Collections of essays are always a mixed bag; this one is more mixed than most, held together by a slender thread of the inclusion of some non-Western presence as well as some globe-trotting. The title is ambiguous; global history can stress the treatment of inter-action between societies, or in eras where such inter-action is limited, it compares different patterns of development around the world. Hence, a world history study may involve cultures that actually had contact with and influence on one another, or cultures that went through various stages of development with little or no outside influence. [1] A very few of the chapters conform to the first definition by examining the interactions or influences of different cultures on one another; the majority of the essays focus more on the Western perception or interpretation of these marginal figures than on the figures themselves. Such diversity leads me in fact to question who would read this whole book, much less pay Brepols’ price for it. Because the order of the chapters reflects no discernable organization, I will review them in what seem to me some logical groupings.

To begin: one author who truly delivers on non-Westerners and their interactions with others is Paul Hartle, who presents a fascinating study of the appearance of various Japanese men in Western settings. His chapter, “The Convergence of the Twain: Early Modern Encounters between Japan and Britain,” presents a delicious assortment of unexpected scenarios that surprise and delight. I knew of a Japanese delegation to Siena in the 1500s, having read of it by chance in a Sienese chronicle, but nothing of Japanese sailors, and had only a vague, faint memory of a Japanese delegation to the pope (this narrowness reveals my own ignorance, but one shared by many Western scholars, I suspect). Hartle denies the dismissal of the significance of the thousands of pages left by the East India Company and instead asserts that “the textual traces of the encounter between the British traders and the indigenous Japanese (the ‘naturalls’) show on the English side an engagement marked by both puzzled curiosity and a developing understanding, even admiration, especially in the cosmopolitan sophistication of the chief factor” (31). Though trade did not flourish, “[A] rich series of social exchanges ensued, constituting the core of the two nations’ interactions; here, rather than in the trade itself, lies the principal interest of the English factory at Hirado” (33). The second half of his rich essay focuses on Japanese influences in early modern Britain, as shown in Western maps but also in the appearance of Japanese goods: paper, weaponry and lacquerware (44). He concludes with evidence of Japanese seamen found in the records of several ships.

A second chapter (8) that shows some degree of global interaction is James W. Fuerst’s “‘Die a King’: Gonzalo Pizarro’s Rebellion in the Second Part of theRoyal Commentaries.” The author of this work, the mestizo historian el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, was renowned for the First Part, published in 1609, “a monumental reconstruction of Inca history and culture...” (165). The second part, often dismissed, focuses on Gonzalo Pizarro’s rebellion against King Charles V’s New Laws (1544-1548). These laws, inspired in part by Bartolomé de las Casas, forbade the enslavement of indigenous people and set strict limits on the amount and kind of tribute to be exacted from those held in encomiendas. Fuerst sensitively explores the verbal and military conflicts that arose between different groups in Peru and also between them and their royally appointed viceroy. He also questions the denigration of Garcilaso’s favorable account that previous historians had maligned both Carvajal and Gonzalo as a ploy to flatter the Spanish monarchy, and states his responsibility to relate the truth of events in his own time “without passion or partisanship” (171). Of greater significance, however, is Fuerst’s main thesis, culminating in the claim that the Second Part of the Royal Commentaries establishes Inca Garcilaso as the first to consider and argue for “the possibility of an independent Peru freed from the direct control of the Spanish monarchy” as well as “the first American to see armed insurrection in the service of independence as an alternative to colonial rule” (186). Finally, he “reminds us that political justice across the New World requires that Spaniards and Europeans engage with indigenous peoples throughout the Americas as active and equal partners in governance and administration rather than captive laborers and pawns” (186). Others more familiar with Spanish historiography and Peruvian history may dispute these claims, but they certainly make for an exciting exposition of marginal figures in a (limited) global setting.

Maintaining a New World focus is Sharonah Esther Fredrick’s “Early Modern Retellings of Pre-Conquest Maya Femininity: The Xtabay Legend and its Resonances,” chapter 10. Fredrick relies on several conjectures, all of which seem plausible, more or less. Is it a fact that “her magical biography had been transmitted orally by Maya villagers in the centuries since the brutal subjugation of Yucatan by the Montejos...in the 1540s,” or a possibility? (204). The latter, I would think. Fredrick is a bit more circumspect in suggesting “it is very possible that the Xtabay may have seen her origins in the written language of the Maya” before the codices and hieroglyphic manuscripts met their fiery ends in 1562, thanks to Bishop Diego de Landa (204). The Franciscan clergy deemed the written Maya language to be the tool of the devil; using it to tell the triumph of a sensual independent woman and the demise of a virtuous one would have been doubly damning. Fredrick then explores other elements of pre-Colombian Mayan culture, suggesting, among other tantalizing leads, that the pre-Hispanic Maya goddess Ixtab, protectress of suicides, might share not only an etymology but also major characteristics of Xtabay: “It may be that here, in the connection between a compassionate face of Death, and the fatal allure of Xtabay, we have one of the points of origin of a legend that does entwine sex and doom in a complex fashion” (216). A quick review of the nature of suicide, and of the occurrence and significance of eclipses, rounds out this rich offering. As neither a folklorist nor a scholar of Pre-Columbian culture, I can offer little in the way of critical analysis; I can only offer my delight at stepping into this magical foreign world.

These three chapters go some way toward examining globalism in its first sense. One very satisfying chapter, 7, does emphasize the other element in the title--marginal figures--though in a European context. Meg Lota Brown and Kari Boyd McBride do scholars in several disciplines a great service by presenting an exhaustive catalog of female artists who worked and thrived in early modern Europe. “Designing Disgrace: Early Modern Female Artists Creating in the Margins” does not delve into much by way of analysis; it does, however, reveal the success of many women who established themselves as successful artists. Some claims lack a reference, for instance that “during the Renaissance women still-life painters and miniature portraitists were some of the highest paid and celebrated artists among the courts and monied classes of Europe” (142). Still, the knowledge that Luisa Ignacia Roldán became Sculptor of the Chamber to King Charles II of Spain, overshadowing her husband, another sculptor, comes as a delightful surprise (145-46), as do many other examples. A few names--Maria Sibylla Merien, Sofonsiba Anguissola, and Artemisia Gentileschi--will be familiar to scholars of early modern Europe; many others will not. A short coda to the chapter examines women’s presence in the vocal arts, as performers and composers, and lastly as actors (158-60). This chapter holds many treasures for anyone interested in the arts and in women’s place in the cultural scene of early modern Europe; by bringing together so many sources and stories Brown and McBride will surely become a valuable resource for a wide variety of scholars.

Three other chapters are highly insular, both in their locales and their narrow focus: “Representations of the Plowman and the Prostitute in Puritan and Anti-Puritan Satire: Or the Rhetoric of Plainness and the Reformation of the Popular in the Harvey-Nashe Quarrel” (chapter 3, by Kyle DiRoberto); “The Darkside (sic) of Celtic Mythology: The Evil Eye, Evil Creatures, and the Frightening Side of the Otherworld” (chapter 4, by Angela Loewenhagen Schrader); and “Women Wearing the Pants: Cross-dressing and Performativity in Early Modern Drama” (chapter 5, by Elizabeth Labiner). Connoisseurs of particularly thin slices of early modern British cultures will doubtless profit from their contents; it is difficult for a non-specialist in any of the fields examined to appreciate the subtleties of their arguments or to judge their worth.

Chapter 9, “Veiled Truths: Early Modern European Travel Accounts of Ottoman and Safavid Women,” by Lindsay Weiler-Leon, breaks little new ground in presenting European perceptions of “Muslim barbarity with the reality of women’s variegated roles and lives..., utilizing secondary source material written by both Ottoman and Safavid historians” (188). The two Sherley brothers, Sir Anthony and Robert, second and third sons of a minor nobleman, wished to become two of Queen Elizabeth I’s “gentlemen adventurers” in the mold of Sir Walter Raleigh (190). Relying too heavily on Edward Said’s problematic concept of “Orientalism,” Weiler-Leon gives a negative spin to most of Sir Anthony’s observations; for example, she states that his use of the title “The Great Sophi” to refer to Shah Abbas, as opposed to “Majesty” for European monarchs “did not necessarily place the shah on the same level as European royalty. Instead it revealed anti-Ottoman sentiment...[that] thus contributed to the underlying fear and fascination that shaped European impressions of both the Ottoman and Safavid Empires” (193). This facile set of assumptions poses problems at several levels. First, the author nowhere indicates any acquaintance with any non-European language and only a superficial understanding of either non-Western culture; her point about titles would be more convincing if she actually knew either. Second, no one would argue that Europeans “already knew everything they needed to know” and took their own superiority for granted (191). Ottomans, Savafids, and members of virtually every culture share the same assumption; presenting some of their opinions of the Europeans would do a lot to present a global Renaissance viewpoint and probe these relationships more deeply. I will say that the first part of the essay did make me curious to read Sir Anthony Sherley’s actual account if and when it becomes more widely available (190, n. 8).

The second half of the chapter, “Women in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires: The Reality,” (195-200) again presents little new to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with these cultures. That women were often powerful operators in the household and the courts, were often generous patrons of architecture and education, could control the money they brought to their marriages, and even, for the elite, were highly educated is surely common knowledge. Her conclusion, “there appeared to be far more diversity in women’s roles in Muslim society than what European men would initially have their readers think,” (201) comes as no surprise; readers would do well not to follow Sherley but instead turn to a female author, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), for a far more sophisticated, far more accurate presentation of Ottoman women.

The two remaining chapters present interesting arguments but prove irritating because the authors strain so painfully to be “relevant” [2]. The first selection, Arnaud Zimmern’s “One-World Ambitions: Reading Donne’s Globalism Otherwise Post-9/11” begins with a famous quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr. that Zimmern claims “reminded” King of John Donne’s famous line, “No man is an Island entire of itself”--but it doesn’t (1). His thesis, namely that “the ‘mankind’ Donne conceives of and addresses in the Devotions is more liturgically specific and ecclesiastically defined than King’s globalist interpretation suggests” (3) is fascinating and convincing. “Humankind” in seventeenth-century discourse jars a bit, but the sudden lurch to the “fever of Islamophobia” post-9/11 jolts far more violently. Once Zimmern stops conflating Donne, King, Donne’s world, and the present, he sensitively explores the liturgical framework for these most famous lines of Donne and of several other important works with sensitivity and cogency. Lovely--had Zimmern only stopped there! Instead, back we go to global terrorism and counter-terrorism, and superficially to how poetry is taught and how politicians can wrap the flag around Donne’s lines. He ends with the rather flat assertion that while Donne would surely mourn with the mourners the many tragic deaths of our age, “it remains unclear whether he would have shared their politics, let alone their sense of scale” (27). In fact, the bulk of his essay makes the case that Donne most certainly would not have. Read this essay as a sensible and sensitive reframing of Donne’s most famous words, and skip the window dressing.

Similar flaws appear in the final chapter under review, “Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain in Medieval Literature: The evidence of Der Stricker’sDaniel von dem Blühenden Tal,” by Albrecht Classen (chapter 6). It begins promisingly, exploring “the rule of the mythical, but certainly concretely identifiable, Old Man of the Mountain” in a range of medieval literary texts...” (123). Such an exploration would generate an informative and intriguing analysis. Unfortunately, the author in what I can assume is only a misguided effort to be relevant, awkwardly abandons his thesis to leap lightly from individual assassinations (that of Martin Luther King, Jr.) to suicide bombers to--terrorists? Space prevents a lengthy explanation of the many, crucial, differences between these acts of violence; why the author cites the sprawling Wikipedia article on the history of terrorism is a mystery. I chose rather to consult The Oxford English Dictionary, which crisply distinguishes a targeted murder (assassination) from an event designed to spread a general feeling of alarm (terrorism), often by using “violent and intimidating methods in the pursuit of political aims; esp. a member of a clandestine or expatriate organization aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against it or its subjects” (OED, online). Neither lists the other as a synonym. Nor do the real, historical Assassins of the medieval Middle East “continue to exist throughout the entire Muslim world and have found a multitude of ominous successors, such as the members of Al-Qaeda and ISIS...” (126); they do not. Classen also slips casually between the reality of the medieval Assassins and stories about them in Marco Polo and the appearance of “the so-called ‘Old Man from the Mountain’ who led these mysterious Assassins into [appearing as?] a significant opponent of King Arthur and his entire court” in Der Stricker’s work of ca. 1240-1250 (127)--or is it 1210-1225 (131)? [3]

The particulars of Der Stricker’s tale present some novel elements; his surprising conclusion, though is that “there is little doubt that Der Stricker specifically alluded to the Kingdom of the Old Man of the Mountains, even though there is no direct mention of assassination attempts” (134, emphasis added). In fact, there is a great deal of doubt, on so many levels, particularly as farther down on the same page the author asserts that this romance provides “further testimony of the extensive reception process of this fascinating account about that kingdom of assassins as it had been received in Western Europe.” What assassins?All Der Stricker has are two robot giants, far more intriguing; if we want an elderly man with magical powers, Merlin would seem a more likely presence in King Arthur’s court. Finally, in one more implausible stretch, Classen associates Boccaccio’s mention of an abbot who had used a powder from the Old Man of the Mountain via a Prince of the Levant to induce a state of profound sleep with the same Old Man’s administration of a drug to a young man so he will commit murder (136-37). The author seems surprised to note that this myth would have been common knowledge in Western Europe (131-32); why wouldn’t it be, given the hundreds of thousands of crusaders, merchants, and pilgrims who voyaged east and returned home?

I am left with two questions: for whom is this book intended? Scholars of various disciplines may find a chapter or two of interest, but the book as a whole demonstrates no overarching focus or theme. I am also curious about why Brepols, with its reputation for scholarly excellence, would publish such a miscellany. It is difficult to judge the quality of individual chapters, given their often high degree of specialization; probably most are solid and valuable contributions. The editors could have exercised greater control in reining in some of the more far-fetched speculations of a few, and even more in requiring coherence for the whole.

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Notes:

1. This is a modification of an AHA page on teaching world history: https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/teaching-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/world-civilizations-the-ancient-period-to-500-ce/introduction-to-doing-world-history

2. I am presenting here my overall conclusions; interested readers are free to contact me for a more detailed analysis.

3. As with Zimmern, I present my main conclusions and am happy to provide deeper analysis to interested readers.