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A richly illustrated history of textiles in the Mughal Empire In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a vast array of textiles circulated throughout the Mughal Empire. Made from rare fibers and crafted using virtuosic techniques, these exquisite objects animated early modern experience, from the intimate, sensory pleasure of garments to the monumentality of imperial tents. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India tells the story of textiles crafted and collected across South Asia and beyond, illuminating how cloth participated in political negotiations, social conversations, and the shared seasonal rhythms of the year. Drawing on small-scale paintings, popular poetry, chronicle histories, and ro...
With contributions from leading experts, this edited collection presents original research on the skills brought by immigrant communities to the textile and fashion industries, from the early modern to postmodern periods in Asia and the Islamic World, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Manufacturing of textiles and apparel is arduous work, which historically depended on skilled artisans, inexpensive labor, and the introduction of labor-saving technology. Immigrant communities supplied much of the work force, bringing their own skill sets to new locations, leading to the development of new manufacturing centers and an increase in both production and technical expertise. Throughout the volume, ...
This book offers a comprehensive moral theory of privatization in war. It examines the kind of wars that private actors might wage separate from the state and the kind of wars that private actors might wage as functionaries of the state. The first type of war serves to probe the ad bellum question of whether private actors can justifiably authorize war, while the second type of war serves to probe the in bello question of whether private actors can justifiably participate in war. The cases that drive the analysis are drawn from the rich and complicated history of private military action, stretching back centuries to the Italian city-states whose mercenaries were reviled by Machiavelli. The b...
The impulse in much nineteenth-century American painting and culture was to describe nature as a wilderness on which the young nation might freely inscribe its future: the United States as a virgin land, that is, unploughed, unfenced, and unpainted. Insofar as it exhibited evidence of a past, its traces pointed to a geologic or cosmic past, not a human one. The work of the New England artist Fitz H. Lane, however, was decidedly different. In this important study, Margaretta Markle Lovell singles out the more modestly scaled, explicitly inhabited landscapes of Fitz H. Lane and investigates the patrons who supported his career, with an eye to understanding how New Englanders thought about thei...
In Black Bodies, White Gold Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity central to the slave trade and colonialism, as a focus for new interpretations of the way art, commerce, and colonialism were intertwined in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. In doing so, Arabindan-Kesson models an art historical approach that makes the histories of the Black diaspora central to nineteenth-century cultural production. She traces the emergence of a speculative vision that informs perceptions of Blackness in which artistic renderings of cotton—as both commodity and material—became inexorably tied to the monetary value of Black bodies. From the production and representation of “negro cloth”�...
A bold reorientation of art history that bridges the divide between fine art and material culture through an examination of objects and their uses Art history is often viewed through cultural or national lenses that define some works as fine art while relegating others to the category of craft. Global Objects points the way to an interconnected history of art, examining a broad array of functional aesthetic objects that transcend geographic and temporal boundaries and challenging preconceived ideas about what is and is not art. Avoiding traditional binaries such as East versus West and fine art versus decorative art, Edward Cooke looks at the production, consumption, and circulation of objec...
Durable authoritarian rule often rests on the co-optation of challengers. The conventional story is straightforward: rulers entice opposition groups to “sell out,” offering them benefits if they set aside their antiauthoritarian aspirations and become part of the system. However, co-optation does not always neutralize former adversaries, and even seemingly domesticated opponents can turn on their rulers. Co-optation does weaken opposition—but it is not as simple, reliable, or transactional as existing theories claim. Shouting in a Cage offers new ways to understand co-optation’s power and its limits by examining two co-opted parties, the Wafd Party in Egypt and the Istiqlal Party in ...
Three women led a fashion revolution and turned themselves into international style celebrities. Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had nothing left to lose. After surviving incarceration and forced incestuous marriage during the worst violence of the French Revolution of 1789, they dared sartorial revolt. Together, Joséphine and Térézia shed the underwear cages and massive, rigid garments that women had been obliged to wear for centuries. They slipped into light, mobile dresses, cropped their hair short, wrapped themselves in shawls, and championed the handbag. Juliette made...
In 1587, Abū al-Faz̤l ibn Mubārak – a favourite at the Mughal court and author of the Akbarnāmah – completed his Preface to the Persian translation of the Mahābhārata. This book is the first detailed study of Abū al-Faz̤l's Preface. It offers insights into manuscript practices at the Mughal court, the role a Persian version of the Mahābhārata was meant to play, and the religious interactions that characterised 16th-century India.