Europeans in the World: Sources on Cultural Contact, Volume 1 (From Antiquity to 1700)
This reader focuses on the relations between European civilization and the rest of the world. It chronologically organizes material from antiquity to the present. It presents excerpts from primary source texts, written documents, and visual images, and pays particular attention to providing materials that reflect a diverse set of experiences. Themes such as politics, gender, religion, and ethnicity in non-European parts of the world enable students to place European history in its larger global context.
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Topics of the primary source materials in this collection range from the legend of the Assyrian monarch Sargon II (721-705 B.C.E.), which points to the spread of Mesopotamian culture into the regions of Egypt and Palestine because of its similarities with the story of the birth of Moses, to the slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), which protested the brutality of England's participation in the slave trade. The material is at first organized chronologically, with seven sections devoted to the Ancient Near East, the Classical World, Early Medieval Europe, the first documented encounters with the East, Eastern influence on Europe, and the eve of exploration. The final seven sections, all devoted to the period 1500-1700, are organized thematically, detailing early modern contact, the first encounters with the New World, early colonization, evangelization, the influence of exploration on Europe, fictional treatments of the world during colonization, women and colonization, and the plantation complex and the slave trade. The types of documents range from historical narratives to legal documents. Lehning and Armstrong are both of the U. of Utah. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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