Entangled itineraries: materials, practices, and knowledges across Eurasia

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Part 1. Overview -- Chapter 1. Nodes of Convergence, Material Complexes, and Entangled Itineraries \ Pamela H. Smith -- Chapter 2. Trans-Eurasian Routes of Exchange: A Brief Historical Overview \ Tansen Sen and Pamela H. Smith -- Part 2. Entangled Itineraries: Modes of Approach -- Chapter 3. The Silk Roads as a Model for Exploring Eurasianm Transmissions of Medical Knowledge: Views from the Tibetan Medical Manuscripts of Dunhuang \ Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim -- Chapter 4. Things (Wu) and Their Transformations (Zaowu) in the Late Ming Dynasty: Song Yingxing's and Huang Cheng's Approaches to Mobilizing Craft Knowledge \ Dagmar Schäfer -- Chapter 5. Curative Commodities between Europe and Southeast Asia, 1500-1700 \ Tara Alberts -- Chapter 6. Translating the Art of Tea: Naturalizing Chinese Savoir Faire in British Assam \ Francesca Bray -- Part 3. Material Complexes in Motion -- Chapter 7. The Itinerary of Hing/Awei/Asafetida across Eurasia, 400-1800 \ Angela Ki Che Leung and Ming Chen -- Chapter 8. Smoke and Silkworms: Itineraries of Material Complexes across Eurasia \ Pamela H. Smith, Joslyn DeVinney, Sasha Grafit, and Xiaomeng Liu -- Chapter 9. Itineraries of Images: Agents of Integration in the Buddhist Cosmopolis \ Tansen Sen -- Chapter 10. Itineraries of Inkstones in Early Modern China \ Dorothy Ko -- Part 4. Convergences and the Emergence of New Objects of Knowledge -- Chapter 11. Convergences in and around Bursa: Sufism, Alchemy, Iatrochemistry in Turkey, 1500-1750 \ Feza Günergun -- Chapter 12. A Wooden Skeleton Emerges in the Knowledge Hub of Edo Japan \ Chang Che-chia -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index.

Chapter 4. Things (Wu) and Their Transformations (Zaowu) in the Late Ming Dynasty: Song Yingxing's and Huang Cheng's Approaches to Mobilizing Craft Knowledge \ Dagmar SchäferChapter 5. Curative Commodities between Europe and Southeast Asia, 1500-1700 \ Tara Alberts; Chapter 6. Translating the Art of Tea: Naturalizing Chinese Savoir Faire in British Assam \ Francesca Bray; Part 3. Material Complexes in Motion; Chapter 7. The Itinerary of Hing/Awei/Asafetida across Eurasia, 400-1800 \ Angela Ki Che Leung and Ming Chen

Trade flowed across Eurasia, around the Indian Ocean, and over the Mediterranean for millennia, but in the early modern period, larger parts of the globe became connected through these established trade routes. Knowledge, embodied in various people, materials, texts, objects, and practices, also moved and came together along these routes in hubs of exchange where different social and cultural groups intersected and interacted. Entangled Itineraries traces this movement of knowledge across the Eurasian continent from the early years of the Common Era to the nineteenth century, following local goods, techniques, tools, and writings as they traveled and transformed into new material and intellectual objects and ways of knowing. Focusing on nonlinear trajectories of knowledge in motion, this volume follows itineraries that weaved in and out of busy, crowded cosmopolitan cities in China; in the trade hubs of Kucha and Malacca; and in centers of Arabic scholarship, such as Reyy and Baghdad, which resonated in Bursa, Assam, and even as far as southern France. Contributors explore the many ways in which materials, practices, and knowledge systems were transformed and codified as they converged, swelled, at times disappeared, and often reemerged anew