December 2012, report Chris Nierstrasz
This term, I have strongly focused on writing. Last year, the main point of improvement pointed out me
last year, so I have stepped up the effort. At present I have handed in two completely revised papers
that hopefully will be published. I am almost done with the article for Venice on tea. These articles have
been based on work I have done in the archives last year, which meant I had to go back to the archives
several times to check the material. At the same time, one of the datasets I have been deeply involved
in, has now been presented to the colleagues and at the end of the project will be published on our
website. I have been submitting material for the textiles dataset too, a project I look forward to work on
after the Venice conference. Halfway through the term, I presented my work in progress to Jan de Vries
and the colleagues at Warwick. This session helped me sharpen my ideas and has directly led to my
paper on tea for Venice. After the submission of the Venice paper I will still write and submit a book
proposal. The Venice paper can also be considered a first chapter for my proposed monograph.
Apart from writing I have been busy as the convener of the ‘World of Consumption’ module.
Apart from doing administrative duties, this also involved teaching on the ‘World of Consumption’
module, on the ‘Making of the Modern World’ Module and an excursion to the V&A. At the V&A, I also
attended a conference, which will be followed by two conferences next week. The Monash conference
will be next week and will be on teaching global history. For this I have also submitted material this
term. Then, there is the global commodities conference at Warwick, which is very interesting for our
project. I will attend both these events. I have also volunteered for the Christmas lunch for the third
year in a row and started attending the presentation at the Economics department at Warwick
University. I have been invited by Mark Knights to his workshop on ‘corruption’, but due to personal
reasons I think it will be difficult to give a talk there.

Towards publications:
1) Taiwan conference paper: ‘The erosion of the VOC. The VOC and its search for alternatives to
decline (1740-1796)’
2) Glasgow conference paper: ‘In the Shadow of the Companies: Empires of Trade in the
Orient and Informal Entrepreneurship’
3) Venice conference paper: ‘Have your tea, and drink it too! How rough companies, private
trade and smuggling popularized tea consumption in Europe (1700-1760).’

Teaching and organization:
1) Convener and tutor ‘World of Consumption’ module
2) Taught lecture on Making of the Modern World
3) Marked essays
4) Excursion to V&A together with students, organized and executed together with Felicia
Gottmann
5) Volunteer for the organisation of the History Department Christmas lunch

Events:
1) Prepared and gave a talk for Jan de Vries
2) V&A conference
3) Economics talk
4) Monash conference on teaching (next week) submitted preparation in September
5) Commodities Workshop at Warwick (next week)

Research:
1) Finished up archival work (London and The Hague) for articles
2) Finished literature (Leiden) for articles
3) Presented dataset EIC order lists to colleagues
4) Submitted material for the textiles database