Zoltán Biedermann
Visiting Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and History (Spring 2012)
Zoltan_Biedermann@brown.edu
BIOGRAPHY
Zoltán Biedermann received his PhD from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and the Universidade Nova in Lisbon. He is a historian of the Portuguese Empire, with a focus on Asia in the early modern period. His main interest is in early imperial encounters, ideas of conquest and the representation and organization of space in maps and texts. Besides his core work on the Portuguese in Sri Lanka, South Arabia and the Persian Gulf, he has published on subjects including diplomacy, cartography, urbanism and religious missions. He was an associate researcher at the Center for Overseas History in Lisbon from 1999 to 2008, to which he remains attached. Between 2003 and 2006 he coordinated the international research project Historical Atlas of the Persian Gulf at the EPHE in Paris. In 2006-07 he was an Ahmanson-Getty fellow at the UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Since 2006 he has also been a co-editor of the Maritime Asia series published by Harrassowitz Verlag in Germany. He has been a Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, since 2009. Publications include Soqotra: Geschichte einer ehemals christlichen Insel im Indischen Ozean (2006) and the Historical Atlas of the Persian Gulf (2006). He is currently working on a book entitled Mutual Conquests: Sri Lanka and the Making of Iberian Imperialism in Asia, 1500-1600.
Publications (selection)
Soqotra: Geschichte einer ehemals christlichen Insel im Indischen Ozean (Maritime Asia 17), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006, vi + 232 p.
Historical Atlas of the Persian Gulf (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries) / Atlas historique du golfe Persique (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), ed. by Dejanirah Couto, Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont & Mahmoud Taleghani, coordinated by Zoltán Biedermann, with contributions by Patrick Gautier Dalché & Elio Brancaforte (Terrarum Orbis, 6), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2006, 478 p.
Articles
‘The Matrioshka Principle and How it was Overcome: Portuguese and Habsburg Attitudes toward Imperial Authority in Sri Lanka and the Responses of the Rulers of Kotte (1506-1656)’, Journal of Early Modern History, 13, 4 (2009), pp. 265-310
‘Colombo versus Cannanore: Contrasting Structures of Two Early Colonial Port Cities in South Asia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 53, 2 (2009), pp. 413-459
‘Notes on a Portuguese Map of Ceylon: Fernão Vaz Dourado, 1568 / Notas sobre um mapa português de Ceilão: Fernão Vaz Dourado, 1568’, in Oriente, 18 (2007), pp. 97-105
‘Uma erva de muitas virtudes: o aloés de Socotorá na mira de viajantes e botanistas desde a Antiguidade até à Época Moderna’, in Revista de Cultura de Macau, 21 (2007), pp. 28-46
‘Portuguese Diplomacy in Asia in the Sixteenth Century: a Preliminary Overview’, in Itinerario, 29, 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 13-37
‘Nos primórdios da antropologia moderna: a Ásia de João de Barros’, in Anais de História de Além-Mar, 4 (2003), p. 29-61
‘A última carta de Francisco de Albuquerque (Cochim, 31 de Dezembro de 1503)’, in Anais de História de Além-Mar, 3 (2002), p. 123-153
‘Nas pegadas do apóstolo: Socotorá nas fontes europeias dos séculos XVI e XVII’, in Anais de História de Além-Mar, 1 (2000), pp. 287-386
book chapters
‘Imagining Asia from the Margins: Early Portuguese Conceptions of the Continent’s Architecture and Space’, in Hazel Hahn & Vimalin Rujivacharakul (eds.), Architectural-ized Asia: Mapping the Continent through Architecture and Geography (forthcoming)
‘Um outro Vieira? Pedro de Basto, Fernão de Queiroz e a profecia jesuítica na Índia portuguesa’, in Gaetano Sabatini, José Javier Ruíz Ibáñez & Pedro Cardim (eds.), Antonio Vieira, Roma e l’unversalesimo delle monarchie portoghese e spagnola, Rome: Università degli Studi Roma Tre (under press)
‘Ruptura imperial ou realização de um velho plano português? O conturbado início da conquista de Ceilão em 1594’, in Santiago Hernández Martínez (ed.), Governo, administração e representação do poder no Portugal e seus territórios ultramarinos no período dos Áustrias (1580-1640), Lisbon: Tinta da China / Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2011, pp. 147-176
‘Um viajante sem mapas? Figueroa e a cartografia da Pérsia’, in Rui Loureiro & Vasco Resende (eds.), Estudos sobre Don García de Silva y Figueroa e os “Comentarios” da embaixada à Pérsia (1614-1624), Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2011, pp. 367-393
‘Mapping the Backyard of an Empire: Portuguese Cartographies of the Persian Littoral, 1500-1600’, in Rudi Matthee & Jorge Flores (eds.), Portugal, the Persian Gulf and Safavid Persia, Ghent: Peeters, 2011, pp. 51-78
‘The “Malwana Convention” revisited. Notes on the Lankan transition to Iberian rule’, in Gaston Perera (ed.), Christians and Spices: The Portuguese in Sri Lanka and Goa, Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2010, pp. 29-48
‘Home Sweet Home: The Networks of Fernão Mendes Pinto in Portugal’ (with Andreia Martins de Carvalho), in Jorge Santos Alves (ed.), Fernão Mendes Pinto and the Peregrinação, vol. I: Studies, Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2010, pp. 29-53
‘An Island under the Influence: Soqotra at the Crossroads of Egypt, Persia and India from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age’, in A. Schottenhammer & R. Kauz (eds.), The Silk Route of the Seas: From the Persian Gulf to the China Seas, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010, pp. 9-24
‘Ormuz et sa région dans les cartes portugaises du XVIe siècle’, in Dejanirah Couto & Rui Loureiro (eds.), Revisiting Hormuz. Portuguese Interactions in the Persian Gulf Region in the Early Modern Period, Wiesbaden / Paris: Harrassowitz Verlag / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2008, pp. 121-133
‘Representations of the Sri Lankan Space in Portuguese Texts and Maps of the Sixteenth Century’, in Jorge Flores (ed.), Re-exploring the links: History and Constructed Histories between Portugal and Sri Lanka (Maritime Asia 18), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007, p. 235-260
‘As cidades luso-asiáticas no tempo de Francisco Xavier’, in João Paulo Oliveira e Costa & Carla Alferes Pinto (eds.), O Mundo de São Francisco Xavier, Lisbon: Epal, 2007, pp. 87-105
‘Krieg und Frieden im Garten Eden: die Portugiesen in Sri Lanka (1506-1658)’, in Michael Kraus & Hans Ottomeyer (eds.), Novos Mundos /Neue Welten, Exhibition Catalogue, Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum / Sandstein Verlag, 2007, pp. 151-161
‘Tribute, Vassalage and Warfare in Early Luso-Lankan Relations (1506-1543)’, in Fátima Gracias, Celsa Pinto & Charles Borges (eds.), Indo-Portuguese History: Global Trends. Proceedings of the XIth International Seminar on Indo-Portuguese History, Goa: University of Goa, 2005, pp. 185-206
‘Das Geschäft mit den Dickhäutern – Anmerkungen zum ceylonesischen Elephantenhandel vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert’, in J. S. Alves, C. Guillot & R. Ptak (eds.), Mirabilia Asiatica - Produtos raros no comércio marítimo/ Produits rares dans le commerce maritime/ Seltene Waren im Seehandel, Wiesbaden / Lisbon: Harrassowitz Verlag / Fundação Oriente, 2005, pp. 141-167
‘De regresso ao Quarto Império: a China de João de Barros e o imaginário imperial joanino’, in R. Carneiro & A. Matos (eds.), D. João III e o Império, Actas do Congresso Internacional comemorativo do seu nascimento (Lisboa e Tomar, 4 a 8 de junho de 2002), Lisbon: CHAM & CEPCEP, 2004, pp. 103-120
