ARTICLES
Visions of Juliana: A Portuguese Woman at the Court of the Mughals
Taymiya R. Zaman, 761
This article discusses Juliana Dias da Costa (d. 1734), an influential Portuguese woman at the court of the Mughal king Bahadur Shah I (d. 1712). Through an analysis of sources that traverse three centuries and several languages, this article demonstrates how visions of Juliana were shaped by the political aspirations of those writing about her. To Jesuits, Juliana was a proxy for their mission in India, and to the Portuguese, she was one of their own, strategically placed at court to serve their interests. And for her impoverished descendants in British India, she was emblematic of times when they held both power and prestige. Concluding with the author’s encounter with a descendant of Juliana’s in Pakistan, this article addresses questions of belonging that a figure such as Juliana raises today.
An Early Modern South Asian Thinker on the Rise and Decline of Empires: Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi, the Mughals, and the Byzantines
Vasileios Syros, 793
This article offers an in-depth discussion of the theory of civilization of Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi, a prominent Muslim scholar in eighteenth-century India. It shows that Shāh Walī Allāh articulates a naturalistic understanding of the genesis of social life and the evolution of civilization, outlines the factors involved in the decline of the state and the empire, and sets forth a program for dealing with a broad range of emergencies. It explores the ways in which Shāh Walī Allāh’s thought relates to previous Islamic political discourse, notably the akhlāq (Ṭūsī, Dawwānī) and Indo-Islamic (Baranī, Abū’l-Faẓl) traditions of political thought. It also investigates Shāh Walī Allāh’s use of the Byzantine paradigm as a heuristic device to trace the causes of the dissolution of the Mughal Empire. The article looks at Shāh Walī Allāh’s analysis of Byzantine decline from a cross-cultural perspective and places him in conversation with Byzantine political writers who discuss the factors that led to the decay of the Byzantine Empire.
Public Good and Partisan Gain: Political Languages of Faction in Late Imperial China and Eighteenth-Century England
Ari Daniel Levine, 841
This article compares the fictional rhetoric in late imperial China with that of eighteenth-century England to explain how political rhetoricians could justify the existence of ministerial factions at court by representing them as loyal servants of the public good. Yet, historical contingency and different alignments of state and society produced divergent discourses of political authority in China, where faction was deplored, and England, where partisan divisions were increasingly accepted. While limited monarchy and parliamentary governments made English partisanship defensible, Chinese rhetoricians of the Song and Ming dynasties failed to articulate political interests that were independent from the unitary monarchy they served.
Writing on the Margins of the World: Hester Lynch Piozzi’s Retrospection (1801) as Middlebrow Art?
Marnie Hughes-Warrington, 883
Hester Lynch Piozzi’s Retrospection is little discussed in the historiography of world history. This article explores Piozzi’s composition, publication, and repeated reinscription of the work from the mid 1780s to her death in 1821, and locates it within her varied efforts at describing a social index of affinity and cohesion. Drawing out this dimension of the work highlights the opportunity to connect textual annotation with another nineteenth-century textual expression of social relationship—photography—and thereby provides an avenue to expand John Sutton’s research on physical “exograms” through a consideration of desired as well as actual relationships. In this way, Retrospection—and world histories—are seen as opportunities for authors to bind themselves to the “middlebrow” communities of friend-readers, and thus as works of far “smaller compass” than traditional analyses of imperial and national themes would suggest.
Toward a Comparative History of the Modern Mediterranean, 1750–1919
Edmund Burke III, 907
Is the modern Mediterranean one place with a common history? Or several places, riven by colonialism? Viewed from a global perspective, the Mediterranean region has enjoyed a common historical experience since 1500. Increasingly semiperipheral with respect to the world capitalist system, and characterized by weak state structures, delayed or muffled class formation, agrarian backwardness, and the persistence of pastoralism, the coming to modernity of the Mediterranean thus foreshadows the historical experience of the Third World in its unity and diversity. This article offers some strategies for approaching the modern Mediterranean as a new object of world historical study.
BOOK REVIEWS
Trevor R. Getz and Liz Clarke. Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History
reviewed by Maryanne A. Rhett, 941
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference
reviewed by Hugh Glenn Cagle, 943
Kerwin Lee Klein. From History to Theory
reviewed by Mason Tattersall, 947
Ricardo Duchesne. The Uniqueness of Western Civilization
reviewed by David Northrup, 950
Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail. Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present
reviewed by Richard Blundell, 953
Peter Heather. Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe
reviewed by Steven K. Ross, 957
Richard W. Bulliet. Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History
reviewed by Jamsheed K. Choksy, 961
Charles Freeman. Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe
reviewed by Jennifer Schuberth, 965
Ethan Isaac Segal. Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan
reviewed by Michael Laver, 968
María M. Portuondo. Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World
reviewed by Elena del Río Parra, 970
Gyan Prakash. Mumbai Fables: A History of an Enchanted City
reviewed by Sheetal Chhabria, 973
Kären Wigen. A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600–1912
reviewed by Tom Looser, 977
Robin Blackburn. The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights
reviewed by Kevin Dawson, 980
James D. Drake. The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America
reviewed by Jose R. Torre, 983
Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914
reviewed by Stephen K. Sanderson, 987
Sunil S. Amrith. Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia
reviewed by Karen M. Teoh, 991
Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt, eds. Racism in the Modern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation
reviewed by Brett Bebber, 995
John Tully. The Devil’s Milk: A Social History of Rubber
reviewed by James P. Kraft, 998
Janet Klein. The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone
reviewed by Sargon Donabed, 1001
Daniel S. Margolies. Spaces of Law in American Foreign Relations: Extradition and Extraterritoriality in the Borderlands and Beyond, 1877–1898
reviewed by James F. Siekmeier, 1005
Keith L. Camacho. Cultures of Commemoration: The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands
reviewed by Joanna Poblete, 1007
Nicholas Papastratagakis. Russian Imperialism and Naval Power: Military Strategy and the Build-Up to the Russo-Japanese War
reviewed by Paul Dunscomb, 1010
Shao Dan. Remote Homeland, Recovered Borderland: Manchus, Manchoukuo, and Manchuria, 1907–1985
reviewed by Norman Smith, 1013
Annemarie H. Sammartino. The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922
reviewed by Clifton Ganyard, 1016
Volker Langbehn and Mohammad Salama, eds. German Colonialism: Race, the Holocaust, and Postwar Germany
reviewed by J. Laurence Hare, 1019
Hillil Cohen. Haim Watzman, trans. Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948–1967
reviewed by Noah Haiduc-Dale, 1021
Gardner Bovingdon. The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land
reviewed by Scott Relyea, 1024
INDEX TO VOLUME 23
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