SPECIALIST IN MICROHISTORY, GLOBAL TRADE NAMED TO HOLD ARMENIAN CHAIR AT UCLA
Published: Wednesday May 23, 2012
Dr. Sebouh Aslanian.
Sebouh Aslanian: “Quedah Merchant was no ordinary vessel”
Los Angeles – An award-winning young historian has been selected to
fill a chair originally occupied by retired UCLA historian Richard
Hovannisian, who is widely regarded as the world’s dean of Armenian
studies.
Sebouh David Aslanian, who joined UCLA’s department of history in
September 2011 as an assistant professor of history, will be installed
May 22 in the Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair.
“It was a challenge to find a scholar who could one day fill Richard
Hovannisian’s large shoes,” said David Myers, chair of UCLA’s history
department. “But we believe that Sebouh Aslanian is that person,
and we are delighted and honored to have him.”
Born and raised in Ethiopia, Aslanian is the grandson of Armenian
immigrants who fled the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s. His maternal
grandfather, George Djerrahian, co-founded Ethiopia’s first privately
owned printing press in 1931. The family emigrated to the United States
in 1976, on the heels of the Ethiopian Revolution, and then settled
in the United Arab Emirates, where Aslanian attended middle school,
before moving to Canada.
After completing his undergraduate degree at McGill University in
Montreal, Aslanian received his Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia
University. Before joining UCLA’s faculty, he taught at California
State University, Long Beach; Cornell University; the University of
Michigan; the University of Chicago; and Whitman College. From 2009
to 2010, Aslanian was a Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellow in
world history at Cornell.
Able to conduct research in a range of European languages (French,
Italian, Spanish) as well as classical Armenian, Aslanian is fluent in
the western and eastern dialects of modern Armenian. In addition, he is
one of the few scholars active today who is able to conduct research
in the dialect of Julfa, the home, until the early 17th century,
of a group of Armenian silk merchants near today’s republic of Armenia.
The history of the merchants, who were resettled under the Persian
empire in New Julfa, a suburb of today’s Iranian metropolis of
Isfahan, is a central theme of Aslanian’s scholarship. He also
is involved in global microhistory, a new trend in world history
scholarship that explores the details of the lives of marginal or
previously overlooked figures as windows onto larger processes and
trends shaping global history.
“With the skill of a detective, he traces the entwined byways of
commerce and culture traveled by Armenian merchants as they made
their way from Julfa to India to Europe and back,” Myers said.
Aslanian is the author of “From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean:
The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants From New Julfa”
(University of California Press, 2011), a history of the emergence
and growth of a global trade network operated by Armenian merchants.
Tracing a network of commercial settlements that stretched from London
and Amsterdam to Manila and Acapulco, from the early 17th to the late
18th centuries, the book was selected for the PEN Center USA literary
award for the most outstanding first book of 2011 to come from the
UC Press.
“Sebouh David Aslanian has been tireless in his consultation of
archival sources in India, Armenia and Iran, throughout Europe, and
even in Mexico,” said a review of the book that appeared in the Times
Literary Supplement.
With the goal of illuminating the little-told history of French
expansion into the Indian Ocean, Aslanian is now working on a
microhistory of an Armenian merchant from Julfa, Marcara Avachintz,
who in 1666 was appointed by Louis XIV and his minister of finance,
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, as the first regional director in the Indian
Ocean and Iran of the newly created French East India Company.
He also is working on the history of the Santa Catharina, an
Armenian-freighted ship that was seized by the British navy in 1748
against the backdrop of the War of the Austrian Succession. Using more
than 2,000 pieces of family and mercantile correspondence that were
on the ship at the time of its capture, Aslanian plans to illuminate
the larger history of globalization in the Indian Ocean arena during
the 17th and 18th centuries.
In addition, Aslanian is gathering material for a third book, on the
history of diasporic Armenian print culture across a range of areas,
including Venice, Amsterdam and Madras. In a related activity, he is
organizing a two-day international conference at UCLA on the history
of Armenian print culture. Entitled “Port Cities and Printers,”
the Nov. 10-11 conference will celebrate the 500th anniversary of
the printing of the first Armenian book in Venice.
At UCLA, Aslanian has taught a sweeping, two-quarter survey of
Armenian history from its genesis to the 18th century. He has also
taught a seminar in one of his areas of specialization – the early
modern period of Armenian history (1500 to 1800).
Aslanian was selected for the chair in April 2011 after a one-year
international search.
“It’s a wonderful honor to have this position,” Aslanian said. “I’m
extremely grateful, and it’s an excellent fit because I get to do
both things I can’t live without – researching and teaching.”
Richard Hovannisian retired last year after a 50-year career at UCLA.
While earning an international reputation as a pioneer in the field
of Armenian studies, he organized both the undergraduate and graduate
programs in Armenian history at UCLA and amassed one of the largest
collections of oral histories by survivors of the Armenian Genocide
of 1915-1923.
“As the towering figure in the study of modern Armenian history,
Professor Hovannisian not only undertook path-breaking and far-reaching
research,” Myers said. “He established UCLA as the major center of
instruction and research in modern Armenian history in the world.”
http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2012-05-23-specialist-in-microhistory-global-trade-named-to-hold-armenian-chair-at-ucla-