This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This course will explore the dynamic history of the Early Modern Indian Ocean. Students will study the importance of the physical environment in the formation of the empires and states of the area; from the annual monsoon to the importance of inland deserts as barriers and arenas of exchange. This will be achieved through the study of local texts, objects and images. The course will also consider the relationships between emergent European empires and established powers. Students will learn about the rise and fall of some of the great empires of history, from the Safavids of Iran to the Mughals of India, as well as the fascinating period of female rule in the Indonesian Kingdom of Aceh. The course will use a variety of texts in translation, from a Persian poetic account about a voyage to Siam, to the personal diary of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir.
Contact hours: 30
Private study hours: 270
Total hours: 300
Main assessment methods:
Essay 1 (3,000 words) 35%
Essay 2 (3,000 words) 35%
Annotated Bibliography 20%
Extended Primary Source Analysis (1,000 words) 10%
Indicative Reading List:
Alam, Muzaffar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries 1400-1800. Cambridge, 2007.
Aslanian, Sebouh. From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa. Oakland: University of California Press, 2011.
Baladouni, Vahé, and Margaret Makepeace. Armenian Merchants of the Seventeenth Century and Early Eighteenth Centuries: English East India Sources. American Philosophical Society Philadelphia, 1998.
Barendse, Rene. The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Routledge, 2002
Chaudhuri, K.N., Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press,1985).
Das Gupta, Ashin, India and the Indian Ocean World: Trade and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Dale, Stephen. Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
-The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Ebrahim, Mo?ammad, trans., John O'Kane, Ship of Sulaiman (New York: Routledge, 1972).
Islam, Riazul, Indo-Persian Relations (Tehran, 1970).
Ruangsilp, B., The Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, An Infernal Triangle: The Contest between the Mughals, Safavids and Portuguese 1590-1605 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012).
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1 Critically evaluate and critique modern scholarship on the importance of the Indian Ocean as a zone of encounter in the Early Modern Period.
2 Demonstrate a systematic understanding and critical awareness of the complexity of connected histories between the powers of the Indian Ocean region, including Europeans.
3 Independently investigate how people, ideas and cultural objects move across borders, how they experienced cultural, religious and linguistic difference, and how they overcame, hid or enforced these differences.
4 Systematically assess the merits and limits of different methodological approaches.
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1 Actively participate in discussion, make their own contributions to discussion and listen to and respect the contributions of others.
2 Communicate complex concepts effectively and in an accessible way through oral written work, assisted by peer and teacher feedback
3 Demonstrate a sense of historical empathy and a sensitivity for issues of migration, for intercultural and interreligious encounters and for questions around the transfer of knowledge, ideas, and cultural products across borders.
4 Demonstrate problem solving skills by tackling seminar and research questions both independently and within groups.
5 Demonstrate independent research skills by using library resources, undertake historical research, organise and analyse material, give oral presentations, and write essays.
6 Demonstrate an ability to critically evaluate, and a comprehensive understanding of, intellectual concepts as well as differences of methods, opinion and interpretation amongst historians and social
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