Zoltán Biedermann
Biographic Data
| ID | 361271 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zoltán Biedermann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zoltán |
| FAMILY NAME | Biedermann |
| SIGNATURE | BIEDERMANN Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1252-3074 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Empire of Contingency
How Early? How Modern? Reflections on the Global Early Modern (Part 1)
This Introduction reflects on the editors’ shared impression that in recent years, scholarship in the “early modern” field has remained insightful and archivally rich but reluctant to engage with large conceptual, methodological, and historiographical questions. The term “early modern” has lost precise meaning and deserves greater scrutiny. The authors featured in this special issue approach the conundrum of the meaning of “early modernity” in th…
Falando ElRey, lhe perguntou da saude d’ElRey”
Este artigo insere-se numa investigação mais alargada sobre as dinâmicas diplomáticas que sustentaram a primeira globalização. Nas páginas que se seguem, procurarei, primeiro, caracterizar a cultura diplomática que, no meu entender, foi crucial para o estabelecimento de relações duráveis no Índico, e também numa África Ocidental que possibilitou, poucos anos antes, aprendizagens relevantes para a acção dos portugueses no Oriente. Passarei depois …
In a Garden of Forking Maps
This article compares the cartographical representations of the Caspian region produced around 1560 in Goa and Venice, with references to other centers of mapmaking such as Lisbon, Seville, and Antwerp. It explores the scientific, cultural, technical, and commercial logics that led to profoundly dissimilar cartographies of the Caspian and its surroundings in different centers of map production around the same time. It asks questions about the con…
Mafalda Soares da Cunha, coord., Resistências. Insubmissão e Revolta no Império Português
Few people will have heard about the "War of the Mad" (Guerra dos doidos) that tore apart the fragile fabric of Timorese society in 1776-86, or the protests staged by Black working women in Lisbon in 1717 against the Municipal council's tax plans.Only rarely does one hear the story of Ana Dias, whose home in Funchal became a focus of illegal Jewish practices in the late 1500s, or the rise and fall of Tamandar, also known as "Papa Antnio", the ind…
A História Natural de Portugal de Leonhard Thurneysser zum Thurn, ca. 1555–1556, written by Bernardo Jerosch Herold, Thomas Horst, and Henrique Leitão Itinerarium, written by Hieronymus Münzer and edi…
Portugal in the Sea of Oman. Religion and Politics. Research on Documents, edited by Abdulrahman Al-Salimi and Michael Jansen and in collabaration with Pedro Pinto, Karsten Ley, and Helmut Siepmann
La Renaissance au grand large
Escrituras cartográficas
Al escribir sobre sus viajes y los de otros, los autores portugueses del siglo XVI no sólo describieron el mundo, como también contribuyeron a su forma. Este artículo explora las estructuras cartográficas de la escritura de viajes, presentando una interpretación preliminar de las principales prácticas de la representación de los espacios (globales, del imperio y más allá de ello) en los textos escritos. Tocamos, entre otros aspectos, en el contra…
David Ringrose. Europeans Abroad, 1450–1750
Europe’s role in the making of the early modern world has been subject to much critical scrutiny over the past three decades. Terms such as “discoveries,” “conquest,” and “expansion” are now often used between quotation marks, qualified, and at times avoided altogether. The deconstruction of Eurocentric narratives of early globalization has accompanied the shifts in economic and political power of recent times. Connected histories and other trans…
Le jardin aux cartes qui bifurquent
Le jardin aux cartes qui bifurquent: La mer Caspienne vue de Venise et de Goa au xvie siècleCet article compare les représentations cartographiques de la région caspienne produites vers 1560 à Goa et à Venise, en faisant aussi référence à d'autres centres de cartographie tels que Lisbonne, Séville et Anvers. Il explore les logiques scientifiques, culturelles, techniques et commerciales qui ont conduit à des cartographies profondément dissemblable…
Three Ways of Locating the Global
Reflections, echoes, connections: the sixteenth century abounds with transcontinental phenomena carrying the potential to challenge Eurocentric narratives in global history. Even as we look back on the now substantial historiography of early modern global flows and connections, new and surprising aspects catch our eye every time we delve into the sixteenth century. We may take almost any single year — for example, 1546, not a particularly remarka…
(Dis)connected empires imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan diplomacy, and the making of a Habsburg conquest in Asia
(Dis)connected Empires' offers a new contribution to the current debate on the role of global history in a world of resurgent nationalisms. Biedermann explores the world of early diplomatic connections between Europe and Asia in the Renaissance, focusing on the rarely told story of Portuguese encounters with the Buddhist kingdoms of Sri Lanka
Global Gifts
Herzog, Tamar, "Frontiers of Possession. Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas"
The Temporal Politics of Spiritual Conquest
This article queries the relationship between imperial expansion, geographical knowledge and epistemic spatiality in Portuguese Asia. It proposes to disentangle these aspects by exploring the Conquista Espiritual do Oriente of Friar Paulo da Trindade, a Lusophone, Asian-born Franciscan writing in Goa in the 1630s. Trindade’s chronicle provides disturbing insights into the difficult relationship between imperial expansion and the spatial organizat…
Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932
Journal Article Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932: Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism, by Timothy J. Coates Get access Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932: Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism, by Timothy J. Coates (Leiden: Brill, 2014; pp. xxvi + 205. €99). Z. Biedermann Z. Biedermann 1University College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic …
The Portuguese in Sri Lanka and South India
El espacio subordinado al tiempo en la cronística franciscana
This article explores the Conquista Espiritual do Oriente of Fr. Paulo da Trindade, a major Franciscan chronicle written in Goa in the 1630s. The main focus is on an examination of the articulation between spatial and temporal aspects of the narrative, especially in the chapters describing Ceylon, which constitute a central piece in the symbolic economy of the text and of the Franciscan order as such in the East. A close reading reveals the absol…
Early Brazil
Kingship and conversion in sixteenth-century Sri Lanka
The Matrioshka Principle and How it was Overcome
This article deals with roughly the first hundred years of Portuguese expansion in Sri Lanka (1506-1600), the local “reactions” to it, and how the interaction was changed when the Portuguese Crown fell to the Habsburgs in 1580. It analyzes how Portuguese and Sri Lankan notions of kingship, authority and Empire were included in a dialog that indicates the existence of commonalities in the field of political culture. The imperial projects of Portug…
Colombo versus Cannanore
This article compares the urban structures of early modern Colombo and Cannanore, two South Asian port cities controlled by the Portuguese during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and taken over by the Dutch in 1656 and 1663. It is argued that, whereas Cannanore was an urban complex marked by a set of walls that separated ethnically and religiously distinct neighborhoods, Colombo, less influenced by regulations emanating from Lisbon and Go…
Portuguese Diplomacy in Asia in the Sixteenth Century
Scattered as it was over thousands of miles of African and Asian coastline, the Portuguese empire in the East had a peculiar shape when compared to the Spanish one in the New World. As one author of the early seventeenth century put it, ‘the king our lord does not have more than twenty leagues of land in all Asia, from Macao to the Cape of Good Hope’. Portugal was a small country with a population of one and a half million people, and it is no su…
(Dis)connected empires imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan diplomacy, and the making of a Habsburg conquest in Asia
(Dis)connected Empires' offers a new contribution to the current debate on the role of global history in a world of resurgent nationalisms. Biedermann explores the world of early diplomatic connections between Europe and Asia in the Renaissance, focusing on the rarely told story of Portuguese encounters with the Buddhist kingdoms of Sri Lanka
The Matrioshka Principle and How it was Overcome
This article deals with roughly the first hundred years of Portuguese expansion in Sri Lanka (1506-1600), the local “reactions” to it, and how the interaction was changed when the Portuguese Crown fell to the Habsburgs in 1580. It analyzes how Portuguese and Sri Lankan notions of kingship, authority and Empire were included in a dialog that indicates the existence of commonalities in the field of political culture. The imperial projects of Portug…
Colombo versus Cannanore
This article compares the urban structures of early modern Colombo and Cannanore, two South Asian port cities controlled by the Portuguese during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and taken over by the Dutch in 1656 and 1663. It is argued that, whereas Cannanore was an urban complex marked by a set of walls that separated ethnically and religiously distinct neighborhoods, Colombo, less influenced by regulations emanating from Lisbon and Go…
Portuguese Diplomacy in Asia in the Sixteenth Century
Scattered as it was over thousands of miles of African and Asian coastline, the Portuguese empire in the East had a peculiar shape when compared to the Spanish one in the New World. As one author of the early seventeenth century put it, ‘the king our lord does not have more than twenty leagues of land in all Asia, from Macao to the Cape of Good Hope’. Portugal was a small country with a population of one and a half million people, and it is no su…
The Matrioshka Principle and How it was Overcome
This article deals with roughly the first hundred years of Portuguese expansion in Sri Lanka (1506-1600), the local “reactions” to it, and how the interaction was changed when the Portuguese Crown fell to the Habsburgs in 1580. It analyzes how Portuguese and Sri Lankan notions of kingship, authority and Empire were included in a dialog that indicates the existence of commonalities in the field of political culture. The imperial projects of Portug…
Colombo versus Cannanore
This article compares the urban structures of early modern Colombo and Cannanore, two South Asian port cities controlled by the Portuguese during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and taken over by the Dutch in 1656 and 1663. It is argued that, whereas Cannanore was an urban complex marked by a set of walls that separated ethnically and religiously distinct neighborhoods, Colombo, less influenced by regulations emanating from Lisbon and Go…
Kingship and conversion in sixteenth-century Sri Lanka
Early Brazil
The Portuguese in Sri Lanka and South India
El espacio subordinado al tiempo en la cronística franciscana
This article explores the Conquista Espiritual do Oriente of Fr. Paulo da Trindade, a major Franciscan chronicle written in Goa in the 1630s. The main focus is on an examination of the articulation between spatial and temporal aspects of the narrative, especially in the chapters describing Ceylon, which constitute a central piece in the symbolic economy of the text and of the Franciscan order as such in the East. A close reading reveals the absol…
Herzog, Tamar, "Frontiers of Possession. Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas"
The Temporal Politics of Spiritual Conquest
This article queries the relationship between imperial expansion, geographical knowledge and epistemic spatiality in Portuguese Asia. It proposes to disentangle these aspects by exploring the Conquista Espiritual do Oriente of Friar Paulo da Trindade, a Lusophone, Asian-born Franciscan writing in Goa in the 1630s. Trindade’s chronicle provides disturbing insights into the difficult relationship between imperial expansion and the spatial organizat…
Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932
Journal Article Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932: Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism, by Timothy J. Coates Get access Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932: Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism, by Timothy J. Coates (Leiden: Brill, 2014; pp. xxvi + 205. €99). Z. Biedermann Z. Biedermann 1University College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic …
Global Gifts
(Dis)connected empires imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan diplomacy, and the making of a Habsburg conquest in Asia
(Dis)connected Empires' offers a new contribution to the current debate on the role of global history in a world of resurgent nationalisms. Biedermann explores the world of early diplomatic connections between Europe and Asia in the Renaissance, focusing on the rarely told story of Portuguese encounters with the Buddhist kingdoms of Sri Lanka
Three Ways of Locating the Global
Reflections, echoes, connections: the sixteenth century abounds with transcontinental phenomena carrying the potential to challenge Eurocentric narratives in global history. Even as we look back on the now substantial historiography of early modern global flows and connections, new and surprising aspects catch our eye every time we delve into the sixteenth century. We may take almost any single year — for example, 1546, not a particularly remarka…
David Ringrose. Europeans Abroad, 1450–1750
Europe’s role in the making of the early modern world has been subject to much critical scrutiny over the past three decades. Terms such as “discoveries,” “conquest,” and “expansion” are now often used between quotation marks, qualified, and at times avoided altogether. The deconstruction of Eurocentric narratives of early globalization has accompanied the shifts in economic and political power of recent times. Connected histories and other trans…
Le jardin aux cartes qui bifurquent
Le jardin aux cartes qui bifurquent: La mer Caspienne vue de Venise et de Goa au xvie siècleCet article compare les représentations cartographiques de la région caspienne produites vers 1560 à Goa et à Venise, en faisant aussi référence à d'autres centres de cartographie tels que Lisbonne, Séville et Anvers. Il explore les logiques scientifiques, culturelles, techniques et commerciales qui ont conduit à des cartographies profondément dissemblable…
Portugal in the Sea of Oman. Religion and Politics. Research on Documents, edited by Abdulrahman Al-Salimi and Michael Jansen and in collabaration with Pedro Pinto, Karsten Ley, and Helmut Siepmann
La Renaissance au grand large
Escrituras cartográficas
Al escribir sobre sus viajes y los de otros, los autores portugueses del siglo XVI no sólo describieron el mundo, como también contribuyeron a su forma. Este artículo explora las estructuras cartográficas de la escritura de viajes, presentando una interpretación preliminar de las principales prácticas de la representación de los espacios (globales, del imperio y más allá de ello) en los textos escritos. Tocamos, entre otros aspectos, en el contra…
A História Natural de Portugal de Leonhard Thurneysser zum Thurn, ca. 1555–1556, written by Bernardo Jerosch Herold, Thomas Horst, and Henrique Leitão Itinerarium, written by Hieronymus Münzer and edi…
In a Garden of Forking Maps
This article compares the cartographical representations of the Caspian region produced around 1560 in Goa and Venice, with references to other centers of mapmaking such as Lisbon, Seville, and Antwerp. It explores the scientific, cultural, technical, and commercial logics that led to profoundly dissimilar cartographies of the Caspian and its surroundings in different centers of map production around the same time. It asks questions about the con…
Mafalda Soares da Cunha, coord., Resistências. Insubmissão e Revolta no Império Português
Few people will have heard about the "War of the Mad" (Guerra dos doidos) that tore apart the fragile fabric of Timorese society in 1776-86, or the protests staged by Black working women in Lisbon in 1717 against the Municipal council's tax plans.Only rarely does one hear the story of Ana Dias, whose home in Funchal became a focus of illegal Jewish practices in the late 1500s, or the rise and fall of Tamandar, also known as "Papa Antnio", the ind…
Falando ElRey, lhe perguntou da saude d’ElRey”
Este artigo insere-se numa investigação mais alargada sobre as dinâmicas diplomáticas que sustentaram a primeira globalização. Nas páginas que se seguem, procurarei, primeiro, caracterizar a cultura diplomática que, no meu entender, foi crucial para o estabelecimento de relações duráveis no Índico, e também numa África Ocidental que possibilitou, poucos anos antes, aprendizagens relevantes para a acção dos portugueses no Oriente. Passarei depois …
Empire of Contingency
How Early? How Modern? Reflections on the Global Early Modern (Part 1)
This Introduction reflects on the editors’ shared impression that in recent years, scholarship in the “early modern” field has remained insightful and archivally rich but reluctant to engage with large conceptual, methodological, and historiographical questions. The term “early modern” has lost precise meaning and deserves greater scrutiny. The authors featured in this special issue approach the conundrum of the meaning of “early modernity” in th…
History (14 works) · Ancient history (10 works) · Art (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Portuguese (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (8 works) · History (8 works) · Law (8 works)