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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261022T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261022T200000
DTSTAMP:20261002T110911Z
CREATED:20260825T133044Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261002T110911Z
UID:25485-1792693800-1792699200@royalasiaticsociety.org
SUMMARY:Mughals in Bombay? Border-making and itinerant belonging in a colonial port city
DESCRIPTION:This lecture is part of the Royal Asiatic Society’s Maritime Asia Series \nAbout the Talk\nThis is a talk about Persianate Bombay\, a city that is not commonly seen as a part of the Persianate world or era\, or as a border city. I argue that Bombay was both- Persianate and a border city- in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As larger numbers of migrants arrived from the ports of the Persian Gulf following the steam revolution of the nineteenth century\, Bombay’s administrators sought to criminalise itinerancy and reify the borders of the Raj by sorting “desirables” from “undesirables”. Amidst these state processes of border-making and fixing people in space through property and taxation\, Persian itinerants built diverse professions and overlapping orders of social belonging as Mughals (Shias) and Iranis (Zoroastrians)\, tied by shared norms of Persianate adab. As the city transitioned from being an ocean-facing port city to a nation-facing mill city\, so did the norms of belonging and the notions of space embedded in its neighbourhoods. \nAbout the Speaker\nTania Bhattacharyya is Assistant Professor of the History of Capitalism at the University of Warwick. She is a historian of migration\, urbanity and labour in the British Empire and specializes in the study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Her book manuscript Ocean Bombay: Space\, itinerancy and community in a colonial port city\, 1839-1945 is currently under review with Columbia University Press. It tells the story of colonial Bombay as it transitioned from an ocean-facing port city to a nation-facing mill city by following itinerants who traversed the routes between Zanzibar\, Aden\, Bushire and Bombay and studying the communities and neighbourhoods that formed at the interstices of these networks in Bombay. \n  \nFree and open to all. \nTo join over Zoom\, please register here.
URL:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/lectures-event/mughals-in-bombay-border-making-and-itinerant-belonging-in-an-imperial-port-city/
LOCATION:Royal Asiatic Society Lecture Theatre\, 14 Stephenson Way\, London\, NW1 2HD\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:RAS Lectures & Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Mughal-Masjid-1.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261029T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261029T200000
DTSTAMP:20261006T150854Z
CREATED:20260916T085242Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261006T150854Z
UID:25449-1793298600-1793304000@royalasiaticsociety.org
SUMMARY:Book Launch: The Art of Drinking Chocolate: Coconut Cups and Other Marvels from the New World
DESCRIPTION:About The Book\nJoin us for the launch of the new book The Art of Drinking Chocolate: Coconut Cups and Other Marvels from the New World\, published by Oxbow Books in September. This richly illustrated journey into the history of chocolate explores a fascinating and largely forgotten aspect of the ritual of drinking it: the use of coconuts and gourds\, often mounted in silver\, as luxurious drinking vessels. This tradition emerged in the Americas in the sixteenth century and endured for more than four centuries\, bringing together Indigenous practices\, Asian materials\, European craftsmanship and changing ideas about luxury and consumption. \nThe presentation will also uncover the remarkable cultural history of the coconut\, a fruit prized for its extraordinary versatility\, providing water and food as well as fibre for rope\, fuel and natural vessels for drinking. Despite its strong association with the Caribbean today\, the coconut was introduced to parts of the Americas from the Philippines in the sixteenth century\, becoming part of a remarkable story of trans-Pacific exchange. We will discover the extraordinary beliefs and stories of coconuts\, and their magical properties. Such ideas shaped the ways in which coconut-shell chocolate cups were understood\, used and valued. Some were believed to protect their owners against poison or to possess prophylactic and magical powers. \nThe event will surely deliver lively exploration of the intersections between food history\, material culture\, global trade\, ritual and belief at the dawn of the early modern “Age of Wonders”. Following these remarkable objects across oceans and cultures reveals complex histories of exchange between Asia\, the Americas and Europe\, while illuminating changing attitudes towards luxury\, consumption\, magic and the natural world. \n  \nAbout the Author\nDr. Juan de Lara is an archaeologist and art historian who teaches at the University of Oxford. He has held leading roles across major cultural institutions\, including Director of the Armenian Institute (2023–2024)\, Director of the Bagri Foundation (2021–2023)\, and Head of Cultural at Asia House (2016–2021). \nWorking internationally\, he has advised on cultural initiatives across the Middle East and Europe\, collaborating with leading organisations on projects such as the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and the Epic Iran exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. \n  \nFree and open to all. \nTo join online\, please register here.
URL:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/lectures-event/book-launch-the-art-of-drinking-chocolate-coconut-cups-and-other-marvels-from-the-new-world/
CATEGORIES:Book Launch,RAS Lectures & Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/COVER-300DPI-copy.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261103T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261103T203000
DTSTAMP:20261005T111631Z
CREATED:20261005T111604Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261005T111631Z
UID:25544-1793730600-1793737800@royalasiaticsociety.org
SUMMARY:CITY OF VICTORY: HAMPI VIJAYANAGARA Illustrated Talk by Dr George Michell
DESCRIPTION:About the Talk\nVijayanagara Hampi was capital of the greatest Hindu kingdom of Southern India between the 14th and 16th centuries. Contemporary Persian and Portuguese travellers testify to the power of its emperors and the splendour of their court\, the grand scale of the city and its imposing buildings\, and the wealth of its markets where diamonds could be purchased. To this day\, the remains of Vijayanagara in central Karnataka give the best possible idea of the magnificence of this great capital. Covering an area of more than 30 square kilometres\, the ruins are set in an astonishingly rugged landscape of granite boulders through which flows the sacred Tungabhadra River. \n            In 1986\, Hampi was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO\, which included it on its list of antiquities of global significance. The city’s extraordinary religious and courtly ruins that include more than a thousand structures\, continue to draw pilgrims\, artists\, scholars and visitors from around the world. In his illustrated talk\, Michell will give the historical background to Vijayanagara as well as discussing the principal monuments with their vivid sculptural decoration.  \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nThe London based\, architectural historian Dr George Michell trained as an architect in Melbourne and then continued with a doctoral thesis on the Badami Chalukya temples for the School of Oriental African Studies at the University of London. Beginning in 1980\, Michell spent over 20 years mapping Hampi in collaboration with the American archaeologist John M. Fritz. Together they have authored City of Victory (Mumbai 2026)\, illustrated with splendid images by the Australian photographer John Gollings.
URL:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/lectures-event/city-of-victory-hampi-vijayanagara-illustrated-talk-by-dr-george-michell/
CATEGORIES:RAS Lectures & Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Elephant-Stables_Vijayanagara.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261215T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261215T203000
DTSTAMP:20261006T103605Z
CREATED:20261006T103131Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261006T103605Z
UID:25550-1797359400-1797366600@royalasiaticsociety.org
SUMMARY:Indians in the Ocean: Promises of Slaves and Pirates\, 1000-1500 CE 
DESCRIPTION:Part of the Maritime Asia lecture series. \nAbout the Talk\nThe idea that the Indian Ocean was a peaceful place before Europeans arrived with cannon-bearing ships and combined trade with warfare from the sixteenth century onward has been challenged in recent scholarship. From Gujarat to Coromandel and Bengal to Malabar\, local communities participated in\, benefited from\, and were also subjected to a broader economy of violence\, with or without state support. The forms of this violence varied\, but enslavement and piracy were among its most significant means of profit-making. Yet we know very little about Indians who were taken as slaves across the seas or worked as pirates between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. This talk explores the violent worlds of maritime slavery and piracy\, complicating conventional understandings of both phenomena in the Indian Ocean and the Indian subcontinent. It builds on my recent book\, Indians in the Ocean: Cultures of Trade and Travel (New Delhi: Penguin Random House\, 2026; Leiden: Leiden University Press\, forthcoming). \nAbout the Speaker\nMahmood Kooria is a historian of the Indian Ocean world\, currently teaching at the School of History\, Classics and Archaeology\, University of Edinburgh\, and director of the Edinburgh Centre for Global History. He earned his PhD in global history at the Leiden University Institute for History in 2016\, authored Islamic Law in Circulation: Shafiʿi Texts Across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean (Cambridge\, 2022)\, and co-edited Malabar in the Indian Ocean World: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region (Oxford\, 2018). In 2024\, he won the Infosys Prize in Humanities and Social Sciences for his contributions to the studies of Islam and Malabar in the Indian Ocean world. \n  \nFree and open to all
URL:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/lectures-event/indians-in-the-ocean-promises-of-slaves-and-pirates-1000-1500-ce/
CATEGORIES:RAS Lectures & Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/City_of_Cannanore_1572.jpg
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