Global Perspectives on Medieval and Early Modern Historiography

This series engages with recent debates in the field of comparative historical studies. It provides a forum for original scholarship on the cross-cultural study of medieval and early modern historiography broadly construed, including the emerging fields of world and global history. It invites monographs and collected volumes that employ a mix of approaches to the evolution of various genres of historical writing, and open up new perspectives on medieval and early modern discourse on the methods associated with the study of the past. Topics include (but are not limited to): history as a distinct subject of inquiry; the civic and societal value and function of historiography; the philosophical theories, notions, and concepts underpinning the investigation and analysis of historical events; and historical perspectives on comparative religions. The central purpose of the series is to promote research into diverse modes of historical writing in various cultural, religious, geographical, and linguistic settings. As such, it puts into dialogue different historiographical traditions, such as those that have developed in Europe, Byzantium, the Islamic world, the Americas, India, Africa, East Asia, and Oceania.

The series logo of an upside-down Dutch ship draws its inspiration from a similar image found in a seventeenth-century Japanese map of Nagasaki that is now kept in the British Library Asian Collection (Or.75.g.25). Drawn from a particular spatial perspective and in line with local cartographical and pictorial traditions, it represents a historical source that defies a singular reading and works as a constant reminder of the complexity and connectivity of early modern historiographical practices. An upside-down ship inspired by this map was selected as the series logo because it symbolizes the mandate of the series to defamiliarize modes of historical writing and to diversify this field of study.