The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo

In the nineteenth century the idea of "The Oriental Renaissance" came into currency as a way of marking the arrival in Europe during the Romantic period of Sanskrit texts and Hindu pantheism, an event which was seen having a cultural impact equal to that of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What was not envisaged then, nor until very recently, was the extent to which the Renaissance proper was itself shaped, at least in significant respects, by an historical encounter between Asia and Europe. This is the central argument of Jerry Brotton's important book. Every generation, he argues, creates a version of the European Renaissance in its own image. In the nineteenth century, when European political power and cultural hegemony were rising towards their global zenith, the Renaissance was viewed as the defining moment in the emergence of European cultural superiority. Its new spirit of humanism was contrasted with what the historian Michelet called the "bizarre and monstrous" quality of the Middle Ages. And it was celebrated as a uniquely European achievement. Perhaps the most influential view of the Renaissance was that of Jacob Burckhardt. He saw the revival of classical antiquity and the growing unease with organised religion as signalling the historical emergence of a new kind of human spirit, one which emphasised individuality rather than collectivity. This key theme was later elaborated in the writings of such thinkers as Walter Pater who saw the Renaissance as more a spiritual phenomenon than a historical period, characterised essentially by the great works of art, architecture and literature of the period. At its heart was the idea of the 'Renaissance Man', and its historical significance was nothing less than the birth of the modern world and the global triumph of the European spirit. Brotton seeks to subvert this "myth" in two ways, the one focusing on the internal history of Europe during the Renaissance period, the other to its external relations. The latter, external dimensions of the Renaissance are the ones that historians have most conspicuously ignored. Concerned to emphasise its purely European provenance, they have failed to place its achievements in a wider context that recognises the key role that links with Asia played in the early modern period. In particular they have, according to Brotton, failed to take account of the complex cultural, intellectual and commercial links between Asia and Europe, especially following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. This event is usually seen as the trigger for the migration westwards of Byzantine scholars, carrying with them treasured manuscripts that date back to the classical world of Greece and Rome. But it was also part of a much wider-ranging commercial and cultural engagement between Western Christendom and Islam, the latter far more open and tolerant than later generations were inclined to allow, and through this engagement "Europe began to define itself not in opposition to the mysterious east, but through an extensive and complex exchange of ideas and materials" (p.37). A close examination of many of the period's great art-works, so often seen through purely classical or Christian lenses, reveals close cultural and commercial exchanges between East and West, not only with Islam but even with India and China. The artists and their patrons were acutely aware that oriental cultures possessed many things that the city states of Europe desired. Thus, Venice, a quintessential Renaissance city, was known in its day for its admiration and emulation of eastern cultures, and artists as wide apart geographically as the Bellinis and Dürer were fascinated by both the myths and the reality of the Orient and incorporated eastern motifs and stories into their paintings. In addition to this, new ways of doing business were learnt from the Arabs such as paper money, deposit banking and double-entry bookkeeping, and the subsequent European domination of the globe depended to a considerable extent on Arab scientific know-how. And in philosophy, too, we can see the Renaissance syncretism of such thinkers as Ficino and Pico, embracing both European and non-European ideas, as a reaching out beyond a narrow Eurocentric world-view. This reaching out to the East produced some strange intellectual and political alliances. Martin Luther, who engaged in a careful study of the Koran and published several texts on Islam, sought a kind of bond with Islam based on a common cause against popish heresies and idolatry. Evidence that this was more than sheer fantasy comes from the fact that the Catholic emperor, Charles V, was convinced that Luther and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent were in league against him. Another strange alliance was that between the Turkish Sultan and Queen Elizabeth of England, a link which not only strengthened her hand against Catholic Spain but helped to stimulate trade and also had a direct impact on the literature of England at that time. As far as the internal dynamics of the Renaissance were concerned, Brotton's arguments are directed towards the standard and somewhat narrow view that the it was an essentially cultural phenomenon. He confronts this traditional interpretation by showing that the artistic and literary transformations of the period cannot be viewed in isolation from commercial, technical, and intellectual developments. It is thus a much more exciting picture than the received image, one which not only allows different cultures into the picture but shows how the artists' work was closely integrated into the political upheavals of the time. Aside from the detailed historiographic arguments, this book is a highly readable introduction to the Renaissance which conveys a vivid image of it as a truly global phenomenon. Furthermore, the current global awareness, and our belated recognition of Europe's spiritual and cultural debt to the great civilisations of Asia, make this book highly relevant to our contemporary concerns.