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Shared infrastructures, informational asymmetries: Persians and Indians in Japan, c.1890–1930*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2013

Nile Green
Nile Green*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Bunche Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Drawing on primary materials in Persian, Urdu, and English, this article compares Persian and Indian travel accounts to assess the similarities and differences of contemporaneous encounters with Japan. By linking Persian and Urdu writings from either side of 1900 to the differential impact of industrial communications (vernacular printing, steam travel) on Persia and India, the article reconstructs the global connections and inter-Asian networks that suddenly rendered Japan an important touchstone for intellectuals in the Middle East no less than South Asia. By presenting a triangulated and comparative model of inter-Asian exchange, the article contributes to building robust material foundations for positioning Asia, and its Muslims in particular, within global intellectual history, and concludes by contrasting the sources of information generation that preceded ideological formation.

Keywords

Indiaintellectual historyIranJapantransnationaltravel writing
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 2013 , pp. 414 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

For comments and suggestions, I am most grateful to William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Selçuk Esenbel, Suzuki Hideaki, Richard Jaffe, Naoto Kagotani, Afshin Marashi, Jonathan Miran, Herman Ooms, and Renée Worringer.

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