24th January, 2005 Slavery in Global History John Thornton and Linda Heywood, ‘Looking for the Charter Generation: the First Generation of Africans in English and Dutch American Colonies’
John K. Thornton and Linda Heywood are Professors of History and African American Studies at Boston University. Professor Thornton’s books include Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World – the most admired and influential book on its subject and, most recently, The Kongolese Saint Anthony. He is an influential innovator in the teaching of global history. Professor Heywood is the author of Contested Power in Angola, 1840s to the Present and editor of Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Together they are at work on Angolans in the early Anglo-Dutch Atlantic, and a new history of Africa.
Discussant: Gareth Austin (LSE)
31st January, 2005 The Historiography of Global History Jack Goody, ‘The Theft of History’
Jack Goody, William Wyse Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College, is the doyen of British anthropology and a major source of influence on historians. His outstanding contributions to global history have included The East in the West and ground-breaking scholarship on the subjects of food and love. His studies of the oral transmission of literature (including The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society and The Interface between the Written and the Oral) are equally famous. His recent work includes Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fiction, Relics and Sexuality.
Discussant tba
7th February, 2005 Comparative Approaches Patricia Seed, tba
Patricia Seed, Professor of History at Rice University, is one of the outstanding pioneers and leading exponents of comparative colonial history. Her books include the ground-breaking Taking Possession, which examined colonial appropriation rituals throughout the New World, and, most recently, American Pentimento, which contrasts British and Spanish methods of empire. She has also made important contributions to the history of navigation and cartography, including an award-winning website. Her work on aboriginal rights has influenced current debate.
Discussants: Joan-Pau Rubiés (LSE) and José-Juan López-Portillo (Queen Mary)
14th February, 2005 Food in Global History Martin Jones, ‘Culinary frontiers: the ecology of empire in Roman Europe’
Martin Jones, George Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science at Cambridge, is one of the foremost British pioneers of historical ecology, renowned for work on later prehistoric and early historic agriculture in Europe, the biomolecular archaeology of early crops and ecological theory in its relation to archaeological method. His books include England before Domesday and, most recently, the highly acclaimed The Molecule Hunt: Archaeology and the Search for Ancient DNA. He is at work on a book on the global history of feasting.
Discussant: Tim Lang (City University)
21st February, 2005 Cultural Exchange in Global History Al Andrea, ‘The Crusades as a Topic in World History’
Alfred Andrea is Professor Emeritus of History, The University of Vermont. He co-edited The Human Record, the most widely used collection of source materials for university courses in global history. His other books include Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade and The Capture of Constantinople: the "Hystoria Constantinopolitana" of Gunther of Pairis. His research interests focus on the Crusades and the comparative study of world religions. He is the editor of the forthcoming Encyclopaedia of the Crusades and editor-in-chief of what promises to be a vast encyclopaedia of world history.
Discussants: David D’Avray (UCL), Tom Asbridge (Queen Mary)
7th March, 2005 The Historiography of Global History David Christian, ‘Stretching History: from World History to Big History’
David Christian is Professor of History at San Diego State University, where he teaches a world history course which has become famous for an innovative approach. After publishing an important monograph on the history of vodka in Russian society and a general history of Russia, he demonstrated how his interests were growing by producing the widely admired A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia: i, Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire (1998). His controversial new book, Maps of Time: an Introduction to Big History (2004) takes a revolutionary and already-impactful approach, locating our planet in the cosmos as well as our species in the environment.
Discussant tba
18th April, 2005 Comparative Approaches Matthew Restall. ‘Mayas and Africans’
Matthew Restall is Associate Professor of Latin American History, Women's Studies,and Anthropology, and Co-director of Latin American Studies at Penn State. His books include some of the most radically revisionist contributions yet made to the colonial history of Latin America, including Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society and Maya Conquistador. He co-edited Maya Survivalism (with Ueli Hostettler) and Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes (with Susan Kellogg). He has also made notable contributions to African American and Women’s studies. His edited volume, Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America will be published in 2005, and he has just finished writing a new book, The Black Middle: Slavery, Society, and African-Maya Relations in Colonial Yucatan.
Discussant: tba
25th April, 2005 Regional Studies in Global Perspective Gareth Austin, 'Coercion, Economic Growth and the State in History: African Experiences in Global Perspective, 1700-2000'.
Gareth Austin, Lecturer in Economic History at the LSE, works mainly on the economic history of Sub-Saharan Africa, especially West Africa from c.1700 to the present, including contemporary development issues in historical perspective and the broader themes of comparative economic history of Africa, Asia and Latin America; and the `global history' of material life.
Discussant: tba
2nd May, 2005 Slavery in Global History William Gervase Clarence-Smith, 'Slaves in Islamdom: a tentative census'
William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Professor in the Economic History of Asia and Africa at SOAS. His works include Cocoa and Chocolate 1765-1914, Hadhrami Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean 1750- 1960, The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade, The Third Portuguese Empire 1825-1975: an Economic Imperialism, and Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola, 1840–1926. His interests extend to the modern economic history of the Third World, South East Asian history, tree crops, Asian trading diasporas, alternative transport technologies, the historical frontiers of Islam and Christianity, and labour history. His talk to the seminar will preview his forthcoming book on Islam and the Abolition of Slavery.
Discussant: tba