal agenda had evident ‘conservative’ underpinnings that arguably put a new spin on the idea of modernity.
Rammohun Roy, the liberal reformer of the early nineteenth century, and perhaps the first Indian to comprehensively embrace the ideal of modernity, encountered a volley of criticisms during his lifetime and beyond. Of all this, the twin charges, that is, his reformist project denigrated India’s ancient sociocultural heritage and he acted as an unconscious tool of the British Empire in India, have recently gathered a new momentum in the context of the changing dynamics of Indian politics. This article seeks to engage with this line of argument by examining the political, social and religious dimensions of Roy’s thought and action. It is accepted that he was inspired by the ideals of Western modernity, which, he believed, held the key to the long-term intellectual, sociocultural, political and economic development of the Indians. He also supported the continuation of British rule at least for a period of time to allow wider dissemination of these progressive values in India and to pave the way for its all-round advance. It is contended, however, that neither did he intend to undermine India’s classical heritage, nor did he favour mindless aping of the West. On the contrary, he took ample care to integrate indigenous sociocultural components into his proposed roadmap for the future. Thus, his liberal agenda had evident ‘conservative’ underpinnings that arguably put a new spin on the idea of modernity.
In memory of Esteban Hernández Esteve, 1931–2023
Editorial
Men, Masculinism and Masculinities: Ancient Indian Antecedents
Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 2, Page 239-264, August 2023.
This article seeks to analyse how the concept of masculinity is embedded in the cultural discourse of Ancient India. It is also our contention that since in the ancient Indic context, the sex-gender system was a reality, we cannot discount the existence of a ‘masculinist’ structure which had a role to play in shaping the perception/functioning of a masculine persona. The article is an attempt to unravel the mystique of Indic manhood across a broad temporal frame by focusing on different themes such as varn˙a status, male body, fatherhood and sexuality and its framing within the discourse on masculinity. Since masculinity was constructed in opposition to both femininity and the defective/deficient male, these two aspects have also been focused upon.
This article seeks to analyse how the concept of masculinity is embedded in the cultural discourse of Ancient India. It is also our contention that since in the ancient Indic context, the sex-gender system was a reality, we cannot discount the existence of a ‘masculinist’ structure which had a role to play in shaping the perception/functioning of a masculine persona. The article is an attempt to unravel the mystique of Indic manhood across a broad temporal frame by focusing on different themes such as varn˙a status, male body, fatherhood and sexuality and its framing within the discourse on masculinity. Since masculinity was constructed in opposition to both femininity and the defective/deficient male, these two aspects have also been focused upon.
Book review: K. L. Tuteja, Religion, Community and Nation: Hindu Consciousness and Nationalism in Colonial Punjab
Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 2, Page 280-283, August 2023.
K. L. Tuteja, Religion, Community and Nation: Hindu Consciousness and Nationalism in Colonial Punjab, Indian Institute of Advanced Study and Primus Books, 2021, pp. 372+xi, ₹1,250.
K. L. Tuteja, Religion, Community and Nation: Hindu Consciousness and Nationalism in Colonial Punjab, Indian Institute of Advanced Study and Primus Books, 2021, pp. 372+xi, ₹1,250.
Nationalism, Revivalism and Pan-Islamism: Shifts in the Political and Cultural Imaginings of Allama Iqbal’s Poetry
Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 2, Page 199-238, August 2023.
This paper argues that contrary to some popular perceptions, the ideological shift in Iqbal dates not from 1930 (when he apparently moved towards the acceptance of the two-nation theory at the Allahabad Session of the Muslim League) but to his stay in Europe from 1905 to 1908 (after which he made a complete and abrupt shift from Indian nationalism to revivalism and Pan-Islamism). This shift is powerfully expressed in the political and cultural imaginings of both his Urdu and Persian poetry. His poetry becomes suffused with the ideas of revivalism and Pan-Islamism in counter-position to those of composite nationhood and territorial nationalism on which the Indian national movement was premised. The shift is embodied in poetic imagery and metaphor incompatible with the modern idea of nationalism, especially the dominant idea of Indian nationalism. Iqbal’s later thoughts concerning Islam’s relations with non-Muslims in India and elsewhere promote an adversarial historical and cultural narrative of Islam.Though triggered by a passionate rejection of the West and its modernity, the shift manifested not just in a critique of the West but also of all non-Islamic cultures and civilizations. Iqbal’s narrative of Islam is teleological and triumphalist. Far from being defensive about the charges of intolerance and aggression levelled against Islam by its critics, he proudly invokes imagery of the sword and the conquest in the history of Islam, while bemoaning the decline of its political power in the modern era. Iqbal’s quest is for a supposedly pure Islam of the past and its revival in the twentieth century in the form of a redefined, reconstituted and revitalized Umma which cuts across boundaries of nations, continents and ethnicities. Few poets in the history of the modern world have had such influence as Allama Iqbal, and fewer still have made such fundamental shifts.
This paper argues that contrary to some popular perceptions, the ideological shift in Iqbal dates not from 1930 (when he apparently moved towards the acceptance of the two-nation theory at the Allahabad Session of the Muslim League) but to his stay in Europe from 1905 to 1908 (after which he made a complete and abrupt shift from Indian nationalism to revivalism and Pan-Islamism). This shift is powerfully expressed in the political and cultural imaginings of both his Urdu and Persian poetry. His poetry becomes suffused with the ideas of revivalism and Pan-Islamism in counter-position to those of composite nationhood and territorial nationalism on which the Indian national movement was premised. The shift is embodied in poetic imagery and metaphor incompatible with the modern idea of nationalism, especially the dominant idea of Indian nationalism. Iqbal’s later thoughts concerning Islam’s relations with non-Muslims in India and elsewhere promote an adversarial historical and cultural narrative of Islam.Though triggered by a passionate rejection of the West and its modernity, the shift manifested not just in a critique of the West but also of all non-Islamic cultures and civilizations. Iqbal’s narrative of Islam is teleological and triumphalist. Far from being defensive about the charges of intolerance and aggression levelled against Islam by its critics, he proudly invokes imagery of the sword and the conquest in the history of Islam, while bemoaning the decline of its political power in the modern era. Iqbal’s quest is for a supposedly pure Islam of the past and its revival in the twentieth century in the form of a redefined, reconstituted and revitalized Umma which cuts across boundaries of nations, continents and ethnicities. Few poets in the history of the modern world have had such influence as Allama Iqbal, and fewer still have made such fundamental shifts.