Takeda narrates early French-Persian trade relations
In
her new book "Iran
and a French Empire of Trade, 1700-1808: The Other Persian Letters"
(Oxford University Press), Syracuse history professor Junko Takeda explores the
political, commercial, and cultural links between eighteenth century France and
Persia. Her global microhistory reveals how trans-imperial trade impacted the
lives of various entrepreneurs and mercenaries living on the edge of empire,
while demonstrating how French engagement with the Asian continent shaped
Enlightenment political thought and policy making across the Age of Revolutions.
Takeda
begins by arguing how European arms and commodity trading exacerbated tensions
among Turkey, India, Russia, and Persia, and worsened the effects of climate
change and resource insecurities in these regions. She explores this dynamic by
focusing on a colorful cast of characters who existed on the margins of the
French state, and developed projects for Franco-Persian trade that ran contrary
to the monarchy’s traditional partnership with the Ottoman Empire. Their
activities, she claims, played an important role in transforming French ideas
about Asia, empire and revolutions. While historians of France who have studied
eighteenth-century political ruptures have traditionally ignored Asian politics,
Takeda’s work offers a more global perspective that helps us reconsider the Age
of Revolutions.
Historian
Junko Takeda is an associate professor and Daicoff Faculty Scholar at Syracuse
University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Her research
interests include early modern French statecraft, global trade and the history
of disease and medicine. At Maxwell, she teaches a variety of lower and upper
division courses, including graduate coursework in early modern Europe, the
French Revolution and globalization. She is currently working on two
monographs, a global microhistory of Avedik, an Armenian patriarch imprisoned
in France under the reign of Louis XIV, and another project on the
Franco-Japanese silk trade. In 2014, Takeda was named a Ronald O’Hanley Faculty
Scholar, a title she held for three years.
For more information about her forthcoming book, please
visit the publisher’s
website.
12/29/20