Melaka, "Piracy" and the Modern World System
Because our modern world system emerged within world-wide contexts, we must consider how founding relationships that established it reflect global interconnectedness of their own era. Douglas Sturm has written, "History is a process of new formations. What we are and what we shall become are no...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1996
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| In: |
Journal of law and religion
Year: 1996, Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Pages: 107-125 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Because our modern world system emerged within world-wide contexts, we must consider how founding relationships that established it reflect global interconnectedness of their own era. Douglas Sturm has written, "History is a process of new formations. What we are and what we shall become are not givens. They are results of many relations in which we are engaged and whose character we affect, in however small a degree, by the manner of our participation." Too often this relational perspective has been ignored in propounding origins and fundamental relationships of our modern world. For over five hundred years, for example, Eurocentrism has betrayed indebtedness to Renaissance hubris. Further, contemporary memories of our relational past are laced with policies and perspectives of forebears who constituted nation states. These processes entailed "inventing traditions" post facto, while also vesting collective memories with [hi]stories on behalf of national dignity and imperial stature. Even as false memories have been used for socializing children into citizens, and for motivating troops and voters, they also render indispensable historical understandings problematical. Sometimes there are hints of such fabrications in paradoxical impressions. Edward Lucie-Smith muses: "Granted that piracy is really no more than robbery at sea, how did the crime come to acquire the aura of sinister glamour that still clings to it, an aura which sets the pirate apart from other and more commonplace malefactors?" Piracy's "aura of sinister glamour" is not confined to tropes like Blackbeard, the Jolly Roger, or Long John Silver. "Piracy" has clouded Asian history and rationalized European incursions, at least since the Portuguese captured the fabulous port city of Melaka in 1511. |
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| ISSN: | 2163-3088 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1051370 |