Myopia or strategic behavior? Indian regimes and the East India Company in late eighteenth century India

2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandar Oak ◽  
Anand V. Swamy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Fast and slow ships from China: The speed of Dutch East Indiamen reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
Johan de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ship Design ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Inland Waterways ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Slow Adaptation ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
New Research

This article questions the commonly held assumption that the ships of the Dutch East India Company VOC were slower than those of other East India companies. Recently, Solar and De Zwart showed that Dutch ships were slower on outward voyages to a number of Asian destinations during the periods 1770–1775 and 1783–1792. They cited as plausible explanations differences in ship design resulting from constraints imposed by the Dutch shallow inland waterways and the slow adaptation of copper sheathing in the late eighteenth century. Research by the author of this article leads to a critical assessment of these explanations. Moreover, additional new research into homebound voyages from China undertaken by ships of four East India companies, for the periods 1730–1740, 1750–1755, 1770–1775 and 1783–1792, leads to the outcome that – concerning speed – Dutch ships could compete very well with those of the English, Swedish and Danish companies.

Edge of Enlightenment: The Akbar tradition and ‘universal toleration’ in British Bengal

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (06) ◽  
pp. 1956-2006
Author(s):  
JUSTIN BIEL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Street Violence ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Indian Secularism

Abstract‘Toleration’ is a notoriously slippery concept, and yet, as recent scholarship on the historical roots of Indian secularism has implied, it was a guiderail for East India Company decision-making in Bengal in the late eighteenth century. What, then, was the outcome when Europeans encountered what they were quick to regard as South Asian patterns of ‘toleration’? This article argues, first, that a medley of competing policy visions emerged from this interaction and, second, that where these visions overlapped was in perceiving political gain to ensue from facilitating existing South Asian devotional practices. A corollary consequence of this still-emergent policy framework was that most East India Company personnel were loath to intervene in any way but a reactive one when conflicts between devotees of Durga on parade and observers of the Shia Muslim holy day ashura escalated into reprisals and street violence in Calcutta in September 1789.

Redesigning an Enigmatic River

2019 ◽  
pp. 202-246
Author(s):  
Arupjyoti Saikia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter recounts how the East India Company (EIC) officials embarked on their journey to Assam in the late eighteenth century and how they realized that the river could become a trusted ally of the British Empire. Knowing the river became an utmost necessity. The task of assembling practical knowledge about the river was put in place. As the imperial juggernaut gathered steam over the latter half of the eighteenth century, the needed to optimize economic and political benefits from the Brahmaputra. This led to an intensification of interest in the upper reaches of the river. The British colonialists saw the river’s eastern course as a big window to a wider world of trade and commerce. This chapter further tells one how several eventful journeys and surveys were undertaken in a bid to find the source as well as the course of the river to further British economic and political interests.

Women, Monastic Commerce, and Coverture in Eastern Indiacirca1600–1800 CE

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
INDRANI CHATTERJEE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
Commercial Presence ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Made In

AbstractThis article argues that economic histories of the transition to colonial economics in the eighteenth century have overlooked the infrastructural investments that wives and widows made in networks of monastic commerce. Illustrative examples from late eighteenth-century records suggest that these networks competed with the commercial networks operated by private traders serving the English East India Company at the end of the eighteenth century. The latter prevailed. The results were the establishment of coverture and wardship laws interpellated from British common law courts into Company revenue policies, the demolition of buildings. and the relocation of the markets that were attached to many of the buildings women had sponsored. Together, these historical processes made women's commercial presence invisible to future scholars.

Representations of India, the English East India Company, and Self by an Eighteenth-Century Indian Emigrant to Britain

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 891-911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Eastern India ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Cultural Mores ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
The Revolution

By writing about the late eighteenth-century revolution which led to the East India Company rule, members of a largely Muslim pre-colonial administrative elite in eastern India sought take control over their own history. They explained the society and ancien régime of India, as well as themselves, to the new British rulers for whom they worked. In so doing, they strove to inform and guide the new British colonial authorities into employing them in the new administration as well as into valuing the cultural mores and bureaucratic experience which they embodied. They also wrote introspectively for the own class, trying to understand the causes of the revolution that had displaced their own traditional rulers and themselves with rule by Europeans and administrations staffed increasingly by Indians with backgrounds different from their own.

Sovereignty, Property and Land Development: The East India Company in Madras

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 976-1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhavani Raman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Land Development ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Competing Ideas

AbstractFrom the late eighteenth century struggles over untitled and unassessed land in Madras became completely entangled with the East India Company’s efforts to craft its sovereign powers. These lands could not be leached of their social meanings and use and instead, competing ideas of ownership incarnated sovereignty as eviction and the Company as a pre-eminent land developer.

scholarly journals The Origins of Colonial Labour Policy in Late Eighteenth-Century Madras

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Ahuja
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Labour Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
English East India Company

This article challenges the view that the English East India Company was unable effectively to dominate society in the colonial metropolis of Madras before the end of the eighteenth century. Instead it is argued that colonial interventions, even into the social organization of labour, were persistent in goals and methods and acquired institutional forms in the latter half of the century. Hence an early colonial labour policy is clearly discernible. The ruling block's strategies concerning the regulation of labour were not based on laissez-faire ideas but rather on a paternalistic brand of contemporary English social theory. This ideological disposition found practical expression in interventions into the city's labour relations by means of various “police committees”. Moreover, British legal techniques were used to regulate labour relations in Madras. On the whole, early colonial labour policy was distinguished from contemporary practices in Britain by a far higher level of coercion.

scholarly journals Styles of mastery of a Calcutta Brahman family: Krishnachandra Ghoshal’s pilgrimage to Gaya, Kashi and Prayag, 1769, in Vijayram Sen’s Ti-rthaman.gala

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-123
Author(s):  
David L. Curley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Gift Exchanges ◽  
And Control

This article examines styles of mastery practised by a wealthy, managerial Brahman family in late eighteenth-century Bengal, when managerial Brahmans found new opportunities in association with the English East India Company. It is based on Tīrthamaṅgala by Vijayram Sen, a verse narrative of a pilgrimage in 1769, led by Krishnachandra Ghoshal for the purpose of performing the trayasthalī śrāddha in Gaya, Kashi and Prayag. Krishnachandra was the elder brother of Gokulchandra Ghoshal, who then was the chief banian of Governor Harry Verelst. The poem describes agencies that enabled the Ghoshals’ success and purposes that shaped their identity. It represents the family’s practices of accountancy, patronage and charity. It represents Krishnachandra’s self-control and control of others, his austerity and munificence in shraddha rites (obsequies), and his use of both Indo-Persian and Sanskrit codes of conduct in gift exchanges and formal conversations. In quite different settings, he used ‘pleasing conversations’ or discussions of knowledge in Sanskrit texts. Both kinds of formal conversation revealed the ‘character’ or ‘dignity’ of participants, and introduced them to important men whom they did not already know. Portraying agencies and purposes that were both this-worldly and spiritual, the poem does not categorically distinguish them. It does de-emphasise courtly aesthetics.

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