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The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures
Three Ways to Be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World
Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s Three Ways to Be Alien draws on the lives and writings of a trio of marginal and liminal figures cast adrift from their traditional moorings into an unknown world. The subjects include the aggrieved and lost Meale, a “Persian” prince of Bijapur (in central India, no less) held hostage by the Portuguese at Goa; English traveler and global schemer Anthony Sherley, whose writings reveal a surprisingly nimble understanding of realpolitik in the emerging world of the early seventeenth century; and Nicolò Manuzzi, an insightful Venetian chronicler of the Mughal Empire in the later seventeenth century who drifted between jobs with the Mughals and various foreign entrepôts, observing all but remaining the eternal outsider. In telling the fascinating story of floating identities in a changing world, Subrahmanyam also succeeds in injecting humanity into global history and proves that biography still plays an important role in contemporary historiography.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionIndia
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
10 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
69 books74 followersHe taught Delhi School of Economics, then EHESS (Paris), then Oxford, before becoming Holder of Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair of Indian History at UCLA which he joined in 2004.
In 2013, he became Holder of Early Modern Global History Chair at Collège de France.
In 2013, he became Holder of Early Modern Global History Chair at Collège de France.
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July 9, 2016Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Urvashi Butalia
Urvashi Butalia: Does it excite you the possibility of discovering women in history?... Do you consider the possibility of looking at other sorts of archives?
Sanjay Subrahmanyam: I am really not looking for things in history which necessarily have to do with questions of my self and my identity. This sets me apart from many other historians who are essentially driven by these identity questions... And who think that they will only address the objects which respond to these identity questions.
Urvashi Butalia: Does it excite you the possibility of discovering women in history?... Do you consider the possibility of looking at other sorts of archives?
Sanjay Subrahmanyam: I am really not looking for things in history which necessarily have to do with questions of my self and my identity. This sets me apart from many other historians who are essentially driven by these identity questions... And who think that they will only address the objects which respond to these identity questions.
November 10, 2017
The book is not just an accumulation of three case studies about the life and journeys of Miyan Ali, Sherley, and Manuzzi. It also has serious theoretical concerns about the genres of history writing, biography and its relation to the question of agency and structure, microhistory vs. world history, and the relevance of anthropology discipline to the early modern world.
I think Three Ways to Be Alien is important in the sense that it focuses on three cases of encounter that structurally are similar and take place in similar geographical realms; however, each is unique and offers a distinct perspective towards being a stranger and discovering a new world, ranging from misery and alienation to fascination, integration and in one case the sense of mastery. Meanwhile, one can ask that what is the purpose of putting these three characters besides each other? Showing diversity in experience? If so, one can argue any other three cases would more or less imply on diversity as well. I am asking so, because, in my reading, while each chapter stood significantly on its own, the link between chapters was pale and sometimes absent.
I think Three Ways to Be Alien is important in the sense that it focuses on three cases of encounter that structurally are similar and take place in similar geographical realms; however, each is unique and offers a distinct perspective towards being a stranger and discovering a new world, ranging from misery and alienation to fascination, integration and in one case the sense of mastery. Meanwhile, one can ask that what is the purpose of putting these three characters besides each other? Showing diversity in experience? If so, one can argue any other three cases would more or less imply on diversity as well. I am asking so, because, in my reading, while each chapter stood significantly on its own, the link between chapters was pale and sometimes absent.
August 15, 2022
Drinking from a firehose, that is what this book is. I think authors who write as much as Sanjay somehow forgot where the waste basket is in their office.
The book is an attempt to illustrate early modern era by lives of people who existed uncomfortably between cultures (a highly commendable project in my view). There are three case studies in their separate chapters, plus several more in the introduction. The three personages are truly less than illustrious: one Muslim gentry element kept in Goa as a pawn in convoluted power games between the Portuguese and the surrounding sultanates, and two Christian conmen of different types at Safavid and Mughal courts. Each of their life stories is a walking contradiction complex enough to span the 16th century globe. The author presents the concrete and general context of their lives in great detail, their actual characters much less so. Without very solid understanding of Eurasian political geography of the early modern era, the reader will drown in a paragraph or two no matter on which page he/she opens the book.
On the good side, with Sanjay I was sure that the author is someone who did enormous amount of original research on the subject and who is familiar with both Indian and Western perspective. On the bad side, the amount of detail is simply excessive. We all have recently found how excruciating it is to follow every little scheme of a painfully productive conman, without having to mine early modern archives in multiple languages for it. Less would have been more.
The book is an attempt to illustrate early modern era by lives of people who existed uncomfortably between cultures (a highly commendable project in my view). There are three case studies in their separate chapters, plus several more in the introduction. The three personages are truly less than illustrious: one Muslim gentry element kept in Goa as a pawn in convoluted power games between the Portuguese and the surrounding sultanates, and two Christian conmen of different types at Safavid and Mughal courts. Each of their life stories is a walking contradiction complex enough to span the 16th century globe. The author presents the concrete and general context of their lives in great detail, their actual characters much less so. Without very solid understanding of Eurasian political geography of the early modern era, the reader will drown in a paragraph or two no matter on which page he/she opens the book.
On the good side, with Sanjay I was sure that the author is someone who did enormous amount of original research on the subject and who is familiar with both Indian and Western perspective. On the bad side, the amount of detail is simply excessive. We all have recently found how excruciating it is to follow every little scheme of a painfully productive conman, without having to mine early modern archives in multiple languages for it. Less would have been more.
May 13, 2018
This book was challenging, but in the end, I really enjoyed it. Subrahmanyam gave a brilliant analysis and did remarkable work recovering some of these individuals from history (and uncovering others from beneath the layers and layers of embellishment-- I'm looking at you, Anthony Sherley). Subrahmanyam also had a wry sense of humor that snuck in there. It's definitely on the more academic side, but I would still recommend it!
August 30, 2013
Three very interesting lives in interesting periods of history. The author assumes a specialist's level of background knowledge. I would have preferred a lot less academic argument and more storytelling.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews