Dr Alan Strathern
I work on the global history of religious encounter and conversion, particularly in the early modern period (1500-1800). However, I have recently completed a more general theoretical book about the nature of religious change and its relationship with politics across the whole of world history, Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History (Cambridge 2019), while a companion volume will look at ruler conversions in Kongo, Hawaii, Japan and Thailand. I first specialised in Sri Lankan history, as in my first monograph, Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Sri Lanka (2007), and articles on such themes as origin myths, source criticism, sacred kingship, and ethnic identity.
I teach both European and Global History as a Fellow at Brasenose College, and a Lecturer at St. John's College. I'm happy to consider DPhil supervision across a wide range of areas in the early modern world.
Research Interests
- Religious Conversion
- Ethnic Identity
- Global Comparative History
I work in the global history of religious encounter. I have recently completed a book drawing on anthropology and historical sociology to offer a new theoretical understanding of religion and its relationship with politics across premodern history: Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History (Cambridge 2019). A companion volume will look at why the rulers of some societies converted to Christianity and others did not: Converting Kings: Kongo Hawaii, Thailand and Japan c. 1450-1850 (Cambridge, forthcoming). Underlying both books is a large question: Why does the religious map of the world today look the way it does? Why, for example, did large stretches of Asia remain immune to monotheism? In two or three publications, I have also begun to extend this line of thinking to the expansion of Islam.
Much of my primary research has concerned those parts of the world that came into contact with European seaborne expansion in the early modern period c. 1500-1800. I first specialised in Sri Lankan history, as in my first monograph, Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land (Cambridge 2007), and articles on such themes as origin myths, source criticism, and the development of ethnic consciousness. More recently I have co-edited a book with Zoltan Biedermann ranging across all of Lankan history before 1850: Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History (UCL Press, 2017): available free here http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/sri-lanka-at-the-crossroads-of-history. In the past ten years, however, my research has increasingly taken a comparative, inter-disciplinary and global approach. This is reflected in a volume I am co-editing with Azfar Moin on Sacred Kingship in World History: Between Immanence and Transcendence , following a conference of the same name held in Oxford in 2019: https://global.history.ox.ac.uk/event/conference-sacred-kingship-world-history-between-immanence-and-transcendence/
Longer-term research projects now include a general overview of religion and state in the early modern world, and a global investigation of so-called apotheosis interpretations in moments of first encounter.
Follow Alan Strathern on Instagram
In the Media
'Sri Lanka, Behind the News: Sri Lanka’s clash of faiths’
Teaching
I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding:
- Early Modern Asian history
- History of Sri Lanka
- Global comparative early modern history
I currently teach:
Prelims |
FHS | Masters |
European and World History III: 1400-1650 |
European and World History VIII: Eurasian Empires, 1450-1800. |
Global and Imperial History: Themes and Concepts |
Approaches to History: Sociology and Anthropology |
Further Subject 11: The Iberian Global Century, 1550-1650 |
Global and Imperial History: DPhil Training Seminar |
Optional Subject 10: Conquest and Colonization: Spain and America in the Sixteenth Century | Disciplines of History |
Dawn of the Global World, 1450-1800 |
Research Centres
Publications
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Immanent Power and Empirical Religiosity: Conversion of the Daimyo of Kyushu, 1560–1580
December 2020|Journal article|Japanese Journal of Religious StudiesThe baptisms of the lords of the Ōmura, Arima and Ōtomo families formed the breakthrough for Christianity in Kyushu. These conversions are analysed here in the light of the relevance of ‘empirical religiosity’: the tendency to alter religious commitments and ritual practices according to their perceived efficacy in bringing about this-worldly outcomes. This article arises out of a larger project of comparative global history, which establishes a three-fold model of ruler conversions. The revelation of ‘immanent power’ forms the second element of this model. Close analysis of the sources reveals that in Sengoku Japan, just as elsewhere, the daimyo in question were driven to experiment with and then commit to the new cult due to its capacity to bestow military success, healing, exorcism and fertility. In particular, this is shown through a detailed account of the changing religious affiliations of Ōtomo Sorin and his son Yoshimune. Since the bulk of the sources relating to these conversions are European, the article also considers how far these themes are simply missionary projections. Some Japanese evidence is brought in to assist the argument that both pro- and anti-Christian parties came to frame their arguments in terms of a shared empiricist epistemologyConversion, daimyo, Otomo Sorin, Luis Frois, empirical religiosity -
Tensions and Experimentations of Kingship: King Narai and his response to missionary overtures in the 1680s
November 2019|Journal article|Journal of the Siam Society -
Unearthly Powers Religious and Political Change in World History
May 2019|BookDrawing on sociology and anthropology, as well as a huge range of historical literature from all regions and periods of world history, Alan Strathern sets out a new way of thinking about transformations in the fundamental nature of religion ...History -
Sacred Kingship under King Narai of Ayutthaya: Divinisation and Righteousness
May 2019|Journal article|The Journal of the Siam SocietyThis article analyses the system of sacred monarchy that maintained during the reign of King Narai of Ayutthaya (r. 1656-1688) in terms of a set of concepts designed to elucidate the relationship between religion and politics more generally in the pre-modern world. It argues that Ayutthayan kingship was unusually intensively sacralised in terms of two quite different modes simultaneously, the divinised and the righteous. These modes, both in themselves and in conjunction, produced somewhat paradoxical effects as well as forms of authority. The article thereby adopts a global perspective on Ayutthaya kingship while also offering some thoughts as to how and why it developed in the way it did and how Narai strove to manage the consequences.Ayutthaya, Narai, Conversion, Sacred Kingship -
Global Early Modernity and the Problem of What Came Before
November 2018|Journal article|Past & Present