U ovom se zborniku objavljuju tekstovi koje su prijatelji, suradnici i nekadašnji studenti profesora Drage Roksandića iz cijeloga svijeta napisali kako bi obilježili njegov sedamdeseti rođendan i odlazak u mirovinu s Odsjeka za povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu. Tkogod da je susreo profesora Dragu Roksandića između 1990., kada je na Odsjeku za povijest izabran za docenta, i 2018. godine, kada je otišao u mirovinu, vjerojatno je primijetio njegov značajan utjecaj na studente svih razina, od preddiplomskih do doktorskih. Profesor je snažno inspirirao i utjecao na bliske suradnike svih generacija. Ovdje je riječ o pravom Festschriftu, „pisanoj proslavi“, koja prema dobrim običajima akademske zajednice izlazi u čast jednog njezina uvaženog člana. Prilozi u zborniku obuhvaćaju različite epohalne horizonte – neki detaljno istražuju pojedine segmente određenog perioda, neki se usmjeravaju na lokalne fenomene ili pristupaju istraživačkim problemima mikrohistorijski. Neki tekstovi obuhvaćaju razdoblja u duljem trajanju, obrađuju različite strukture ili nude određene globalnohistorijske odrednice. Mnogi su prilozi multidisciplinarni, interdisciplinarni ili transdisciplinarni, što je odraz činjenice da Drago Roksandić nikada nije smatrao da je povjesničarev zanat isključiv ili zatvoren, već je u svojim predavanjima i radovima uvijek otvarao komunikacijske prostore s drugim disciplinama. U nekim se tekstovima autori posebno bliski profesoru Roksandiću prisjećaju iskustava kolegijalne suradnje. Zajedničko je svim radovima to što su znak predanosti i iskrene počasti profesoru i kolegi koji svojim primjerom pokazuje što znači odanost struci, na koji način istraživati određene teme inovativno, polazeći iz različitih perspektiva, zatim kako postavljati prava problemska pitanja i kako očuvati istraživačku radost, energiju i žar, odnosno zbog čega povijesne kontroverze treba proučavati hrabro i trezveno, a prilaziti im dijaloški. Ovaj je zbornik, dakako, samo jedan mogući prikaz interesa, epoha, problema i pristupa kojima se do sada Drago Roksandić bavio. U svim je radovima moguće pronaći njegove utjecaje, a brojna je istraživanja, čiji su rezultati sada ovdje objavljeni, i on sâm potaknuo, mnogo prije negoli je započeo rad na ovom zborniku.
The oriental spices that so dazzlingly performed in the early modern economy were mysti ed in the sense that, from being rare, valuable and of as yet unspeci ed provenance, these objects were raised within the western phenomenological scheme beyond the commonplace and ascribed marvellous properties. This was part of the mysti cation of the East, a time-worn conception of western society inherited from the rst expeditions of Alexander the Great, which created an enduring and formative legend of oriental luxury, abundance, and exuberance that the medieval penchant for marvels (Mirabilia) conveniently appropriated. Spices too were mysti ed through the medium of biblical literature and speci cally through associations with the terrestrial paradise, which was a place much debated by cosmographers until the seventeenth century. This paper concentrates on the process of mysti cation rather than its projection, and suggests that it constituted a self-conscious aesthetic-if held within certain imaginative bounds-even when confronted by empirical knowledge. I conclude with a critical discussion of quite how marvellous the marvellous must have seemed to its audience, and posit it somewhere between the mythical and legendary horizons of that society.
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1740022808002775 How to cite this article: Stefan Halikowski Smith (2008). 'Prots sprout like tropical plants': a fresh look at what went wrong with the Eurasian spice trade c.
Portuguese perceptions of nature in the new worlds they encountered in Southeast Asia from the turn of the sixteenth century were a complex amalgam of inherited frameworks and the forging of a new gaze or vision. Grand claims that the Portuguese discoveries amount to the “construction of space” and the “invention of humanity” have been trumpeted, but are too overblown. From another perspective, Portuguese scholars have recently engaged in a philosophical debate around experiencialismo—the distinction between “scientific experience” and the supposedly pre- or non-scientific “lived” experience of the senses (experiência vivencial), suggesting that the Portuguese Discoveries fall at a critical juncture between these two hermeneutic paradigms. But what did this amount to in concrete terms?I would prefer to turn to other scholars like the Belgian historian Albert Deman, who has stipulated that the perception of Indian nature in the European imaginary, was locked in three unchanging tropes that even first-hand experience could not easily undo. These tropes were exuberance, superabundance and luxury, and go right back to the first encounters between East and West in antiquity, notably Alexander the Great's adventures of the fourth century B.C., which impressed upon Westerners the East's “superior forms of life” and what Pliny, for example, dutifully acknowledged as “the wonder of the victorious expedition of Alexander the Great, when that part of the world was first revealed.” Why wonder, and what does Deman allude to when he writes of “superior forms of life”? The common impression was that everything grew more forcefully, and in greater profusion in the East. There were, for example, two flowerings a year of some plants; the colours and tastes were stronger; the smells were beguiling. What the Portuguese noted as “the fumos da India” merely drew on biblical reference in the Book of Proverbs to the “spicy breezes of the East”. From these basic conceptions had sprung compilations of all the fabulous stories of the East, texts such as those produced by Ktesias the Knidian and Megasthenes whose ideas were passed down through Pliny into the genre of the marvellous, or mirabilia, fanciful speculations and fables developed along the lines of half-truths reported by returning merchants and travellers, and sometimes fictions spread by Arab middlemen keen to retain their long-standing monopoly of purveyance to Christian consumers.
The substantial Portuguese populations across the Bay of Bengal, seeking protection in the fortified settlements of the English East India Company, were more compliant than those populations in western India, for whom the English often remained an enemy. On the east coast of India there were not twenty-four, but only one Portuguese fortress. Thus the Portuguese formed groups of subaltern collaborators, contributing to the wellbeing of English settlements in different ways including: through the provision of civil defence, freight services and active capital investment; as intermediaries in the diamond trade, as tavern-owners, registrars, doctors and even aldermen, but also as concubines and domestic slaves. Many Portuguese converted to Protestantism, supported by contemporary Portuguese translations of the Book of Common Prayer, while others sought other assimilationist strategies, including sending children to Britain for schooling. While scholars have attached due importance to renegadism and to service to various Indian rulers, these defections to rival Protestant powers have gone unnoticed.
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