scholarly journals Labouring Transformations of Amphibious Monsters: Exploring Early Modern Globalization, Diversity, and Shifting Clusters of Labour Relations in the Context of the Dutch East India Company (1600–1800)

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (S27) ◽  
pp. 19-42
Author(s):  
Matthias van Rossum
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Early Modern Globalization

AbstractEarly modern globalization depended on labour-intensive production and transport of global commodities. Throughout the Dutch Empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries labour was mobilized through a variety of different labour relations (especially casual, contract, slave, and corvée labour). The mobilization of these workers often entailed movements over short, but more often long, distances. Port cities were crucial nodal points connecting various sites of production and circuits of distribution. Furthermore, these ports were themselves also important working environments (ranging from transport and storage, to production and security). As a result, workers from various regional, social, and cultural backgrounds worked in the same environments and were confronted with each other – as well as with the legal and disciplining regimes of early modern urban and corporate authorities. This article studies the development of labour relations in the port work of the Dutch Asian empire, looking at the mobilization and control of labour for dock work (loading and unloading of ships) and transport in its urban surroundings. It will analyse and compare the development of the need for labour, the employment of different sets of labour relations, and the mechanisms of control that developed from it. As the largest trading company active in Asia (up to the 1750s), the case of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is crucial in understanding the impact of early imperial and capitalist development in changing global social and labour relations.

Corvée Capitalism: The Dutch East India Company, Colonial Expansion, and Labor Regimes in Early Modern Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Matthias van Rossum ◽  
Merve Tosun
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
South And Southeast Asia ◽  
And Control ◽  
Labor Regimes

Abstract This article revisits our understanding of corvée labor regimes and their role and impact in the early expansion of colonialism and capitalism. Rather than remnants of feudal pasts, or in-kind taxation or revenue instruments of weak colonial powers, corvée regimes should be viewed as refined methods of colonial exploitation that provided colonial actors with more direct access to and control over the production of commercially interesting global commodities. This article explores and compares the corvée labor regimes employed and shaped by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Moluccas, Sri Lanka, and Java. The article first addresses how to understand corvée and tributary relations as labor, production, and (political-)social regimes. Second, it explores and compares the organization and development of corvée labor relations in the context of the VOC in South and Southeast Asia. These corvée labor regimes reappear as crucial instruments in the expansion of (early) modern colonialism and capitalism, which could explain their widespread recurrence across the globe in the last few centuries.

“NOTHING IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TIME REGIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technology ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.

scholarly journals Dutch trade and patronage networks as facilitators of transcontinental mobility in early modern Russia and the VOC Cape

Historia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
B. Gorelik ◽  
G.J. Schutte
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East India Company ◽  
High Status ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
Identity Transformations

The Swellengrebels were the most important family at the Cape under Dutch East India Company (VOC) rule to become members of the Netherlands governing elite. Hendrik Swellengrebel was the colony's only locally-born governor, while his father and other members of the family at the Cape were born in Russia. Their migration between Europe, Africa and Asia reflected the development and functioning of the Dutch trade and patrimonial networks. Even on the periphery, at the Cape and among Dutch expatriates in Russia, those networks provided opportunities for overseas employment and upward social mobility. The case of the Swellengrebels shows that not only goods but also people could make their way from Russia to the Cape and the VOC Asia. Patronage enabled both spatial and upward social mobility. Keeping mutually beneficial relations with influential patrons such as Nicolaes Witsen, members of the Swellengrebel family navigated their way within the Dutch trade networks and achieved prosperity and a high status in such culturally diverse societies as Russia and the Cape. The social advancement, identity transformations and transcontinental migrations of the Swellengrebel family demonstrate the materiality of transcontinental patrimonial networks in the early modern period.

scholarly journals Administering Empire. Business Diplomacy in Early Modern Sweden: The Cases of Abraham Cabiljau and the Gothenburg Company

2022 ◽  
pp. 21-51
Author(s):  
Kaarle Wirta ◽  
Katja Tikka ◽  
Jaakko Björklund
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
International Commerce ◽  
Military Recruitment ◽  
New Era ◽  
Economic Relationships ◽  
Northern European

The article illustrates the importance of business diplomacy practised by free agents, who navigated and negotiated between northern European empires for widespread commercial, legal and administrative developments. Abraham Cabiljau’s career is an example from the early modern Swedish empire, which stands on the threshold of a new era. In the Swedish empire, Cabiljau was involved in several different sectors, from military recruitment to the development of state accounting and administration of international trade. He represents the Swedish empire’s vast economic relationships with international merchant networks operating in a broad spectrum of military and commercial arenas. The Swedish empire was economically dependent on the financial resources of the merchants in Amsterdam, and economic prosperity was not the sole contribution of these merchants. The education, knowledge and connections provided by Cabiljau greatly enhanced the administration and organisation of Sweden’s international trade by importing a new legal mindset and organisational culture. In return, northern mining resources and Baltic commerce were alluring for Dutch merchants. We argue that the modelling of international organisations was an essential part of Swedish economic development. However, the first Swedish trading companies remained an experimental attempt to transplant the Dutch East India Company (VOC) model to Sweden. Individuals like Cabiljau represent key actors who ignited, taught and promoted commercial law development in Sweden, on which international commerce was later built upon, with long-lasting impacts.

Comparisons and Consequences in Global Perspective, 1500–1750

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
The Reformation

This chapter places the Protestant Reformation in a global perspective in two ways, using methods and examining themes common in world history as a field. First, it compares the Reformation to other religious transformations that were occurring at roughly the same time, including the early development of Sikhism, reform movements within Chinese Confucianism, and the reinvigoration of Islam in the Songhay Empire by King Askia the Great. Second, it examines the spread of Protestant ideology and institutions in the increasingly interconnected early modern world, with the colonies of the Dutch East India Company and the missionary work of the Moravians serving as the primary examples of such cultural encounters. It argues that moving beyond Europe to adopt a broader spatial scale enhances our understanding of the religious dynamism of the period, which does not diminish the importance of the Protestant Reformation, but allows us to view it in new ways.

scholarly journals Risk connected to the demographic factors in managing labour relations in the tertiary sector of the economy

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 420-427
Author(s):  
Aaliya Abdoolla ◽  
Patsy Govender
Keyword(s):  
Work Performance ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Employee Assistance ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Tertiary Sector ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Digital Work ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

In today’s fast-paced, competitive and digital work environment, the challenges of work commitments and personal responsibilities confront employers and employees. Employees want flexibility and control over their work obligations and their personal lives. This is imperative as their economic needs depend on the income derived from work performance. Employers need to institute relevant programmes for economic viability and sustainability. The study aims to examine the impact of the demographic variables on work-life balance in a tertiary sector of the economy. The study utilizes a questionnaire that was self-developed which was pilot tested and, the validity and reliability were determined. Significant differences surfaced in the study. The findings of the study shed light on balancing several aspects of employees’ work and family lives. The results culminate in recommendations for management to integrate Employee Assistance Programmes into its structure and policies; provide for on-site day care facilities and; institute flexible working practices to impact positively on employee commitment and motivation, amongst others.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Southeast Asia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Borschberg
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Business Networks ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
The 19Th Century

The Dutch East India Company, also known by its historic initials VOC, was a chartered trading company that was active between 1602 and 1795. Formed by a merger of six smaller trading firms that traded in the East Indies and backed by a monopoly of trade, this proto-conglomerate emerged as a driving force in globalization, transregional investment, and early European colonization in Asia and Africa. The VOC operated as a profit-driven shareholder corporation and at the apex of its power, around the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, maintained a series of factories and settlements stretching from Cape Town in Southern Africa, the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India, Bengal, to insular and mainland Southeast Asia and as far as Taiwan (Formosa) and Japan. Chartered companies possessed considerable investments and infrastructure outside Europe, especially with their administrative apparatus, contacts, business networks, and trading knowledge. This in turn laid the foundations for Dutch imperialism during the 19th century.

How and Why the Dutch East India Company Became Competitive in Intra-Asian Trade in East Asia in the 1630s

Itinerario ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
World Economy ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
The World ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Global Operations

Many of the principles we know today about the world economy were first discovered in Early Modern Asia. The Portuguese and the Spanish were the first to extend their sphere of trade to encompass the world. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the English, Dutch, French, Danes, Swedes and others, all made their way past the Cape of Good Hope seeking their share of the Asian trade. By the middle of the century, one of them became so successful that, aside from being the envy of the others, they set a new standard of efficiency in global operations. It was of course the Dutch.

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