THE GLOBAL MIDDLE AGES
WORKSHOP TWO: PERIODISATION
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
This time we have not cut the list down to a minimal number of items, but we have marked *
against a couple of items in each section that may be useful places to start.
General
Brown, Peter, ‘What’s in a name?’ A talk given at the opening of Oxford Centre for Late
Antiquity on Friday 28 September 2007, brown_what_in_name.pdf.
Gallois, William, Time, religion and history (Harlow: Longman, 2007), pp. 13-31 (Ch. 2 ‘The
varieties of time’), Journal of Late Antiquity 1 (2008).
Nelson, Janet L., ‘The Dark Ages’, History Workshop Journal 63 (2007).
*Reuter, T., ‘Medieval: another tyrannous construct’, in Medieval Polities and Modern
Mentalities, ed. J.L. Nelson (Cambridge, 2006).
Runciman, W. G., A theory of cultural and social selection (Cambridge 2009), ch. 5
‘Selectionist theory as narrative history’ [one way of thinking about doing it!]
*Sen, Sudipta, ‘Imperial orders of the past: the semantics of history and time in the medieval
Indo-Persianate culture of north India’, Invoking the past: the uses of history in South
Asia, ed. Daud Ali (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 231-257.
Wickham, C. J., ‘Systactic structures: social theory for historians’, Past & Present 132 (1991)
[for why Runciman (or at least an earlier version of the paper) might not be the right way].
Beginnings and ends
Andah, B.W. 1995. European encumbrances to the development of relevant theory in African
archaeology. In: P.J. Ucko (ed.) Theory in Archaeology. London: Routledge, pp. 96-109.
Athar Ali, M., ‘Encounter and efflorescence: genesis of the medieval civilization’, Social
Scientist 1 (1990), 14-28.
*Bentley, Jerry, ‘Early modern Europe and the early modern world’ in Between the Middle
Ages and Modernity, ed. Charles H. Parker and J. Bentley (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2007).
Cameron, Averil, ‘The “long” Late Antiquity: a late twentieth century model’, in T.P.
Wiseman, ed., Classics in Progress. Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford
2002), pp. 165–191.
Goldstone, Jack, ‘The problem of the “early modern” world’, Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 41:3 (1998), 249-284.
*Holl, A. 2009. Worldviews, mind-sets, and trajectories in West African archaeology. (In)
Schmidt, P. (ed.). Postcolonial Archaeologies in Africa. Santa Fe: School of Advanced
Research Press. pp.129-148.
Le Goff, J., The Medieval Imagination, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. (Chicago &
London: University of Chicago Press, 1988) [for a brief chapter suggesting a new date range
for the European medieval, not far off the one Fasolt proposed].
Picken, Laurence, & Noel Hickson, eds., Music from the Tang court, vol. 7 (Cambridge:
CUP), pp. 17 ff.
Reischauer, Edwin O., Ennin's travels in T'ang China (New York: Ronald Press, 1955), pp.
272-294 (‘The Koreans in China’). [He addresses the topic directly as a chapter in world
history].
Robertshaw, P. (ed.). 1990. A history of African archaeology. London: James Currey.
Chapters 6 (Schmidt), 7 (Andah), and 8 (Holl) in Schmidt, P. and Patterson, T.C. (eds.).
1995. Making alternative histories. Santa Fe: School of Advanced Research Press.
Strickmann, Michel, Mantras et mandarins (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 17-58 (‘Introduction’).
Shifts and transitions
Adolphsen, Mikael S., ‘Social change and contained transformations: warriors and merchants
in Japan 1000-1300’, in Arnason and Wittrock.
Arjomand, Said Amir, ‘Transformation of the Islamicate civilization: a turning point in the
thirteenth century?’, in Arnason and Wittrock [Wide-ranging and comparative].
*Bentley, Jerry H., ‘Hemispheric integration, 500-1500 C.E.’, Journal of World History 9:2
(1998), 237-254.
*Eaton, Richard M. ‘Islamic history as global history’, in Islamic and European expansion:
the forging of a global order, ed. Michael Adas (Philadelphia: 1993), pp. 1-36.
Fasolt, C., ‘Hegel’s ghost: Europe, the Reformation and the Middle Ages’, Viator 39 (2008),
345-86.
*Goody, Jack, Renaissances: the one or the many? (Cambridge: CUP, 2010).
Marshall, Michael, ‘Ruined’, New Scientist, 4 August 2012, 32-36.
Theme issue: Medieval/Renaissance: after periodization, Journal of Medieval and Early
Modern Studies 37:3 (2007), http://jmems.dukejournals.org/content/vol37/issue3/.
Lieberman, Victor, ‘Charter state collapse in Southeast Asia, ca. 1250–1400, as a problem in
regional and world history’, American Historical Review 116:4 (2011), 937-963.
Lieberman, Victor, ‘Transcending east-west dichotomies: state and culture formation in six
ostensibly disparate areas’, Modern Asian Studies 31:3 (1997): 463-546.
Pollock, Sheldon, ‘The transformation of culture-power in Indo-Europe 1000-1300’, in
Arnason and Wittrock..
Watts, John, ed., The End of the Middle Ages? (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1998), introduction and
conclusion.
Zhang Dian, Jim Chiyung, Lin Chusheng, He Yuanqing & Lee Fung, ‘Climate change, social
unrest and dynastic transition in ancient China’, Chinese Science Bulletin 50:2 (2005), 137144.
Gaps and blanks
Bentley, J. H., ‘World history and grand narrative’ in Writing world history 1800-2000, ed.
B. Stuchtey and E. Fuchs (Oxford, 2003), pp. 48-65.
*Manguin, Pierre-Yves, ‘Trading ships of the South China Sea: shipbuilding techniques and
their role in the history of the development of Asian trade networks’, Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient 36:3 (1993), 253-280.
Shaffer, Lynda, ‘Southernization’, Journal of World History 5:1 (1994), 1-21.
*Thapar, Romila, Interpreting early India (Oxford India Paperbacks, 1999).
Wickham, C., ‘Memories of undevelopment: what has marxism done for medieval history,
and what can it still do?’, in Marxist history-writing for the twenty-first century, ed.
C.Wickham (Oxford, 2007), pp. 32-48.
Contemporary periodisations
*Bayley, C. A., ‘“Archaic” and “modern” globalization in the Eurasian and African arena,
c.1750-1850’, in Globalization in World History, ed. A. G. Hopkins (London, 2002), pp. 4773.
Chandra, Satish, Historiography, religion, and state in medieval India (New Delhi: HarAnand Publications, 1996). SY
*Hargett, James M., ‘A chronology of the reigns and reign names of the Song dynasty’,
Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies 19 (1987), 26-34.
Hobson, J. M., The eastern origins of western civilization (Cambridge, 2004) [trying to read
things from a non-western perspective?]
Mukhia, Harbans, Perspectives on medieval history (Vikas publishing 1993)
Medieval History Journal 1 (1998). [A series of regional essays on definitions of the
medieval].
Von Glahn, Richard, ‘Imagining pre-modern China’, in The Song-Yuan-Ming transition in
Chinese history, ed. Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Asia Center, 2003), pp. 35-70.