those men are the most lavish men in the world, and the
TRANSCRIPT
Those men are the most lavish men in the world, and the
most careless of the morrow[...]. They cannot keep
money and whatever riches fall to them, they waste all in
a very little time. Let, for instance, the king give fifty or a
hundred thousand Livres to any man, he lays it out in less
than a fortnight, in buying slaves of both sexes; in hiring
handsome wives; in setting up a noble equipage; in
furnishing a house, or clothing himself richly: and so
spends the whole sum so fast, without any regard to the
time to come, that unless some new supplies intervene in
two or three months time, our gentleman will be forced
to sell again his whole equipage by piecemeal, beginning
with his horses; then his needless servants; then his
concubines and slaves; and lastly, even his own clothes...
Jean Chardin (1643-1713) (1664)
Isfahan
Shah Abbas (1571-1629)
Court
Sir Robert Shirley (1581-1628)
Don García de Silva Figueroa
P Della Valle
Travel Reports
Thomas Coryat (1577-1617)
"Furcifer” & “umbrella”
King James (1603-1625)
KING LEAR (1603)
To EDGAR
You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred; only I
do not like the fashion of your garments: you will
say they are Persian attire: but let them be changed.
Banned after the French Revolution
Thomas Stone and James Henderson
(1804)
Boom of the Fashion Market
(mid-19th century)
From Kimono to “Western” clothes
Postwar revolt
How did we go from…
Medieval era
Chopine
Early modern era
Victorian era
20th century era
We are here to understand history
as…….
His lectures are kind of like watching 500 days of summer.
It's not sequenced by chronology but rather by themes. It
all comes together in the end. As a biology major who
found MMW laborious and boring, I found this class
rather interesting. His exams are not too bad.
1453
Fall of Constantinople or
Formation of Istanbul
History as Interrelated,
contingent and non-
sequential
Read straightforward narratives of
progress
Medieval period (dark)
Renaissance
Scientific Revolution
Industrial & French revolutions
----------------------------------------------
Important dates: 1517 (95 theses) Luther
1529 Siege of Vienna
Michel Foucault
"For many years now, historians have preferred to turn
their attention to long periods, as if, beneath the shifts
and changes of political events, they were trying to reveal
the stable, almost indestructible system of checks and
balances, the irreversible processes, the constant
readjustments, the underlying tendencies that gather
force, and are then suddenly reversed after centuries of
continuity, the movements of accumulation and slow
saturation, the great silent, motionless bases that
traditional history has covered with a thick layer of
events"
Fetishism of EVENTS
George Washington's crossing of the
Delaware River sort of history
How we will approach history in this
class?
1. CONTACT
New forms of behavior, fashion and
understanding of self in contrast or in
reference to others is created.
2. Conditional Probabilities
History is nonlinear
History is non-deterministic
Why? Because of human action in negotiation with
multiple and contingent processes (environmental,
sociological, etc.)
“We already know the physical laws that govern
everything we experience in everyday life… It’s a tribute
to how far we have come… that it now takes enormous
machines and a great deal of money to perform an
experiment whose results we cannot predict.” Steven
Hawking
Unintended consequences of Human
action in historical time
How did travelers like Chardin predict
the impact of the Persian high heal
shoes on modern fashion?
The role of History in our lives:
Path dependence
History is everywhere:
Decisions we make in a given situation are limited to the
decisions we or others have made in the past, though those
decisions may no longer appear pertinent in our present
lives.
No End Game:
Historical processes do not progress steadily toward some
pre-determined outcome.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-
1831)
The Ugly Duckling
History is full of unrealizable realities
Macro versus micro histories
Can we think about history in its
broader sense by focusing on small
histories?
Blind Chance
King Manuel I (1496 CE)
Cabral discovered Brazil (April 22, 1500)
Brazil
7-1 (World Cup 2014)
Making of the Modern World 13New Ideas and Cultural Contacts
Spring 2015, Lecture 1
Fall Quarter, 2011
My information
Professor. Babak Rahimi
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 9:00am-10:00am
Wed, 9am-11am
Department of Literature,
Literature Building
3rd floor: 3324
Phone: 858-534-2147
Email: [email protected]
Description of the course
An examination of the period between roughly 1200 and 1750 CE, the Making of the Modern World 13 focuses on global transformations that gave rise to various patterns of modernity. We will examine various socio-economic, cultural, political and religious processes in the formation of various discourses and practices of early modernity. The course primarily adopts an approach that focuses more on contacts and exchanges between various regions and civilizations, especially in the Afro-Eurasian zones of contact. We will also focus on the relationship between communication, culture and space in the context of emerging global powers.
Basic Goals
1. To acquire basic understanding of late medieval and early modern histories and societies, with a focus on social life.
2. To gain familiarity with non-European civilizations, in particular the Chinese and Islamic societies.
3. To engage in intensive university-level writing and to improve one’s analytical and critical skills.
Required Texts Textbooks are available for purchase at the UCSD bookstore and
Cal Copy.
Jerry H. Bentley and Herbert F. Ziegler, Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. MMW combined Edition, 5th Edition.
Course Reader, MMW 13.
A Writer’s Reference, 8th edition, by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers (Bedford/St. Martins, 2014)
Address:Villa Norte Shopping Center, 3251 Holiday Ct,
La Jolla, CA 92037
Phone:(858) 452-9949
www.calcopy.com open until 7pm
Course Requirements
Assignments
Assignments and grades will be determined as follows:
1. Writing Assignments 35%
2. Midterm Exam 20%
3. Final Exam 35%
4. Section Attendance/ Participation 10%
Exams
● The mid-term and the final are in-class exams.
Your lecture attendance, participation
in sessions and readings should prepare you for the two exams.
I will provide a study guide for the midterm and final exam.
You must complete all parts of the writing assignment, attend section, and take all exams in order to pass the course.
* Please note that make-up exams maybe allowed only in the legitimate cases.
Red half-sheet ParSCORE & Blue
Notebook
Writing Assignment
●Writing assignment consists of research paper (8 to 10 pages) on a topic relevant to general MMW course and to the period and topics covered in MMW4.
a) Your ultimate objective will be to research and to write about a scholarly question that interests you.
b) Your aim is to first find a direction in which to start.
c) Also, please note that you are expected to use at least one
primary source and one journal article for your research paper. Your TAs will explain to you the writing assignments.
CLASS POLICY &
GUIDELINES
Attendance & Participation
Active participation for each week compromises 10%
of your grade. Students are expected to come to the
lectures and are required to attend the sections.
Students are also expected to have read the assigned
reading materials and be prepared to talk about the
reading material and lectures during discussion
sessions. You can certainly ask questions during the
lectures.
Late Papers
You must complete all assigned papers in a timely manner
to pass the course. Late papers will be penalized 1/3 of a
grade for each class that they are late.
Plagiarism
The major part of your course assignments and exams involves writings based on
your assigned reading. So, make sure to cite your sources, either quoted directly or
paraphrased, so to avoid plagiarism. In other words, submit your own original work!
See me if you have any questions regarding what constitutes plagiarism. If you are
caught cheating you will automatically fail the course.
Assistance
In case of disability that may require
accommodation, please see me or
your Section instructor on the first
day of class.
Communication
I have set up an official office hour on Tuesdays 9:00am-11:00am and Wednesdays 9:00am-11am at the Department of Literature 3rd floor (room 3324) on the Warren Campus.
You could certainly reach me by email and phone.
I expect to occasionally communicate with you by email. So, please check your UCSD emails, at least, on a weekly basis.
Email and Sleep
● Please GO ahead and check your emails or Facebook
in class!
Sleep if you want in during the lecture!
Course Calendar:
Thursday March 26
C. Chavez Holiday March 27
Instruction begins Monday, March 30
Memorial Day Observance Monday, May 25
Instruction ends Friday, June 5
Final exams: June 8-12
Spring Quarter ends: June 12
49 Days of Instruction
57 Days in Quarter
Final
Final Day Exam:
June 11, 2015
Thursday 7:00 pm-9:59 pm
Schedule of
Lectures
Week 1
March 31 (Tuesday)
● Introduction to the course:
Rethinking World History
April 2 (Thursday)
● Eurasian Complex and Southernization
Week 2
April 7 (Tuesday)
● Nomadic Empires and Eurasian
Integration
April 9 (Thursday)
● States and Societies of Sub-Saharan
Africa
Week 3
April 14 (Tuesday)
● The Increasing Influence of Europe
(Economy, Society, and State)
Film: TBA
April 16 (Thursday)
● India and the Indian Ocean Basin
Week 4
April 21(Tuesday)
● The Song Modernity in East Asia
April 23 (Thursday)
● The Americas and Oceania
Week 5
April 28 (Tuesday)
● Afro-Eurasia and Americas
Expanding Horizons of Cross-Cultural Interaction
(The Case of Hemispheric Pandemics)
May 30 (Thursday)
● Early Modern Interconnected Global (1500-1800 C.E.)
*Study Guide for the Midterm
Week 6
May 5 (Tuesday)
Midterm Exam
*Bring scantron and blue notebook
May 7 (Thursday)
● New Worlds: Americas and Oceania
Week 7
May12 (Tuesday)
● Transformation of Europe I
(Economy, Religion and State)
May 14 (Thursday)
● Transformation of Europe II
(The City and “Renaissance”
of European Identity)
Week 8
May 19 (Tuesday)
● Transformation of Europe III
(Print, Science and Technology)
May 21 (Thursday)
● Tradition and Change in East Asia
in the early modern period
Week 9
May 26 (Tuesday)
● Islamic Gunpowder Empires I
(The Ottomans)
May 28 (Thursday)
● Islamic Gunpowder Empires II
(The Mughals)
Week 10
June 2 (Tuesday)
● Islamic Gunpowder Empires III
(Safavids)
Study Guide for the Final Exam & in-class review of the
exam
June45 (Thursday)
● Conclusion
Week 11
(FINAL WEEK, June 9-12 June)
Final Exam:
June 11
Thursday 7:00-9:59pm
Mediterranean-Mesopotamia Complex:
Rise of Islam as a World Religion and an Imperial Force.
(Abbasid Empire)
Rise of Roman-Germanic Medieval Europe (Western
Europe).
3. Byzantium (Eastern Europe)
Eastern Asia
Rise of Tang (618-907 C.E.) State Bureaucracy
Song Dynasties (960-1279). (Technological Developments).
● Spread of Buddhism & Neo-Confucianism
India: Post-Gupta (451 C.E.)
Islam (in the north)
8th century
The Hindu Kingdoms of Southern India
Africa-Mediterranean
& Sub-Saharan Africa
Northern Africa: Fatimads and various other Muslim territories.
East Africa-Western Asia (Middle East): Swahili civilization
Sub-Sahara and rest of Africa: Kingdoms, empires, and city-states 800-1500 C.E.
Rise of Islam (Ghana in West Africa)