The science of farming is a science full of benefits; it is the origin of all industries.” ʿ ilm-i filāḥat ʿ ilm-i pür menāfiʿ ve aṣl-ı cemi-i ṣanāyıʿ, Nevi Efendi (1533/4–1598)
Agriculture essentially means reducing complex ecosystems to controlled habitats for a few selected species of plants and animals. It encourages meticulous observation of natural patterns, and its improvement and stability often provide the backdrop for experimentalism and natural history.
This working group explores how the quotidian labour of the field informed the disparate ways of organizing knowledge across pre-modern Middle East and Sinographic realms. Our sights train on:
- Boundary work: how historical actors classified and negotiated “peasantly” knowledge among various fields of knowledge in Asian cultures. Some of these fields of knowledge parallel modern disciplines, such as medicine, hydrology, forestry, geography, or botany, but nevertheless had very different boundaries, teleologies, and structures. Others have no comparable Western counterpart. We aim to comprehend the “scientific” rationale underlying these domains of learning.
- Material practices: the role of empirical observation, argumentative styles, and experimentation in this boundary work. Across the Islamicate and the Sinographic world, agriculture formed the economic backbone while political power was concentrated among landowning elites. These elites, while removed from direct agricultural labor, positioned themselves as learned stewards of the land. Such hands-on engagement of elites with the material realities of agriculture—while often mediated through hired labor—generated both practical and theoretical knowledge. Our purpose is to elucidate these generative processes, while remaining particularly attentive to the agency of material actions.
Recent Activities
Reading Group “Agriculture, Metrology, and Statecraft in the Sinographic World, 1000–1850,” held on every other Tuesday from 15:00–17:00, beginning 23.01.2024.
Reading Group “Agriculture in the History of Science,” held fortnightly on Fridays, 11.11.2022–10.02.2023.
News & Upcoming
Edited volume in preparation, edited by Justin Niermeier-Dohoney and Aleksandar Shopov: “Toward a Global History of Soil: Sciences, Practices, and Materialities in the Early Modern World” (Brill, forthcoming).
The group has partnered with Brill to launch the book series “Agriculture and the Making of Sciences, 1100–1700: Texts, Practices and Transcultural Transmission of Knowledge in Asia.”