This volume of the ASLU series examines perspectives on maritime and underwater cultural heritage (MUCH) in southern Africa and proposes new management approaches to advance protection and public engagement. By redefining the maritime historical narratives in countries that have predominantly interpreted their maritime past through colonial shipwrecks, it is possible to create an environment in which stakeholders become active participants in heritage management. The application of a broad ma...

In the historiography of the period of Dutch rule in the Cape of Good Hope, from 1652 until 1795, Cape burghers are represented as the perpetual underdogs bristling against the rule of a restrictive Dutch East India Company (VOC). But was this relationship really so antagonistic?

The author places Cape colonial society in the wider context of the Dutch Republic and, in doing so, compares the political structures, institutions and dynamics of the Republic and its overseas settlement. He shows ...

Gum Arabic is a natural product which grows exclusively in the Sahel and has played an ever increasing role in the global economy. In the time of the crusades, Europeans bought the ingredient in Arab countries. Soon, it was not only used in ink or medicine, but also as a symbol of its putative Arab origin, the noble Orient. Later, gum was bought directly in the countries where it was produced, but western dependence on it grew. As European countries were laying the foundations for their colon...

The remains of Dutch East India Company forts are scattered throughout littoral Asia and Africa. But how important were the specific characteristics of European bastion-trace fortifications to Early-Modern European expansion? Was European fortification design as important for Early-Modern expansion as has been argued? This book takes on these questions by studying the system of fortifications built and maintained by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in present-day India and Sri Lanka. It unc...

The work of Fernand Braudel (1949) should have revolutionized the way archaeology conceptualizes temporal scales and builds chronological narratives. Even though Braudel’s general views did impact archaeological theory deeply, his three different time-scales, together with insights into duration as the inner dialectic between different temporalities, remain neglected in archaeological practice.

Nowadays, ceramic chronology building in archaeology still relies on two main variables: time-spa...

The Afro-Asianism of the early Cold War has long remained buried under the narrative of Bandung, homogenising and subverting the different visions of post-colonial worldmaking that co-existed alongside the Bandung project. This book turns the lens on these other visions, and the transnational interactions which emerged from various other gatherings of the 1950s and 1960s that existed beyond the realm of high diplomacy, while blurring the lines between state and non-state projects. It examines...

The year 2024 marks the opening of the new Middle Eastern Library of Leiden University, a purpose-built facility to serve the needs of all those who engage in the study of the Middle East and North Africa from the dawn of history to the present day. To celebrate the occasion, more than 40 authors from Leiden and beyond have contributed to this special volume on the library’s rich and multifaceted Oriental holdings.

Topics range from the Ancient Near East to the material and conservational ...

This new and now unabridged English translation of Huizinga’s Autumntide of the Middle Ages (Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen) celebrates the centenary of a book that still ranks as one of the most perceptive and influential analyses of the late medieval period. Its wide-ranging discussion of fourteenth and fifteenth century France and the Low Countries makes it a classic study of life, culture, and thought in medieval society.

The translation of the original text captures the impact of Huizing...

Abu ‘Abdollâh' Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki (c. 880 CE-941 CE) was a poet to the Samanid court which ruled much of Khorâsân (northeastern Persia) from its seat in Bukhara.

He is widely regarded as "the father of Persian poetry, for he was the first major poet to write in New Persian language, following the Arab conquest in the seventh and eighth centuries, which established Islam as the official religion, and made Arabic the predominant literary language in Persian-speaking lands for some two...