The Atlantic Empires in the Eighteenth Century

Spanish America; John J. Tepaske     

The Rise of the Safavids According to their Old Veterans: Amini Haravi's Futuhat-e Shahi

This article studies an early Safavid chronicle, Futuhat-e Shahi by Amini Haravi. In 1521, the founder of the Safavid state, Shah Isma‘il, provided Haravi with a number of veterans from the early days of the Safavid uprising as informants. Their narrative presents an alternative view on the early career of the shah that differs from the dominant version current in modern scholarship. From the perspective of the Futuhat, the rise of the Safavids did not occur as a wild apocalyptic explosion, but was a carefully planned and cautious campaign run by experienced commanders who kept a tight rein on the teenage Shah Isma‘il.     

The Ottomans and the West: Some Thoughts on Mutual Perceptions and Good Government

Sir Jack Goody has been exploring the changing dynamics of East/West relations in numerous brilliant works. The key question concerns the dominance of the West since the eighteenth century. Are there features unique to the West which lead to its superiority both in arms and in culture? Or, were the last 200 years a mere passing moment in the “longue durée”? The history of the Ottomans from the thirteenth to the twentieth century provides a good background for Goody’s critical arguments. They turn out to be an unexpectedly tough adversary in the First World War, and yet the Empire fails. Does the Ottoman experience and the Turkish transformation provide new insights for the role of Islam in politics? Are there lessons to be learnt in the conduct of military operations against radical Islamic groups concerning the need for good, responsible and, above all, just governance?     

New World States and Empires: Politics, Religion, and Urbanism

The past decade has seen a veritable explosion in archaeological research on complex societies in Latin America. In 1993, Smith published an overview of research to that date; this article is one of two bringing that summary up to the present. Our first article, New World states and empires: Economic and social organization (Smith and Schreiber, 2005), dealt with issues regarding economic and social organization. The present article tackles political organization and dynamics, religion, urbanism, and settlement patterns. We also review recent research in the context of various theoretical perspectives, some traditional, some more contemporary, including approaches to history and process, cultural evolution, agency-based models, linguistic prehistory, migration theory, and the relationship between environmental change and cultural events. Our discussion blends empirical findings, methodological advances, and theoretical perspectives.