Eminent historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam presented an innovative approach to Portugal's exploration of Asia during an afternoon speech at the Fletcher School yesterday.
The speech, entitled "When the World Discovered Portugal: Ten Years of Luso-Asian Interaction, 1498-1508," was part of Tufts' Pearson Prentice Hall Seminar Series in Global History.
Subrahmanyam, Chair of Indian History at the University of California in Los Angeles, delivered his hour-long speech to an intimate crowd of about 20 professors and graduate students seated in armchairs around a wooden table in Goddard Hall's Edward R. Murrow Room.
Subrahmanyam's speech sought to examine Portugal's early maritime exploration of Asia through eyes other than those of the Portuguese explorers who provided most of the primary documentation on this subject.
During the era on which Subrahmanyam focused, many European countries were seeking Asian spices, but no common avenue of travel into Asia had yet been discovered.
"It all comes down to the [trade of] pepper, because the Spice Route was not discovered until after the period of time we are dealing with," Subrahmanyam said.
Subrahmanyam spoke of international rivalries within Europe and within Asia during that period, in addition to those between European and Asian civilizations.
Of the Portuguese, Subrahmanyam said, "their main rivals were the Venetians." At the same time, however, Portugal was engaged in a war with the Mamluks of Egypt.
"There's an enormous amount of instability; the situation is incredibly disturbed," he said.
Tufts Professor of History Felipe Fernandez-Armesto organized the seminar series of which this speech was a part. The series is "part of the new dynamism of exciting initiatives that Tufts is launching in exploiting the genius of its history department which is globalism," Fernandez-Armesto said. "We're launching a global history Ph.D. program which is going to be the most attractive and promising in the country and therefore the world."
Subrahmanyam is "one of the most complex, diverse historians," according to audience member Mana Kia, a Harvard graduate student; still, the atmosphere was familiar and relaxed despite the speech's sophisticated nature, as audience members freely interjected with contributions or questions.
"Getting here from Harvard is a trek, but it's worth it," Kia said. "[Tufts'] global history lecture [series is] superior in many ways to what is available even at Harvard and MIT."
After Subrahmanyam finished his speech, he answered questions from audience members for over an hour. The friendly atmosphere, promoted by the high ratio of professors to students, led to a stimulating back-and-forth during the question section.
Boston College professor David Northrup introduced Subrahmanyam by saying, "I am afraid his reputation precedes him."
Subrahmanyam is the author of numerous history books, Joint Managing Editor of the Indian Economic and Social History Review, and former Chair in Indian History and Culture at the University of Oxford in England.
