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22 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 1 of 2

A Franciscan Tombstone in Fourteenth-Century China

A Franciscan Tombstone in Fourteenth-Century China
  • A Global History
  • Nancy Wu
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • This Element examines the tombstone for Andrew of Perugia (d. 1332?), the sole surviving object from the 14C Franciscan mission in China. The narrative begins in Zayton, where diverse groups brought to this maritime entrepot old antagonisms and new alliances. The discovery of Andrew's tombstone and that of other Christian monuments over the centuries, demonstrate how various Christian churches interacted with their host society from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Relying to the extent possible on words of the protagonists, this Element scrutinizes the Nestorian cross-and-lotus motif and questions prevailing interpretations about this quintessential Nestorian iconography and its presence on a Franciscan tombstone: the inter-religious borrowing of art and symbolism, the mode through which ideas and traditions were transmitted, the function and purpose of adaptation, and the plausible contribution of local artisans to the creation of the earliest Christian art in China.
Early Globalism and Chinese Literature

Early Globalism and Chinese Literature
  • Yuanfei Wang, Victor H. Mair
  • Published online:
    18 February 2026
    Print publication:
    19 March 2026
    • Element
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  • Exploring 'early globalism and Chinese literature' through the lens of 'literary diffusion,' this Element analyzes two primary forms. The first is Buddhist literary diffusion, whose revolutionary impact on Chinese language and literature is illustrated through scriptural translation, transformation texts, and 'journey to the West' stories. The second, facilitated diffusion, engages with the maritime world, traced through the seafaring journey of Cinderella stories and the totalizing worldview in literature on Zheng He's voyages. The authors contend that early global literary diffusion left a lasting imprint on Chinese language, literature, and culture. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Death Rituals

Death Rituals
  • The Rūs and 'Vikings' in Arabic and Persian
  • Tonicha M. Upham
  • Published online:
    13 September 2025
    Print publication:
    09 October 2025
  • In the study of the early medieval Rūs and the Viking diaspora, Arabic geographical writings on the practice of funerary sacrifice loom large. Against growing uses of this body of source material as evidence on ritual, the treatment of women, and the global connections of the Rūs, critical issues in the use of and access to this source material necessitate a fresh analysis. This Element reevaluates geographical writings on Rūs death and sacrificial rituals, redirecting focus towards the textual transmission of ideas in both Arabic and Persian to offer a critical guide to geographical knowledge dissemination on Rūs funerary practices.
Teaching Early Global Literatures and Cultures

Teaching Early Global Literatures and Cultures
  • Geraldine Heng
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
  • Teaching Early Global Literatures and Cultures is a guide to the terra incognita of the global literature classroom. It begins with a framing rationale for why it is valuable to teach early global literatures today; critically surveys the issues involved in such teaching; supplies details of some two dozen texts from which to build a possible syllabus; adds a comprehensive bibliography, and suggestions for student research and student involvement in co-creating course content; and furnishes detailed guidelines for how to teach some 10 texts. It should be possible for faculty and graduate instructors to take this Element and begin teaching its sample syllabus right away.
Islamicate Environments

Islamicate Environments
  • Water, Land, Plants, and Society
  • D. Fairchild Ruggles
  • Published online:
    08 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • Islam burst forth from Arabia in the seventh century and spread with astonishing speed and force into the Middle East, Asia and northern Africa and the Mediterranean. While its success as a dominant culture has often been attributed to military strength, astute political organization, and religious factors, this Element focuses on the environmental conditions from which early Islamic societies sprang. In the belt of arid land that stretches from Iran to the Maghreb (Spain and Morocco)-i.e. the territories of early Islam-the adaptation of natural water systems, landforms and plant varieties was required to make the land habitable and productive.
Elephants and Ivory in China and Spain

Elephants and Ivory in China and Spain
  • John Beusterien, Stephen West
  • Published online:
    11 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • The Element provides a global history of ivory and elephants, acknowledging the individuality and dignity of the elephants that provided that ivory. Sections on China include the first translations of texts about the cultural importance of elephants and ivory in the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and an examination of an ivory stave (huban 笏板), crafted from an Asian elephant tusk (Elephas maximus), carried by officials in court and other formal rituals. Sections on Spain examine the value of ivory during the reign of King Alfonso X of Castille (1221–1284) and the Virxe Abrideira (ca. 1260–1275), an ivory Virgin and Child statuette owned by Queen Violante of Aragon (1236–1301), crafted from an African elephant tusk (Loxodonta africana). The Element concludes by offering a pedagogy from a comparative literature perspective about Sunjata (c.1226), an epic from the Mali empire in West Africa, an important source for thirteenth-century global ivory markets.
The Global Legend of Prester John

The Global Legend of Prester John
  • Christopher E. Taylor
  • Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • The Global Legend of Prester John delves into the enduring fascination with Prester John, an unreachable, collectively-imagined Christian priest-king who figured prominently in Europe's entrance into an interconnected global world. This Element draws on “The International Prester John Project,” an archive of Prester John narratives, from papal epistles to missionary diaries to Marvel comics, all of which respond to the Christian heterotopia promised in the twelfth-century Letter of Prester John. During the medieval and early modern periods, the desire to legitimize the letter's contents influenced military tactics and papal policy while serving as a cultural touchstone for medieval maps, travel narratives, and romance tales. By providing an overview of distinct narrative paths the legend took along with an analysis of the themes of malleability and elasticity within and across these paths, this Element addresses how belief in Prester John persisted for six centuries despite a lack of evidence.
Global Ships

Global Ships
  • Seafaring, Shipwrecks, and Boatbuilding in the Global Middle Ages
  • Amanda Respess
  • Published online:
    11 December 2024
    Print publication:
    16 January 2025
  • Global Ships examines the major seafaring traditions and technologies that engendered long-distance connections across the world's oceans during the Global Middle Ages. Between the years 500–1500 CE, maritime trade networks spanning the seas globalized commodities, religions, and trade diasporas in an increasingly mobile world. Focusing on shipbuilding traditions, nautical cultures, sailing itineraries, and examples of recovered shipwrecks and cargoes from around the world, Global Ships provides an expert overview of the major vessels that sailed the seas in the Global Middle Ages. A concise interpretive guide to global maritime technologies and cultures for researchers, teachers, and students, Global Ships highlights essential historical context, technological case studies, and logics of seafaring around the world before the modern age.
‘Ethiopia’ and the World, 330–1500 CE

‘Ethiopia’ and the World, 330–1500 CE
  • Yonatan Binyam, Verena Krebs
  • Published online:
    11 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024
  • This Cambridge Element offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the histories of the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands from late antiquity to the late medieval period, updating traditional Western academic perspectives. Early scholarship, often by philologists and religious scholars, upheld 'Ethiopia' as an isolated repository of ancient Jewish and Christian texts. This work reframes the region's history, highlighting the political, economic, and cultural interconnections of different kingdoms, polities, and peoples. Utilizing recent advancements in Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies as well as Medieval Studies, it reevaluates key instances of contact between 'Ethiopia' and the world of Afro-Eurasia, situating the histories of the Christian, Muslim, and local-religious or 'pagan' groups living in the Red Sea littoral and the Eritrean-Ethiopian highlands in the context of the Global Middle Ages.
Swahili Worlds in Globalism

Swahili Worlds in Globalism
  • Chapurukha M. Kusimba
  • Published online:
    31 December 2023
    Print publication:
    18 January 2024
  • This Element discusses a medieval African urban society as a product of interactions among African communities who inhabited the region between 100 BCE and 500 CE. It deviates from standard approaches that credit urbanism and state in Africa to non-African agents. East Africa, then and now, was part of the broader world of the Indian Ocean. Globalism coincided with the political and economic transformations that occurred during the Tang-Sung-Yuan-Ming and Islamic Dynastic times, 600-1500 CE. Positioned as the gateway into and out of eastern Africa, the Swahili coast became a site through which people, inventions, and innovations bi-directionally migrated, were adopted, and evolved. Swahili peoples' agency and unique characteristics cannot be seen only through Islam's prism. Instead, their unique character is a consequence of social and economic interactions of actors along the coast, inland, and beyond the Indian Ocean.
The Chertsey Tiles, the Crusades, and Global Textile Motifs

The Chertsey Tiles, the Crusades, and Global Textile Motifs
  • Amanda Luyster
  • Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
  • While visual cultures mingled comfortably along the silk roads and on the shores of the Mediterranean, medieval England has sometimes been viewed – by both medieval and more recent writers – as isolated. In this Element the author introduces new evidence to show that this understanding of medieval England's visual relationship to the rest of the world demands revision. An international team led by the author has completed a digital reconstruction of the so-called Chertsey combat tiles (sophisticated pictorial floor tiles made c. 1250, England), including both images and lost Latin texts. Grounded in the discoveries made while completing this reconstruction, the author proposes new conclusions regarding the historical circumstances within which the Chertsey tiles were commissioned and their significant connections with global textile traditions.
Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400

Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400
  • Patricia Blessing, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, Eiren L. Shea
  • Published online:
    08 May 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023
  • This study considers the textiles made, traded, and exchanged across Eurasia from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages with special attention to the socio-political and cultural aspects of this universal medium. It presents a wide range of textiles used in both domestic and religious settings, as dress and furnishings, and for elite and ordinary owners. The introduction presents historiographical background to the study of textiles and explains the conditions of their survival in archaeological contexts and museums. A section on the materials and techniques used to produce textiles if followed by those outlining textile production, industry, and trade across Eurasia. Further sections examine the uses for dress and furnishing textiles and the appearance of imported fabrics in European contexts, addressing textiles' functions and uses in medieval societies. Lastly, a concluding section on textile aesthetics connects fabrics to their broader visual and material context.
Early Tang China and the World, 618–750 CE

Early Tang China and the World, 618–750 CE
  • Shao-yun Yang
  • Published online:
    05 May 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023
  • For about half a century, the Tang dynasty has held a reputation as the most 'cosmopolitan' period in Chinese history, marked by unsurpassed openness to foreign peoples and cultures and active promotion of international trade. Heavily influenced by Western liberal ideals and contemporary China's own self-fashioning efforts, this glamorous image of the Tang calls for some critical reexamination. This Element presents a broad and revisionist analysis of early Tang China's relations with the rest of the Eurasian world and argues that idealizing the Tang as exceptionally “cosmopolitan” limits our ability to think both critically and globally about its actions and policies as an empire.
Late Tang China and the World, 750–907 CE

Late Tang China and the World, 750–907 CE
  • Shao-yun Yang
  • Published online:
    05 May 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023
  • In recent decades, the Tang dynasty (618-907) has acquired a reputation as the most 'cosmopolitan' period in Chinese history. The standard narrative also claims that this cosmopolitan openness faded after the An Lushan Rebellion of 755-763, to be replaced by xenophobic hostility toward all things foreign. This Element reassesses the cosmopolitanism-to-xenophobia narrative and presents a more empirically-grounded and nuanced interpretation of the Tang empire's foreign relations after 755.
Slavery in East Asia

Slavery in East Asia
  • Don J. Wyatt
  • Published online:
    05 December 2022
    Print publication:
    05 January 2023
  • In premodern China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, just as in the far less culturally cohesive countries composing the West of the Middle Ages, enslavement was an assumed condition of servitude warranting little examination, as the power and profits it afforded to the slaver made it a convention pursued unreflectively. Slavery in medieval East Asia shared with the West the commonplace assumption that nearly all humans were potential chattel, that once they had become owned beings, they could then be either sold or inherited. Yet, despite being representative of perhaps the most universalizable human practice of that age, slavery in medieval East Asia was also endowed with its own distinctive traits and traditions. Our awareness of these features of distinction contributes immeasurably to a more nuanced understanding of slavery as the ubiquitous and openly practiced institution that it once was and the now illicit and surreptitious one that it intractably remains.
Southeast Asian Interconnections

Southeast Asian Interconnections
  • Geography, Networks and Trade
  • Derek Heng
  • Published online:
    03 December 2022
    Print publication:
    05 January 2023
  • Since the late first millennium CE, Maritime Southeast Asia has been an inter-connected zone, with its societies and states maintaining economic and diplomatic relations with both China and Japan on the east, and the Indian Sub-Continent and Middle East on the west. This global connectedness was facilitated by merchant and shipping networks that originated from within and outside Southeast Asia, resulting in a trans-regional economy developing by the early second millennium CE. Sojourning populations began to appear in Maritime Southeast Asia, culminating in records of Chinese and Indian settlers in such places as Sumatra, Malay Peninsula and the Gulf of Siam by the mid-first millennium CE. At the same time, information of products that were harvested in Southeast Asia began to be appropriated by pockets of society in China, the India and the Middle East, resulting in the production of new knowledge and usages for these products in these markets.
Global Medievalism

Global Medievalism
  • An Introduction
  • Helen Young, Kavita Mudan Finn
  • Published online:
    12 September 2022
    Print publication:
    06 October 2022
  • The typical vision of the Middle Ages western popular culture represents to its global audience is deeply Eurocentric. The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones imagined entire medievalist worlds, but we see only a fraction of them through the stories and travels of the characters. Organised around the theme of mobility, this Element seeks to deconstruct the Eurocentric orientations of western popular medievalisms which typically position Europe as either the whole world or the centre of it, by making them visible and offering alternative perspectives. How does popular culture represent medievalist worlds as global-connected by the movement of people and objects? How do imagined mobilities allow us to create counterstories that resist Eurocentric norms? This study represents the start of what will hopefully be a fruitful and inclusive conversation of what the Middle Ages did, and should, look like.
Eurasian Musical Journeys

Eurasian Musical Journeys
  • Five Tales
  • Gabriela Currie, Lars Christensen
  • Published online:
    13 April 2022
    Print publication:
    05 May 2022
  • This Element explores the circulation of musical instruments, practices, and thought inpremodern Eurasia at the crossroads of empires and nomadic cultures. It takes into consideration mechanisms of transmission, appropriation, adaptation, and integration that helped shape musical traditions that are perceived as culturally and geographically distinct yet are historically linked. The five stories featured here range from the geographically diverse performing groups during the Sui and Tang era, to the elusive musical world of Kucha in the Tarim Basin; from the fragmentary history of a single instrument linked to the Turkic peoples across Eurasia, to the transcontinental circulation of sound-making automata, including the organ, on both east-west and north-south axes. Within the conceptual background of cultural encounter and exchange, this Element provides possible strategies for integrating such information into the historical tapestry of Eurasian transcontinental networks as explored in other Elements in the series.
Cahokia and the North American Worlds

Cahokia and the North American Worlds
  • Sarah E. Baires
  • Published online:
    17 February 2022
    Print publication:
    10 March 2022
  • The City of Cahokia provides a unique case study to review what draws people to a place and why. This Element examines not only the emergence and decline of this great American city but its intersection with the broader Native American world during this period. Cahokia was not an isolated complex but a place vivid on the landscape where people made pilgrimages to and from Cahokia for trade and religious practices. Cahokia was a centre-place with expansive reach and cultural influence. This Element analyses the social and political processes that helped create this city while also reflecting on the trajectory of Native American history in North America.
Oceania, 800-1800CE

Oceania, 800-1800CE
  • A Millennium of Interactions in a Sea of Islands
  • James L. Flexner
  • Published online:
    25 November 2021
    Print publication:
    23 December 2021
  • Over a span of 1000 years beginning around 800CE, the people of the Pacific Islands undertook a remarkable period of voyaging, political evolution, and cross-cultural interactions. Polynesian navigators encountered previously uninhabited lands, as well as already inhabited islands and the coast of the Americas. Island societies saw epic sagas of political competition and intrigue, documented through oral traditions and the monuments and artefacts recovered through archaeology. European entry into the region added a new episode of interaction with strange people from over the horizon. These histories provide an important cross-cultural perspective for the concept of 'the Middle Ages' from outside of the usual Old World focus.

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