Alexander the Great

For five researchers embarking on the project ‘Civilizations in Contact’, finding the links between each of their specialist fields will provide unique insight into pre-modern world history.

Under the aegis of the Civilizations in Contact project, not only will five scholars each be authoring excellent stand-alone research but also, by tracing the points of contact between them, they will have the opportunity to create something even greater

Professor Geoffrey Khan

Five scholars have received £1.2 million funding to undertake research that collectively spans five millennia of civilisation. For thousands of years, the movement of ideas, people, trade and religion has linked empires and connected civilisations. Evidence of these communication routes, the major sites where commercial and cultural exchanges took place and the historical background against which these contacts occurred offers a view of world history that transcends geographical boundaries.

‘Under the aegis of the Civilizations in Contact project, not only will five scholars each be authoring excellent stand-alone research but also, by tracing the points of contact between them, they will have the opportunity to create something even greater,’ explained Professor Geoffrey Khan, the project’s Principal Investigator, from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

The researchers, Sally Church, Robert Harding, Paul Lunde, Jane McIntosh and Caroline Stone, will each study a period of Afro-Eurasian history. Their research will include trade across the Iranian plateau and through the Gulf; the movement of pilgrims and merchants across the Indian Ocean; the routes taken by diplomatic missions to and from pre-modern China; and the development and administration of emporia in Southeast Asia and Japan. ‘Just one example of civilisations in contact is the pilgrimage of hundreds of Chinese monks across the Silk Road into India in the first millennium AD and the important effect this had on the development of Buddhism when they returned to China,’ explained Dr Harding.

The project, with offices at Wolfson College, has been funded by the Golden Web Foundation, a charitable foundation with international funding based in Cambridge. Paul Keeler, Director of the Foundation, commented: ‘We are delighted to support this project, the fruits of which will be available through our innovative Golden Web system when it launches in 2011.’

‘Our aim is to research exchanges across cultural and political boundaries, and to study the evolution of societies and economies in the light of these exchanges,’ said Dr Church. ‘The history of civilisations in contact reminds us time and again that globalisation is not a new phenomenon, but has a long and significant history, which when investigated can provide fresh perspectives on the world today.’

For more information, please contact Dr Sally Church (skc1000@cam.ac.uk).


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