Richard Eaton - Review
_The central question the author asks is at once profound and disarmingly simple namely, how best to organize our knowledge of world history between the 6th and 16th century? Most studies of world history in this period suffer from several fatal flaws. For one thing, they (still) see history from a mainly European frame, as something that flows toward Europe, and implicitly, toward "us". .Although its title blatantly announces a departure here, the book does not ignore Europe. I was especially pleased to see a Portuguese figure, Tome Pires, included among the book's cast of characters. The inclusion of Pires's story toward the end of the book allows the author to discuss some of the principle differences between Asian and European conceptions of trade, power, religion, and society, thereby putting Asia in this period in a proper comparative perspective.
Most macrosurveys still take as their unit of analysis self-contained cultures, states, or even nation states. Such a framework inevitably suggests centerperiphery notions of space: empires governing hinterlands from centralized capitals. By contrast, this book takes as its basic unit the connections between regions. This gives the reader a very different picture, namely, of an interconnected and interdependent world, rather than of a handful of hegemonic cultural/political centers.
The author addresses the above goal by concentrating on the lives of individuals (or in one case, a ship) who were constantly in motion, most of them traveling many thousands of miles in their lifetimes. By humanizing its subject matter in this way, the book makes complex historical processes immediately accessible to the reader. The work's accessibility is one of its greatest strengths. It neither talks down to the reader, nor roams through a jargon-filled thicket of social theory. The trick in this sort of writing is in the weaving back and forth between the strictly biographical information, and the more abstract, analytical points. I believe the author has handled these transitions very effectively.
The book's footnotes show that the author has made a thorough survey of the best and most recent secondary literature, as well as translations of the relevant primary sources.
Richard Eaton, Professor of History
University of Arizona
Most macrosurveys still take as their unit of analysis self-contained cultures, states, or even nation states. Such a framework inevitably suggests centerperiphery notions of space: empires governing hinterlands from centralized capitals. By contrast, this book takes as its basic unit the connections between regions. This gives the reader a very different picture, namely, of an interconnected and interdependent world, rather than of a handful of hegemonic cultural/political centers.
The author addresses the above goal by concentrating on the lives of individuals (or in one case, a ship) who were constantly in motion, most of them traveling many thousands of miles in their lifetimes. By humanizing its subject matter in this way, the book makes complex historical processes immediately accessible to the reader. The work's accessibility is one of its greatest strengths. It neither talks down to the reader, nor roams through a jargon-filled thicket of social theory. The trick in this sort of writing is in the weaving back and forth between the strictly biographical information, and the more abstract, analytical points. I believe the author has handled these transitions very effectively.
The book's footnotes show that the author has made a thorough survey of the best and most recent secondary literature, as well as translations of the relevant primary sources.
Richard Eaton, Professor of History
University of Arizona