Böcker utgivna av Leiden University Press

Lived experiences of the law in colonial Sri Lanka. Dutch and Sinhalese law coexisted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sri Lanka. A dual forum called the Landraad empowered colonial justices to defer to either imperial or indigenous law on issues ranging from standards of evidence to inheritance rights. So, while major judicial decisions were often skewed toward assimilation, everyday life in the colony was marked by a cultural multiplicity. In Navigating Pluralities, Nadeera Rupesinghe focuses on these day-to-day experiences of the law in colonial Sri Lanka, discovering how such plural practices affected both colonized and colonizers in surprising ways.

The contributions assembled in this volume present cutting-edge research that examines the network of Indo-American interconnections over a wider time frame. The case studies stretch into the early decades of the American republic hinting at a longer history of mutual influence and exchange, beyond the registers of 'the American century' of globalization. By bringing together academics working across disciplines ranging from history to cultural and literary studies, comparative religion, political science and sociology, this volume thus foregrounds and historicizes the complex, multi-sited, polyvalent nature of the Indo-US encounter. At the same time, the book explore the possibilities of methodologically engaging with established categories--such as the nation, the imperial and Empire--and test alternative typologies to better understand this encounter. Taken together, our authors reconstruct the myriad ways in which Americans and Indians have engaged with each other through trade, diplomacy, intellectual comradeship, missionary evangelism and revolutionary fervor.

"In the aftermath of World War I, the beaten paths of tourism guided an increasing number of international tourists to the hinterlands of the Arab Eastern Mediterranean, where they would admire pyramids and Roman ruins. Yet they were not the only visitors: Arab nationalists gathered in summer resorts, and Yishuvi skiing clubs practised on Lebanese mountain slopes. By catering to these travellers, local tour guides and advocates of tourism development pursued their agendas. The book unearths unexpected connections between tourism and the emergence of nation-states in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Arab middle-class actors striving for independence, Zionist settlers and mandate officials presented their visions of the post-Ottoman spatial order to an international audience of tourists. At the same time, mobilities and infrastructures of tourism shaped the material conditions of this order. Tourism thus helps us to understand the transformations of Arab societies in their global context, and its history is a colourful story of the emergence of the modern Middle East. "

Monsoon Asia was the first venue of global trade, a zone of encounters, exchanges, and cultural diffusion. This book demonstrates the continuing fertility of the Monsoon Asia perspective as an aid to understanding what South/Southeast Asia, as a connected space, has been in the past and is today. Sixteen tightly knit chapters, written by experts from perspectives ranging from Indology and philology to postcolonial and transnational studies, offer a captivating view of the region, with its rich and variegated history shaped by commonalities in human ecology, cultural forms, and religious practices. The contributions draw upon extensive research and a thorough command of the most recent scholarship. This volume will be an invaluable text for anyone interested in South and Southeast Asia, and for more specialized students in the fields of global and Indian Ocean history, transcultural studies, archaeology, linguistics, and politics.

From time immemorial, thunder and lightning were seen as a wrathful Deity's instruments of punishment. But then, in 1752, came Benjamin Franklin's paradigm-shifting invention of the lightning rod, and the way we view God and nature was changed forever.

Parvin E'tesami (1907-1941) is among the few Persian female poets, who has gained nationwide popularity, while her authorship was disbelieved. She is celebrated in a plethora of publications every year in Iran and beyond. E'tesami is the only female poet who has remained part of the daily lives of people in her society for about a century. Her poetry appears in school curricula both before and after the Revolution of 1979. People use her poetry on social media, particularly in critical times. It is also used in public speeches by Ali Khamenei (r. 1989-present) the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. This book engages with E'tesami in the transformational context of the early twentieth century in Iran to investigate the controversies around her identity as a popular female poet. It demonstrates that the reason for E'tesami's paradoxical popularity was not merely her gender, but the transgression of patriarchal Iranian-Muslim gender norms.

The Asian Studies Parade reflects a lifetime of commitment to the field by Paul van der Velde, a leading Asian studies innovator, scholar, and publisher. The first chapters examine aspects of the Dutch colonial presence in Asia and its intellectual support system in the Netherlands. The author's engagement with historical biography emerges in studies of such contrasting figures as Japanese interpreter Imamura Gen'emon Eisei, pioneering anthropologist P.J. Veth, and anti-colonialist Jacob Haafner. Van der Velde then continues to describe the development of Asia-Europe links at the end of the 20th century and the emergence of the 'New Asia Scholar' in the 21st century. This unique work will interest anyone concerned with wider issues in Asian studies.

Economic Diversity in Contemporary Timor-Leste analyses various economic dynamics in past and present Timor-Leste. Comprising 14 research chapters, the volume brings to the fore: 1) local, community-based economic values and arrangements; 2) community-based entanglements with a market-driven economy; 3) the colonial and postcolonial governance praxis through which a market-driven economy has permeated the country, and 4) the creative and place-based ways through which local people have responded to these transformations. The collection challenges hegemonic, market-driven analyses which characterise Timor-Leste's economy as weak, deformed and homogenised and demonstrates the myriad of socially embedded ways through which Timor-Leste's economy is diverse, richly complex and continually brought into being. To frame the analysis of these complex economic dynamics in Timor-Leste, the collection's introduction develops the concept of economic ecologies: the assemblages of institutions and their localised and historical relationships mobilised for reproducing collective life, both in its material and immaterial aspects.

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 how Afro-Asianism was lived by activists, intellectuals, cultural figures, as well as political leaders in building a post-imperial world ΓÇô particularly women. As a whole, this collection of essays examines the diversity of Afro-Asian ideals that emerged through such movements, untangling the personal relationships, political competition, racial hierarchies, and solidarities that shaped them. By visualising political Afro-Asianism and its proponents as a living network, a fuller picture of decolonization and the Cold War is brought into view.

This is the revised prose version of the Babad Tanah Jawi, originally prepared by C.F. Winter Sr., in Javanese script and in English translation.