Department of History Special Subject Treasure Fleets of the Eastern

Department of History

Special Subject

Treasure Fleets of the Eastern Oceans: China, India and the West 1601-1833

HI 31F

Module Director: Professor Maxine Berg

Module Booklet 2010-11

Module Director: Professor Maxine Berg Tel. 02476 523377 23377 (internal) [email protected] Room H020 Office Hours: Thursdays. 10-11 or by appointment

1 Treasure Fleets of the Eastern Oceans: China, India and the West 1601- 1833

Special Subject

Tutor: Maxine Berg

Aims and Objectives:

The module will allow students to investigate how European encounters with Asia worked at the level of exchanges of material culture. As a Special Subject this will develop students’ skills in identifying and deploying primary sources to frame and substantiate their historical analyses. This module develops the use of Warwick’s electronic sources – ECCO and the Goldsmith- Kress Collection on-line as well as other electronic repositories. It introduces students to museum collections and art collections, as well as colonial and shipping records, correspondence and travellers’ accounts.

Context:

There are no prerequisites for this Special Subject. It opens opportunities for in depth reading, understanding, research and writing on global and colonial history, especially exploring Europe’s encounter with Asia. It builds on other single themes discussed in Year 1-2 Options ‘Comparative British Imperialism’, ‘The Dragon’s Ascent: the Rise of Modern China’, and ‘Travellers’, and Year 2 Option ‘Galleons and Caravans’. It complements Special Subject ‘Antipodean Encounters: Aborigines, Convicts and Settlers in Colonial New South Wales, 1770-1850’ and Advanced Option ‘China and the Wider World’. The Special Subject connects senior undergraduates to a major new research area in the department centred on Asian and global history. Undergraduates will engage with a new secondary literature on global history, in new initiatives in museum displays and documents collections focussed on East- West connections.

Times & Places:

The course tutor is Professor Maxine Berg. Office Room H307. Office Hours are Thursdays 10-11.00, but other times can be arranged by e-mail. Students are also encouraged to attend the seminars and workshops of the Global History and Culture Centre. These take place approximately three Wednesdays per term at . A programme will be distributed, and will be available on the website. Also please make use of the website:

2 Syllabus

The module explores European discovery and trade in Asian exotic and luxury commodities. Those commodities: spices, textiles, porcelain and tea, brought from South-east Asia, China and India transformed the domestic lives of Europe’s elites and ordinary people. The module emphasises the encounters and connections of Asia’s and Europe’s material cultures. It investigates how curious exotics collected on voyages of discovery became European desirables and even necessities. It looks at how the goods were traded first by Asian merchants, then by Europe’s East India Companies. It looks at how these precious goods for world trade were made, and then transported in long-distance sea voyages. It shows how the trade was organized across far- flung trading posts via ships risking storms, privateering and war. Such goods from afar became the gifts of diplomatic missions. They inspired scientific expeditions and experiments, and they entered into the European art world. The treasure fleets of discovery and encounter turned to the ships and navies of empire. The module connects older historiographies of colonialism and imperialism to new questions arising from global history. It looks to art history, the histories of collecting and display and anthropology to understand the meanings of the goods and the desires for exotic cargoes.

Teaching and Learning

The module will be taught through a combination of thematic seminar discussions, library visits and individual tutorial sessions on long essays. Most students will complete an 8,000 word dissertation essay based on original research involving primary sources. The module does not include lectures.

3 Expected Learning Outcomes

LEARNING Which teaching and learning Which assessment methods will OUTCOMES methods enable students to measure the achievement of this (By the end of the achieve this learning learning outcome? module the student outcome? should be able to....)

Have enhanced Seminar discussions, individual 2 examination papers (some students their research, research/ will substitute an assessed research writing and Reading and essay writing paper for one Communication examination paper) skills

Have gained an Seminar discussions, individual 2 examination papers (some students understanding of research/ will substitute an assessed research the Reading and essay writing paper for one examination paper). Availability, uses and limits of primary source Material for historical analysis

Have deployed Seminar discussions, individual 2 examination papers (some students electronic research/reading and essay will substitute an assessed research technologies in their writing paper for one examination paper). learning

Have a broad Seminar discussions, individual 2 examination papers (some students knowledge of the research/reading and essay will substitute an assessed research history of long writing paper for one examination paper). distance trade, the East India Companies and exchange of material cultures in the period between 1601 and 1833

4 Course Work:

Regular attendance at seminars and active participation is expected. Students are also expected to attend the special sessions set up for the course including the Library Internet Sources session. All will be expected to submit three pieces of non-assessed work. For those who do a dissertation essay there will be two short essays and a long-essay proposal with outline and bibliography. Fully examined students will submit three short essays.

Core & Additional Reading:

Students will be provided with a USB memory stick with copies of many of the core primary readings. The memory stick will also contain some secondary readings not easily available in the library. Other secondary reading will be available in the library. There are also suggestions for further reading which may be used in short and long essays. Students should also make wide use of online sources which will be listed in the course booklet and further discussed at the online sources session.

Teaching:

Lectures per week None

Seminars per week 1 1.5-hour seminar per week for 18 weeks

Tutorials per week Linked to essay production

Laboratory sessions None

Total contact hours 28.5

Module duration (weeks, if 19 (including 2 reading weeks) applicable)

Other (please describe):e.g. distance-learning, intensive weekend teaching

5 Assessment Methods:

Type of assessment Length % weighting

Examinations 1 X 3 Hours 50%

Assessed essays/ coursework 1 X 8000 50% Words

Other type of formal assessment

Type of assessment Length % weighting

Examinations 2 X 3 Hours 100%

Assessed essays/ coursework

Other type of formal assessment

6 Seminar Topics

1. Global History: new perspectives.

2. Seaborne empires of the Indian Ocean: ports and emporia.

- Electronic Sources – Library Demonstration: Richard Parker.

3. Fleets from the Western Oceans: the Portuguese and the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

4. The Straits of Malacca and the Malabar Coast: the spice trade.

5. Japanese Encounters: the closure of Japan and Dutch traders.

6. The English East India Company.

7. The French East India Company.

8. The Textile Century: Indian cottons and European consumers.

9. Oriental luxuries: the chinaware revolution.

10. Chinese factories: from Jingdezhen to Canton.

11. The tea trade: taxes and smugglers.

12. Primary sources and long essay topics.

13. Ships and sailors, pirates and captives.

14. Science and Empire: botany and plantations.

15. Cartography, sea charts and maritime knowledge.

16. Princes and traders: the Macartney Embassy to China.

17. Revision session.

7 Indicative Primary Sources

Electronic Resources:

The Goldsmith-Kress Collection on line The Eighteenth-Century On-line.

Empire On-line

Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire. 1656-1668 (ed. &translated by Archibald Constable, 1891) Biswas, Kalipada, 1950 , The Original Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks Relating to the Foundation of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Calcutta: royal Asiatic Society of Bengal) Stephen H. Gregg, ed., Empire and Identity. An Eighteenth-Century Sourcebook (Paper, Palgrave, 2005) J.L. Cranmer-Byng, An Embassy to China. being the Journal kept by Lord Macartney during his Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung 1793-1794 (London, 1962) Sir George Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (Dublin 1793) Warren R. Dawson, the Banks Letters. A Calendar of the Manuscript Correspondence (London. British Museum, 1958) H.B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China 1635- 1834 , 5 vols.(Oxford, 1926), The Letters of Pere d’Entrecolles’. translated by Robert Tichane in Robert Tichane, Ching-te-chen. Views of a Porcelain City (Painted Post, NY), 1983 William Alexander and George Henry Mason, Costume of China (London, 1800) The Diaries of Ananda Ranga Pillai (12 vols). 1730-80 Frances Buchanan. A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar, 3 vols. London 1807

Indicative Secondary Sources:

David Arnold, ‘Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: a pre- history of development’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 5, no. 4, Oct. 2005, p. 505-525 C.A. Bayly, Rulers, townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1983) C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian. The British Empire and the World 1780-1830 (1989) Maxine Berg, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global Origins of British Consumers’, Past and Present, 182, Feb. 2004, pp. 85-142 Maxine Berg ‘Britain, Industry and Perceptions of China: Matthew Boulton, Useful Knowledge’ and the Macartney Embasssy to China 1792-4’, Journal of Global History (2006) Huw Bowen, The Business of Empire. The East India Company and Imperial Britain 1765-1833 (Cambridge, 2006)

8 Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge, 2003) K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 (Cambridge, 1978) K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe. Economy and Society of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1990) S. Chaudhury and M. Morineau, Merchants, Companies and Trade (1999) Carlo Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires. Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (1992) Linda Colley, Captives Philip D. Curtin, Cross Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984) A.R. Disney, Twilight of the Pepper Empire (Cambridge, 1978) Natacha Eaton, ‘Between mimesis and alterity: art, gift and diplomacy in colonial India, 1770-1800’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47, 2004, pp. 816-844 Robert Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: the Culture of Porcelain in World History’, Journal of World History, 9 (1993), pp. 141-188Natasha Glaisyer, ‘Networking: Trade and Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire’, Historical Journal, 14 (2004), pp. 451-476 Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis: 1976) Conrad Gill, Merchants and Mariners of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1961) G. Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain Stuart Gordon, When Asia was the World (Yale, 2007) Wang Gungwu, ‘Merchants without empire: the Hokkien sojourning communities’ in James L. Hevia, Chirishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham, NC and London, 1995) John Irwin and K.B. Brett, Origins of Chintz (London, 1970). Contains eighteenth-century accounts of cotton dyeing and printing in india by Rhyiner, Father Coeurdoux and William Roxborough Maya Jasanoff, ‘Collectors of Empire’, Past and Present, 184 Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, Ceramic Technology.Vol 5 Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5 part 12. Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mas Production in Chinese Art (Princeton, 2000) David Mackay, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire, 1780- 1801 (London, 1985) Peter Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empire (OUP, 2005) P.J. Marshall, The Eighteenth Century in Indian History. Revolution or Evolution? (OUP 2005) Hoh-Cheung & Lorna H. Mui, ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade before 1784’, American Historical Review 74, 1968 Hoh-Cheung & Lorna H. Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1989) Hoh-cheung Mui and Lorna H. Mui, The management of monopoly. A study of the East India Company’s conduct of its tea trade, 1784-1833 (Vancouver, 1984) Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (1983)

9 P. Parthasarathi, ‘Rethinking wages and competitiveness in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 158 (198), pp. 79-109. P. Parthaasarathi, The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720-1800 (Cambridge, 2001) M.N. Pearson, Spices in the Indian Ocean World M.N. Pearson, The World of the Indian Ocean 1500-1800 (Ashgate 2005) Anne Pérotin-Dumon, ‘The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and the Law on the Seas, 1450-1850’ in James D. Tracy, The Political Economy of Merchant Empires (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 196-227. Om Prakash, ‘Spices and the Spice trade’, Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Vol 5 Geoff Quilley, ‘Signs of Commerce: The East India Company and the Patronage of Eighteenth-Century British Art’, in H.V. Bowen et. al, The Worlds of the East India Company Antony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, c. 1450-1680, w vols. (New Haven, Yale U. Press), 1988-93) Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History (OUP India 2005) Tirtankhar Roy, eds., Cloth and Commerce: Textiles and colonial India (New Delhi, 1996) James D. Tracy, The Rise of Merchant Empires (Cambridge, 1990 George D. Winius & Marcus P.M. Vink, The Merchant Warrior Pacified. The VOC and its Changing Political Economy in India (Oxford paper, 1994)

10 Seminars

1. Global History: New Perspectives

Seminar Questions:

1. What is new about Global History?

2. What makes global trade possible?

3. What made European curious about the rest of the world?

Secondary reading:

David Washbrook, ‘India in the Early Modern World Economy: Modes of Production, Reproduction and Exchange’, Journal of Global History, 2 (2007), pp. 87-111.

C.A.Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, chaps 1, 2.

K. Pomeranz and S. Topik, The World that Trade Created, pp. 158-160.

Jan De Vires, ‘The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World‘, presentation at the University of Warwick, October 2007.*

Further Reading:

Barbara Watson Andaya, ‘Oceans Unbounded: Transversing Asia across “Area Studies”’, Journal of Asian Studies, 65, 4 (2006), pp. 669-690. *

Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and Dawn of the Global World (London, 2008)

William Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World (New York, 2008), chap. 7-10.

John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405 (London, 2007) Chapter 2.*

Catherine Hall, Review of C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, Institute of Historical Research Book Review (2004). *

F. Fernández-Arnesto, ‘Britain, the Sea, the Empire, the World’, in David Cannadine, ed., Empire, the Sea and Global History, pp. 6-22

11 David Christian, Maps of Time: An introduction to Big History (Berketley, 2004).

Jurgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Peterson, Globalization: A Short History (Princeton, 2005)

Jon E Wilson, Early Colonial India Beyond Empire, Historical Journal, 50/4 (2007), pp.951-970.*

‘World Historians and their Critics’, History and Theory Theme issue 34 (1995).

Anne C McCants, Exotic Goods, Popular Consumption and the Standard of Living: Thinking about Globalization in the Early Modern World’, Journal of World History, 18/4 (2007), pp. 433-462.

Documents

Tom Laichas, ‘A Conversation with Kenneth Pomeranz’, World History Connected, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007).

Binu M. John, ‘” I am not going to call myself a Global Historian”: An Interview with C.A. Bayly’, Itinerario, 31/2 (2007), pp. 7-14. *

Bede Morre, An interview with Mark Elvin, Itinerario 31/2 (2007), pp. 9-15.*

12 2. Seaborne empires of the Indian Ocean: ports and emporia

Seminar Questions:

1. What attracted traders to the Indian Ocean? 2. How effective were Indian overseas merchants and traders

Secondary Reading:

David Washbrook,’ India in the Early Modern Economy: Models of Production, Reproduction and Exchange’, Journal of Global History, vol2, 2007, pp.87-112.

Om Prakash, ‘The Indian Maritime Merchant, 1500-1800’

K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An economic history from the rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985), chapters 1, 2 and 5.

K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1990), chapter 11, pp. 355- 360.

Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India before Europe, CUP, 2006, chaps. 6.*

Uma Das Gupta (ed.), The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant 1500-1800. Collected Eassya of Ashin Das Gupta (New Delhi, 2004). Introduction by Subrahmanyam, chap. 1- The Maritime Marchant and Indian History and chap. 2 – India and the Indian Ocean 1500-1800. *

Further Reading: F. Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, Vol. 2, pp. 581-599; Vol. 3, pp. 484- 535.

Markus P.M. Vink, ‘Indian Oean Studies and the ‘new thalassology’, Journal of Global History , vol. 2 (1), 2007, pp. 41-62

David Lambert, Luciana Martins and Miles Ogborn, ‘Currents, visions and voyages: historical geographies of the sea’, Journal of Historical Geography, 32 (2006, pp. 479-493

John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge History of India, I.5), CUP, 1995, chap. 9

M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and c. 1630 (The Hague, 1962, reprint 1969), pp. 27-35

13 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500-1650 (Cambridge, 1990), chapter 5, ‘Europeans and Asians in an age of contained conflict’, pp. 252-297.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Introduction’ in Subrahmanyam (ed.) Maritime India (Oxford, 2004). *

Stephen Frederic Dale, Indian merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1699-1750 (Cambridge, 1994), chapters 1 and 6.

M.N. Pearson, ‘The Indian Ocean and the Red Sea’ in M.N. Pearson ed., The World of the Indian Ocean 1500-1800 (Ashgate, 2005), chapter X. Also see this volume for other detailed studies.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Trading World of the Western Indian Ocean, 1546-65: A Political Interpretation’ in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Mughals and Franks (New Delhi, 2005), pp. 21-41.

Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India before Europe, CUP, 2006, chaps. 7,8,9.

John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405 (London, 2007) Chapter 2.

Documents:

Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire, 1656-1668 (ed. & translated by Archibald Constable, 1891).

14 3. Fleets from the Western Oceans: the Portuguese and the Dutch East India Company (VOC)

Seminar Questions

1. Why were the Portuguese able to establish such a strong position in Indian Ocean trade? 2. What advantages did Dutch merchants gain from the organization of the VOC?

Secondary Sources:

The Portuguese

Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, Vol. 3, pp. 138-157

Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. I, ‘The Century of Discovery’, (Chicago UP, 1965)

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The birth-pangs of Portuguese Asia: revisiting the fateful ‘long decade’ 1498-1509, Journal of Global History, 2/3 (2007), pp. 261- 280

Sanjay Subrahmanyam , The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500-1650 (Cambridge, 1990), chap. 4.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.) Maritime India (Oxford, 2004).

K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean , chaps. 3,4

Francisco Bethencourt & Diogo Ramada Curto, Portuguese Oceanic Expansion 1400-1800 (CUP 2007), chap. 1 by Stuart B. Schwartz ‘The Economy of the Portuguese Empire’; chap. 3 by M.N. Pearson, ‘Markets and Merchant Communities in the Indian Ocean: Locating the Portuguese’

Furher Reading:

Carla Rahn Phillips, ‘The Growth and Composition of Trade in the Iberian Empires, 1450-1750’ in James B. Tracy, The Rise of Merchant Empires. (CUP, 1990), chap. 2, pp. 34-101

Om Prakash, European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia (Ashgate, 1997), chaps 2,3)

James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Traders in Asia Under the Hapsburgs 1580-1640 (1993).

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, From the Tagus to the Ganges (Oxford, 2005), chapter 2 – On Indian Views of the Portuguese in Asia, 1500-1700.

15 Stefan Halikowski Smith, ‘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, 2008, pp. 389-418.

The Dutch

Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy (CUP, 1997), chap. 9.5.6 ‘The Rise of the VOC, pp. 382-411 and ’10.3, ‘Trade with Asia’, pp. 429-448.

Jan de Vries, ‘The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World’, Presentation at the University of Warwick, October 2007.*

Niels Steensgaard ‘The growth and composition of the long-distance trade of England and the Dutch Republic before 1750’ in James B. Tracy, The Rise of Merchant Empires, CUP, 1990, chap. 3, pp. 102-153

F.S. Gaastra and J.R. Bruijn, ‘The Dutch East India Company’s Shipping, 1602- 1795, in a Comparative Perspective’ in F.S. Gaastra and J.R. Buijn (ed.), Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and Their Shipping in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries (Amsterdam, 1993).

Om Prakash, ‘The Portuguese and the Dutch in Asian Maritime Trade: a Comparative Analysis’ chap 8 in Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau eds., Merchants, Companies and Trade. Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era, chap. 8, pp. 175-188.

Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge, 2008).

George D. Winius & Marcus P. M. Vink, The Merchant Warrior Pacified. The VOC and its Changing Political Economy in India (Oxford paper, 1994).

Documents:

Fernão Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto, ed., and trans. Rebecca Catz (Chicago,1989) - Intro. Xv-xlvi - Chap. 2 – Passage to India - Chap. 12 – Departure for Malacca - Chap. 94-97 – The founding of Peking to Business and Trade Practices in China - Chap. 132 –134 - The Discovery of Japan to How firearms came to Japan

Liam Mathhew Brockey, ‘A Selection of Contemporary Sources’, Itinerario 31/2(2007). *

Peter C. Mancall, Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery. An Anthology. (OUP).

16 - Document 12 – Duarto de Sande – An Excellent Treatise of the Kingdom of China (1590), pp. 165-175. - Document 13 – Matteo Ricci - A Discourse of the Kingdom of China, pp. 176- 186. - Document 14 – A Discourse of Voyages into the East and West Indies (1598).

Kees Zandvliet, The Dutch Encounter with Asia 1600-1950 (Amsterdam, 2002) - Visual Images.

Peter Jimack, ed., A History of the Two Indies. A Translated Selection of Writings from Raynal’s Histoire Philosophique et politique des établissements des Européens dans les Deux Indes (Ashgate, 2006), Introduction and books 1, 2 and 5

17 4. The Straits of Malacca and the Malabar Coast: the Spice Trade

Seminar Questions:

1. How were spices traded from the East to the West?

2. What were the effects of European demand for spices on Asian production and producers?

Secondary Reading

Om Prakash, ‘Spices and the Spice trade’, Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Vol. 5

Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient 1600-1800 (University of Minnesota Press, 1976, chap.1 pp. 31-78 or in S Subrahmanyam (ed.) Maritime India.

Anthony Reid, ‘Economic and Social Change’ in Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol. 2 1500-1800, pp. 116-160.

Further Reading:

K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean, chap. 5 ‘Emporia Trade’.

M.N. Pearson, Spices in the Indian Ocean World (Aldershot, 1996).

A.R. Disney, The Twilight of the Pepper Empire (Cambridge, 1978)

John E. Wills, Pepper, Guns and Parleys: the Dutch East India Company and China 1622-1681 (Cambridge, Mass. 1974)

Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, c. 1450-1680, 2 vols. Yale, 1988-93), chapters 1, 2 and 3.

M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago, chaps. 5, 9

John Keay, The Spice Route: a History (University of California, 2007), chaps. 10-13, also see images here.

Conrad Gill, Merchants and Mariners of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1961), chap. 2. *

Leonard Blussé, ‘No Boats to China. The Dutch East India Company and the Changing Pattern of the China Sea Trade, 1625-1690’, Modern Asian Studies 30/1 (February, 1996), pp. 51-76. *

18 Documents:

A. Reid (ed.), Johan Nieuhof: Voyages and Travels to the East Indies 1653-1670 (Singapore, 1988). *

19 5. Japanese Encounters: the Closure of Japan and Dutch Traders

Seminar Questions:

1. How ‘closed’ was Tokugawa Japan? 2. What did the Japanese have to offer other trading nations?

Secondary Reading

John Whitney Hall (ed.) The Cambridge History of Japan Vol 4: Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, 1991).

Om Prakash, ‘Trade in a Culturally Hostile Environment: Europeans in the Japan Trade, 1550-1700’ in Prakash, ed. European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia (Variorum, 1997), chap. 6, pp. 117-128

Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan (Berkeley, 1993)

Further Reading:

Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge, 2003).

Luke S. Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in Eighteenth Century Tosa (Cambridge, 1998) Chap 1.

Susan B. Hanley and Kozo Yamamura, Economic and Demographic Change in Preindustrial Japan 1600-1868 (Princeton, 1977)

Susan B. Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan; the Hidden Legacy of Material Culture (Berkeley, 1997), chapters 1 and 2, pp. 1-50.

Michael Cooper, S.J., ed, They Came to Japan (Berkeley, 1965)

Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place and Culture in the Tokugawa Period, 1603-1868 (Berkeley, 2003)

Documents:

Engelbert Kaempfer, Kaempfer’s Japan: Topkugawa Culture Observed ed. & translated by Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey (University of Hawaii Press, 1999), Book 4, pp. 137-229

20 6. The English East India Company

Seminar Questions:

1. Why was the British East India Company able to make the transition from trade to government in the eighteenth century?

Secondary Sources:

K.N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company

Peter Marshall, ‘The English in Asia to 1700’ in Nicholas Canny ed.,The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Origins of Empire (OUP, 1998), chap. 12, pp. 264-285

Peter Marshall, ‘The British in Asia: Trade to Dominion, 1700-1765’, in P.J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, (Oxford, 1998), chap. 22, pp. 487-50. Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, chap. 2

Nick Robins, The Corporation that Changed the World. How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (London, 2006)

Anthony Sherrington, Trading Place, British Library.

Further Reading:

K.N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company’s Shipping (c. 1669-1760) in J.R. Bruijn and F.S. Gaastra (eds.), Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and their Shipping in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, pp. 49-80.

K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 (Cambridge, 1978)

Peter Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empire

J. Talboys Wheeler, Early Records of British India: A History of the English Settlements in India (New Delhi, 1994). *

Huw Bowen, Margarett Lincoln, Nigel Rigby, The Worlds of the East India Company (Boydell, 2002) (see esp. essay by Om Prakash on the English East India Company and India)

Huw Bowen, The Business of Empire (CUP)

Huw Bowen, ‘Privilege and Profit: Commanders of East Indianmen as Private Traders, Entrepreneurs and Smugglers, 1760-1813’, International Journal of Maritime History, 19/2 (December, 2007), pp.43-88. *

21 Miles Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the World 1550-1800 (Cambridge, 2008). Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East 1750- 1850 (London, 2005).

Natasha Eaton, ‘Between Mimesis and Alterity: Art, Gift and Diplomacy in Colonial India, 1770-1800’

David Arnold, ‘Agriculture and Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: a Pre- history of Development’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 5/4 (October, 2005), pp. 505-525. *

Javier Cuenca Esteban, ‘Comparative patterns of colonial trade: British and its rivals’, in Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Exceptionalism and Industrialisation: British and its European Rivals, 1688-1815 (Cambridge, 2004), chap 2, pp. 35-60.

Documents:

John Corneille, Journal of my Service in India 1727*

Additional Documents:

Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar (London, 1807), Introduction and pp. 193-226

22 7. The French East India Company

Seminar Questions

1. Compare the structures of the English and French East India Companies.

2. How did the East India Companies meet the risks of long distance trade?

Secondary Sources

Colin Jones, The Great Nation (Penguin, 2002), pp. 133-148, 159-170, 242-245

Catherine Manning, ‘French Country Trade on Coromandel, 1720-50’ in Om Prakash, ed., European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia, chap. 14

Catherine Manning, Fortunes à Faire. The French in Asian Trade 1719-48 (Variorum,Aldershot, 1996), chaps 1-3.

Further Reading:

Simon Schaffer (ed.), The Brokered World: Go-Betweens, and Global Intelligence (Segamore Beach, MA 2009).

Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous. Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (CUP, 2007)

Neil Chambers, Joesph Banks and the British Museum. The World of Collection 1770-1830 (Pickering & Chatto, 2007)

Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale, 2007)

Jan DeVries, Reviews of Harold J Cook, Matters of Exchange and Anne Goldcar, Tulipmania, American Historical Review, 113/2 (April, 2008), pp. 438- 441. *

John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley, 2003).

Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government, Chapter 3

Neil A. Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of Collecting, 1770-1830 (London, 2002) Chapters 1 and 2.

33 Stefan Halikowski Smith, ‘Perceptions of Nature in Early Modern Portuguese India’, Itinerario, 31/2 (2007). *

William Gervase Clarence-Smith, ‘Scientific and Technological Interchanges Between the Islamic World and Europe, c. 1450-c 1800’. Simon Schaffer, ‘Newton on the Beach: A Genealogy and Solitude’. *

Documents:

Anton Hove, Tours for Scientific & Economical Research made in Guzerat, Kaltiwar & the Conkins 1787-8. *

34 15. Cartography, sea charts, and maritime knowledge.

Seminar Questions:

1. Compare Western and Eastern map-making techniques and capabilities. 2. Explain how Europeans achieved a better understanding of the sea and its weather systems. 3. Was technology transmitted along with the exchange of material objects?

Secondary Reading:

Peter Barder & Tom Harper, Magnificent Maps, British Library 2010

Chandra Mukerji, ‘Cartography, Entrepreneurialism and Power in the Reign of Louis XIV’, in Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels, pp. 248-277. *

Nicholas Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (2003). Intro. Chap. 1 & 2.

Benjamin Schmidt, ‘Inventing Exoticism’, in Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels, pp. 347-369

Daniel R. Headrick, When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution 1700-1850 (Oxford, 2000) Chs. 4 and 5.

Andrew S. Cook, ‘Establishing the Sea Routes to India and China: Stages in the Development of Hydrographical Knowledge’, in H. Bowen, M. Lincoln and N. Rigby, The Worlds of the East India Company (Boydell, 2002), pp. 119-136

D. Cannadine, ed., Empire, the Sea and Global History (Palgrave, 2007), the following chapters: P.J. Marshall, ‘Empire and British Idenity: the Maritime Dimension’ Richard Drayton, ‘Maritime Networks and the Making of Knowledge’ Simon Schaffer, ‘Instruments, Surveys and Martime Empire’

Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science – chap. 2 ‘Circulation and the Emergence of Modern Mapping’.