Pearls of Meaning offers a collection of essays by J.T.P. (Hans) de Bruijn, a leading scholar in the field of Persian Studies, in which essential domains of Persian culture such as poetry and Sufism are analyzed in an exemplary fashion. While poetry plays a pivotal position in these essays, the reception of the Persian literary tradition in Europe is another focus of the volume. De Bruijn evaluates the works of a generation of scholars such as A. Reland (1676-1718), C.H. Ethé (1844-1917), J....

For a long time, silk, tea, sinocentrism, and eurocentrism made up a big patch of East Asian history. Simultaneously deviating from and complicating these tags, this edited volume reconstructs narratives from the periphery and considers marginal voices located beyond official archives as the centre of East Asian history. The lives of the Japanese Buddhist monks, Eastern Han local governors, Confucian scholars, Chinese coolies, Shanghainese tailors, Macau joss-stick makers, Hong Kong locals, a...

In 1884 an obscure British soldier, having finished his tour of duty in India, decided to make a detour on his trip home in order to spend three months crossing Persia unaccompanied except for the local muleteers. Among his accoutrements he packed a small leather-bound sketchbook in which he not only wrote a journal but in which he also added accomplished and charming water-colour illustrations. The authors' introduction contextualises this trip made in 1884 against the background of Persiana...

Navigating Pluralities marks a break in understanding the history of Roman-Dutch law in Sri Lanka. Methodologically, it challenges socio-legal studies that concentrate on major jurisdictional conflicts alone, emphasizing the lived experience of everyday practices of judicial forums. It uncovers the navigation of plural practices in the Landraad, a judicial forum set up by the Dutch East India Company in seventeenth-century Sri Lanka. A choice of laws came into play in that forum, that choice ...

As a former colonized nation, Indonesia has a unique place in the history of photography. 'A History of Photography in Indonesia: From the Colonial Era to the Digital Age' looks at the development of photography from the beginning and traces its uses in Indonesia from its invention to the present day. The Dutch colonial government first brought the medium to the East Indies in the 1840s and immediately recognized its potential in serving the colonial apparatus. As the country grew and changed...

The Afro-Asianism of the early Cold War has long remained buried under the narrative of Bandung, homogenising and subverting the different visions of post-colonial worldmaking that co-existed alongside the Bandung project. This book turns the lens on these other visions, and the transnational interactions which emerged from various other gatherings of the 1950s and 1960s that existed beyond the realm of high diplomacy, while blurring the lines between state and non-state projects. It examines...

Whose international matters, and why? How are geographic regions constructed? What are the channels of engagement between a place, its people, its institutions, and the world? How do we understand the non-West’s influence in contemporary global interactions? From humanitarianism and activism to diplomacy and institutional networks, South Asia has been a crucial place for the elaboration of international politics, even before the twentieth century. South Asia Unbound gathers an interdiscipli...

Het Hemels Mandaat vormde de basis van de heerschappij van de Chinese keizers als vertegenwoordigers van de hemel op aarde. Onder deze illustere titel behandelt Barend ter Haar op overzichtelijke en heldere wijze de geschiedenis van het Chinese keizerrijk. De auteur geeft een kritische analyse van cruciale gebeurtenissen als de zestiende-eeuwse globalisering, de opkomst en ondergang van het Mandsjoerijk en het westerse imperialisme in de negentiende en vroege twintigste eeuw. Ook de recentere...