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Global Gifts
The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia

Global Gifts considers the role that the circulation of material culture played in the establishment of early modern global diplomacy.

Zoltán Biedermann (Edited by), Anne Gerritsen (Edited by), Giorgio Riello (Edited by)

9781108415507, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 December 2017

314 pages, 42 b/w illus. 3 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.65 kg

'Asking what made a good gift in the early modern past, Global Gifts explores the intersection of diplomatic history and material culture studies. Textured and deeply researched, this volume traces the itineraries of exotica across a tangle of cultural and geographic boundaries. Whether one is Thailand or Portugal, India, or Italy, this book will prompt new thinking about issues that were crucial in the past yet have resonance in our own time – labor and luxury, politics and trade, generosity and thwarted desire.' Dana Leibsohn, Smith College, Massachusetts

This anthology explores the role that art and material goods played in diplomatic relations and political exchanges between Asia, Africa, and Europe in the early modern world. The authors challenge the idea that there was a European primacy in the practice of gift giving through a wide panoramic review of imperial encounters between Europeans (including the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English) and Asian empires (including Ottoman, Persian, Mughal, Sri Lankan, Chinese, and Japanese cases). They examine how those exchanges influenced the global production and circulation of art and material culture, and explore the types of gifts exchanged, the chosen materials, and the manner of their presentation. Global Gifts establishes new parameters for the study of the material and aesthetic culture of Eurasian relations before 1800, exploring the meaning of artistic objects in global diplomacy and the existence of economic and aesthetic values mutually intelligible across cultural boundaries.

Introduction: global gifts and the material culture of diplomacy in early modern Eurasia Zoltán Biedermann, Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello
1. Portraits, turbans and cuirasses: material exchange between Mantua and the Ottomans at the end of the fifteenth century Antonia Gatward Cevizli
2. A silken diplomacy: Venetian luxury gifts for the Ottoman Empire in the late Renaissance Luca Molà
3. Diplomatic viories: Sri Lankan caskets and the Portuguese-Asian exchange in the sixteenth century Zoltán Biedermann
4. Objects of prestige and spoils of war: Ottoman objects in the Habsburg networks of gift giving in the sixteenth century Barbara Karl
5. The diplomatic agency of art between Goa and Persia: Archbishop Friar Aleixo de Meneses and Shah 'Abb?s I in the early seventeenth century Carla Alferes Pinto
6. Dutch diplomacy and trade in Rariteyten: episodes in the history of material culture of the Dutch Republic Claudia Swan
7. Gifts for the shogun: the Dutch East India Company, global networks and Tokugawa Japan Adam Clulow
8. 'From his Holiness to the King of China': gifts, diplomacy and Jesuit evangelization Mary Laven
9. 'With great pomp and magnificence': royal gifts and the embassies between Siam and France in the late seventeenth century Giorgio Riello
10. Coercion and the gift: art, jewels and the body in British diplomacy in Colonial India Natasha Eaton.

Subject Areas: Material culture [JFCD], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], General & world history [HBG]

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