Islamic and European Expansion: The Forging of a Global Order

Critical Perspectives on the Past

by Michael B. Adas

This volume of essays makes available the essential background information and methods for effective teaching and writing on cross-cultural history. The contributors—some of the most distinguished writers of global and comparative history—chart the advances in understanding in their fields of concentration, revealing both specific findings and broad patterns that have emerged. The cover image, "The Arrival of the Dutch at Patane," from Theodore de Bry, India Orientals, Part VIII ( W. Richteri, 1607) depicts the two key phases of global history that are covered by the essays. Muslim inhabitants of the town of Patane on the Malayan peninsula warily confront a Dutch landing party whose bearing suggests that it is engaged in yet another episode in the saga of European overseas exploration and discovery. The presence of the Muslims in Malaya reflects an earlier process of expansion that saw Islamic civilization spread from Spain and Morocco in the west to the Philippines in the east in the millennium between the 7th and 17th centuries. The Dutch came by sea to an area on the coastal and island fringes of Asia, the one zone where their warships gave them a decisive edge in this era. The citizens of Patane had good reason to distrust the European intruders, since the Portuguese who had preceded the Dutch had used force whenever possible to control the formerly peaceful trade in the region and often to persecute Muslim Peoples.

Genres: Islam, History

336 pages, Hardcover

First published July 20, 1993

About the author

Michael Adas is an American historian and currently the Abraham E. Voorhees Professor of History at Rutgers University. He specializes in the history of technology, the history of anticolonialism and in global history.

Reviews

[Ibn Shamal · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book is a decent quick read its focus on European expansion and how historians have portrayed this expansion is a bit out dated. The chapters have commonality in that they ask historians to include a more diverse and global perspective when writing history. This is to be expected of today's scholars and the message has been received. While it is good at giving an overview of a wide range of topics, gender, disease, gunpowder, and Columbus, it is to parceled and lacking continuity.