Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T00:58:07.021Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2007

Sumathi Ramaswamy
Sumathi Ramaswamy
Affiliation:
History, University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The increasing preoccupation of the scholarly community in recent years with globalization appears to have left its impact on postmodern geographers and historians of cartography as well, several of whom have turned their attention recently to the history and politics of the image that is at the center of this new problematic, namely, the terrestrial globe. As Denis Cosgrove notes in his provocative analysis of cartographic representations of Earth in the Western imagination, “Whether pictured as a networked sphere of accelerating circulation or as an abused and overexploited body, it is from images of the spherical earth that ideas of globalization draw their expressive and political force” (2001: ix). Its very ubiquity as a symbol of the times in which we live underscores the preoccupation with the image of the globe in the late modern imagination. However, as Jerry Brotton observes, its pervasiveness may also point to an increasing redundancy of its appearance in our times, and the image of the globe has suffered what might be called “a waning of affect” (1999: 73). This argument leads him to a study of the early modern period in Europe when the terrestrial globe first emerged in his assessment as “a socially affective object” (ibid.: 72). In his Trading Territories (1997), Brotton considers how the terrestrial globe came to not just reflect an increasingly “global” world but also to constitute it over the course of the sixteenth century. Its power lay “in the ideological representation of the world it purported to describe. Its lack of cognitive specificity was not its weakness but ultimately its greatest strength, because the very perceptions of distance and space upon which the terrestrial globe rested stressed speculation and conjecture over the extent and possession of distant territories” (1999: 87–88). From the early years of the sixteenth century, even as the Copernican revolution was slowly undoing medieval Christian cosmological conceptions of the universe, terrestrial globes became increasingly crucial to the exercise of state power in Europe, as well as to the surging search for new markets and tradable goods. As importantly, as prestige objects, globes and maps became part of a new gift economy of circulation and exchange, and were sought after like “the spices, pepper, silk and precious metals to which [they] appeared to give directional access” (Brotton 1997: 25; see also Jardine 1996: 295–309, 425–36). In the process, they helped fashion new bourgeois modalities of the self, mostly but not exclusively male. Not surprisingly, as Brotton notes, “It is upon the figure of the globe, as both a visual image and a material object, that many of the social and cultural hopes and anxieties of the period came to be focused” (1997: 21).

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 751 - 782
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akimushkin, Oleg F., ed. 1996. The St. Peterburg Muraqqa’: Album of Indian and Persian Miniatures from the 16th through the 18th Century and Specimens of Persian Calligraphy by ‘Imad al-Hasani. Milan: Leonardo Arte Srl.Google Scholar
Arnold, Thomas W. and Wilkinson, J.V.S.. 1936. The Library of Chester A. Beatty: A Catalogue of Indian Miniatures, 3 vols. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. 1998. The Indian Conquest of Catholic Art: The Mughals, the Jesuits and Imperial Mural Painting. Art Journal 57, 1: 24–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. 1999. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Beach, Milo Cleveland. 1981. The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court. Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Beach, Milo Cleveland and Koch, Ebba, eds. 1997. King of the World: The Padshahnama. An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. London: Thames and Hudson Limited.Google Scholar
Binney, Edwin, ed. 1973. Indian Miniature Painting from the Collection of Edward Binney, 3rd: The First in a Series of Catalogues: I: The Mughal and Deccani Schools with some Related Sultanate Material. Portland: Portland Art Museum.Google Scholar
Brotton, Jerry. 1997. Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Brotton, Jerry. 1999. Terrestrial Globalism: Mapping the Globe in Early Modern Europe. In, Cosgrove, D., ed., Mappings. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Ratnabali. N.d. European Oil Painting and the Mughal Experience. In, Ray, A.Ray, S. C., and Sanyal, H., eds., Indian Studies: Essays Presented to the Memory of Professor Nihar Ranjan Ray. Delhi: Caxton Publications.Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, K. N. 1990. Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cosgrove, Denis. 2001. Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in Western Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Crane, Nicholas. 2002. Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the World. New York: H. Holt.Google Scholar
Das, Ashok K. 1978. Mughal Painting during Jahangir's Time. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society.Google Scholar
Desai, Visakha N. 1994. Reflections of the Past in the Present: Copying Processes in Indian Painting. In, Asher, C.Metcalf, T. R., eds., Perceptions of South Asia's Visual Past. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Digby, Simon. 1990. The Sufi Shaykh and the Sultan: A Conflict of Claims to Authority in Medieval India. Iran 28: 71–81.Google Scholar
Eaton, Natasha. 2004. Between Mimesis and Alterity: Art, Gift, and Diplomacy in India, 1770–1800. Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 4: 816–44.Google Scholar
Ettinghausen, Richard. 1961. The Emperor's Choice. In, Meiss, M., ed., De Artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Findly, Ellison Banks. 1992. The Visionary Paintings of Jahangir's Later Years. In Contacts between Cultures: West Asia and North Africa. Lewiston: E. Mellen Press.Google Scholar
Foster, William, ed. 1990. The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India 1615–1619 as Narrated in His Journal and Correspondence. New and rev. ed. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. (Original 1926.)Google Scholar
Gascoigne, Bamber. 1971. The Great Moghuls. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Gole, Susan. 1976. Early Maps of India. New Delhi: Sanskriti in association with Arnold Heinemann.Google Scholar
Gole, Susan. 1989. Indian Maps and Plans: From Earliest Times to the Advent of European Surveys. New Delhi: Manohar Publications.Google Scholar
Habib, Irfan. 1979. Cartography in Mughal India. Indian Archive 28: 88–105.Google Scholar
Hostetler, Laura. 2001. Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Imran Qureshi, et al. , eds. 2005. Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration. Ridgefield, Conn.: Aldrich Contemporary Museum.Google Scholar
Jardine, Lisa. 1996. Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Karamustafa, Ahmet T. 1992. Military, Administrative, and Scholarly Maps and Plans. In, Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D., eds., Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Koch, Ebba. 2001. Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Leach, Linda York. 1995. Mughal and other Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library. 2 vols. London: Scorpio Cavendish.Google Scholar
Lippincott, Kristen. 1999. Globes in Art: Problems of Interpretation and Representation. In, Dekker, E., ed., Globes at Greenwich: A Catalogue of the Globes and Armillary Spheres in The National Maritime Museum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Losty, Jeremiah P. 1991. Abu'l Hasan. In, Bombay, P. Pal, ed., Master Artists of the Imperial Mughal Court. Bombay: Marg Publications.Google Scholar
Lowry, Glenn D. 1983. The Emperor Jahangir and the Iconography of the Divine in Mughal Painting. Rutger's Art Review 4: 36–45.Google Scholar
Mignolo, Walter D. 1995. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Minnisale, Gregory. 2000. The Synthesis of European and Mughal Art in the Emperor Akbar's Khamsa of Nizam. Asianart.com.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Colin Paul. 2000. Sir Thomas Roe and the Mughal Empire. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mukhia, Harbans. 2004. The Mughals of India. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Needham, Joseph. 1971. Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Pt. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Okada, Amina. 1992. Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court. Dusinberre, D., trans. New York: Harry N. Abrams.Google Scholar
Pingree, David. 1990. The Puranas and Jyotihsastra: Astronomy. Journal of the American Oriental Society 110, 2: 274–80.Google Scholar
Qaisar, A. J. 1982. The Indian Response to European Technology and Culture (A.D. 1498–1707). Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Raj, Kapil. 2006. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Scientific Knowledge in South Asia, 17th–19th Centuries. New Delhi: Permanent Black.Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2003. Visualizing India's Geo-body: Globes, Maps, Bodyscapes. In, Ramaswamy, S., ed., Beyond Appearances? Visual Practices and Ideologies in Modern India. New Delhi: Sage.Google Scholar
Richards, John F. 1998. The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir. In, Alam, M. and Subrahmanyam, S., eds., The Mughal State, 1526–1750. Delhi: Oxford University Press (repr.).Google Scholar
Sarma, Sreeramula R. 1994. From al-Kura to Bhagola: On the Dissemination of the Celestial Globe. Studies in the History of Medicine and Science 13, 1: 69–85.Google Scholar
Savage-Smith, Emilie. 1992. Celestial Mapping. In, Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D., eds., Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schmitz, Barbara and Desai, Z. A., eds., 2006. Mughal and Persian Paintings and Illustrated Manuscripts from Rampur Raza Library. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.Google Scholar
Schwartzberg, Joseph E. 1992. South Asian Cartography. In, Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D., eds., Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Sudipta. 2002. Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins of British India. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Skelton, Robert. 1988. Imperial Symbolism in Mughal Painting. In, Soucek, P. P., ed., Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World: Papers from a Colloquium in Memory of Richard Ettinghausen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2–4 April 1980. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Sotheby's, 1995. A Life-Size Mughal Portrait of the Emperor Jahangir Holding a Globe. In Oriental Manuscripts & Miniatures, Sale LN5617. London: Sotheby's.Google Scholar
Srivatsava, Ashok Kumar. 2000. Mughal Painting: An Interplay of Indigenous and Foreign Traditions. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.Google Scholar
Stanley Clarke, C. 1922. Indian Drawings: Thirty Mogul Paintings of the School of Jahangir and Four Panels of Calligraphy in the Wantage Bequest. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Stevenson, Edward L. 1921 Terrestrial and Celestial Globes: Their History and Construction Including a Consideration of Their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and Astronomy. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Strong, Roy. 1987. Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2002. Frank Submissions: The Company and the Mughals between Sir Thomas Roe and Sir William Norris. In, , H.V.B. et al. , eds., The Worlds of the East India Company. London: The Boydell Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Andrew. 2004. The World of Gerard Mercator: The Man who Revolutionised Geography. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Topsfield, Andrew. 1994. Indian Paintings from Oxford Collections. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum/Bodleian Library.Google Scholar
Unno, Kazutako. 1994. Cartography in Japan. In, Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D., eds., Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
van den Broecke, Marcel, et al. , eds. 1998. Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas: Essays Commemorating the Quadricentennial of his Death, 1598–1998. Utrecht: HES Publishers.Google Scholar
Van Donzel, et al. , eds., 1978. The Encyclopedia of Islam (New Edition), Vol. IV. Leiden: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Verma, Som Prakash. 2005. Painting the Mughal Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Welch, Stuart Cary et al. 1988. The Emperor's Album: Images of Mughal India. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.Google Scholar
Welu, James A. 1975. Vermeer: His Cartographic Sources. The Art Bulletin LVII: 529–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Denis and John Fels, . 1992. The Power of Maps. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar