Those men are the most lavish men in the world, and the

Those men are the most lavish men in the world, and the

most careless of the morrow[...]. They cannot keep

money and whatever riches fall to them, they waste all in

a very little time. Let, for instance, the king give fifty or a

hundred thousand Livres to any man, he lays it out in less

than a fortnight, in buying slaves of both sexes; in hiring

handsome wives; in setting up a noble equipage; in

furnishing a house, or clothing himself richly: and so

spends the whole sum so fast, without any regard to the

time to come, that unless some new supplies intervene in

two or three months time, our gentleman will be forced

to sell again his whole equipage by piecemeal, beginning

with his horses; then his needless servants; then his

concubines and slaves; and lastly, even his own clothes...

Jean Chardin (1643-1713) (1664)

Isfahan

Shah Abbas (1571-1629)

Court

Sir Robert Shirley (1581-1628)

Don García de Silva Figueroa

P Della Valle

Travel Reports

Thomas Coryat (1577-1617)

"Furcifer” & “umbrella”

King James (1603-1625)

KING LEAR (1603)

To EDGAR

You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred; only I

do not like the fashion of your garments: you will

say they are Persian attire: but let them be changed.

Banned after the French Revolution

Thomas Stone and James Henderson

(1804)

Boom of the Fashion Market

(mid-19th century)

From Kimono to “Western” clothes

Postwar revolt

How did we go from…

Medieval era

Chopine

Early modern era

Victorian era

20th century era

We are here to understand history

as…….

His lectures are kind of like watching 500 days of summer.

It's not sequenced by chronology but rather by themes. It

all comes together in the end. As a biology major who

found MMW laborious and boring, I found this class

rather interesting. His exams are not too bad.

1453

Fall of Constantinople or

Formation of Istanbul

History as Interrelated,

contingent and non-

sequential

Read straightforward narratives of

progress

Medieval period (dark)

Renaissance

Scientific Revolution

Industrial & French revolutions

----------------------------------------------

Important dates: 1517 (95 theses) Luther

1529 Siege of Vienna

Michel Foucault

"For many years now, historians have preferred to turn

their attention to long periods, as if, beneath the shifts

and changes of political events, they were trying to reveal

the stable, almost indestructible system of checks and

balances, the irreversible processes, the constant

readjustments, the underlying tendencies that gather

force, and are then suddenly reversed after centuries of

continuity, the movements of accumulation and slow

saturation, the great silent, motionless bases that

traditional history has covered with a thick layer of

events"

Fetishism of EVENTS

George Washington's crossing of the

Delaware River sort of history

How we will approach history in this

class?

1. CONTACT

New forms of behavior, fashion and

understanding of self in contrast or in

reference to others is created.

2. Conditional Probabilities

History is nonlinear

History is non-deterministic

Why? Because of human action in negotiation with

multiple and contingent processes (environmental,

sociological, etc.)

“We already know the physical laws that govern

everything we experience in everyday life… It’s a tribute

to how far we have come… that it now takes enormous

machines and a great deal of money to perform an

experiment whose results we cannot predict.” Steven

Hawking

Unintended consequences of Human

action in historical time

How did travelers like Chardin predict

the impact of the Persian high heal

shoes on modern fashion?

The role of History in our lives:

Path dependence

History is everywhere:

Decisions we make in a given situation are limited to the

decisions we or others have made in the past, though those

decisions may no longer appear pertinent in our present

lives.

No End Game:

Historical processes do not progress steadily toward some

pre-determined outcome.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-

1831)

The Ugly Duckling

History is full of unrealizable realities

Macro versus micro histories

Can we think about history in its

broader sense by focusing on small

histories?

Blind Chance

King Manuel I (1496 CE)

Cabral discovered Brazil (April 22, 1500)

Brazil

7-1 (World Cup 2014)

Making of the Modern World 13New Ideas and Cultural Contacts

Spring 2015, Lecture 1

Fall Quarter, 2011

My information

Professor. Babak Rahimi

Office Hours: Tuesdays, 9:00am-10:00am

Wed, 9am-11am

Department of Literature,

Literature Building

3rd floor: 3324

Phone: 858-534-2147

Email: brahimi@ucsd.edu

Description of the course

An examination of the period between roughly 1200 and 1750 CE, the Making of the Modern World 13 focuses on global transformations that gave rise to various patterns of modernity. We will examine various socio-economic, cultural, political and religious processes in the formation of various discourses and practices of early modernity. The course primarily adopts an approach that focuses more on contacts and exchanges between various regions and civilizations, especially in the Afro-Eurasian zones of contact. We will also focus on the relationship between communication, culture and space in the context of emerging global powers.

Basic Goals

1. To acquire basic understanding of late medieval and early modern histories and societies, with a focus on social life.

2. To gain familiarity with non-European civilizations, in particular the Chinese and Islamic societies.

3. To engage in intensive university-level writing and to improve one’s analytical and critical skills.

Required Texts Textbooks are available for purchase at the UCSD bookstore and

Cal Copy.

Jerry H. Bentley and Herbert F. Ziegler, Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. MMW combined Edition, 5th Edition.

Course Reader, MMW 13.

A Writer’s Reference, 8th edition, by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers (Bedford/St. Martins, 2014)

Address:Villa Norte Shopping Center, 3251 Holiday Ct,

La Jolla, CA 92037

Phone:(858) 452-9949

www.calcopy.com open until 7pm

Course Requirements

Assignments

Assignments and grades will be determined as follows:

1. Writing Assignments 35%

2. Midterm Exam 20%

3. Final Exam 35%

4. Section Attendance/ Participation 10%

Exams

● The mid-term and the final are in-class exams.

Your lecture attendance, participation

in sessions and readings should prepare you for the two exams.

I will provide a study guide for the midterm and final exam.

You must complete all parts of the writing assignment, attend section, and take all exams in order to pass the course.

* Please note that make-up exams maybe allowed only in the legitimate cases.

Red half-sheet ParSCORE & Blue

Notebook

Writing Assignment

●Writing assignment consists of research paper (8 to 10 pages) on a topic relevant to general MMW course and to the period and topics covered in MMW4.

a) Your ultimate objective will be to research and to write about a scholarly question that interests you.

b) Your aim is to first find a direction in which to start.

c) Also, please note that you are expected to use at least one

primary source and one journal article for your research paper. Your TAs will explain to you the writing assignments.

CLASS POLICY &

GUIDELINES

Attendance & Participation

Active participation for each week compromises 10%

of your grade. Students are expected to come to the

lectures and are required to attend the sections.

Students are also expected to have read the assigned

reading materials and be prepared to talk about the

reading material and lectures during discussion

sessions. You can certainly ask questions during the

lectures.

Late Papers

You must complete all assigned papers in a timely manner

to pass the course. Late papers will be penalized 1/3 of a

grade for each class that they are late.

Plagiarism

The major part of your course assignments and exams involves writings based on

your assigned reading. So, make sure to cite your sources, either quoted directly or

paraphrased, so to avoid plagiarism. In other words, submit your own original work!

See me if you have any questions regarding what constitutes plagiarism. If you are

caught cheating you will automatically fail the course.

Assistance

In case of disability that may require

accommodation, please see me or

your Section instructor on the first

day of class.

Communication

I have set up an official office hour on Tuesdays 9:00am-11:00am and Wednesdays 9:00am-11am at the Department of Literature 3rd floor (room 3324) on the Warren Campus.

You could certainly reach me by email and phone.

I expect to occasionally communicate with you by email. So, please check your UCSD emails, at least, on a weekly basis.

Email and Sleep

● Please GO ahead and check your emails or Facebook

in class!

Sleep if you want in during the lecture!

Course Calendar:

Thursday March 26

C. Chavez Holiday March 27

Instruction begins Monday, March 30

Memorial Day Observance Monday, May 25

Instruction ends Friday, June 5

Final exams: June 8-12

Spring Quarter ends: June 12

49 Days of Instruction

57 Days in Quarter

Final

Final Day Exam:

June 11, 2015

Thursday 7:00 pm-9:59 pm

Schedule of

Lectures

http://roosevelt.ucsd.edu/mmw/cours

es/mmw13.html.

Week 1

March 31 (Tuesday)

● Introduction to the course:

Rethinking World History

April 2 (Thursday)

● Eurasian Complex and Southernization

Week 2

April 7 (Tuesday)

● Nomadic Empires and Eurasian

Integration

April 9 (Thursday)

● States and Societies of Sub-Saharan

Africa

Week 3

April 14 (Tuesday)

● The Increasing Influence of Europe

(Economy, Society, and State)

Film: TBA

April 16 (Thursday)

● India and the Indian Ocean Basin

Week 4

April 21(Tuesday)

● The Song Modernity in East Asia

April 23 (Thursday)

● The Americas and Oceania

Week 5

April 28 (Tuesday)

● Afro-Eurasia and Americas

Expanding Horizons of Cross-Cultural Interaction

(The Case of Hemispheric Pandemics)

May 30 (Thursday)

● Early Modern Interconnected Global (1500-1800 C.E.)

*Study Guide for the Midterm

Week 6

May 5 (Tuesday)

Midterm Exam

*Bring scantron and blue notebook

May 7 (Thursday)

● New Worlds: Americas and Oceania

Week 7

May12 (Tuesday)

● Transformation of Europe I

(Economy, Religion and State)

May 14 (Thursday)

● Transformation of Europe II

(The City and “Renaissance”

of European Identity)

Week 8

May 19 (Tuesday)

● Transformation of Europe III

(Print, Science and Technology)

May 21 (Thursday)

● Tradition and Change in East Asia

in the early modern period

Week 9

May 26 (Tuesday)

● Islamic Gunpowder Empires I

(The Ottomans)

May 28 (Thursday)

● Islamic Gunpowder Empires II

(The Mughals)

Week 10

June 2 (Tuesday)

● Islamic Gunpowder Empires III

(Safavids)

Study Guide for the Final Exam & in-class review of the

exam

June45 (Thursday)

● Conclusion

Week 11

(FINAL WEEK, June 9-12 June)

Final Exam:

June 11

Thursday 7:00-9:59pm

Mediterranean-Mesopotamia Complex:

Rise of Islam as a World Religion and an Imperial Force.

(Abbasid Empire)

Rise of Roman-Germanic Medieval Europe (Western

Europe).

3. Byzantium (Eastern Europe)

Eastern Asia

Rise of Tang (618-907 C.E.) State Bureaucracy

Song Dynasties (960-1279). (Technological Developments).

● Spread of Buddhism & Neo-Confucianism

India: Post-Gupta (451 C.E.)

Islam (in the north)

8th century

The Hindu Kingdoms of Southern India

Africa-Mediterranean

& Sub-Saharan Africa

Northern Africa: Fatimads and various other Muslim territories.

East Africa-Western Asia (Middle East): Swahili civilization

Sub-Sahara and rest of Africa: Kingdoms, empires, and city-states 800-1500 C.E.

Rise of Islam (Ghana in West Africa)