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Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Affiliation:
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Extract

The majority of Japanese even today believe that the politico-cultural universe of the Edo period was fundamentally determined by the closure of the country. They also think that the opening of Japan can be reduced to the development of exchanges with the West, following the birth of the Meiji regime. It is hard for them to imagine that Japan developed in relation with other Asian countries, since they are hardly used to appreciating Asian cultures.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

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44 For one detailed case-study, see Phillips, Carla Rahn, Ciudad Real, 1500–1750: Growth, Crisis and Readjustment in the Spanish Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 71–5, passim. The ‘bureaucratic elite’ of the area is shown to have invested in land, taking advantage of distress sales by small landholders.Google Scholar

45 For an excellent (albeit uneven) collection of papers on these questions, see Schwartz, Stuart (ed.), Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

46 Cf. in this context, the pertinent comments in Ludden, David, ‘History Outside Civilization and the Mobility of South Asia’, South Asia (n.s.) 17, 1 (1994), 123.Google Scholar