The Nascent Globe: Diplomacy and the Making of the First Global Order, c.1480-c.1520

为什么欧洲人在近代早期冒险进入遥远的海洋并建立新的联系时如此成功？第一个全球政治秩序究竟是如何从这些航行中产生的？我的项目对这些问题采取了一种新颖的方法，通过研究在500年前的1521年完成的第一次环球航行之前的关键几十年里展开的外交接触。它探索了1480年左右葡萄牙和西班牙早期航海的历史资料，这些航海为后来的英国、法国和荷兰帝国的建立铺平了道路。在承认贸易和航海重要性的同时，我将深入研究那些被忽视的支持它们的外交机制。早期跨洲对话的核心是一种普遍的愿望，那就是让相遇充满意义，并让它们持续下去。我认为，在这个项目中，外交是实现远距离联系的关键。我进一步提出，外交接触不仅仅是欧洲“扩张”的结果。这在很大程度上取决于不同的吸引力焦点。各大洲的地方统治者向葡萄牙人和西班牙人伸出援手，进行具有政治意义的特使、信件、礼物和地理知识的交换。他们在寻找新的贸易机会，但也在寻找新的军事盟友，这些盟友可能会帮助他们应对地区和当地的敌人，或者仅仅是外交交流的象征性价值。如果没有非欧洲统治者的这种合作意愿，欧洲航海家将无处可去。为了理解扩张和吸引的结合过程，我将研究六个有代表性的案例，并首次将它们整合到一个总体研究中。这些国家（按时间顺序排列）：加纳；伊斯帕尼奥拉岛/波多黎各;东非的斯瓦希里海岸；南印度的马拉巴尔海岸；摩鹿加群岛或香料群岛；和菲律宾。我将建立这些地区之间的历史联系，并对当地统治者为吸引葡萄牙和西班牙航海家而采取的外交举措进行比较研究。这一点很重要，因为非洲、亚洲和美洲小国的历史在很大程度上是在彼此孤立的情况下写成的。他们对早期葡萄牙和西班牙航海以及帝国主义的影响很少被提及。葡萄牙语和西班牙语活动本身通常是分开学习的。把所有这些参与者聚集在一起，将使我能够确定一种模式，并辩称，第一个全球政治秩序源于对外交联盟及其所具有的象征性力量的广泛共同愿望。事实上，我们还不知道究竟是谁首先看到了全球化思维的全部潜力：是葡萄牙和西班牙的国王，谁监督了第一次全球连接，谁拥有第一张全球地图？或者是像太平洋马鲁古群岛的苏丹那样的统治者，他们为了自己的利益，利用了这些遥远的对手相互对抗的潜力？为了回答这些问题，我将研究葡萄牙语、西班牙语、英语、意大利语、法语和德语的文献和批评文献。我将利用我在伦敦教书和生活的世界领先的图书馆，并在葡萄牙和西班牙的档案馆进行研究，其中一些我以前曾与之合作过。我将与其他全球和地区历史学家讨论我的发现。我还将与加纳、波多黎各和南印度的当地历史学家和听众分享想法，并致力于首次建立一个连接这些地区的学者网络。通过这样做，我们将共同开始讲述一个欧洲人、非洲人、亚洲人和美国人共同分享的早期全球化故事——以批判的态度，而不是将这段常常充满暴力的过去浪漫化。

Why were Europeans so successful as they ventured into distant seas and established new contacts at the beginning of the early modern age? And how exactly did the first global political order emerge from those voyages? My project takes a novel approach to these questions by studying the diplomatic encounters that unfolded during the crucial decades leading up to the first circumnavigation of the globe, completed 500 years ago in 1521. It explores historical sources produced from around 1480 in the context of early Portuguese and Spanish voyages that paved the way for later, British, French and Dutch empire building. Whilst acknowledging the importance of trade and navigation, I will dig deeper to study the overlooked diplomatic mechanisms supporting them. At the heart of early transcontinental conversations was a widely shared desire to imbue encounters with meaning and make them last. Diplomacy, I argue in this project, was key to making long-distance connections work.Diplomatic encounters, I further propose, were not just the result of European "expansion". Much was down to various foci of attraction. Local rulers across the continents reached out to the Portuguese and the Spanish to engage in politically meaningful exchanges of envoys, letters, gifts, and geographical knowledge. They looked for new opportunities in trade, but also new military allies who might help them cope with regional and local enemies, or simply the symbolic value of diplomatic exchanges. Without this desire of non-European rulers to cooperate, European navigators would have had nowhere to go. To understand the combined processes of expansion and attraction, I will examine six representative cases and draw them together into an overarching study for the first time. These are (in chronological order): Ghana; Hispaniola/Puerto Rico; the Swahili Coast in East Africa; the Malabar Coast in South India; the Moluccas or Spice Islands; and the Philippines. I will establish historical connections between these regions and engage in a comparative study of the diplomatic initiatives taken by local rulers to attract Portuguese and Spanish navigators. This is important because the histories of small states in Africa, Asia and the Americas have been written largely in isolation from each other. Their influence on early Portuguese and Spanish navigations and imperialism is rarely mentioned. Portuguese and Spanish activities themselves are usually studied separately. Bringing all these actors together will allow me to identify a pattern and argue that the first global political order grew out of a widely shared desire for diplomatic alliances and the symbolic power they carried. In fact, we are yet to understand who exactly was first in seeing the full potential of thinking globally: the kings of Portugal and Spain, who oversaw the first global connections and possessed the first global maps? Or perhaps rulers such as the sultans of the Maluku islands in the Pacific, who harnessed the potential of pitching those distant rivals against each other for their own benefit?To answer these questions, I will be working with sources and critical literature written in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French, and German. I will make use of the world-leading libraries of London, where I teach and live, and complement this with research periods in archives in Portugal and Spain, some of which I have worked with before. I will talk about my findings with other global and regional historians. I will also share ideas with local historians and audiences in Ghana, Puerto Rico, and South India, and work towards establishing, for the first time, a network of scholars connecting these regions. By doing so, we will together start telling - critically, without romanticising this often violent past - a story of early globalisation shared by Europeans, Africans, Asians and Americans alike.