'Expeditions in Persia: Exploring Qajar Persia in two 19th-Century Diaries' unveils the intricacies of 19th-century Persian expeditions through two complementary travelogues. The first account, with an anonymous author (attributed to Sir John Malcolm), offers a detailed diplomatic and historical perspective on the journey through Persia during an East India Company mission led by Sir John Malcolm. The second travelogue, written by Mirza Saleh, an Iranian intellectual and later diplomat, chron...

The year 2024 marks the opening of the new Middle Eastern Library of Leiden University, a purpose-built facility to serve the needs of all those who engage in the study of the Middle East and North Africa from the dawn of history to the present day. To celebrate the occasion, more than 40 authors from Leiden and beyond have contributed to this special volume on the library’s rich and multifaceted Oriental holdings.

Topics range from the Ancient Near East to the material and conservational ...

This book considers the interplay between the affordances of technologies, the experiences and processes of technological systems, and the process of learning and adaptation by state actors as part of governance reform in China. It offers detailed studies of specific projects and applications that are automated or quasi-automated in organising and governing social, economic, and cultural lives in the world’s largest techno-authoritarian regime. Written by scholars from six countries across ...

This book analyzes the expansion of the Anatolian livestock trade, focusing on sheep and cattle, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries— a period marked by significant changes in state policies, society and environment. It examines the impact of these changes on both human and non-human actors, maps trade routes and networks, and explores their transformations over time, thereby contributing to the literature on Ottoman environmental and socioeconomic history.

The book identif...

This volume traces how colonial powers from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century built, adapted, and expanded systems of slave trading and coerced labour across different regions of the globe. Bringing together diverse geographical perspectives and source materials, the contributors investigate how European practices of enslavement—shaped above all by experiences in the Atlantic world—were transferred to, or reshaped by, societies in the Indian Ocean and Asia. In examining the manageme...