Week 1 - Encounter and Exchange

Question 1

Problems of periodisation

Answer 1

Dividing history into sections such as medieval
Emphasise separation between times
Harder to notice continuities with such ruptures
Medieval, renaissance, early modern can be seen as Eurocentric
Trying to convey more continuities between times and world areas
Europe was often very backwards in these times and other places were more advanced - but how did Europe become so dominant?
Premodern is used to be more helpful

Question 2

utility of categories

Answer 2

Limits focus
Chronological ordering, understanding processes and change
Probing connections and distinctions
Premodern is relatively free of baggage because it is so new

Question 3

exchange

Answer 3

A transfer of things between ‘social actors’
Social actors = inidivuals, groups, beings
Things = humans, animals, objects, ideas
Can occur within or between groups and cultures
Relationship building
Enforcing hierarchies

Categories:
Reciprocity - returning favours (feudal relationships with land, protection and respect)
Redistribution - donation to charity and redistribution
Market exchange - capitalism (something is given for a price. Financial more than social)

Question 4

encounter

Answer 4

Explanatory framework for cultural change
Engagements across difference
Difference = cultural, religious, linguistic, asymmetrical power relations
Engagements = interactions, brief, extended, planned, accidental
Parties are both changed but remain distinct
Provoke negotiation or adoption of new parties
Outcomes and dynamic and unforeseen

Question 5

Kedar and Weisner Hanks summary

Answer 5

• Centrality of islamic society in encounters within the eastern hemisphere
• Translation as an essential process in encountering ideas across cultures
• Accessible geographical knowledge is not always automatically integrated into maps
• Limited cultural borrowing but renewed expression of Christian, European identity in crusader kingdoms
• What is preserved and what is lost? Difference between maps produced for an imperial court vs low level daily encounters of merchants
• Are exchange and encounter too neutral? May not show negative experiences and outcomes such as slavery and conquest

Question 6

KWH gravitational pull

Answer 6

• Islamic world
• Mongol empire

Question 7

KWH pieces of evidence

Answer 7

• Maps - show cultural and trade perspectives, definitive boarders between cultures
• Written can be more biased than archaeological

Question 8

KWH interactions

Answer 8

• Intentional - mapping and what is and isn’t included
• Accidental - how do we access evidence of this?

Question 9

KWH examples of encounter/exchange

Answer 9

Crusades
Only one attempt from each side to write about the other side’s perspective:
* History of the Franks who Came Forth to the Land of Islam, Hamdān al-Athāribī (c. 1071–1148)
◦ served first Frankish and then Muslim masters
◦ Written in Arabic

• History of the Princes of the East, William of Tyre (c. 1130–86)
  ◦ was commissioned by his patron, King Amaury
  ◦ Written in Latin
• Neither work survived → They were out of step with their times

Compendium of Chronicles by Rashīd al-Dīn (c. 1247–1318)
* closest thing to an all perspective work (“all-hemispheric history”)
* Persian and Arabic versions
* A Jewish physician who converted to Islam in his youth → Broader perspective

Question 10

Sandberg summary

Answer 10

• Use of the word encounter can have a neutralising or sanitising effect. Colonisation by Columbus and the consequent atrocities have been sanitised this way
• Places not encountered by Europeans not always documented
• Normal life and not war not always documented
• Sometimes Europeans documented other places with deliberate or accidental misunderstanding