Comparing Companies
Workshop at the University of Warwick
28 October 2011
The aim of the workshop is to bring together scholars who have done extensive research on the
different European East India Companies, in order to connect their work on the individual
enterprises. The workshop will focus in particular on questions of the organisation of trade and
networks, on sales and markets, as well as on the wider impact of the East India trade on Europe’s
political and moral economies. A more ‘connected’ history of the different East India Companies will
serve to understand the wider European context in which these early modern trading enterprises
operated. In order to raise new questions, we aim to build on the work of the leading experts in the
field and, therefore, hope our speakers will share with us some of the insights derived from their
recent and current research.
Our research project, ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830’, tries to bring together
the study of long-distance trade with the history of consumption and production. We wish to
investigate, therefore, not only the trade flows of specific products from the East, but enquire into
how these commodities were made, marketed and distributed in Asia, en route from Asia and in
Europe. We believe that the European East India Companies played a significant role in the creation
of wide consumer markets in Europe as well as in the development of sophisticated export ware
sectors in Asia.
The workshop will be split into three sessions on the themes a) ‘Networks of trade in Europe and
Asia’, b) ‘Markets and Sales’, and c) ‘Statistics and Wider Impact’, with a general round-table session
as a conclusion. Speakers are not required to give formal papers. We would instead invite
approximately ten-minute long contributions or short interventions ideally on all three themes –
each of which we hope will stimulate lively discussion and exchange. The questions below reflect our
project’s interest and are intended only as guidelines both for the presentations and the following
discussions. They are, however, by no means exhaustive nor mandatory, and as the speakers will
present their own research interests and findings, they are invited to pose – and perhaps even
answer – their own questions should they wish.
Networks of trade in Europe and Asia
Transnational perspectives can lead to a greater appreciation of the role that merchant networks
(including communities, diasporas, family dynasties) played in comparison with and in relation to the
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great monopoly companies, often only analysed in a national context. A fairly recent wave of studies
on networks (both formal and informal) opened up new avenues for research that we would like to
discuss in this first session. First, historians have begun to take a closer look at the local
intermediation of trade in the East. The role of go-betweens in Asia and elsewhere has become a
focal point of attention. Nevertheless, there is still a considerable gap in the existing literature about
the information networks that existed between Company servants, free traders and local merchants
and manufacturers on the spot. Second, a renewed interest in private and privilege trade has
brought a range of interesting ‘new’ actors to the forefront of research. We would like our speakers
to share with us their ideas about the role of historiographically marginalised figures who were
directly involved in the organization of the East India trade, or on those who were vaguely associated
with the Companies’ activities. For instance, wholesalers, retailers, artisans, merchant-bankers,
commercial agents, consuls, captains and supercargoes could all be engaged in the distribution (legal
and illicit) of Oriental luxuries, the shaping of tastes and the creation of ever growing markets in
Europe through re-export, private commissions and commercial speculation. We would like to
discuss some of these networks in order to understand the complex ways in which goods,
knowledge, trading practices and people circulated in Eurasia, constantly crossing national and
regional boundaries. There are many more questions that could be discussed in this session, among
them, but not restricted to:
What was the role of transnational, regional, and local networks in the East India trade?
How did Companies and servants interact with other networks, such as with politics, entrepreneurs,
retailers, fashion magazines, and more widely with the republic of letters, learned societies, and the
public sphere in general?
How did different companies interlink in their operations? What was the role of personnel from
other countries?
What were the key skills and resources that private traders had to have in order to trade successfully
in Company goods?
How did informal networks and information flows work and what was their impact?
What was the role and importance of historiographically marginalised actors for the organisation of
the East India trade (merchant-bankers, commercial agents, consuls, captains and other members of
the maritime elite)?
Markets and Sales
Historical narratives of the East India Companies often read like stories of commercial success.
However, it might be asked what do we really know about the difficulties (and failures) involved in
establishing extensive markets for Asian manufactured wares (such as cotton and silk textiles,
furniture, porcelain and many other wares) that so influenced eighteenth-century fashions in early
modern Europe? We believe that we need to better understand the market mechanisms (e.g.
marketing, auction sales and design transfers) in Europe and the changes that occurred over the
period under consideration (1600-1830). One area of research we are interested in is the mapping of
different or possibly overlapping markets for Company goods across Europe. Another area of
discussion could evolve around the relationship between private and Company trade and sales,
touching on profits, procedures and the role marketing played in all of that. Furthermore, a topic
that seems to be fundamental, but as yet understudied, is the question of quality. This applies both
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to the Companies’ efforts to control the quality of their imports from China and India, as well as to
the question of the role that ‘quality’ played in consumer demand and competition. In order to link
the research on the European East India Companies to concepts such as the early modern ‘consumer
revolution’, it is necessary to map changes in both qualities and quantities of goods brought in from
Asia. Possible questions to be addressed in this session are:
Did we underestimate the role of the private trade for the creation of a European market for Asian
luxuries?
What was the role of re-export and informal modes of distribution for local and specialised markets
in Europe?
Were there national differences in tastes and markets or were these class-based and, therefore,
pan-European? What role did fashion play in this context? Did the marketing of Asian luxuries work
differently from one Company to another?
How did quality control work?
Statistics and wider Impact
In the last session of the workshop, we would like to address some questions that grow out of our
own research on the East India trade. Much statistical work has been done on the individual
Companies. What is missing, however, is an attempt to bring some of the results together into a
wider comparative picture. We still do not know enough, for instance, about the prices that were
fetched in different European markets, and how widely distributed Asian manufactured wares were
in continental Europe. There are ways of coming to terms with these issues and we would like to
discuss some of the possibilities of comparing the quantitative source bases available for the
different Companies. We could also discuss complementary sources available, regarding tax policies,
national trade statistics et cetera. There is much more untapped material available that could shed
new light on the commercial success of both private and Company trade and the overall impact of
Asian luxuries – and fortunes made in the East – on the social, economic, and political developments
of each country involved in that trade. Questions that could be addressed in this context are:
What are possible conclusions from statistical works on the different Companies?
Is is time for a major revision of the to-date estimated volume of trade in Asian consumer goods to
Europe?
What was the role of the state in different national contexts, for instance, for taxation and the
success of the respective Company?
What are the links to material culture, history of science, political economy? The role of innovation,
learned societies, national debates?
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