The Medieval History Journal

This essay argues that the monstrous peoples depicted on the edge of the œcumene in medieval maps of the world are not the expression of a medieval preference for the bizarre or fantastic, or the reflection of a mythically oriented consciousness. Rather, they need to be ap proached as a genuine confrontation with the strange or the alien. Drawing on insights from sociological theory, the essay suggests that as liminal figures, the monstra articulate a transcendence inherent in strangeness; at the same time they help define the borders ofgenus humanum, hence in the end to define what is one's own.

The article attempts a reconstruction of the ways in which the pro duction of knowledge about Persia was organised by Engelbert Kaempfer in his writings. This late seventeenth century German traveller to Asia has been unfailingly commended for his critical empiricism. While this has been taken for granted in thefield of natural sciences—Kaempfer was a famous physician and botanist—it is more difficult, when searching for the foundations of his judgement about the political system of Persia, to distinguish between experience and scholarly tradition. The article provides a survey of the information Kaempfer had to rely upon. A comparison between these sources and the report itself gives us some insight into the processes through which the production of socio-political knowledge about an alien world took place and how the encounter with the alien exercised an influence on the political judgement of a seventeenth century explorer.

Around 1550, Europeans came into close contact with Amerindians of the Brazilian coast. This paper explores in which way the Tupi and the Europeans perceived each other and how this experience of alterity was translated into culturally informed models of otherness. While the Europeans-emphasised contrasts between their culture and the Tupi, describing indigenous anthropophagous customs, the Tupi seemed to accept the Europeans at a level of parity, attempting to include them into their ritual life. European authors depicted the Tupi as simple and natural people, presenting them as an antithesis to European 'decadence'. Thus, South American cannibals became teachers of the White Men.

The Mongols utilised personnel from several Central and West Asian subject states as administrators in China, where they constituted a separate class (Semuren). They also occupied a unique position be tween the Mongols and the Chinese since they were conquerors but also subjects. As such, they present an interesting example of alterity in the Mongol empire. Many Semuren successfully straddled both sides of that divide, thriving simultaneously as political and cultural elites. This paper examines those Semuren through the lens of alterity, and argues that the strategies they adopted to craft their identity were based in, and took advantage of, their bi-polar alterity.

The article investigates the processes by which a particular image of slavery was created and diffused in the Mediterranean basin. It draws upon notarial records from the archives of Dubrovnik and Barcelona, whichfurnish rich descriptions of the origins, names, character traits and physical anomalies of 'human merchandise' during the Middle Ages. The constitution of a particular image of slavery cannot be dissociated from politico-economic considerations that governed the working of medieval communes, nor does the conversion of the slave through baptism bring with it an automatic change in servile status.

With the introduction of Christian conversions, non-Christian north ern and eastern Europe were conceived of as a unified North from the ninth century onwards, as aquilo. This notion of an alien North retained its hold over contemporary historiography, even after the completion of the missions in the twelfth century. The political, cultural, ethnic and linguistic otherness of the north-east continued to foster associations of the North as the kingdom of the devil, regardless of the fact that the regions beyond the Elbe had converted to Christianity. The so-called North in northern and eastern Europe thus provided an image of the alien for old Europe for more than a millennium.

This paper examines the production of knowledge about cultural difference as an interactiveprocess, emerging from a dialogue between German Pietist missionaries and local population in a South Indian region in early eighteenth century. Drawing upon sources from both sides, it analyses the respective cultural codes by which the alien was defined. How did cultural boundaries shift during a long-term interaction with elements initially viewed as the other? By looking at instances of mutual recognition and of rejection, the paper argues that the dissolution of certain notions of alterity over time did not necessarily lead to a 'synthesis of cultures'; rather responses and reactions to otherness refracted back upon an understanding of the self, often generating afresh set of questions and tensions.