This seminar follows on from the fieldtrip, scheduled for 27 February 2012.

Presentations on an object of your choice from the Ashmolean collection Please select an object from the collection that allows you to focus on the following questions. Feel free to do this in groups. what do we know about the object itself? (When, where and how was it made? Do we know anything about where it was used/displayed/consumed?) Who were involved in the production, trade, and exchange of this material good? How and where did it travel? Is it possible to say anything about the meanings the object acquired as it moved through space and time? Did the object mean something different when it was manufactured from when it was consumed? what does it mean now, on display at the Ashmolean? Why does any of this matter? Why is the object important? How does the study of this object fit into the wider secondary literature on global connections between 1300 and 1800?

 

Resources

A history of the world in 100 objects: British Museum and BBC radio 4 programme starting on the 18th January 2010.

See also the accompanying book: Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (London, 2010) [D 20.M3]

 

Core Readings

• Maxine Berg, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 182 (2004), pp. 85-142
• Craig Clunas, ‘Modernity Global and Local: Consumption and the Rise of the West’, American Historical Review, 104/5 (1999), pp. 1497-1511.

 

Global Luxuries

• Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, Consumers and Luxury (1999), Introduction and chaps 2, 3 [HS 2200.C6]
• Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, Luxury in the Eighteenth Century (2003), chs. 14, 16 [HC 500.L8]
• Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (1991; new edition, 2004), chs. 1, 6 [HC 7608.3.C5]
• Peter Burke, ‘Rex et Verba: Conspicuous Consumption in the Early Modern World’, in J. Brewer and R. Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods (London and NewYork, 1993), ch. 7 [HS 2200.C6]
• Robert Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History’, Journal of World History, 9 (1998), pp. 141-187

 

Global Consumption and Connections

· Susan Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan (1997), chs. 1, 2 (Also available as a History e-book). [HP 8118.7.S7]

• Donald Quataert (ed.), Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An Introduction (Albany, 2000), introduction. [HS 2380.C6]
• Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (New York, 2008).
• John Styles, ‘Product Innovation in Early Modern London’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), pp. 124-169.
• Anne E. McCants, ‘Exotic Goods, Popular Consumption, and the Standard of Living: Thinking about Globalization in the Early Modern World’, Journal of World History, 28/4 (2007), pp. 433-462.
• S.A.M. Adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China 1400-1800 (1997), chs. 2 and 3 [HK 14.A3]
• David Porter, "A Peculiar but Uninteresting Nation: China and the Discourse of Commerce in Eighteenth-Century England," Eighteenth-Century Studies 33 (1999-2000), 181-199
• C.Dean and D. Leibsohn, 'Hybridity and its Discontents: Considering VisualCulture in Colonial Spanish America', Colonial Latin American Review, 12.no.1 (2003), pp. 5-35.
• Ruth Barnes, ‘Indian Textiles for Island Taste: The Trade to Eastern Indonesia’, in Rosemary Crill (ed.), Textiles from India. The Global Trade (Oxford and Calcutta, 2006), pp. 99-116. [HP 8161.T3]

· Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, ‘East and West: Textiles and Fashion in Eurasia in the Early Modern Period’ , Journal of Social History, 41/4 (2008), pp. 887-916.

 

European Reception of Asian Goods

• Audrey W. Douglas, ‘Cotton textiles in England: the East India Company’s Attempts to Exploit Developments in Fashion 1660-1721’, Journal of British Studies, 8, no. 2 (1969), pp. 28-43.
• Beverly Lemire, ‘Domesticating the Exotic: Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade with England, c. 1600-1800’, Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 1, 1 (2003), pp. 65-85.
• Dietmar Rothermund, ‘The Changing Pattern of British Trade in Indian Textiles, 1701-1757’, in Sushil Chaudhuri and Michel Morineau, eds., Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 276-286 [HY 3040.M3]
• Robert Batchelor, ‘On the Movement of Porcelains: Rethinking the Birth of Consumer Society as Interactions of Exchange Networks 1600-1750’, in Frank Trentmann and John Brewer, eds., Consuming cultures, Global Perspectives (Oxford, 2006), pp. 95-122 [HS 2000.C6]
• John E. Wills, ‘European Consumption and Asian Production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Brewer and Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods, ch. 6 [HS 2200.C6]

 

Spices and Food

• John Keay, The Spice Route (London, 2006) [HP 918.7.K3]
• H. Kuster, Review of ‘Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices’ by Andrew Dalby, Journal of World History, 14, 4 (2003), pp. 553-555.
• Om Prakash, ‘Spices and Spice Trade’, Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, vol. 5, pp. 1-5 [HK 10.O9 - online.]
• M.N. Pearson, Spices in the Indian Ocean World (1996), Introduction, ch. 15
• Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985) [HP 917.M4]

 

The Arts

• Beckwith, John, ‘The Influence of Islamic Art on Western Medieval Art’, Apollo 103 (April 1976), pp. 270-281.
• Howard, Deborah, ‘Venice and Islam in the Middle Ages: Some Observations on the Question of Architectural Influence’, Architectural History, 34 (1991), pp. 59-74. [Short Loan]
• Howard, Deborah, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100-1500 (New Haven and London, 2000) [NA 1121.V3]
• Jairazbhoy, Rafique Ali, Oriental Influences in Western Art (Bombay, 1965) [N 7429.J2]
• King, Donald and David Sylvester (eds.), The Eastern Carpet in the Western World, (Rugby, 1983) [NK 2808.A7]
• Lach, Donald F., Asia in the Making of Europe. Volume II. A Century of Wonder. Book One: The Visual Arts (Chicago and London, 1970), chs. 1-2 [CB 251.L2]
• Lightbown, Ronald, ‘Oriental Art and the Orient in Late Renaissance and Baroque Italy’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 32 (1969), pp. 228-279
• Mack, Rosamond E., Bazaar to Piazza. Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600, (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2000), chs. 9-10 [Short Loan NK 959.M2]
• Naquin, Susan, 'Giuseppe Castiglione/Lang Shining: A Review Essay', T'oung Pao 95 (2009), pp. 393-412.
• Raby, Julian, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode (London, 1982) [NP 621.V3]
• Watson, William, ed., The Westward Influence of the Chinese Arts from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London, 1972). [N 7343.W3]
• Jardine, Lisa and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests. Renaissance Art between East and West (London, 2003) [N 6370.J2]
• Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Imagery in Japan, 1720-1810 (London, 1998).
• Carswell, John, Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and its Impact on the Western World, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, 1985) [NK 4565.C2]

• Clunas, Craig, Art in China (Oxford, 1997) [N 7340.C5]
• Clunas, Craig Empire of Great Brightness. Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China 1368-1644 (Reaktion, 2007) [N 7343.5.C5]
• Metcalf, T.R., An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (1989) [NA 1503.M3]
• Timon Screech, ‘Pictures, the Most Part Bawdy: The Anglo-Japanese Painting Trade in the Early 1600s’, Art Bulletin, 87/1 (2005), pp. 50-72.
• Rosemary Crill, ‘Visual Responses: Depicting Europeans in South Asia’, in Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer (eds.), Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800 (London, 2004), pp. 188-99.
• William R. Sargent, ‘Asia in Europe: Chinese Paintings for the West’, in Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer (eds.), Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800 (London, 2004), pp. 272-81.[CB 251.E6 – Oversize]
• Mitter, Partha, ‘The Early British Port Cities of India: Their Planning and Architecture Circa 1640- 1757’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 45, no. 2 (1986), pp. 95-114. [Short Loan]
• Schimmel, AnneMarie, The Empire of the Great Mughals. History, Art and Culture (Reaktion, 2004) [DS 461.S2]
• Amin Jaffer, ‘Diplomatic Encounters: Europe and South Asia’, in Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer (eds.), Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800 (London, 2004), pp. 74-99. [CB 251.E6 – Oversize]
• James L. Hevia, ‘Diplomatic Encounters: Europe and East Asia’, in Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer (eds.), Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800 (London, 2004), pp. 100-123. [CB 251.E6 – Oversize]

All images below are from the Collections Database

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

http://www.ashmolean.org/