Admission requirements
This course is part of the (Res)MA History Programme. It is not accessible for BA students.
Description
This research workshop focuses on unraveling non-Western agency in both Western and non-Western primary sources. The emphasis is on the culturally specific heuristics and hermeneutics of these sources, which can include important archival series, (translated) published or unpublished texts in different genres, as well as visual and oral sources. The examples presented at the course are early-modern and modern, ranging from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, encompassing South Asia and Africa. Students will participate “on the job” in a course-related project under the supervision of one tutor/researcher who offers projects on the following topics:
SEMESTER 2:
- VOC Sources on South India (Bes)
- Cartography (Van Groesen)
- British Colonial Sources (Jawad)
In each project students work together in a group on primary sources of a particular genre, theme or region. Under supervision of a tutor, they meet in three sessions that deal with (1) historiography on non-western agency, (2) source heuristics (how to find relevant sources) and (3) source-hermeneutics (how to read/interpret sources). Students write one paper (circa 1000 words) and prepare a group presentation (15 minutes) for a final workshop.
Please note that some time before the start of the workshop students will be invited to indicate their first, second and third choice regarding the projects. We cannot ensure, though, that all wishes can be fulfilled as we also aim at equal distribution to make sure that all groups have a similar size.
Below a concise description of the projects:
** 1. VOC Source on South India (Bes) **
This class investigates the historiographical value of dynastic chronicles and political treatises produced at royal courts in early modern south India. These texts are often seen as mythical, normative, or simply ‘a-historical’. Yet, various ‘historical’ elements may be identified in them, like foundation stories, dynastic continuation, royal legitimation practices, political organisation, and inter-state relations. Questions we will address include: What purposes did these works serve? What should one make of information that seems historically inaccurate? How have historians interpreted these texts so far? To contextualise these sources, this class also considers external sources on south India’s politics: Dutch East India Company (VOC) reports concerning the close Dutch connections with south Indian kingdoms. These sources detail, for example, dynastic successions, the power of courtiers, and court protocol. Important questions here include: How did the Dutch acquire and process information about events at south Indian courts? Are local perspectives represented in VOC documents? To what extent can local information in VOC sources be considered historically accurate? Finally, this class discusses how south Indian texts compare to VOC records and how VOC records may contribute to south India’s historiography.
British Colonial Sources (Jawad)
This project critically examines the Punjab Gazetteers, contextualizing their production within colonial administrative and political motives, particularly their role in resource extraction and governance. It explores how standardized data formats reinforced imperial control. Using Foucault’s knowledge-power framework and Said’s Orientalism, it deconstructs colonial representations of Punjab’s geography, society, and culture, highlighting how gazetteers shaped colonial subjects and spaces. It will also investigate colonial “investigative modalities,” such as surveys and linguistic translation, to reveal biases in knowledge production. Employing strategies like “reading against the grain,” it identifies indigenous agency and resistance while integrating digital humanities tools, such as spatial mapping, to reinterpret historical data of this genre. Comparative analysis with indigenous sources, oral histories, and postcolonial critiques addresses gaps in colonial narratives. Ethical considerations navigate the dual role of gazetteers as both empirical sources and instruments of colonial power. Finally, the project will engage us in collaborative scholarship, contributing to debates on decolonizing archives, subaltern studies, and the relevance of gazetteers in contemporary Punjab, fostering reflexive and critical research approaches.
Cartography (van Groesen)
Maps are more than just sources to chart the world. They are also instruments of power, that both reflected and shaped the inequalities of the colonial era. Guided by the ideas of the late British geographer Brian Harley, we will together attempt to ‘read between the rhumb lines’ on Dutch maps, and uncover non-Western agency in the documents that, more than any other, embody the Dutch worldview that became so canonical in the seventeenth century. In this course, we will study cartographic sources from the vast catalogue of manuscript maps made by the VOC and the West India Company, we will visit the map collection of Leiden University Library, and we will engage with ongoing scholarship in the history of cartography.
Course objectives
General learning objectives
The student has acquired:
- The ability to independently identify and select sources, using traditional and modern techniques;
- The ability to analyse and evaluate a corpus of sources with a view to addressing a particular historical problem;
- The ability to independently formulate a clear and well-argued research question, taking into account the theory and method of the field and to reduce this question to accessible and manageable sub-questions;
- The ability to independently set up and carry out an original research project that can make a contribution to existing scholarly debates;
- The ability to give a clear and well-founded oral and written report on research results in correct English, when required, or Dutch, meeting the criteria of the discipline;
- The ability to participate in current debates in the specialisation;
- The ability to provide constructive feedback to and formulate criticism of the work of others and the ability to evaluate the value of such criticism and feedback on one’s own work and incorporate it;
- (ResMA only:) The ability to participate in a discussion of the theoretical foundations of the discipline.
Learning objectives, pertaining to the specialisation
The student has acquired:
Thorough knowledge and comprehension of one of the specialisations as well as of the historiography of the specialisation, focusing particularly on the following; in the specialisation Colonial and Global History: how global (political, socio-economic, and cultural) connections interact with regional processes of identity and state formation; hence insight in cross-cultural processes (including the infrastructure of shipping and other modes of communication) that affect regions across the world such as imperialism, colonisation, islamisation, modernisation and globalization (in particular during the period 1200-1940); including the history and politics of cultural knowledge production and heritage formation (including archives) in colonial and postcolonial situations, at local, transnational and global levels.
Thorough knowledge and comprehension of the theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects of the specialisation or subtrack in question, with a particular focus on the following: in the specialisation Colonial and Global History: empirical and archival research from a comparative-and-connective global and postcolonial-theory perspective.
Learning objectives, pertaining to this Research Workshop
The student:
- gains insight in theoretical and practical strategies to disentangle non-Western agency in Western and non-Western primary sources.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
The course consists of 5 group tutorials and one workshop.
Assessment method
Assessment
Written paper (ca. 1,000 words, based on research in primary sources)
measured learning objectives: 1-7, 9-11Oral presentation: group presentation of 15 minutes
Weighing
Written paper: 40%
Oral presentation: 40%
Participation: 20%
The final grade for the course is established by determining the weighted average with the additional requirement that all three components must always be sufficient.
Deadlines
Assignments and written papers should be handed in within the deadline as provided in the relevant course outline on Brightspace.
Resit
Should the overall mark be unsatisfactory, the paper is to be revised after consultation with the instructor.
Inspection and feedback
How and when a review of the written paper will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the results, a review of the written paper will have to be organised.
Reading list
Ricardo Roque and Kim A. Wagner, “Introduction: Engaging Colonial Knowledge”, in Ricardo Roque and Kim A. Wagner (eds), Engaging Colonial Knowledge; Reading European Archives in World History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012): 1-31.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs
Not applicable
Contact
Coordinator: Jos Gommans at j.j.l.gommans@hum.leidenuniv.nl
For course related questions, contact the coordinator listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Huizinga.
Remarks
None