The focus of this volume is on illuminating how local educational traditions developed in particular contexts around the world before or during the encounter with European early modern culture. In this vein, this volume breaks from the common narrative of educational historiography privileging the imposition of European structures and its consequences on local educational traditions. Such a narrative lends to historiographical prejudice that fosters a distorted image of indigenous educational cultures as “historyless,” as if history was brought to them merely through the influence of European models. Fifteen multi-disciplinary scholars globally have contributed with surveys and perspectives on the history of local traditions in countries from around the globe before their own modernities.
Cristiano Casalini is Associate Professor and holds the Chair in Jesuit Pedagogy and Educational History at Boston College. He has published mostly on education in the early modern period, and he is the editor-in-chief of the book series History of Early Modern Educational Thought.
Edward Choi, Ph.D. (2020, Boston College), is a research assistant at the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College. He has published articles and book chapters on a variety of topics including Korean education, internationalization, and the global phenomenon of family-owned universities.
Ayenachew A. Woldegiyorgis, Ph.D., is a graduate from the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College. He has published articles and chapters on a range of topics related to education in low- and middle-income countries, particularly Ethiopia.
Contributors include: Guochang Shen, Yongyan Wang, Xia Shen, Gaétan Rappo, Sunghwan Hwang, Jan S. Aritonang, Mere Skerrett, Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri, Zackery M. Heern, Judith Francis Zeitlin, Layla Jorge Teixeira Cesar, Mustafa Gündüz, Igor Fedyukin, Edit Szegedi, Inese Runce, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, and Davíð Ólafsson.
Introduction
Cristiano Casalini
Part 1
Asia and Oceania
1 “Universities” in Japan? Education and Places of Learning in the Early Modern Period
Gaétan Rappo
2 School Education in China from 1400 to 1800
Guochang Shen, Yongyan Wang, and Xia Shen
3 Education in Premodern Korea. Commitment, Resiliency, and Change
Edward Choi and Sunghwan Hwang
4 Mission Schools in Batakland
Jan S. Aritonang
5 Interaction between Māori “Indigenous” Educational Systems and the “Imposed” Educational Systems of the West
Mere Skerrett
6 Education and the Transmission of Knowledge in India’s Medieval Past. Contents, Processes, and Implications
Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri
7 Shiʿi Educational Traditions and Systems in Early Modern Iraq and Iran
Zackery Mirza Heern
Part 2
Americas
8 Learning and Literacy in Mesoamerica. Pre-Hispanic Traditions and the Challenges of Alphabetic Hegemony
Judith Francis Zeitlin
9 Indigenous Peoples and Colonial Early Modern Education in Brazil
Layla Jorge Teixeira Cesar
Part 3
Africa and the Ottoman Mediterranean
10 Ethiopian Traditional Education and Fifteenth-Century Reformist Movements
Ayenachew A. Woldegiyorgis
11 Premodern Ottoman Educational Institutions
Mustafa Gündüz
Part 4
Blurred Boundaries
12 Education in Early Modern Russia. Beyond the “Petrine Revolution”
Igor Fedyukin
13 Educational Traditions in the Principality of Transylvania (1541–1691)
Edit Szegedi
14 Educational Traditions in the Early Modern Baltics, 1400–1800
Inese Runce
15 In the Name of Barefoot Historians. In-Between Spaces within the Icelandic Educational System
Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð Ólafsson
Index
