Introduction to Volume 3: Literature of the World between 1500 and 1800

This chapter covers the historical changes and development of the world's literatures in the three hundred years from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Geopolitical conflicts and wars and the frequently changing and porous borders also present opportunities for economic, technological, and cultural exchanges. Globalization brings different peoples and cultures together in economic relations and technological exchanges, but it may also be a process of exploration, conquest, religious conversion, and genocide with violent and dire consequences. The history of the Americas from 1500 to 1800 was marred by the annihilation of the indigenous peoples and their cultures, the enslavement of Africans, and the dehumanization of European settlers themselves in their inhumanity to Native Americans and African slaves. In the three centuries from 1500 to 1800, Persian poetry was composed in Central Asia and the Caucasus under the Otttoman empire, the Safavid dynasties in Iran, and the Mughal dynasties in India. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.