Suchergebnisse

This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia. These studies are based on Gommans' observation that Indian empires always had to deal with a highly dynamic inner frontier between semi-arid wilderness and settled agriculture. Such inner frontiers could only be bridged by the ongoing movements of Turkish, Afghan, Rajput and other warbands. Like the most spectacular examples of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empires, they all based their power on the exploitation of the most lethal weapon of that time: the warhorse. In discussing the breeding and trading of horses and their role in medieval and early modern South Asian warfare, Gommans also makes some thought-provoking comparisons with Europe and the Middle East. Since the Indian frontier is part of the much larger Eurasian Arid Zone that links the Indian subcontinent to West, Central and East Asia, the final essay explores the connected and entangled history of the Turko-Mongolian warband in the Ottoman and Timurid Empires, Russia and China.

This article aims to situate medieval South Asia in the broader taxonomy of frontier types and to identify it as a region that was neither wholly sedentary nor wholly pastoral but rather a place where internal frontier zones existed between these two ecological types. From the twelfth century onward, these zones were invigorated by the growing resources of mobile warriors, pastoralists, and merchants. Hence, state-building increasingly hinged on spanning the divide between arid jungle and humid arable land.

"In 1602, the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands chartered the first commercial company, the Dutch East India Company, and, in so doing, initiated a new wave of globalization. Even though Dutch engagement in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans dates back to the 16th century, it was the dawn of the 17th century that brought the Dutch into the fold of the general movement of European expansion overseas and concomitant globalization. This volume surveys the Dutch participation in, and contribution to, the process of globalization. At the same time, it reassesses the various ways Dutchmen fashioned themselves following the encounter and in the light of increasing dialogue with other societies across the world. As such, Exploring the Dutch Empire offers a new insight into the macro and micro worlds of the global Dutchman in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The result fills a gap in the historiography on empire and globalization, which has previously been dominated by British and, to a lesser extent, French and Spanish cases."--Bloomsbury Publishing

Preliminary Materials /J.J.L Gommans and H.T. Zurndorfer -- Lands Under State Cultivation Under The T'Ang /Denis Twitchett -- The Birth Of Capitalism In China /E. Balazs -- A Cycle Of Economic Change In Imperial China: Coal And Iron In Northeast China, 750-1350 /Robert Hartwell -- Maritime Commerce And Its Relation To The Sung Navy /Jung-Pang Lo -- Estate And Family Management In The Later Han As Seen In The Monthly Instructions For The Four Classes Of People /Patricia Ebrey -- The Merchant Network In 16th Century China A Discussion And Translation Of Zhang Han's \'On Merchants\' /Timothy Brook -- Is There An East Asian Development Path? Long-Term Comparisons, Constraints, And Continuities /Kenneth Pomeranz -- A New Interpretation Of Indian History /A.L. Basham -- Law And The Social Order In India Before The Muhammad An Conquests /J. Duncan M. Derrett -- Religious Networks And Royal Influence In Eleventh Century South India /George. W. Spencer -- International Trade And Foreign Diplomacy In Early Medieval South India /Kenneth R. Hall -- The Genesis And Historical Role Of The Masterweavers In South Indian Textile Production /Vijaya Ramaswamy -- Water Works And Irrigation System In India During Pre-Mughal Times /Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui.

"Dutch overseas expansion in the seventeenth century is a difficult phenomenon for a modern political scientist to explain. In terms of their administrative structure, the long string of Dutch settlements along the coasts of Asia, Africa and America was something between a trading diaspora and an empire. Certainly, Dutch contemporaries themselves neither regarded it as an empire, nor did they feel any sympathies for the very idea of empire. Had they not succeeded in repelling such an empire in a tremendously bloody uprising lasting a staggering eighty years? Their rebellion had been against an imperial tyrant who rode roughshod over their traditional privileges and freedoms"--