On finishing this book I have many thoughts about it relevant to the history of Julfa. I want to write those down without delay, so excuse the lack of structure and in part randomness of my notes here.
The author, Jerry Brotton, has written a very good book. His scholarship regarding William Shakespeare (his wife too is a Shakespeare scholar) gives him an edge into the history of the period. He focuses intensively on the period of about 1580 to 1604, which overlaps Shakespeare's career. He draws on text by Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare and other Elizabethan playwrights to illustrate the paradox they dealt with, mirroring issues inherent in Elizabethan England.
His focus is on issues relating to: - diplomatic relations between protestant England and Islamic rulers in what today is known as Morroco, Turkey and Iran - how religions concepts were used to weave narratives for diplomacy, eg Elizabeth I writing to the Ottoman Sultan indicating that protestents like muslim's reject the worship of icons and idols - the primacy of trade as the main driver in this history, comprising trade in luxuries from the east (sugar from Morroco, and spices, silk and other products from the Ottoman and Saffavid Empires).
Along the way Brotton's book for me has a lot to say relevant to the centrality of: o geography, resources and climate in shaping socio-economic realities; o trade and power relations between human beings (rulers-subjects, empire-to-empire, class-to-class, religious group to religious group, and so forth); o both diplomacy and war, two ever-present sides of the same coin, a forever vealed fact of human civilisation; o invention, intellectual property, commercialisation and intelligence security are major drivers of trade and change; o image making and representation often involving appropriation or invention of narratives of the past heritage; this draws on ideas for history writing drawn from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and law; and o interplay of all the foregoing drivers of change.
Networks is an important high level concept present in all of those bullet pointed topics.
To explore networks with their nodes and links, history writing responds to records. While reading this book I was as usual reminded of how the histories of people are written in or written out, as a consequences of the availability of sources or lack thereof. A critical issue is the availability of linguistic skills and translated resources.
As regards records, Brotton does an impecable research job of quoting letters between rulers, reminding us how lucky England and other European nations have been not to have suffered constant waves of invasion the result of which is often the destruction of physical records.
This is not the place to go into depth on how I read the book. However, I read it with knowledge in mind of what happened to the Julfa Armenians in 1604, with their deportation to Isfahan by Shah Abbas of the Safavid Empire. As its title indicates, Brotton's book is about the island in which English sits, that's the perspective from which the book looks East. Where he found records, Brotton has recorded a great deal about how rulers and others in the East viewed things from their perspectives. Nonetheless, for want of sources, the book remains largely a book about England at the time of Shakespeare, its internal politics, its fear and conflict with Spain and (less so) Portugal and other Catholic powers on the north shores of the Mediterranean.
I'll end noting that these are mere notes for both a book review as well as viewing Brotton's work from the perspective of Julfa and the Armenians on either side of 1604.
The author, Jerry Brotton, has written a very good book. His scholarship regarding William Shakespeare (his wife too is a Shakespeare scholar) gives him an edge into the history of the period. He focuses intensively on the period of about 1580 to 1604, which overlaps Shakespeare's career. He draws on text by Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare and other Elizabethan playwrights to illustrate the paradox they dealt with, mirroring issues inherent in Elizabethan England.
His focus is on issues relating to:
- diplomatic relations between protestant England and Islamic rulers in what today is known as Morroco, Turkey and Iran
- how religions concepts were used to weave narratives for diplomacy, eg Elizabeth I writing to the Ottoman Sultan indicating that protestents like muslim's reject the worship of icons and idols
- the primacy of trade as the main driver in this history, comprising trade in luxuries from the east (sugar from Morroco, and spices, silk and other products from the Ottoman and Saffavid Empires).
Along the way Brotton's book for me has a lot to say relevant to the centrality of:
o geography, resources and climate in shaping socio-economic realities;
o trade and power relations between human beings (rulers-subjects, empire-to-empire, class-to-class, religious group to religious group, and so forth);
o both diplomacy and war, two ever-present sides of the same coin, a forever vealed fact of human civilisation;
o invention, intellectual property, commercialisation and intelligence security are major drivers of trade and change;
o image making and representation often involving appropriation or invention of narratives of the past heritage; this draws on ideas for history writing drawn from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and law; and
o interplay of all the foregoing drivers of change.
Networks is an important high level concept present in all of those bullet pointed topics.
To explore networks with their nodes and links, history writing responds to records. While reading this book I was as usual reminded of how the histories of people are written in or written out, as a consequences of the availability of sources or lack thereof. A critical issue is the availability of linguistic skills and translated resources.
As regards records, Brotton does an impecable research job of quoting letters between rulers, reminding us how lucky England and other European nations have been not to have suffered constant waves of invasion the result of which is often the destruction of physical records.
This is not the place to go into depth on how I read the book. However, I read it with knowledge in mind of what happened to the Julfa Armenians in 1604, with their deportation to Isfahan by Shah Abbas of the Safavid Empire. As its title indicates, Brotton's book is about the island in which English sits, that's the perspective from which the book looks East. Where he found records, Brotton has recorded a great deal about how rulers and others in the East viewed things from their perspectives. Nonetheless, for want of sources, the book remains largely a book about England at the time of Shakespeare, its internal politics, its fear and conflict with Spain and (less so) Portugal and other Catholic powers on the north shores of the Mediterranean.
I'll end noting that these are mere notes for both a book review as well as viewing Brotton's work from the perspective of Julfa and the Armenians on either side of 1604.