Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, in his Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1974), considers himself to be following historian Fernand Braudel’s earlier theories on the rise of capitalism. Both authors speak of the emergence of capitalist trade and the European world-economy (or world-system), and both focus on the … Continue reading Braudel, Wallerstein, and European Medieval Expansion

I arrived at the topic of the London Steelyard via a rather circuitous route. My primary academic interest lies in the political geography of Holy Roman Empire – specifically northern Germany – and the Baltic Sea, from the outset of the Wendish Crusade (1147) to the beginning of the 30 Years War (1648). To the … Continue reading The Hanse Steelyard in London, MA Thesis Literature Review

Ordensburg Marienburg (now referred to in English as Malbork Castle, from its full Polish name, Zamek w Malborku), was a major castle of the Teutonic Order (or Teutonic Knights) from the 13th through 15th centuries. As the original Wikipedia article notes, the Order made Marienburg their ad-hoc capital in 1308. The establishment of the Order’s … Continue reading Marienburg: a local history wikipedia entry

In this paper, I will look at the map “Germany at the death of Emperor Charles IV, 1378,” which was created for Volume 7 of Hans Ferdinand Helmolt’s The History of the World; A Survey of a Man's Record, published in 1902. Helmolt (d. 1929) was a German historian and political thinker around the turn … Continue reading Analysis of H.F. Helmolt’s 1902 Map, “Germany at the death of Emperor Charles IV, 1378”

A GIS exploration of the political geography of the Holy Roman Empire In this paper, I begin by broadly defining political-geographic patterns across the thousand-year history of the Holy Roman Empire (c. AD 800-1806). Because my interests in the Holy Roman Empire (hereafter, HRE or Empire) are quite broad both geographically and chronologically, I intended … Continue reading Town Settlement Patterns in Medieval Germany

This paper will address four books pertaining to my interest in the history of the Holy Roman Empire (c. AD 800-1806). I begin with an introduction to the Holy Roman Empire (hereafter, HRE or Empire) as a geopolitical construct, as well as the evolution of historiography of the Empire over the two centuries since its … Continue reading Holy Roman Empire Historiography Essay

Given the incredibly limited sources, specifically bronze inscriptions, the difficulties of establishing a picture of ancient Chinese society are more than numerous. Sinologist Li Feng takes on the challenge of reconstructing bureaucratic offices in his article “‘Offices’ in Bronze Inscriptions and Western Zhou Government Administration.” Through an understanding of artifacts from those offices, he paints … Continue reading Zhou Bureaucracy in the Writings of Li and Falkenhausen

Presented to the University of Chicago Department of History In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the BA Degree, April 7, 2017 The University of Chicago Abstract: This paper examines British and Japanese foreign policy during the 1800s to explore the relationship between rhetoric and reality during times of so-called “isolation,” in order to help … Continue reading Solitary Refinement: Understanding Isolationism in 19th Century Britain and Japan

In an untitled poem, Iranian Shu’ubi intellectual Bashbar B. Burd laments the anti-materialism and anti-traditionalism that Islam brought to the remains of the Persian Empire. As a descendant of the great kings of classical civilization, Burd (or the poem’s speaker) demands the life of luxury of which Islam’s unconventional tenets deprive him. The speaker says, … Continue reading Anti-Materialism in Early Islamic Thought

Greek nation builders had the monumental task of creating and concretizing a Greek nation and a Greek identity before, during, and after the War of Independence against Ottoman rule in the 1820s. These nation builders had to wrestle with three broad groups of conceptions of Greekness when forming this identity: conceptions held by historical occupants … Continue reading The New Colossus: The Challenge of Creating a Nation in Nineteenth-Century Greece