Medieval Zomias: Stateless Spaces in the Global Middle Ages: Oxford, February 2019
First, considering my personal history, I would like to begin by talking about the reason why I am concerned with medieval global history.
At present my main research interest lies in the state formation processes of the Danish Jelling dynasty in the 10th and 11th centuries, especially in terms of international and maritime perspectives. On the one hand, this topic concerns the most crucial time for Danish national history because, as the Jelling stone tells us, the Christianized Danish kingdom was in the process of becoming a territorial state which conquered England and Norway. On the other hand, this is part of the so-called "Vikings phenomenon", which may itself be one of the most globally-oriented research areas among a lot of branches of (European) medieval studies. To widen my perspective and share it within Japanese academia, I invited Catherine Holmes to my university to give us several lectures on her global middle ages in 2016.
But originally I was keenly interested in Japanese medieval maritime history in that I was brought up on a tiny island named Yuge, Ehime prefecture, lying in the Setonaikai inland sea, where famous salt-production manors were managed by the Toji-temple in Kyoto, one of the largest temples in medieval Japan. Living with my family until age 15, I moved alone to a high school in Shikoku, and then was allowed to enter the University of Tokyo in 1992. Here I changed my research field from medieval Japan to medieval Europe during my undergraduate degree, strongly influenced by my mentors Hiroshi Takayama, Koichi Kabayama, Takeshi Kido, Takashi Jinno, Shunichi Ikegami and Yoichi Nishikawa. Surprisingly all are European medievalists. This period might have been the heyday of European medieval history at the University of Tokyo. As a graduate, with my own perspective of connectivity and comparison more or less in my mind, I studied European medieval history and languages at the Universities of Tokyo, Copenhagen and Iceland, and after that moved to Nagoya to research and teach and then to Tokyo (but with my family in Kobe on weekends), before my present visit to the UK. This is my personal history with a little bit of global experience both scholarly and personal.
The above story may belong to me. However, we Japanese have a common academic property based on education and reading, too. As a result of such an experience, we Japanese medievalists might have in common unique historiographies for approaching medieval global history, which might seem to be a little bit different to those of the Europeans in some ways.
First, we have practiced a globally comparative history for a long time. All of us have had to study both Japanese history and world history at high school. The aim of this secondary education is to permit the Japanese to understand the development of each region or civilisation in world history comparatively. We can then choose lectures on Japanese history, Occidental history (European and American history) and Oriental history (Asian and African) at almost all universities, and as researchers in any given historical area, we are required to work within a comparative framework , depending on Marc Bloch's famous article ‘A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies’. We Japanese need comparative perspectives even when we specialise in Japanese history, that is national history written for us the Japanese. Among our influences, the late Yoshiki Morimoto (1934-2012) of Kyushu University, who is known among European early medievalists as a historian of the Carolingian polyptique, encouraged us to share and develop a way of thinking about how we use comparison when we face a society different from our own.
Second, to understand medieval Japan, we always have to put the Japanese archipelago in global historical and geographical perspective. The society of the archipelago developed in active and regular interrelation with China, Korea, the Ryukyu with south eastern Asian culture, and the Ezo with Northern culture in medieval times. Besides, the Mongols in the 13th century and the Europeans in the 16th century caused every aspect of Japanese society to change. We can assume that medieval Japan was created in an interregional and international environment. For those who are interested in such an approach, Yoshihiko Amino (1928-2004) is the iconic name. In origin he was an economic historian, but was recognized as the most influential forerunner of social history who wrote medieval history on the interdisciplinary basis of history, archaeology, and folklore with a maritime perspective. A pile of his books on premodern Japanese history have been bestsellers until now.
Third, Japanese historians have contributed a vast amount of work on global Asian histories in medieval and early modern times: especially ones about the Islamic world, the Mongol Empire, and South East Asia including the Japanese archipelago. There has been a long historiography of medieval Eurasian history in Japan since the 19th century. Here I will mention three recent names among many historians: the medieval Islamic historian Tsugitaka Sato (1942-2011); Masaaki Sugiyama (1952-), a specialist in the Mongol Empire; the Arabist Hikoichi Yajima (1939-). Sato, who has written two monographs in English, organized several research groups with large grants, published many edited books, monographs, general books, and articles, and educated the younger generation of medieval Islamic historians during his long career at the University of Tokyo. Sugiyama produced influential general books on the Mongol Empire based upon his specialized research in multiple languages including Chinese, Persian, Mongolian, Latin etc. Yajima is the most prolific translator into Japanese of Arabic sources such as Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battuta etc. whilst also being a historian of the economic and maritime networks of Islamic traders, work which has resulted in several major books.
Almost all of their works are written in Japanese. Although that situation is changing, language limitation hinders the sharing of their academic contribution with world academia.
My Japanese colleagues involved in the present workshop formed their academic careers under these Japanese circumstances. Hiro Tsurushima, specializing in earlier medieval British history, is the general editor of the Japanese translation of the ten-volume Short Oxford History of the British Isles. He acts vigorously and globally as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, fellow of the Society of Antiquities of London, and a board member both of the Haskins Society in the United States and the East Asian Society of British History; he is a leader in the comparison of medieval primary sources between Japan, East Asia and Europe. Hitomi Sato holds two PhDs in medieval history, from Kyoto and Milano. In her works she pursues the comparative history of mountainous boundary areas of medieval and early modern Italy and Japan. Takashi Kawato is a historian of medieval Japan, especially the monetary system, but his perspective extends beyond the national boundaries to stateless maritime spaces found between China, Korea, and Japan. Yoichi Isahaya, who studied in Tsukuba, Kobe, Tokyo, London, Teheran and Jerusalem, is a specialist in the intellectual history of the Mongol Empire, especially translation and the transmission of medieval astrological knowledge. He is able to deal with both primary sources and secondary works ranging from Europe to Japan on a truly Eurasian scale. They all share the traditions and works Japanese academia has produced to improve global history in a Japanese way, and they are changing the Japanese historiography of a global middle ages for themselves, connecting Japanese historiography with non-Japanese. A Japanese translation of Scott's Zomia was made in 2013. It has been shared by Japanese anthropologists and area studies researchers, but has attracted little attention from historians. This may be the first time Japanese historians have engaged with Scott's arguments and ideas.
As for me, maybe for my Japanese colleagues too, I (we) would like to explore three points in this Zomia workshop: one is historiographical reflection. The fifteen speakers who will talk in this workshop today and tomorrow have various backgrounds in terms of their lives, languages, ethnicity, nationality, academic careers and so on. These backgrounds may produce their own academic ideas which may reflect their lives. I and we want to understand the various lines of historiography of a global middle ages, which will enable us all to move beyond any prejudices and national perspectives and to participate in more a global space of varied opinions. Second, I want to know what are "stateless spaces" in the middle ages. As we know, we, of course including me, have discussed medieval history in terms of state formation and state power. This viewpoint remains important still and more and more important, but we also know that there were many more geographical spaces less influenced directly by medieval states and political powers. One of the most important discussion points found in Scott's argument lies here. But we can go a step further. Stateless spaces were also spaces for encounter between various beings, states, powers, cultures and civilisations. We can even imagine that stateless spaces might have produced something new that could change the world rather than merely connect different constituents of the middle ages. Exploring stateless spaces historically may shed light on limitless possibilities for historical studies both of the global middle ages and, in addition, of other ages including our contemporary world. Third, I want to understand more deeply how important historical terms such as "connection", "comparison", and "historiography" might be transformed through thinking about stateless spaces, and, more importantly, how our habits of analysis and description in our own fields and even across the global middle ages could be transformed.
Minoru Ozawa
February 2019