Department of History Special Subject Treasure Fleets of the Eastern
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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: <www2.warwick.ac.uk/go/globalhistory> 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