Gifts in the Age of Empire

Gifts in the Age of Empire
Author: Sinem Arcak Casale
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2023-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226823555

Explores the Safavid and Ottoman empires through the lens of gifts. When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. Sinem Arcak Casale here sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts.

The Battlecruiser New Zealand

The Battlecruiser New Zealand
Author: Matthew Wright
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526784041

This book tells the story of HMS New Zealand, a battlecruiser paid for by the government of New Zealand at the height of its pro-Imperial ‘jingo’ era in 1909, when Britain’s ally Japan was perceived as a threat in Australasia and the Pacific. Born of the collision between New Zealand’s patriotic dreams and European politics, the tale of HMS New Zealand is further wrapped in the turbulent power-plays at the Admiralty in the years leading up to the First World War. The ship went on to have a distinguished First World War career, when she was present in all three major naval battles – Heligoland, Dogger Bank and Jutland – in the North Sea. The book ‘busts’ many of the myths associated with the ship and her construction, including the intent of the gift, New Zealand’s ability to pay, deployment, and the story behind the piupiu (skirt) and tiki (pendant) that, the crew believed, bestowed special protection upon the vessel. All is inter-woven with the human and social context to create a ‘biography’ of the ship as an expression of human endeavour, in significantly more detail than any of the summaries available in prior accounts. Extensively illustrated, this is a book with appeal to a wide audience, from naval enthusiasts and historians to the general reader with a wider interest in the story of Empire. The use of archival material available only in New Zealand, including the Ship’s Book, adds a dimension and novelty not previously included in histories of this great battlecruiser.

Tuscany in the Age of Empire

Tuscany in the Age of Empire
Author: Brian Brege
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2021-07-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674258770

Winner of the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize A new history explores how one of Renaissance Italy’s leading cities maintained its influence in an era of global exploration, trade, and empire. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was not an imperial power, but it did harbor global ambitions. After abortive attempts at overseas colonization and direct commercial expansion, as Brian Brege shows, Tuscany followed a different path, one that allowed it to participate in Europe’s new age of empire without establishing an empire of its own. The first history of its kind, Tuscany in the Age of Empire offers a fresh appraisal of one of the foremost cities of the Italian Renaissance, as it sought knowledge, fortune, and power throughout Asia, the Americas, and beyond. How did Tuscany, which could not compete directly with the growing empires of other European states, establish a global presence? First, Brege shows, Tuscany partnered with larger European powers. The duchy sought to obtain trade rights within their empires and even manage portions of other states’ overseas territories. Second, Tuscans invested in cultural, intellectual, and commercial institutions at home, which attracted the knowledge and wealth generated by Europe’s imperial expansions. Finally, Tuscans built effective coalitions with other regional powers in the Mediterranean and the Islamic world, which secured the duchy’s access to global products and empowered the Tuscan monarchy in foreign affairs. These strategies allowed Tuscany to punch well above its weight in a world where power was equated with the sort of imperial possessions it lacked. By finding areas of common interest with stronger neighbors and forming alliances with other marginal polities, a small state was able to protect its own security while carving out a space as a diplomatic and intellectual hub in a globalizing Europe.

The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age

The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age
Author: Alexandra Urakova
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2022-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000651614

This is the first volume that examines dangerous gift-giving across centuries and disciplines. Bringing to the fore the subject that features as an aside in gift studies, it offers new insights into the ambivalent and troubled history of gift-giving. Dangerous, violent, and self-destructive gift-giving remains an alluring challenge for scholars almost a hundred years after Marcel Mauss’s landmark work on the gift. Globally, the notion of toxic and fateful gifts has haunted mythologies, folklores, and literatures for millennia. This book problematizes what stands behind the notion of the 'dangerous gift' and demonstrates how this operational term may help us to better understand the role and place of gift-giving from antiquity to the present through a series of case studies ranging from ancient Zoroastrianism to modern digital dating. The book develops a complex historical, cross-cultural, and multi-disciplinary approach to gift-giving that invites comparisons between various facets of this phenomenon through time and across societies. The book will interest a wide range of scholars working in anthropology, history, literary criticism, religious studies, and contemporary digital culture. It will primarily appeal to university educators and researchers of political culture, pre-modern religion, social relations, and the relationship between commerce and gifts.

Global Gifts

Global Gifts
Author: Zoltán Biedermann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108415504

Global Gifts considers the role that the circulation of material culture played in the establishment of early modern global diplomacy.

Europe in the Contemporary World: 1900 to the Present

Europe in the Contemporary World: 1900 to the Present
Author: Bonnie G. Smith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350029572

This newly updated and improved edition of Bonnie G. Smith's classic textbook provides the most authoritative history available of Europe in a global context during the 20th and 21st centuries. It cleverly incorporates elements of political, social, cultural, economic and intellectual history and presents an integrated history with detailed coverage right across the continent. Including 131 images and 23 maps, Europe in the Contemporary World: 1900 to the Present is organized around key themes within a chronological chapter structure that is easy to follow. Smith's balanced treatment of the subject allows for a comprehensive assessment of the positive and negative developments in European history over the period, as well as the wider impact of this in the world at large. The book also includes picture essays and document sections, which provide variety and foreground the importance of primary sources, and useful end-of-chapter further readings for students who wish to investigate specific topics in greater depth. The enhanced 2nd edition contains: * A new chapter on the 21st-century issues that have challenged and continue to challenge Europe * More material on globalization, the end of the Cold War, European countercultures and various other topics * Historiographic updates throughout Europe in the Contemporary World: 1900 to the Present is the definitive guide to Europe and its place in the world since 1900 for students and scholars alike.

Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline

Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline
Author: Cecily J. Hilsdale
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107729386

The Late Byzantine period (1261–1453) is marked by a paradoxical discrepancy between economic weakness and cultural strength. The apparent enigma can be resolved by recognizing that later Byzantine diplomatic strategies, despite or because of diminishing political advantage, relied on an increasingly desirable cultural and artistic heritage. This book reassesses the role of the visual arts in this era by examining the imperial image and the gift as reconceived in the final two centuries of the Byzantine Empire. In particular it traces a series of luxury objects created specifically for diplomatic exchange with such courts as Genoa, Paris and Moscow alongside key examples of imperial imagery and ritual. By questioning how political decline refigured the visual culture of empire, Cecily J. Hilsdale offers a more nuanced and dynamic account of medieval cultural exchange that considers the temporal dimensions of power and the changing fates of empires.

Making and Remaking Empire in Early Qajar Iran

Making and Remaking Empire in Early Qajar Iran
Author: Assef Ashraf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2024-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009361554

Uses political practices and a socially-oriented approach to explain imperial formation under the Qajars in early nineteenth-century Iran.

Empire of Emptiness

Empire of Emptiness
Author: Patricia Berger
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2003-01-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0824862368

Imperial Manchu support and patronage of Buddhism, particularly in Mongolia and Tibet, has often been dismissed as cynical political manipulation. Empire of Emptiness questions this generalization by taking a fresh look at the huge outpouring of Buddhist painting, sculpture, and decorative arts Qing court artists produced for distribution throughout the empire. It examines some of the Buddhist underpinnings of the Qing view of rulership and shows just how central images were in the carefully reasoned rhetoric the court directed toward its Buddhist allies in inner Asia. The multilingual, culturally fluid Qing emperors put an extraordinary range of visual styles into practice--Chinese, Tibetan, Nepalese, and even the European Baroque brought to the court by Jesuit artists. Their pictorial, sculptural, and architectural projects escape easy analysis and raise questions about the difference between verbal and pictorial description, the ways in which overt and covert meaning could be embedded in images through juxtaposition and collage, and the collection and criticism of paintings and calligraphy that were intended as supports for practice and not initially as works of art.

The Captive and the Gift

The Captive and the Gift
Author: Bruce Grant
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2016-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501702866

The Caucasus region of Eurasia, wedged in between the Black and Caspian Seas, encompasses the modern territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the troubled republic of Chechnya in southern Russia. A site of invasion, conquest, and resistance since the onset of historical record, it has earned a reputation for fearsome violence and isolated mountain redoubts closed to outsiders. Over extended efforts to control the Caucasus area, Russians have long mythologized stories of their countrymen taken captive by bands of mountain brigands.In The Captive and the Gift, the anthropologist Bruce Grant explores the long relationship between Russia and the Caucasus and the means by which sovereignty has been exercised in this contested area. Taking his lead from Aleksandr Pushkin's 1822 poem "Prisoner of the Caucasus," Grant explores the extraordinary resonances of the themes of violence, captivity, and empire in the Caucasus through mythology, poetry, short stories, ballet, opera, and film. Grant argues that while the recurring Russian captivity narrative reflected a wide range of political positions, it most often and compellingly suggested a vision of Caucasus peoples as thankless, lawless subjects of empire who were unwilling to acknowledge and accept the gifts of civilization and protection extended by Russian leaders.Drawing on years of field and archival research, Grant moves beyond myth and mass culture to suggest how real-life Caucasus practices of exchange, by contrast, aimed to control and diminish rather than unleash and increase violence. The result is a historical anthropology of sovereign forms that underscores how enduring popular narratives and close readings of ritual practices can shed light on the management of pluralism in long-fraught world areas.