Mutual Conquests: Ceylon and the Making of Western Imperialism in Asia, 1506-1598

这个项目的主要目的是完成一部关于欧洲帝国主义在亚洲形成的核心但未被探索的章节的研究专著。这本书最近被圣母大学出版社接受，出版了一部关于西班牙语和葡萄牙语世界的历史、语言和文化的著名丛书。最后的手稿预计将于2012年7月提交。该书以西班牙语、葡萄牙语、英国、印度和斯里兰卡的档案馆为一篇用葡萄牙语撰写的未发表的论文(2006年)所做的研究为基础，旨在通过探索(和澄清)正在出现的“相互关联的历史”范式，对早期近代史领域作出重大贡献。这一范式规定，有可能分析欧洲和亚洲相互联系的历史进程，遵循这样一种想法，即尽管存在所有文化差异，但所涉及的部分能够建立具有历史意义的对话。最近的学术研究表明，欧洲帝国主义并不是作为一种突然的冲击波完全在遥远的地方产生的。它在很长一段时间里缓慢增长，而且在很大程度上是在岛内而不是在岛外生产的。根植于南亚等级王权和帝国传统的地方帝国统一思想，在伊比利亚帝国管理者的脑海中充分展现其变革潜力之前，通过一系列复杂的沟通渠道被注入伊比利亚地区。这些发现不仅在英国学术界的背景下很重要，在英国学术界，南亚和伊比利亚历史都有着悠久的优秀传统。对16世纪的新解读在斯里兰卡也同样重要，在2010年斯里兰卡政府对猛虎组织取得军事胜利后，激进民族主义者对殖民历史的工具化达到了历史最高水平。在过去和现在妖魔化非僧伽罗人的摩尼教逻辑正在被系统地部署，对该国的社会和文化组织造成灾难性的后果。辩称欧洲在岛上的势力并不完全是外生历史过程的结果，有时确实会激起人们的情绪--正如我在2005年和2009年在科伦坡所做的早期研究报告所做的那样--但它也有助于让殖民社会的某些阶层恢复历史代理，这是就帝国统治的根源展开公开和批判性辩论的不可或缺的条件。该书还将有助于对英国、西班牙、尤其是葡萄牙的帝国历史进行批判性的重新评估，在这些国家，将扩张的影响降至最低、过度强调早期帝国接触的“友好”性质的倾向近年来已变得明显。通过对四个世纪前伊比利亚政策在海外经历的转变进行细致入微的分析，拟议中的工作构成了批评两个欧洲国家帝国历史的简单化评估的基石，这反过来可能会增加它与关于英国帝国主义本身的核心辩论的相关性。

The principal aim of this project is to complete a research monograph on a central but under-explored chapter in the making of European imperialism in Asia. The book proposal was recently accepted by the University of Notre Dame Press for a renowned series on the History, Languages, and Cultures of the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds. The submission of the final manuscript is expected in July 2012. Based on research conducted in Spanish, Portuguese, British, Indian and Sri Lankan archives for an unpublished dissertation written in Portuguese (2006), the book aims to make a major contribution to the field of Early Modern History by exploring (and clarifying) the emerging "connected histories" paradigm. This paradigm stipulates that it is possible to analyse European and Asian historical processes in connection with each other following the idea that, despite all cultural differences, the parts involved were able to establish historically relevant dialogues. Recent scholarship - including the research that has fed into the present project - suggests that European imperialism did not arrive in Sri Lanka as a sudden shock wave entirely generated in distant places. It grew slowly over a long period of time, and it was to a significant extent produced within the island rather than outside of it. Local ideas of imperial unification, deeply rooted in South Asian traditions of hierarchical kingship and Empire, were transfused into the Iberian sphere through a complex set of communicational channels before they unfolded, in the minds of Iberian imperial administrators, their full transformative potential. These findings are important not only in the context of British academia, where both South Asian and Iberian History have long-standing traditions of excellence. A new reading of the sixteenth century is equally important in Sri Lanka where the instrumentalisation of colonial history by radical nationalists is reaching an all-time high in the wake of the government's military victory over the LTTE in 2010. Manichean logics that demonise things non-Sinhalese in the past as well as the present are being deployed systematically with disastrous consequences for the social and cultural tissue of the country. To argue that European power in the island was not exclusively the result of exogenous historical processes does at times stir up emotions - as earlier presentations of my research have done in Colombo in 2005 and 2009 - yet it also serves to return historical agency to certain sectors of the colonized society, an indispensable condition for an open and critical debate about the roots of imperial domination.The book will also contribute to a critical reassessment of imperial history in Britain, Spain and especially in Portugal, where a tendency to minimise the impacts of expansion and to over-emphasise the "friendly" nature of the early imperial encounters has become palpable in recent years. By offering a nuanced analysis of the transformations that Iberian policies overseas underwent four centuries ago, the proposed work constitutes a cornerstone in the critique of simplistic evaluations of two European countries' imperial past, which may in its turn add to its relevance to the core debates on British imperialism itself.