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In December 2007, our Chinese and Dutch colleagues organised an international conference in Guangzhou and Macao entitled "Canton and Nagasaki Compared, 1730–1830: Dutch, Chinese, Japanese Relations." I participated with seven Japanese colleagues. With more than twenty-five papers, the conference was a great success and participants were eager to deepen their discussions and to enlarge the scope of their inquiries. And so, stimulated by the co-editor of this special issue of Itinerario, Professor Leonard Blussé of Leiden University, I took up the responsibility of organising the follow-up conference in Japan on the same theme, but placed in a broader temporal context: "Canton and Nagasaki Compared." Comparing the two port cities Canton in South China (nowadays called Guangzhou) and Nagasaki at the western end of the Japanese archipelago, between 1600 and 1850 would yield new historic insights and reveal new perspectives for further research. The articles presented in this issue bear the fruit of this exclusive intellectual exchange.The articles deal with wide ranging subjects, from urban fires to the art of translation, and cover the broad period 1600–1850s. All contributors have taken the comparison of the two port cities at heart. We have grouped the thirteen contributions along four major research themes that emerged out of the conference: shipping networks and the state; managing trade flows; mediating trade; and urban and cultural life. The contributions bear witness of what I would call the four major benefits of the comparative history approach, which will be discussed further below.

AbstractThis article attempts to demonstrate that the notion of "Islamic world" was a creation of the modern age, emanating from north-western Europe in the nineteenth century. The term incorporates two opposing ideological meanings: on the one hand, Europe representing modern, positive values is set against the Islamic world, representing pre-modern, minus values, while on the other hand, the Islamic world was the common bond among all Muslims for their solidarity and unification against European colonialism. The article goes on to investigate why, how and when precisely the two concepts of "Islamic world" were created under the influence of modern European thought. It is stressed that in much of today's discourse too we can still perceive the two different meanings of the term, and this has often led to confusion and misunderstanding in discussion. Modern historians have played a role in substantiating the ideology of the "Islamic world", because modern historiography has often described political objectives as actual reality.

Ever since Minorsky published his introduction and commentary on the Safavid manual of administration Tadhkirat al-Mulūk, which has become a classic in the field, scholars have come to agree on the tribal character of the state that was founded by Shah Esma`il. In fact, it is through the military force of the Turkmen tribes, the Qezelbash, that Shah Esma`il was able to accede to the throne, thus inaugurating a period of relative stability for Iran that lasted more than two centuries. Iran owed its ability to resist the recurring and alternating attacks by the Ottoman Empire and the Uzbegs to Qezelbash power as well.Initially mobilized by religious fanaticism, the military strength of the Qezelbash became a double-edged sword for the Safavid rulers with the waning of unconditional Qezelbash devotion to the shah. Though they were indispensable to the defense of the empire's frontiers, the Qezelbash amirs, with their unbridled despotism and the resulting turmoil, never ceased to be a prime source of concern for the rulers.