Antje Flüchter - Böcker

Contact, Conquest and Colonization brings together international historians and literary studies scholars in order to explore the force of practices of comparing in shaping empires and colonial relations at different points in time and around the globe.Whenever there was cultural contact in the context of European colonization and empire-building, historical records teem with comparisons among those cultures. This edited volume focuses on what historical agents actually do when they compare, rather than on comparison as an analytic method. Its contributors are thus interested in the ‘doing of comparison’, and explore the force of these practices of comparing in shaping empires and (post-)colonial relations between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. This book will appeal to students and scholars of global history, as well as those interested in cultural history and the history of colonialism.

Contact, Conquest and Colonization brings together international historians and literary studies scholars in order to explore the force of practices of comparing in shaping empires and colonial relations at different points in time and around the globe.Whenever there was cultural contact in the context of European colonization and empire-building, historical records teem with comparisons among those cultures. This edited volume focuses on what historical agents actually do when they compare, rather than on comparison as an analytic method. Its contributors are thus interested in the ‘doing of comparison’, and explore the force of these practices of comparing in shaping empires and (post-)colonial relations between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. This book will appeal to students and scholars of global history, as well as those interested in cultural history and the history of colonialism.

Welche Bedeutung hat die Gliederung der Geschichte in Epochen für die historische Forschung und welche Differenzierungen können als plausibel gelten? Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen davon aus, dass Epocheneinteilungen – oder ihr Fehlen – die Perspektive auf die Quellen und ihre Interpretation maßgeblich beeinflussen können. Die Basis für diese Argumentation bieten die in den Beiträgen diskutierten Definitionen und Kriterien für Epocheneinteilungen. Bei aller Unterschiedlichkeit votieren die Texte für die „Vormoderne" als Epochenbezeichnung für den Zeitraum vor 1800 und relativieren damit die übliche Differenzierung zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Beteiligt sind Kolleg*innen mit Forschungsschwerpunkten in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Drei Kolleg*innen mit Expertise im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert haben die Beiträge kommentiert und aus ihrer Perspektive eingeordnet. Der Band verdankt sich einer Vortragsreihe, in der Bielefelder Kolleg*innen sich anlässlich der Einrichtung des Profilbereichs ‚Vormoderne‘ an der Universität Bielefeld zu dem Konzept Stellung bezogen. Im Ergebnis zeigen die Beiträge, dass ein differenziertes Bild der Gesellschaft der Gegenwart ganz wesentlich in ihrer Bezogenheit zur Vormoderne gewinnen lässt.

The purpose of this volume is to identify and analyze the mechanisms and processes through which concepts and institutions of transcultural phenomena gain and are given momentum. Applied to a range of cases, including examples drawn from ancient Greece and modern India, the early modern Portuguese presence in China and politics of elite-mass dynamics in the People’s Republic of China, the book provides a template for the study of transcultural dynamics over time. Besides the epochal range, the papers in this volume illustrate the thematic diversity assembled under the umbrella of the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context.” Drawing from both the humanities and social sciences, stretching across several world areas and centuries, the book is an interdisciplinary work, aptly reflected in the collaboration of its editors: a historian and political scientist.

This book enters new territory by moving toward a new conceptual framework for comparative and interdisciplinary research on transcultural state formation. Once more, statehood and governance are highly discussed topics, whereby modern state building is often considered to be a genuinely European characteristic, despite the fact that early modern Europeans knew of, experienced and grappled with highly developed states in Asia. The articles collected in this book discuss how strategies of governance were part of transcultural transfers between the two continents. The first part presents and discusses concepts of statehood in order to provide a set of conceptual tools for analyzing the transcultural appropriation of governmental strategies. The second part is concerned with case studies that examine the transcultural perception of governance, and the third and final part gathers perspectives on political practice in transcultural encounters (e.g. military, administration, and diplomacy)

Andererseits geht es – spezifischer – um Über­setzungen im Kontext politischer Verhandlungs- und Aushandlungsprozesse und somit um den Zusammenhang zwischen Politics und Translation.

Why did »equality« become prominent in European societies based on hierarchy during the Enlightenment? What does »equality« imply for societies, politics, or legal systems? The contributors to this volume draw on various historical case studies, from visionary practices in revolutionary France and the collection of data on the poor in 19th-century Germany, to claims raised under the minority regime of the League of Nations and the anti-discrimination politics of the UN and India. The dynamics of universalizing equality are contrasted with a concept asserting that equality must be limited to and by order. The contributions thus explore concepts of equality from the perspectives of history and law and show that practices of comparing were essential when it came to imagining others as equal, fighting discrimination, or scandalizing social inequalities.