GLOBAL/COMPARATIVE HISTORY:
IMPERAL ENCOUNTERS ON THE INDIAN OCEAN, 1500-1900
Co-listed as HIST 5397-001C

HIST 6321-001C
MON 2PM-4:50—120 Dallas Hall
Azfar Moin—58C Dallas Hall-214-768-2080

What Christopher Columbus had been unable to do in 1492 – discover a sea route from Europe to India and the Indian Ocean trade – the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama accomplished in 1498.  In the centuries that followed, the Indian Ocean became an arena for intense mercantile and imperial competition among European powers such as the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French. However, these Christian newcomers to the region encountered expanding and ambitious Muslim empires – those of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals – that were linked together by a cosmopolitan Persianate culture. The Indian Ocean at this conjuncture of history became a truly “global” space where, for example, gold and silver from the Americas fueled the ambitions of European and Asian empires alike, and Christian iconography inspired both Jesuit missionaries and Mughal sovereigns. The goal of this course is to study the imperial cultures of this milieu in a comparative and inter-connected vein. We will study the political ideologies and economic practices of key European and Asian powers over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will also compare imperial policies concerning religious difference and conversion, and examine the role of material culture, art and aesthetic tastes in enabling cross-cultural encounters. Towards the end, we will look at how British imperialism reconfigured India and the Indian Ocean region from the nineteenth century onward.

Readings include:  1) Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire 1500-1700; 2) Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Life and Career of Vasco da Gama; 3) GianCarlos Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration;4) Ghosh, Amitav, A Sea of Poppies; 5) Thomas Metcalf, Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920; 6) A selection of articles and book chapters drawn from history, anthropology, and literary studies.