CHIMER

COMEEAS : Communities, Mobilities and Environment around the East Asian Seas (1560-1740)

Presentation: 

The project aims to reconsider the history of the formation of various communities (natives, Asian and European colonists, diasporas, merchants and crews passing through) on the scale of the East Asian seas and the Pacific Ocean over a long 17th century. The dynamics of the research programme are based on collaboration between specialists from colonising European countries and Asian countries. This group will pool its knowledge, linguistic skills, sources and methods to study a series of common themes, too often compartmentalised between European colonial history and Asian history. The project is based on a simple observation: historians specialising in societies located between the Indonesian archipelago, continental South-East Asia and the China-Korea-Japan group, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, work on similar subjects, but collaborate relatively little. Historiographical traditions, scientific institutions, archive collections and extremely diverse languages tend to compartmentalise research, roughly between historians of European colonisation and specialists in the countries of the East Asian ‘cultural area’ (China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, the Indochinese peninsula, etc.). There are some notable exceptions: in the 1980s, Denys Lombard had surrounded himself with researchers capable of navigating between a variety of sources and languages, to which some outstanding works have been added. More recent publications (M. Ollé, S. Subrahmanyam, T. Andrade, R. Bertrand, 2014, L. Gabbiani, D. Couto & F. Lachaud) and several projects (Schottenhammer, Calanca) demonstrate an ongoing desire to work on situations of contact or to bring together researchers from different backgrounds. The present project proposes to strengthen this dynamic around a deeply international group, balanced and diversified in its specialities. Très concrètement, il s’agira, d’une part, de partager et de donner accès à des sources et à une bibliographie en différentes langues (souvent inédites ou non traduites) qui portent sur les mêmes événements ou les mêmes phénomènes. D’autre part, les quatre axes de recherche « Communautés en mouvement et en action », « Négociations, interactions et résistances », « Environnement » et « Navigations » permettront de comparer et de connecter les histoires individuelles et collectives qui se déploient dans l’espace considéré. Une grande complexité caractérise ces communautés subissant des influences multiples (venues Inde sanskritique, Islam, Chine et Occident) et des hybridations à des degrés très variés suivant les lieux.

Partners institutions:

Labex SMS (Structuration des Mondes Sociaux, Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès)
UMR 5136 (Framespa, Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès)
Universitat Pompeu Fabra - ECERM 
Ateneo de Manila University
CHAM-NOVA FCSH
École française d'Extrème-Orient (EFEO)

Project coordinator:

Guillaume GAUDIN (Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès) 

Team members:

Ana BUSQUETS ALEMANY (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Paola CALANCA (EFEO - Chine-Corée-Japon (UMR 8173)
Thomas CALVO (El Colegio de Michoacán (Mexique)
Alexandre COELLO DE LA ROSA (University Pompeu Fabra – ECERM)
Mark DIZON (Universidad Ateneo de Manila)
Frédéric DURAND (Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - LISTT UMR 5193)
Luca GABBIANI (EFEO - Chine-Corée-Japon UMR 8173)
Guillaume GAUDIN (Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - Framespa UMR 5136)
Ubaldo IACCARINO ("L'Orientale" University of Napoli)
Miguel LOURENÇO (Univ. Nova de Lisboa - CHAM-NOVA FCSH)
Paulina MACHUCA (El Colegio de Michoacán - Laboratorio de Análisis y Diagnóstico del Patrimonio (LADIPA))
Charlotte ORTIZ (Casa de Velázquez)
Paulo PINTO (Univ. Nova de Lisboa - CHAM-NOVA FCSH)
Birgit TREMML (The University of Stockholm)
Cheng WEICHUNG (Academia Sinica – Taipei)

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