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Dr Stefan Halikowski-Smith
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s.halikowski-smith@swansea.ac.uk
Office - 136
James Callaghan
Singleton Campus
Available For Postgraduate Supervision
Stefan was trained in Portuguese overseas history on the Vasco da Gama Programme (1993-8) financed by the Portuguese government at the Istituto Europeo Universitario in Fiesole, Italy. He has lectured at the Central European University in Budapest (1998-2000) and at Brown University in the USA (2001-4). He has published four books and over fifty articles. He loves reading in European languages!
Early modern trading empires
Early modern global history
Catholic Europe, especially Portugal
Missionary written culture
Eurasian spice trade
Plant history
Award Highlights
Portugal Índico: sources and critical essays on the Portuguese presence in South Asia in the colonial period, Special Issue of Itinerario, 2007; Creolization and Diaspora in the Portuguese Indies, the Social World of Ayutthaya, 1640-1720 (Brill, 2010); Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011); Two Missionary Accounts of Southeast Asia in the late seventeenth century (Amsterdam University Press, 2019).
Scuolodi Publications Subvention, 2006; Egypt exploration Society Grant, 2006-7; Gladys Kreble Delmas award, 2013, 2018; 3rd prize in the Debrecen University Hungarian language essay-writing competition for foreigners "Mit jelent számomra a magyar kultúra?", 2017.
Erasmus teaching mobility participation, at Universidade Nova de Portugal in 2009 and 2018; Karl Franzens Uni Graz 2013, 2015, 2016; Sveučiliste Zadar, 2019; between October 2020-February 2021, I am wykładowca wizytujący at the Instytut Historiczny, Warsaw University, where I will deliver 60 hours of lecturing, address a doctoral seminar and give a public lecture.
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2022). Twentieth-Century Wartime Life Histories from East-Central Europe. The European Legacy, 27(7-8), 1-8.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2022.2051807, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa59708
Halikowski Smith, S. & Halikowski-Smith, S. (2018). Lisbon in the sixteenth century: decoding the Chafariz d'el Rei. Race & Class, 60(2), 63-81.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396818794355, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa45477
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2019). Two Missionary Accounts of Southeast Asia in the Late Seventeenth Century: A Translation and Critical Edition of Guy Tachard's Relation de Voyage aux Indes (1690—99) and Nicola Cima's Relatione Distinta delli Regni di Siam, China, Tunchino, e Cocincina
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvsf1p5w, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa41028
https://arc-humanities.org/products/t-84119-11097-252-8323/
Halikowski-Smith, S. & Jennings, B. (2019). British participation in the quincentenary commemorations of the death of Prince Henry 'the Navigator' (1960). Práticas da História: Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past, 8, 85-138.
SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa40543
http://www.praticasdahistoria.pt/en/
Halikowski Smith, S. & Halikowski-Smith, S. (2019). Primor E Honra Da Vida Soldadesca No Estado Da India: An Anonymous Late Sixteenth-Century Manual of Soldiery and Political Affirmation of the Military Frontier in India. Romance Studies, 37(1), 12-29.
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2018). "'Siam is the best place in the Indies'. Father Nicola Cima O.E.S.A. and his memorandum of 1709 for renewed East Indies trade". Anais de Historia de Alem Mar, XVII
https://run.unl.pt/handle/10362/34970
Halikowski Smith, S. & Halikowski-Smith, S. (2017). Gasparo Contarini's Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires. Mediterranean Historical Review, 32(2), 189-235.
Smith, S. & Halikowski-Smith, S. (2016). Languages of subalternity and collaboration: Portuguese in English settlements across the Bay of Bengal, 1620-1800. International Journal of Maritime History, 28(2), 237-267.
Smith, S. & Halikowski-Smith, S. (2015). In the shadow of a pepper-centric historiography: Understanding the global diffusion of capsicums in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 167, 64-77.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2014.10.048, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa20072
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2015). 'The unquiet religious backdrop to European East Indies trade: Christian polemical literature and the first Portuguese translation of the Bible, 1642-1694' (with Luis Henrique Menezes Fernandes). Electronic Journal of Portuguese History, 13(2)
http://www.scielo.mec.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1645-64322015000200004
Smith, S. & Halikowski-Smith, S. (2011). 'Descent into Hell'. The Logistics and Performative Rhetorics of the Jesuit Jerónimo Lobo's Crossing the Danakil Desert in 1625. Romance Studies, 29(3), 146-163.
SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa507
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/174581511X13063236265082
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2010). The mid-Atlantic islands: a theatre of early modern ecocide?. International Review of Social History, 55(S18), 51-77.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859010000490, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa509
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2010). 'No obvious home: the flight of the Portuguese 'tribe' from Makassar to Ayutthaya and Cambodia during the 1660s'. International Journal of Asian Studies, 7(1), 1-28.
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2009). 'Insolence and pride': problems with the representation of the South-East Asian Portuguese communities in Alexander Hamilton's A New Account of the East Indies (1727)?. , 1
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2009). "The Physician's Hand' : trends in the evolution of the apothecary and his art across Europe over the early modem period'. , 1
Smith, S. & Halikowski-Smith, S. (2008). 'Profits sprout like tropical plants': a fresh look at what went wrong with the Eurasian spice trade c. 1550–1800. Journal of Global History, 3(03), 389-418.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022808002775, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa11201
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2008). 'Meanings Behind Myths: The Multiple Manifestations Of The Tree Of The Virgin At Matarea'. , 1
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2007). Introduction to Portugal Índico: Essays on the History of the Portuguese Presence in South Asia in the Colonial Period. Itinerario, 31(2), 7-8.
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2011). Creolization and Diaspora in the Portuguese Indies. The Social World of Ayutthaya, 1640-1720 Brill.
http://www.brill.com/creolization-and-diaspora-portuguese-indies
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2013). 'How are European National Libraries Responding to "Big Digitiszation"?. In Frederic Clavert & Serge, Noiret (Ed.), L'histoire contemporaine à l'ère numérique: Contemporary history in the digital age (pp. 107-124). Peter Lang
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2011). 'Relations between Ayutthaya and Macao over the eighteenth century. The case of the 1721 embassy', in The Making of the Luso-Asian World. Intricacies of Engagement. (pp. 83-105). NUS Press: ISEAS
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2009). 'European National Libraries and Digitization in History'. In Symposium 'Contemporary history in the digital age' organised by the University of Luxembourg (Master's in Contemporary European History) and the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l'Europe (CVCE) in October 2009.University of Luxembourg.
https://www.cvce.eu/en/search?q=%E2%80%98Contemporary%20history%20in%20the%20digital%20age%E2%80%99
Halikowski-Smith, S. (Ed.). (2012). Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds. Essays in Honour of Prof. K.N. Chaudhuri. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Other Research Outputs
Halikowski-Smith, S. (2013). TranState Working Papers, No. 172, Universität Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597 - Transformations of the State, Bremen
https://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:sfb597:172
Halikowski-Smith, S. (n.d.) Memorial University of Newfoundland
HIH121 Europe of Extremes, 1789–1989
The nineteenth century saw the rise of a western European civilization, characterized, as Eric Hobsbawm has noted, by capitalist economics, liberal politics, and the dominance of a middle class that celebrated morality and science. In the twentieth century this civilization faced unprecedented challenges from new political ideologies, and from a working class demanding the right to govern in its own name. The result was an eruption of violence not seen on the continent for centuries; in its wake, the Cold War divided the Europe with an Iron Curtain, and saw the continent become the client of two world superpowers ¿ the USA and the Soviet Union. This team-taught module relies on the specialist knowledge of its tutors to examine economic, political and social themes in the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe.
HIH122 Making History
History is an imprecise art and what historians say and write about the past is not the same as what actually happened in the past. Most people's knowledge about the past doesn't come from professional historians at all but rather from 'public history'. Public history is the collective understandings of the past that exist outside academic discipline of history. It is derived from a diverse range of sources including oral traditions, legends, literature, art, films and television. This module will introduce you to the study and presentation of the past. It will consider how the content, aims and methods of academic and public history compare and contrast and you will engage in your own small research project to investigate this. The module will also teach you about the fundamentals of studying and writing history at university. You will learn about essay writing, group work and critical analysis and employ these skills to understand and assess history today, both as an academic activity and as public knowledge.
HIH235 The Golden Age of Spain and Portugal, 1450-1700
This course will provide an introduction to the history of Spain, Portugal and their empires in the early modern period. Students will come away with a broad knowledge of the political, cultural, religious and social history of Iberia during its period of greatest influence. We will begin by surveying the political history of Castile, Aragon and Portugal, seeking to understand the complex series of inheritances and political manoeuvres that created Spain. After looking at Early Modern Iberian imperial government, we will turn to the area¿s social and intellectual history. Here we will discuss Portuguese and Spanish culture, literature and art, as well as the intense religious fervour that launched both a global missionary effort and the Inquisition. The final weeks of the course will be devoted to studying the Spanish and Portuguese empires, both in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Here, our perspective will be decidedly metropolitan as we seek to understand how Iberian social and political institutions were exported overseas. We will also discuss the problems encountered by the Iberian monarchy as it attempted to manage the world¿s first truly global empire and faced the problem of dynastic decline.
HIH237 The Practice of History
The purpose of the module is to encourage you to think more deeply about how historians work and, in particular, about how we as historians can locate and use primary historical sources effectively as a means of interpreting and understanding the past. During the module we will learn about the survival of historical evidence, how it is organised and made accessible to historians to undertake their research, and how to effectively locate and interpret it in your studies. We will consider how the process of doing historical research changes over time, in particular with the impact of recent developments like digitization. At the core of the module will be the work you undertake with others in your seminar group using a range of primary sources which your seminar tutor will introduce to you. As part of the module assessment you will also undertake your own primary source based research project using items from these collections. The module is designed strengthen your analytical skills and to help prepare you for the more extensive uses of primary evidence which you will encounter in final year special subjects and dissertation.
HIH3228 Merchants & Marvels. Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800
'Globalisation' is a phenomenon that has caused a good deal of recent debate, though the movement of goods, people, bullion and services from one corner of the planet to another is nothing new. In this course, students shall investigate in some depth the role of long-distance commerce in 'disenclaving' (to use a French term) the world in the early modern period, the forms this trade took and some of its effects. The elaborate paths luxury goods wove across the planet seem remarkably unimpeded by either the speed of communications (it could take 16-23 months to send a consignment of silk from Nagasaki in Japan to Amsterdam), the high risks of banditry on the caravan routes or shipwreck at sea, and the transmission often via unreliable and hostile intermediaries. At the same time, the instruments of commerce - insurance, credit, speculation and derivative trading that went on in the European trading exchanges like London and Amsterdam - suggest a remarkably modern global system was already on its feet.
Public advisor for Glynn Vivian Museum overhaul and renovation, Swansea, 2014. I constantly review manuscripts for a wide variety of publishers and scholarly journals and when I get a chance, publish book reviews (28 at last count).
Invited Presentations, Lectures and Conferences
'For which company? Guy Tachard S.J.'s unpublished Relation de Voyage aux Indes,
Hakluyt Society, Chatham Docks
'The trato de Europa of Portuguese spices, 1480-1580: underinvesting in Atlantic shipping'
Ponta Delgada, Azores
Royal Asiatic Society, invited lecture to present recent book 'Two missionary accounts of Southeast Asia'
Espelhos de Mercurio. A representação do comércio nas Monarquias Ibéricas, 1500-1800
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