Maxine Berg
University of Warwick
British Trade with Asia:
Historiography and Material
Culture
• a new foregrounding of the role of India and
China in emerging European industrialization.
• China and India were the ‘first industrial
regions’
Europe's Asian Centuries
Trading Eurasia 1600-1830
Global History and Culture Centre
Department of History - University of Warwick
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/eac/
Research
Themes
• Asian Goods in the Political
Economy of Europe
Bringing global
perspectives and
interdisciplinary
methods to bear on
histories of
industrialization,
consumer society
and material culture
• Asian Goods and European
Consumer Cultures
Investigating the
long distance
trade between
Asia and Europe
in material goods
and culture that
transformed the
early modern
world.
• Asian Goods: Making and
Distributing
• Asian Goods and the
Transmission of Knowledge
• Asian Export Ware and
Industrial Revolution
People
Professor Maxine Berg
Project Director
Dr Helen Clifford
Museum Consultant
Dr Hanna Hodacs
Research Fellow
Ms Meike Fellinger
PhD Student
Dr Chris Nierstrasz
Research Fellow
Ms Anna Guszcza
Project Administrator
Dr Felicia Gottman
Research Fellow
Products and qualities
Historiography
Sources case study:
Commercial accounts in the India Office Library
Dr. Felicia Gottmann & Dr. Chris Nierstrasz
Historiographies
• Industrialization
• Consumer Culture
• Trade and Colonization
• Economic history – inward looking
• But history of science and technology – wide
European framework of Britain’s indusrialization
– Joel Mokyr
• Global history: Pomeranz – China and Europe
• But English exceptionalism – Robert Allen
• Consumer and industrious revolutions
• Jan de Vries
• Histories of colonialism and empire
• Historiography of the English East India
Company
A few facts:
• Founded 1600; amalgamation 1709
• 1813 – charter legalising entry of private traders
• 1833 – Company ceased to be a trading
company
• 1858 – Company liquidated.
• Surveys:
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Philip Stern
• Older literature:
Comparative East India Companies
• Business history and Company history:
Chaudhuri;
Huw Bowen
• Indian Ocean World
• Connected histories vs. National histories and
area studies
Subrahmanyam
• Private and Privilege Trade
• Networks of merchants
• Local knowledge and brokered world
• Size of Privilege trade
• Private and family papers of merchants
Material culture:
Size of Asia trade to Europe: 50,000 tons a year
or one pound of Asian goods per person in
the late 18thC.
Variety of textiles:
50 different varieties
Market development: Printed calicoes vs.
Shirts and sheeting
Coromandel Coast, V&A Collections
Chinaware:
Official imports: current ware
Private Trade: specialty goods
New sources:
Orphanages
Poor Law Records
Material Culture
Initiatives at Warwick
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/research/globalcommodities/
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/eac/
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/g
hcc/research/globalporcelain/
Material
Encounters of the
East India Companies
1600-1830