Department of History
Special Subject
Treasure Fleets of the Eastern Oceans:
China, India and the West 1601-1833
HI31F
Module Booklet 2013-2014
Module Director: Professor Maxine Berg
maxine.berg@warwick.ac.uk
Room H020
Tel. 02476 523377
23377 (internal)
Office Hours: Wednesdays 4:00-5:00 (by appointment),
or Thursdays: 1:00-3:00
1
Treasure Fleets of the Eastern Oceans: China, India and the
West 1601-1833
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 GoldsmithKress 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 ‘The Dragon’s Ascent: the Rise of
Modern China’, and Year 2 Option ‘Galleons and Caravans’. It complements
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 H020. Office Hours are
Wednesday 4:00-5:00 (by appointment), or Thursdays: 1:00-3:00, but other
times can be arranged by e-mail, or just drop by. 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 5:00. 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 farflung 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 a 4,500 word long essay or a 9,000 word Dissertation
based on original research involving primary sources. The module does not
include lectures.
Expected Learning Outcomes:
(By the end of the module the
student should be able to....)
Which teaching and learning
methods enable students to
achieve this learning
outcome?
Which assessment methods
will measure the
achievement of this learning
outcome?
Seminar discussions, individual
research/reading and essay
writing
2 examination papers (some
students will substitute an
assessed research paper for
one examination paper)
Have enhanced their research,
writing and communication skills.
Have gained an understanding of
the availability, uses and limits of
primary source material for historical
analysis.
Have deployed electronic
technologies in their learning.
Have a broad knowledge of the
history of long distance trade, the
East India Companies and exchange
of material cultures in the period
between 1601 and 1833.
3
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 long 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:
Uploads of and links to many of the core primary readings will be available on
the module web pages:
(http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/undergraduate/modules/treasur
e_fleets).
The web pages 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 2-hour seminar per week for 18
weeks
Tutorials per week
Linked to essay production
Laboratory sessions
None
Total contact hours
36
Module duration (weeks, if
applicable)
20 (including 2 reading weeks)
Other (please describe):e.g.
distance-learning, intensive
weekend teaching
4
Assessment Methods:
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)





Maximum word length for long essays (4,500) and dissertations
(9,000) does not include footnotes and bibliography. There is no
10% allowance for going over this length.
All second-year option modules have moved to a 50/50 model of
assessment in which all students will write a 4,500 word essay and
undertake a final 2 question/ 2 hour exam paper (consisting of 10
questions). This does not include European World, which continues
to be assessed via a 3-hour exam.
Assessment of Special Subjects and Advanced Options will also
follow a 50/50 model (2 hour exam and 4,500 word essay) unless
students are writing an attached Dissertation, in which case they
will undertake a 3 hour exam paper and will not be permitted to
write a long essay.
Visiting students will be assessed via a new standard mode based
on essays rather than exams:
1 term, arriving autumn - 2 x short essays due Week 5 and Week 9 of
Term 1
2 terms, arriving autumn - 2 x short essays due Week 5 and Week 9
of Term 1 and 1 x long essay due Week 9 of Term 2
3 terms, arriving autumn - 2 x short essays due Week 5 and Week 9
of Term 1 and 1 x long essay due Week 4 of Term 3
1 term, arriving spring - 2 x short essays due Week 5 and Week 9 of
Term 2
2 terms, arriving spring - 2 x short essays due Week 5 and Week 9 of
Term 2 and 1 x long essay due Week 4 of Term 3.
5
Seminar Topics:
Autumn Term
Week 1.
Global History: New Perspectives.
Week 2.
Seaborne Empires of the Indian Ocean: Ports and Emporia.
Week 3.
Fleets from the Western Oceans: the Portuguese and the Dutch
East India Company (VOC).
Week 4.
Trip to Dockland Musuem on Friday 25 October
Week 5.
Straits of Malacca and the Malabar Coast: the Spice Trade.
Week 6.
Reading Week
Week 7.
Japanese Encounters: the Closure of Japan and Dutch Traders.
Week 8.
The English East India Company.
Week 9.
The French East India Company.
Week 10.
The Textile Century: Indian Cottons and European consumers.
Spring Term
Week 1.
Oriental Luxuries: the Chinaware Revolution.
Week 2.
Chinese Factories: from Jingdezhen to Canton.
Week 3.
The Tea Trade: Taxes and Smugglers.
Week 4.
Primary Sources and Long Essay Topics.
Week 5.
Ships and Sailors, Pirates and Captives.
Week 6.
Reading Week
Week 7.
Science and Empire: Botany and Plantations.
Week 8.
Cartography, Sea Charts and Maritime Knowledge.
Week 9.
Princes and Traders: the Macartney Embassy to China.
Week 10.
Long Essay Presentations – Monday 10 March 1-5pm
Venue(TBC)
Summer Term
Week 3.
Revision Session – 8 May 11-1pm
Week 5.
Revision Session – 22 May 11-12pm
6
Indicative Readings
Primary Sources:
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 16351834 , 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.
Electronic Resources:
The Making of the Modern World: The Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic
Literature
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO)
Empire Online
[Log-in to these resources via the Warwick Library Catalogue]
Secondary Sources:
David Arnold, ‘Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: a prehistory 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.
7
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).
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 (London, 2002).
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. 141-188.
Natasha Glaisyer, ‘Networking: Trade and Exchange in the EighteenthCentury 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, Cherishing 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 Roxburgh
Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East
(London, 2005).
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 Mass Production in
Chinese Art (Princeton, 2000).
David Mackay, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire, 17801801 (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).
8
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).
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)
Tirthankar Roy, ‘Knowledge and Divergence from the Perspective of Early
Modern India’, Journal of Global History, 3, 2008, pp. 361-387.
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).
9
Seminars
1.
Global History: New Perspectives
Seminar Questions:
1. What is new about Global History?
2. What makes global trade possible?
3. What made Europeans 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, 1780-1914: Global Connections and
Comparisons (Oxford, 2004), chapters 1 and 2.
K. Pomeranz and S. Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society Culture and
the World Economy, 1400-Present (Armonk, NY, 2006), pp. 158-160.
Jan De Vries, ‘The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World’, Economic
History Review, 63, 3 (2010), pp. 710-733. *
Gurminder Bhambra, ‘AHR Roundtable: Historical Sociology, Modernity, and
Postcolonial Critique’, The American Historical Review, vol. 116 (3), June, 2011,
pp. 653-662.*
Maxine Berg ed., Writing the History of the Global: Challeges for the Twentyfirst Century (Oxford, 2013) (proofs available on module website).*
Marten Jerven, ‘An Uneven Playing Field: Comparisons in Global Economic
History’, Journal of Global History 7 (2012), pp. 107-128.*
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.
10
Catherine Hall, Review of C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, Institute of
Historical Research Book Review (2004), available here:
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/420. *
F. Fernández-Arnesto, ‘Britain, the Sea, the Empire, the World’, in David
Cannadine, ed., Empire, the Sea and Global History: Britain’s Maritime World,
c. 1760-1840 (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 6-22.
David Christian, Maps of Time: An introduction to Big History (Berkeley, 2004).
Jürgen Österhammel 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), available here:
http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/5.1/laichas.html.*
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.*
Global History Videos (a series of interviews with global historians) on the
Global History and Culture Centre Website:
[http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/resources].*
11
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:
Om Prakash, ‘The Indian Maritime Merchant, 1500-1800’, Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient 47, 3 (2004), pp. 435-457.*
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. 355360.
Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India before Europe (Cambridge,
2006), chap. 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 Merchant and Indian History and
chap. 2 – India and the Indian Ocean 1500-1800. *
Further Reading:
F. Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800, (Trans. by Miriam Kochan
London, 1973) Vol. 2, pp. 581-599; Vol. 3, pp. 484-535.
Markus P.M. Vink, ‘Indian Ocean Studies and the ‘New Thalassology’, Journal
of Global History, 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 (New Cambridge History of India;
Cambridge, 1993), 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.*
12
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 S. 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 (Cambridge,
2006), chaps. 7,8,9.
John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405
(London, 2007) Chapter 2.
Edward Alpers and Himanshu Prabha Ray (eds.), Cross-Currents and
Community Networks: The History of the Indian Ocean World (New Delhi; New
York, 2007). Introduction.
B. Bhattacharya, G. Dharamphal-Frick and J. Gommans, ‘Spatial and
Temporal Continuities of Merchant Networks in South Asia and the Indian
Ocean (1500-2000)’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient,
50, 2-3 (2007), pp. 91-105. [This is a special issues also including articles by Om
Prakash, Ghulam Nadri and others]. *
Rene Barendse, The Arabian Seas (Leiden, 2002).
Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: the
Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley,
2011).
Documents:
Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire, 1656-1668 (ed. & translated by
Archibald Constable, 1891). *
13
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 Reading:
The Portuguese
F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th – 18th Century: Vol. 3: The
Perspective of the World (Berkeley, 1992 Printing), pp. 138-157.
Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. I: ‘The Century of
Discovery’, (Chicago, 1965).
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The birth-pangs of Portuguese Asia: revisiting the
fateful ‘long decade’ 1498-1509, Journal of Global History, 2, 3 (2007), pp. 261280.*
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’.
Further 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: LongDistance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750 (Cambridge, 1990),
chap. 2, pp. 34-101.
Om Prakash, European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia (Ashgate,
1997), chapters 2 and 3.
14
James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia Under the Hapsburgs 1580-1640
(Baltimore; London, 2008 [1993]).
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, From the Tagus to the Ganges (Oxford, 2005),
chapter 2 – On Indian Views of the Portuguese in Asia, 1500-1700.*
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, 3 (2008), pp. 389-418. *
The Dutch
Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success,
Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815(Cambridge,
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’, Economic
History Review, 63, 3 (2010), pp. 710-733.*
Niels Steensgaard ‘The growth and composition of the long-distance trade of
England and the Dutch Republic before 1750’ in James D. Tracy, The Rise of
Merchant Empires, (Cambridge, 1990), chap. 3, pp. 102-153.
F.S. Gaastra and J.R. Bruijn, ‘The Dutch East India Company’s Shipping, 16021795, 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
(Cambridge, 1999), 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, 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
15
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).
- 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. 176186.
- 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.*
16
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’, in Joel Mokyr (ed.) Oxford
Encyclopedia of Economic History (Oxford, 2003), Vol. 5.
Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient 1600-1800 (University of
Minnesota Press, 1976, chap.1 pp. 31-78.*
Anthony Reid, ‘Economic and Social Change’ in Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The
Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. 1(2) 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1999),
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.* (images only on website)
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. *
17
Documents:
A. Reid (ed.), Johan Nieuhof: Voyages and Travels to the East Indies 1653-1670
(Singapore, 1988). *
18
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).
Japan Trade, 1550-1700’ in Prakash, ed. European Commercial Expansion in
Early Modern Asia (Aldershot, 1997), chap. 6, pp. 117-128.
Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan (Berkeley, 1993).
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (London, 2011) –
novel about the Dutch factory in Deshima.
Martha Chaiklin, Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture: the
Influence of European Culture on Japan 1700-1850, (Leiden, 2003).
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 (ed.), They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European
Reports on Japan, 1543-1640 (Ann Arbor, 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.*
19
6.
English East India Company
Seminar Questions:
1. Why was the English East India Company able to make the transition from
trade to government in the eighteenth century?
2. What advantages did the English East India Company have as a
latecomer in early modern global trade?
Secondary Reading:
K.N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early JointStock Company 1600-1640 (London, 1965).
Peter J. Marshall, ‘The English in Asia to 1700’ in Nicholas Canny (ed.), The
Oxford History of the British Empire: The Origins of Empire (Oxford, 1998), chap.
12, pp. 264-285.
Peter J. 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, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis;
London, 1976), chap. 2.
Nick Robins, The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India
Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (London, 2006).
Anthony Farrington, Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia 16001834 (London: British Library, 2002).
Huw Bowen, ‘Britain in the Indian Ocean Region and beyond’ in H.V. Bowen,
Elizabeth Mancke and John G. Reid, eds. Britain’s Oceanic Empire
(Cambridge, 2012), pp. 45-66.
Philip J. Stern, ‘History and Historiography of the East India Company. Past,
Present and Future’, History Compass 2010 *
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 J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empire: Britain, India and
America, c.1750-1783 (Oxford; New York, 2005).
20
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 (Woodbridge, 2002) (see esp. essay by Om Prakash on the English
East India Company and India).
Huw Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial
Britain, 1756-1833 (Cambridge, 2005)
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. *
Holden Furber, John Company at Work: A Study of European Expansion in
India in the Late Eighteenth Century (New York, 1970 [1948]).
Soren Mentz, The English Gentleman Merchant at Work: Madras and the City
of London, 1660-1740 (Copenhagen, 2005).
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global
Economic Divergence 1600-1850 (Cambridge, 2011), chapters 2 and 3.
Phillip Stern, ‘History and Historiography of the English East India Company:
Past Present and Future’ History Compass, 7, 4 (2009), pp. 317-336.
Miles Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the World 1550-1800 (Cambridge,
2008).
Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East 17501850 (London, 2005).
Natasha Eaton, ‘Between Mimesis and Alterity: Art, Gift and Diplomacy in
Colonial India, 1770-1800’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46
(2004), pp. 816-844. *
David Arnold, ‘Agriculture and Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: a Prehistory 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.
Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History
(Princeton, 2011).
21
Documents:
John Corneille, Journal of my Service in India (Michael Edwardes (ed.),
London, 1966).*
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), Book 3.*
Additional Documents:
Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore,
Canara, and Malabar (London, 1807), Introduction and pp. 193-226.*
John Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689 (London, 1696) [Electronic
Resource: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2426511~S1].*
Charles Lockyer, An Account of the Trade in India (London, 1711) [Electronic
Resource: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1883471~S1].*
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 Reading:
Donald C. Wellington, French East India Companies: A Historical Account and
Record of Trade (Lanham MD: Hamilton Books, 2006).
Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (London,
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
(Aldershot, 1997), chap. 14.*
Catherine Manning, Fortunes à Faire: The French in Asian Trade, 1719-1748
(Aldershot, 1996), chaps 1-3.*
F-J. Ruggiu, ‘India and the Reshaping of the French Colonial Policy (1759-89)’,
Itinerario, 35 (2011), pp. 25-43.
Further Reading:
Peter Jimack, ed., A History of the Two Indies. A Translation Selection of
Writing from Raynel’s Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements des
European dans les deaux Indes (Ashgate, 2007).
Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, chap. 2.*
Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.) Maritime India (Oxford, 2004).
Chapters in Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau,eds., Merchants,
Companies and Trade (Cambridge, 1999), chaps. 6, 10, 15 *:
Chap 6 – Michel Morineau, ‘Eastern and Western merchants from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, pp. 116-144
Chap. 10 - Philippe Haudrère, ‘The French India Company and its trade in the
eighteenth century’, pp. 202-211
Chap. 15 – Paul Butel, ‘French traders and India at the end of the eighteenth
century’, pp. 287-300.
Indrani Ray, The French East India Company and the Trade of the
Indian Ocean ed. Lakshmi Subramaniam (New Delhi, 1999).
23
Ina B. McCabe, Orientalism in Early Modern France: Eurasian Trade,
Exoticism and the Ancien Régime (New York, 2008).
Documents:
Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire, pp. 200-238.*
The Private Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai, Dubash to Joseph F. Dupleix 17361761, 12 vols., (Madras, 1922, Reprinted, Chennai, 2005). Selected pages.*
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 book 4.*
24
8.
The Textile Century: Indian Cottons and European Consumers
Seminar Questions:
1.
What made Indian cottons desirable for western consumers?
2.
Why were the Indians unable to keep pace with European industrial
production of cotton fabrics?
Secondary Readings:
K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian
Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 297-323.
Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient (Minneapolis; London,
1970), chap. 2, pp 79-125.*
K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company
1660-1760 (Cambridge, 1978), chaps. 11 and 12, pp. 237-312.
Prasannan Parthasarathi, ‘Review of The Great Divergence’, Past and
Present, 176, (August 2002).
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not
(Cambridge CUP 2011), chap. 4.
John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century
England (New Haven, 2007), Introduction, chap 7, 18.
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not
(Cambridge, 2011).
Further Reading:
C.A. Bayly, Rules, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society Society in the
Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1983).
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global
Economic Divergence 1660-1850 (Cambridge, 2011), chapter 4.
Rosemary Crill (ed.), Textiles from India: The Global Trade (Calcutta, 2006).
The following chapters:
Sujata Parsai, ‘Surat as a Centre of the Textile Trade’, pp. 287-302
Donald Clay Johnson, ‘Seventeenth-century Perceptions of the Textile trade
as Evidence in the Writings of the Emperor Jahangir and Sir Thomas Roe’, pp.
233-244.*
Seema Alavi (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in India: Debates in Indian History
and Society (Oxford, 2002), chap. 5 – Om Prakash, ‘ Trade and Politics in
25
Eighteenth-century Bengal’, chap. 7 – Prasannan Parthasarathi -‘Merchants
and the Rise of Colonialism’.*
Jenny Balfour-Paul, ‘India’s Trade in Indigo: its ups and downs’ in
Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the
Genealogies of Globalization (Berkeley, 2008), pp. 357-374.
Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi, The Spinning World: A Global
History of Cotton Textiles (Oxford, 2009).
Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, How India Clothed the World: The World of
South Asian Textiles, 1550-1850 (Leiden, 2009).
Tirthankar Roy, ‘Knowledge and Divergence From the Perspective of Early
Modern India’, Journal of Global History, 3 (2008), pp. 361-388. *
Robert Finlay, ‘Weaving the Rainbow: Visions of Colour in World History’,
Journal of World History, 18, 4 (2007), pp. 383-431.*
Documents:
John Irwin & Margaret Hall, Indian Painted and Printed Fabrics (Ahmedabad,
1971) – Documents: Export Fabrics 17th to 18th Century’; ‘Hangings, Coverlets
and Canopies 19th and 20th Centuries;’, pp. 36-48.*
John Irwin and K.B. Brett, Origins of Chintz (London, 1970) – ‘Father
Coerdoux’s Letters 1742 and 1747, Appendix B; ‘Beaulieu’s Account of the
technique of Indian cotton-painting, c. 1734’, Appendix A; ‘The Roxburgh
account of Indian cotton-painting, 1795’, Appendix C.
26
9.
Chinese Factories: from Jingdezhen to Canton
Seminar Questions:
1.
Compare the openness and closure of early modern China and
Japan.
2.
Discuss changing European tastes for Chinese and Japanese
porcelain. What part did merchants and Companies play in fostering
these tastes?
Secondary Reading:
Robert Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: the Culture of Porcelain in World History’,
Journal of World History, 9 (1993), pp. 141-188.
G.A. Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain and its Influence on European
Wares (London, 1979).
Rosemary E. Scott, ed., The Porcelains of Jingdezhen (London, 1992). This
essays: C.J.A. Jörg, ‘Porcelain for the Dutch in the Seventeenth Century:
Trading Networks and Private Enterprise’, pp. 183-205.
Maxine Berg, ‘Britain’s Asian Century: Porcelain and Global History in the
Long Eighteenth Century’, in Laura Cruz and Joel Mokyr, eds., The Birth of
Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Jan de Vries (Brill), 2010.
Martha Chaiklin, Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture: the
Influence of European Culture on Japan 1700-1850 ,(Leiden, 2003).
Further Reading:
C.L. Jőrg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (The Hague, 1982).
Robert Batchelor, ‘On the Movement of Porcelains: Rethinking the birth of
Consumer Society as Interactions of Exchange Networks, 1600-1750’, in John
Brewer and Frank Trentmann (eds.), Consuming cultures, Global Perspectives:
Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford, 2006), pp. 95-122.
Wang Eang Cheong, Hong Merchants of Canton: Chinese Merchants in SinoWestern Trade, 1684-1798 (Richmond, 1997) chapter 4. (Copy in the Global
History Centre).
Frank Dikotter, Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in
China (New York, 2006) Chapter 2.
H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 16351834, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1926), chap. intro., 6, 17*
27
Documents:
Shipping Log of Nathaniel Torriano 1718-1730, Chancery Masters Exhibits, CO
112/24, TNA.
Louis Dermigny, la Chine et L’Occident: Le Commerce a Canton au XVIII
Siècle, 1719-1833 (Paris, 1964) – Visual sources.*
28
10.
Oriental Luxuries: The Chinaware Revolution
Seminar Questions:
1.
How was porcelain produced and marketed on a global scale?
2.
How were Western consumers persuaded to accept European
substitutes for porcelain?
3.
How accurate were Jesuit accounts of Asian technologies in the early
modern period?
Secondary Reading:
Maxine Berg, ‘Britain’s Asian Century: Porcelain and Global History in the long
eighteenth Century’, paper for Jan de Vries, The Birth of Modern Europe:
Culture and Economy 1400-1800 (2010).*
Anne E McCants, ‘Modest Households and Globally Traded Textiles: Evidence
from Amsterdam Household Inventories’, The Birth of Modern Europe: Culture
and Economy 1400-1800 (2010).*
Robert Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: the Culture of Porcelain in World History’,
Journal of World History, 9 (1993), pp. 141-188.
Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, Joseph Needham’s Science & Civilisation in China
Vol. 5:12 - Ceramic Technology, pp. 443-454; 740-772.
Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in
Chinese Are (Princeton, 2000), pp. 75 -101.
Shelagh Vainker, ‘Luxuries or not? Consumption of silk and porcelain in
eighteenth Century China’ in M. Berg and E. Eger(eds.) Luxury in the
Eighteenth Century (Basingstoke, 2003).
Margaret Medley, ‘Organisation and Production at Jingdezhen in the
Sixteenth Century’, in Rosemary Scott (ed.), The Porcelains of Jingdezhen
(London, 1992), pp. 69-83.
Colin D. Sheaf, ‘Chinese Porcelain and Japanese Tea Taste in the Late Ming
Period’, in Rosemary Scott (ed.), The Porcelains of Jingdezhen (London, 1992),
pp. 165-183.
Theodore Nicholas Foss, ‘Chinese Silk Manufacture in Jean-Baptiste Du Halde,
Description… de la Chine (1735)’ in Michael Adas (ed.) Technology and
Europe Overseas Enterprise: Diffusion, Adaption and Adoption (Aldershot,
1996), pp. 277-296. *
Anne Gerritsen, 'Fragments of a Global Past: Sites of Ceramics Manufacture in
Song-Yuan-Ming Jiangxi.' Journal of the Social and Economic History of the
Orient, 2011.
29
Anne Gerritsen and Stephen McDowall ‘Material Culture and the Other:
European Encounters with Chinese Porcelain 1650-1800’, Journal of World
History, 23, 2012, pp. 87-113.
Documents:
Robert Tichane, Ching-te-chen: Views of a Porcelain City (New York, 1983):
‘Letter I – Pere d’Entrecolles’ chap. 3, pp. 51-112.
‘Letter II – Pere d’Entrecolles’ chap. 4 , pp. 113-128.*
Stephen W. Bushell, Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, being a
translation of the T’ao Shuo (Oxford, 1910).
30
11.
The Tea Trade: Taxes and Smugglers
Secondary Reading:
Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, ‘Taxes on Luxury Goods’ in Proceedings of
the Datini Institute, 2008.
William Ashworth, Customs and Excise: trade, production and consumption in
England, 1640-1845 (Oxford, 2003).
K. Pomeranz and S. Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society Culture and
the World Economy, 1400-Present (Armonk, NY, 2006), pp. 160-163.
Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis;
London, 1970), chap. 3, pp. 125-168.*
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).8
Hoh-Cheung and Lorna H. Mui, ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade before
1784’, American Historical Review, vol. 74 (1), 1968, pp. 44-73*
Anne McCants, ‘Poor Consumers as Global Consumers: the Diffusion of Tea
and Coffee Drinking in the Eighteenth Century’, The Economic History Review,
61 (2008), pp. 172-200.*
12.
Primary Sources and long essay topics.
31
13.
Ships and Sailors; Pirates and Captives.
Seminar Questions:
1.
Was piracy ever a serious threat to the development of global trade?
2.
Compare the backgrounds and capabilities of European and Asian
sailors.
3.
Were ‘captives’ agents of commercial and cultural interchange?
4.
Do captive narratives provide insight into cultural encounter?
Secondary Reading:
K. Pomeranz and S. Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society Culture and
the World Economy, 1400-Present (Armonk, NY, 2006), pp. 41-45, 47-49,154156, 165-167.
K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic
History From the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985), chaps. 6, 7.
Conrad Gill, Merchants and Mariners of the Eighteenth Century (London,
1961).
Anne Péroptin-Dumon, ‘The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and the Law on
the Seas, 1450-1850’ in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy of
Merchant Empires (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 196-227.
Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (London,
2002), chapters 2, 3 and 8.
Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
(London, 2007), Intro. and chaps. 4-7.
David Cannadine (ed.), Empire, the Sea and Global History: Britain’s Maritime
World, c.1760-c.1840 (Basingstoke, 2007), chapters by Philip Morgan ‘Black
Experiences in Britain’s Maritime World’ and Stephen Conway, ‘Empire,
Europe and British Naval Power’.
Sebastian Prange, ‘A Trade of No Dishonour: Piracy, Commerce and
Community in the Western Indian Ocean 12th to 16th Centuries’ American
Historical Review, 116 (2011), pp.1269-1293. *
Miles Ogborn, ‘A Search for Sovereignty. Law and Geography inEuropean
Empires 1400-1900’, American Historical Review 117 (2012), pp. 814-16.
32
Further Reading:
Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant
Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750
(Cambridge, 1987).
Jaap R. Bruijn and Femme S. Gaastra, Ships, Sailors and Spices. East India
Companies and their Shipping in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries,
(Amsterdam, 1993).
Charles Adams (ed.), The Narrative of Robert Adams, a Barbary Captive
(Cambridge, 2005).
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed hydra: Sailors,
Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
(Boston, 2000), chap. 5, pp. 143-173.
John Darwin, Review of Linda Colley’s The Ordeal of Elizabeth March, TLS
(October, 2007). *
Derek L. Elliott, ‘Pirates, Polities and Companies: Global Politics on the Konkan
Littoral, c.1690-1756’, LSE Working Paper 136/10 (March 2010). Available
online: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27888/*
Documents:
Anonymous (Mrs Crisp), The Female Captive: A Narrative of Facts which
Happened in Barbary, in the year 1756 (London, 1769) – Available as an
electronic resource on ECCO.*
33
14.
Science and Empire: Botany and Plantations
Seminar Questions:
1.
Was science an agent of empire in the early modern period?
2.
What factors promoted and subsequently inhibited technological
dynamism in parts of Asia during the period of European East India
Company trade and the early colonial period?
Secondary Reading:
U. Hilleman, Asian Empire and British Knowledge: China and the Networks of
British Imperial Expansion (Cambridge, 2009).
Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 17001850 (New Haven; Yale University Press, 2009), chapters 1-3. See review by M.
Berg, TLS.
Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of
Knowledge in South Asia and Europe 1650-1900 (Palgrave, 2007) Chapter 1 –
Surgeons, Fakirs, Merchants and Craftsmen: Making L’Empereur’s Jardin in
Early Modern South Asia’ and Chapter 2 – ‘Circulation and the Emergence of
Modern Mapping: Great Britain and Early Colonial India, 1764-1820’.
Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial British and the
Improvement of the World (New Haven, 2000), chap. 3.
Further Reading:
Simon Schaffer et. al. (eds.), The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global
Intelligence, 1770-1820 (Sagamore Beach MA, 2009).
Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007).
Neil Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of Collection
1770-1830 (London, 2007).
Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine and Science in
the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, 2007)
Jan De Vries, Reviews of Harold J Cook, Matters of Exchange and Anne
Goldcar, Tulipmania, American Historical Review, 113, 2 (April, 2008), pp. 438441. *
John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early
Modern World (Berkeley, 2003).
Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the
Improvement of the World (New Haven; London, 2000), Chapter 3
34
Neil A. Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of
Collecting, 1770-1830 (London, 2002) Chapters 1 and 2.
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’ in Simonetta
Cavaciocchi (ed.), Relazioni economiche tra Europa e mondo islamico, secc.
XIII-XVIII [Europe's economic relations with the Islamic world, 13th-18th centuries],
Vol. 2. (Prato, 2007), pp. 719-737.
Simon Schaffer, ‘Newton on the Beach: A Genealogy and Solitude’. *
Science and Global History, 1750-1850: Local Encounters and Global
Circulation, A Special Issue of Itinerario, 33 (2009)
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global
Economic Divergence 1600-1850 (Cambridge, 2011), chapter 7.
Documents:
Anton Hove, Tours for Scientific & Economical Research Made in Guzerat,
Kaltiwar & the Conkins 1787-8. *
35
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 and Tom Harper, Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and
Art (London; British Library, 2010)
Chandra Mukerji, ‘Cartography, Entrepreneurialism and Power in the Reign of
Louis XIV’, in P. Smith and P. Findlen, Merchants and Marvels: Commerce,
Science and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York, 2002), pp. 248-277. *
Nicholas Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (London, 2003).
Intro. and chaps. 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)
Chaps. 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 (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 119136.
D. Cannadine (ed.), Empire, the Sea and Global History: Britain’s Maritime
World, c.1760-1840 (Basingstoke, 2007), the following chapters:
P.J. Marshall, ‘Empire and British Identity: the Maritime Dimension’
Richard Drayton, ‘Maritime Networks and the Making of Knowledge’
Simon Schaffer, ‘Instruments, Surveys and Maritime Empire’
Further Reading:
Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World (London, 2007).
Evelyn Edson, The World Map, 1300 – 1492: The Persistence of Tradition and
Transformation (Baltimore, 2007).
36
Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise. Ethnography and Cartography in
Early Modern China (Chicago, 2001), Intro.
37
16.
Princes and Traders: The Macartney Embassy to China
Seminar Questions:
1.
Did the Macartney Embassy reveal a clash of understanding over the
role of ‘goods’ in global connections?
2.
Discuss the political and cultural significance of the Macartney
Embassy to Britain and Europe. What was its legacy?
Secondary Reading:
James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the
Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham, 1995) See also reviews in the American
Historical Review.*
Robert Bickers (ed.), Ritual and Diplomacy: the Macartney Mission to China,
1792-1794 (London, 1993).
Simon Schaffer, ‘Instruments as Cargo in the China Trade’, History of Science,
44 (2006), pp. 1-30
Maxine Berg, ‘Britain, Industry and Perceptions of China: Matthew Boulton,
‘Useful Knowledge’ and the Macartney Embassy to China 1792-4’, Journal of
Global History, 1, 2 (2006), pp. 269-288.
David MacKay, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire 17801801 (London, 1985)
Documents:
Sir George Staunton, An Abridged account of the embassy to the Emperor of
China undertaken by order of the King of Great Britain (London, 1797),
Electronic resource on ECCO.*
H.B. Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834
(1926), Vol. 2 Appendixes G, I, J and K.
Visual Sources:
G.B. Mason, Costume of China. *
17.
Revision Session and Long Essay Presentations
18.
Revision Session
38
Resources
General Online Databases:
Making of the Modern World (Goldsmith’s-Kress) http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/MOME;jsessionid=CCF2C009F7B114E67
DB262F21E8687AC?locID=warwick – probably the best database for Treasure
Fleets primary documents. A quick search for ‘East India Company’ between
1600-1800 returns over 1700 results of official records and other contemporary
accounts. So there is a lot here!
Early English Books Online (EEBO) - http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO
Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalogue–
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page - Can download in text format
William Dampier’s Books, A Voyage to New Holland and A Continuation of a
Voyage to New Holland.
Early Modern Resources Gateway - http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emr/
- lots of great resources and links for all aspects of early modern history. Some
Asian history links, commodity and trade links.
Empire Online – www.empire.amdigital.co.uk - there’s some really interesting
material here, especially in the ‘Visible Empire’ section. However the vast
majority of it is nineteenth century. There are some good seventeenth century
travel journals though – Abel Tasman, William Dampier etc. (search for East
India Company under 17th century). Also, there’s a particularly good
catalogue of European trade with the far East from 1792.
Margot Finn’s ESRC-funded project, 'Colonial Possessions: Personal Property
and Social Identity in British India'. This focuses on the premise that the
exchange and consumption of European and Asian material goods
fundamentally shaped Anglo-Indian family life and social identities in the
decades that preceded the imposition of Crown rule in 1858. The project
combines quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary source data
(diaries, memoirs, private correspondence, probate inventories and wills) to
provide an integrated analysis of select aspects of Anglo-Indians'
engagement with consumer society. A searchable database of information
derived from the inventories and wills, accompanied by a substantial User
Guide, has been compiled. The materials are available online from the UK
Data Archive (Study # 5254), at http://www.dataarchive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5254.
The Modern History Sourcebook http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook1.html - (particularly Asian
sections).
39
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers - http://0parlipapers.chadwyck.co.uk.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/home.do - heaps of
stuff on the East India Company
World and Global History:
See the GHCC Website Links Section mainly – of particular interest though:
See this site before anything else - World History Links http://www.tntech.edu/history/world.html - there are heaps and heaps of
links for world history and related fields. Good section of Maps and
Geographic links too.
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~envision/interact/history.html - list of particular
world history related projects
China and Europe: What is Modern? (Pomeranz and Bin Wong) http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/. Interesting introduction to global
history theory and multiple modernities. Some really good videos.
Historical Maps:
www.maphistory.info/webimages - start here for map searching. Really
extensive cartography gateway.
South Asia Maps http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/index.html really good site, probably the most useful, as most of the images are very high
resolution. All time periods covered, lots of countries and regions in South Asia,
East Asia, Indian Ocean. Some examples:
- Mallet’s Description de l’univers http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/mallet/i
ndex.html
- Nuremberg Chronicle http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/medieval/
nuremchron1493/nuremchron1493.html
- Online illustrations by Bellin from Provost’s Histoire générale des
Voyages http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/prevost
/index.html - lots of images of south asia, china, japan, including maps.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas Austin –
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ - again really great site because of high
resolution images. Use the Historical Maps section, most are after our period
40
but there are still some relevant images. Good selection of historical world
maps. Also lots of modern political and geographic maps which may be of
use.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem - http://historiccities.huji.ac.il/historic_cities.html - This site contains maps, literature,
documents, books and other relevant material concerning the past, present
and future of historic cities and facilitates the location of similar content on
the web. Good Links section.
BNF - http://classes.bnf.fr/idrisi/feuille/to/ind_map.htm
Selected views of Macao http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/macau/macau.html
Renaissance Maps - http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ren/Ren1/Reno.html
- small collection of maps from the renaissance period, may be of some use.
National Library of Australia’s Digital Map Collection - www.nla.gov.au/map
– amazing collection, every map you could ever wish for! Lots of Indian
ocean, asia in general.
Images:
See the Library’s History Useful Websites section under images.
Early Modern Resources, Images http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emr/index.php/category/primarysources/sources/images/
Education Image Gallery - http://edina.ac.uk/eig/ - access to thousands of
useful images, large searchable database.
Library of Congress - www.loc.gov
Atlas of Mutual Heritage - www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl – maps, drawings,
prints and paintings of VOC locations. Zoomable online but not
downloadable in high quality. See Johan Nieuhof’s drawings in particular.
Museums:
National Maritime Museum Collections Online http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/ - Have fantastic collections of maritime
resources online (particularly maps). Again able to view high quality online
but not to download.
British Library – obviously lots here. Check the ‘Trading Places’ seminar, and
the ‘Learning’ sections for some useful resources. ‘Trading Places’ resource at
the British Library http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/trading/tradingplaces.html
41
-
Trading Places Seminar
http://www.fathom.com/course/21701760/index.html
East India Companies Websites:
Maritime Lanka – Good overview of the maritime history of Sri Lanka. Contains
some general information on European/asian contacts.
http://cf.hum.uva.nl/galle/
www.portcities.org.uk – huge image collection, lots of other useful
information, from National Maritime Museum.
http://www.eicships.info/index.html- work in progress database. When
completed it will provide information on all the ships, voyages and seafarers
of the East India Company's mercantile services.
http://www.londoh.com/voc_links.htm - brilliant list of links to VOC resources.
Very long!
http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/empire/default.htm - rise of the British
Empire website. See the rise of the empire section. Some primary sources and
pictures.
‘An essay on the East-India Trade’ by Charles D’Avenant, 1697 http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/econ/eastindi.htm
http://www.colonialvoyage.com/ - Dutch and Portuguese colonial history
website. Lots of resources on different aspects of European colonialism,
chronologies, photos. The extensive links section here is particularly useful.
http://www.duyfken.com/ - Website detailing the history of the Dutch East
India Company ship the Duyfken.
History of Danish East India Company - http://www.scholiast.org/history/tranarr.html
Recreation of Swedish East India Ship Gotheburg http://www.soic.se/engelska/inenglish.4.1e228bcf782be0db97fff408.html
Other Topics:
James Ford Bell Library Trade Products http://bell.lib.umn.edu/Products/Products.html - information and pictures for
a variety of trade products in early modern England.
Trade Routes Resources Blog - http://trade-routes-resources.blogspot.com/ part of The Old World Trade Routes Project (OWTRAD) http://www.ciolek.com/owtrad.html - lots and lots of resources on many
42
different trade routes. Including information and maps on pan-Asian routes,
Indian ocean routes, slavery and commodity resources.
Journals
Journal of World History http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_world_history/
Journal of Global History http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=JGH
Journal of Interdisciplinary History http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_interdisciplinary_history/
Journal of Asian Studies http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=jas
Journal of Asian History –
http://www.iub.edu/~jahist/
Itinerario –
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/itinerario/
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient http://www.brill.nl/journal-economic-and-social-history-orient
Economic History Review
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0013-0117
43