Primary Sources: Intercultural Contact

Volume 1: 1441-1905
Volume 2: 1875 - present

In America's First Adventure in China, John Haddad provides a colourful history of the evolving cultural exchange and interactions between these countries.

In offering a cultural history of the encounter between medieval Latin Christians and the distant East, Before Orientalism reveals how Europeans' prevailing preoccupations with food and eating habits, gender roles, sexualities, civility, and the foreign body helped shape their perceptions of Asian peoples and societies. Phillips gives particular attention to the texts' known or likely audiences, the cultural settings within which they found a foothold, and the broader impact of their descriptions, while also considering the motivations of their writers. She reveals in rich detail responses from European travelers that ranged from pragmatism to wonder. Fear of military might, admiration for high standards of civic life and court culture, and even delight in foreign magnificence rarely assumed the kind of secular Eurocentric superiority that would later characterize Orientalism. Placing medieval writing on the East in the context of an emergent "Europe" whose explorers sought to learn more than to rule, Before Orientalism complicates our understanding of medieval attitudes toward the foreign.

China and maritime Europe, 1500-1800 looks at early modern China in some of its most complicated and intriguing relations with a world of increasing global interconnection.

Covers:
Greeks' Barbarians (writings of Herodotus)
Rome encounters the Celts
Rome encounters Gaul, Germany
Rome and Britain
Goths turn to Rome
Huns
Vandals
Vikings
Ireland
Genghis Khan
Mongols and Tartars
Tamerlane
Crusades: Infidel against Infidel

Through case studies spanning Europe, America, Africa, and Asia, this book illuminates our understanding of what happens when different cultures meet.

Retraces two critical centuries of Middle Eastern history, presents an intriguing chronicle of the Crusades, and offers insights into the forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today.

Cultural encounters during the crusades is an attempt to cover two distinct research areas that are both well-developed internationally, but seldom combined: Cultural studies of encounters and Crusade history. Cultural studies on encounters have often been concentrated on how societies have been able to overcome differences, continue a kind of 'Convivencia', and, as far as possible, reduce the potential for conflict. Here, encounters have been understood as adaptation, as inspiration and as loan from one culture to another. Studies on Crusade history, on the other hand, have often focused on the violent side of encounters. One part has delved into practical aspects of warfare, another part into ideological aspects: the theology of indulgence and martyrdom, the creation of a literature illustrating the cruelty of the enemy and a history-writing stressing the unavoidable conflict between cultures.

Breaks new scholarly boundaries in the exploration of cultural and scientific exchanges across Mongol Eurasia.

First chapters include writings of intercultural contact between the indigenous peoples of the Americans and Europeans.

Contains excerpts of a wide variety of primary documents scattered throughout the book.

See book link for table of contents.

Europe and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting once and for all the misguided notion of a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and Europe. In this landmark book, three eminent historians bring to life the complex and tumultuous relations between Genoans and Tunisians, Alexandrians and the people of Constantinople, Catalans and Maghrebis--the myriad groups and individuals whose stories reflect the common cultural, intellectual, and religious heritage of Europe and Islam.

This volume reveals the ways in which the First Crusade changed the direction of warfare, religion, and perhaps history itself. By highlighting the theme of prophecy, the volume deepens students' understanding of the crusading ethos.

Primary Documents
This extraordinary volume gathers together an astonishing array of voices of those so often overlooked by history. "First Encounters: Native Voices on the Coming of the Europeans" reaches back to add important overlooked viewpoints to our understanding of history, gathering together accounts describing the initial experiences of indigenous peoples around the world with European explorers, missionaries, traders, soldiers, and settlers. It is the first such volume with a truly global perspective.

This volume touches upon many aspects of intercultural links in the medieval Mediterranean. The topic is perceived in the widest perspective, and covers not only strictly cultural and religious contacts, but also political, military, ethnic, social, institutional, scientific and technological relationships.

Many examples of intercultural contact along with many other documents.
A few examples:
Syrians welcome Arabian invaders
Medieval Arab historian's view of the West
Crusaders as viewed by Muslims
Arab cultural superiority to the crusaders
and much, much more

Islamic Central Asia is the first English-language anthology of primary documents for the study of Central Asian history. Scott C. Levi and Ron Sela draw from a vast array of historical sources to illustrate important aspects of the social, cultural, political, and economic history of Islamic Central Asia. These documents-many newly translated and most not readily available for study-cover the period from the 7th-century Arab conquests to the 19th-century Russian colonial era and provide new insights into the history and significance of the region.

During Japan's colonial rule over Korea from 1910 until the end of World War II, Japan adopted assimilation as its administrative policy but was unable to integrate the Korean people as Japanese. In Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945, Mark Caprio traces the history of this policy to determine why Japan failed to attain its stated goals. In his search through government documents, personal travel accounts, diary entries, published essays, newspaper editorials, and fictional works.

This is an account of the growth and uses of Western learning in Japan from 1720 to 1830. These are the dates of the beginning of official interest in Western learning and of the expulsion of Siebold from the country, the first stage of a crisis that could be resolved only by the opening of the country of the West. The century and more included by the two dates was a most important period in Japanese history, when intellectuals, rebelling at the isolation of their country, desperately sought knowledge from abroad. The amazing energy and enthusiasm of men like Honda Toshiaki made possible the spectacular changes in Japan, which are all too often credited to the arrival of Commodore Perry.
Included are portions of Honda Toshiaki's works:
Tales of the West
Secret Plan of Government
and others

The Muslim world of the 11th century was a great civilization, a center of art and science stretching from Spain to the Middle East, while Europe lay slumbering in the Dark Ages. The two worlds knew little of one another. Slowly, inevitably, however, Europe and Islam came together through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The Muslims began to take note of the Europeans and to write about them, to acquire information on languages, science, government, religion, economics.

Includes excerpts of numerous primary sources throughout the text.

Excerpts of primary documents are scattered throughout.

Reorienting the East explores the Islamic world as it was encountered, envisioned, and elaborated by Jewish travelers from the Middle Ages to the early modern period.

Volume 1: Early times - 1600
Volume 2: 1600 - 2000
Volume 1:
Antiquity - Confucius - Way of Laozi - Evolution of Confucianism - Legalists (Chinese Legalism) - Classical Culture - Imperial Order & Han - Codifying Confucian Canon - Economic Order - Later Daoism & Mahayana Buddhism - More Buddhism Chapters - Confucian Revival - Women - Ming Dynasty - Qi
Volume 2:
Challenges to Chinese Tradition - Popular Values - Response to Early Christian Contacts - Opening to West - Reform and Revolution - New Culture Movement - Communist Revolution - Modern China

Volume 1: Earliest times to 1600
Volume 2: 1600 - 2000
Volume 1:
Japanese Dynasties - Early Shinto - Prince Shotolu - Chinese Thought in Japan - Nara Buddhism - Mahayana Univeralism - Spread of Buddhism - Way of the Warrior - Zen Buddhism - Shinto in Medieval Japan - Women's Education
Volume 2:
Ieyasu & Tokugawa Shogunate - Confucianism - Encounter with West - Confucian Revisionists - Haiku - Dutch Learning - 18th Century - Wa of the Warior II - National Learning Schools - Buddhism - Restoration - Seclusion v. Restoration - Japan, Asia & The West - Various sections on socialism, women, World War I & II, Post-War Japan

2 Volumes

Volume 1: through 1500s
Volume 2: 1500s - present

In this important project, Charles Tieszen provides a collection of primary theological sources devoted to the formational period of Christian-Muslim relations. This work provides introductions to authors along with representative selections in English translation. It is arranged according to the themes that emerge as Christians and Muslims encounter one another in this era. The result is a resource that offers students a better grasp of the texts early Christians and Muslims wrote about each other and a better understanding of the theological themes that are pertinent to Christian-Muslim dialogue today.

Before the age of Industrial Revolution, the great Asian civilisations - whether located in the Middle East, India, South-East Asia, or the Far East - constituted areas not only of high culture but also of advanced economic development. They were the First World of human societies.

Ebook
Ibn Battutah was a Moroccan explorer of Berber descent. He is known for his extensive travels. Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the known Islamic world as well as many non-Muslim lands. His journeys included trips to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Africa and Eastern Europe in the West, and to the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China. Ibn Battuta is considered to be among the great travellers of all time. This is his travel diary which discusses the different people and lands he met & traveled to.

Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kubilai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West, he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. The accounts of his travels provide a fascinating glimpse of the different societies he encountered: their religions, customs, ceremonies and way of life; on the spices and silks of the East; on precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts. He tells the story of the holy shoemaker, the wicked caliph and the three kings, among a great many others, evoking a remote and long-vanished world with colour and immediacy.

Quotations from primary documents scattered throughout. Use citations in bibliography to locate original source. See IRC Staff for assistance.

The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living in what constitutes modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, and eastern Turkey, these Syriac Christians were under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, wrote the earliest and most extensive accounts of Islam, and described a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not reducible to the solely antagonistic. Through its critical introductions and new translations of this material, When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars, students, and the general public to explore the earliest interactions of what eventually became the world's two largest religions.

Contains documents in the following areas:
Overseas expansion in Asia, Africa, Europe & Americas
Atlantic World Encounters
State & Religion
Women, Marriage & Family: China & Europe
Scientific Revolution
Enlightenment & Revolution: Europe, Americas, India
Capitalism & Industrial Revolution
Colonization: Europe in Africa & Asia
Westernization & Nationalism: Japan, India & the West
World War I
World War II
Cold War
New Democracy Movements
Globalization

Contains documents in the following areas:
Overseas expansion in Asia, Africa, Europe & Americas
Atlantic World Encounters
State & Religion
Women, Marriage & Family: China & Europe
Scientific Revolution
Enlightenment & Revolution: Europe, Americas, India
Capitalism & Industrial Revolution
Colonization: Europe in Africa & Asia
Westernization & Nationalism: Japan, India & the West
World War I
World War II
Cold War
New Democracy Movements
Globalization

Contains documents in the following areas:
Prehistory & Origisn of Patriarchy to 1000BCE
Urban Revolution: Ancient cities in Mesopotamia, Egypt, & Peru
Caste societies in Greece & India
Empire & Government: China and Rome
Gender, Sex & Love: India, China & Mediterranean
Religions: Hindu-Buddhist & Judeo-Christian
Spread of Universal Religions: Afro-Eurasia
Migrations, Trade & Travel: Movement of people, goods & ideas: Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
Love, Sex & Marriage: Medieval Europe & Asia
First Crusade: Muslims, Christians and Jews
Vikings & Mongols: Eurasia & the Atlantic
Black Death: Afro-Eurasia
Cities: European, Chinese, Islamic & Mexican
Environment, Culture & Technology

Taking the perspective of the vanquished native Andean population, the author describes how the imposed Spanish colonial system altered the organization and belief systems of the native inhabitants of northern Peru during the first fifty years or so after the original conquest. Topics include native Andean ideas concerning leadership and legitimacy, the supernatural and morality, land and tenure, service and allegiance, and wealth.