A Note on the Shipbuilding in Bengal in the Late Eighteenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Both overseas trade and shipbuilding in India are of great antiquity. But even for the early modern period, maritime commerce is relatively better documented than the shipbuilding industry. When the Portuguese and later the North Europeans entered the intra-Asian trade, many of the ships they employed in order to supplement their shipping in Asia were obtained from the Indian dockyards. Detailed evidence with regard to shipbuilding, however, is very rare. It has been pointed out that the Portuguese in the sixteenth century were more particular than their North-European counter-parts in the following centuries in providing information on seafaring and shipbuilding. Shipbuilding on the west coast has been discussed more than that on the eastern coast of India, particularly the coast of Bengal. Though Bengal had a long tradition of shipbuilding, direct evidence of shipbuilding in the region is rare. Many changes were brought about in the history of India and the Indian Ocean trade of the eighteenth century, especially after the 1750s. When the English became the largest carriers of Bengal's trade with other parts of Asia, this had an impact on the shipbuilding in Bengal. It was in their interest that the British in Bengal had their ships built in that province.

In the early modern period, Catholic communities in Protestant jurisdictions were impelled to establish colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories. The Irish, English and Scots Colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and elsewhere are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders and the German lands. Similarly colleges were established in Rome for various national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example. The first colleges were founded in the mid-sixteenth century and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their closure in late eighteenth century. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century. Historians have long argued that these exile colleges played a prominent role in maintaining Catholic structures by supplying educated clergy equipped to deal with the challenges of their domestic churches. This has ensured that the Irish, English and Scots colleges in particular have a rich historiography laid out in the pages of Archivium Hibernicum, the Records of the Scots Colleges or the volumes published under the aegis of the Catholic Record Society in England. Until recently, however, their histories were considered in isolating confessional and national frameworks, with surprisingly little attempt to examine commonalities or connections. Recent research has begun to open up the topic by investigating the social, economic, cultural and material histories of the colleges. Meanwhile renewed interest in the history of early modern migration has encouraged historians to place the colleges within the vibrant migrant communities of Irish, English, Scots and others on the continent. The Introduction begins with a survey of the colleges. It assesses their historiographies, paying particular attention to the research of the last three decades. The introduction argues that an obvious next step is to examine the colleges in transnational and comparative perspectives. Finally, it introduces the volume's essays on Irish, English, Scots, Dutch, German and Maronite colleges, which provide up-to-date research by leading historians in the field and point to the possibilities for future research on this exciting topic.


1992 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Daston

The ArgumentNaturalization confers authority on beliefs, conventions, and claims, but what kind of authority? Because the meaning of nature has a history, so does that of naturalization:naturalization is not the same tactic when marshaled in, say, eighteenth-century France and in late nineteenth-century Britain. Although the authority of nature may be invoked in both cases, the import of that authority depends crucially on whether nature is understood normatively or descriptively, within the framework of the natural laws of jurisprudence or within that of the natural laws of mechanics. During the early modern period, the denotative center of gravity of the word “nature” shifted dramatically. Writings about the female intellect are particularly well suited to reflect and focus these changes for three reasons: first, as with so many aspects of gender identity, what was distinctively female about women's way of thinking was usually alleged to be part and parcel of their “nature”; second, thepolitical and social implications of the female intellect were debated heatedly and in unprecedented detail, particularly in France; and third, the actual content of beliefs about what traits sex the intellect as female remained relatively constant during this period, despite sharp differences of opinion over their putative “natural” causes. The female intellect was naturalized not once but repeatedly, and therein lies its value for a history of naturalization.


2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 215-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Om Prakash

AbstractThe paper first situates the trade carried on by private European traders in the overall framework of the Indian Ocean trade in the early-modern period. It then discusses in some detail the trading network of private English merchants in the Western Indian Ocean with special reference to the Surat-Mocha link in the 1720s and the 1730s. The evidence base is provided mainly by the private papers of Sir Robert Cowan, governor of Bombay between 1729 and 1734 and a major English private trader, operating in collaboration with Henry Lowther, chief of the English factory at Surat. Cette contribution replace tout d'abord les activités commerciales menées par les négociants européens dans le cadre général du commerce de l'Océan indien au cours de la période moderne. Elle examine ensuite avec quelque détail le réseau commercial établi par des négociants anglais privés dans le secteur occidentalde l'Océan indien, plus particulièrement les relations instituées entre Surat et Moka dans les années 1720-1730. Les données présentées ont été tirées principalement de la correspondance privée de Sir Robert Cowan, gouverneur de Bombay (1729-1734) et grand négociant privé, associé à Henry Lowther, responsable du comptoir de Surat.


Author(s):  
Simon Szreter

From 1538 the new Protestant church of Henry VIII provided a system of registration of baptisms, marriages, and burials in all parishes of England and Wales. This chapter re-examines the original motives behind the creation of this system, and explores the reasons for its effectiveness and persistence over the ensuing three centuries in Britain by surveying the comparative history of identity registration systems among the British overseas in the early modern period. A review of the variety of measures for registration set up in the North American and Caribbean colonies during the course of the seventeenth century confirms the importance of the security of property-holding in an increasingly commercial world as a motive for creating such systems. However, this review also indicates the importance of whether or not effective social security systems, giving entitlements to relief, accompanied these early identity registration schemes.


2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ines G. Županov ◽  
Ângela Barreto Xavier

The history of agricultural, botanical, pharmacological, and medical exchanges is one of the most fascinating chapters in early modern natural history. Until recently, however, historiography has been dominated by the British experience from the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, with Kew Gardens at the center of the “green imperialism.” In this article we address the hard-won knowledge acquired by those who participated in early modern Portuguese imperial bioprospecting in Asia. The Portuguese were the first to transplant important economic plants from one continent to another, on their imposing colonial chessboard. In spite of this, the history of Portuguese bioprospecting is still fragmentary, especially with respect to India and the Indian Ocean. We argue not only that the Portuguese—imperial officials, missionaries, and the people connected with them, all living and working under the banner of the Portuguese empire—were interested in gathering knowledge but also that the results of their endeavors were relevant for the development of natural history in the early modern period and that they were important actors within the larger community of naturalists.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Carmen Fracchia

The African presence in imperial Spain, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, was due to institutionalization of the transatlantic slave trade that brought 700,000–800,000 Africans as slaves to the Crowns of Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. During the same period and in the same territories, the Mediterranean slave trade was responsible for the presence of 300,000–400,000 Moor, Berber, and Turk slaves. According to Alessandro Stella, if we add those born in these European territories, there were approximately two million slaves living in the Iberian Peninsula and islands during the early modern period. The black presence was ubiquitous in the south of these territories and in the main cities of the centre and the north, as we shall see in ...


Author(s):  
Martha Chaiklin

In the eighteenth century, Surat was perhaps the single most important port city of the Moghul empire, if not the world. Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese ships were called from Africa and Brazil to obtain Gujarati textiles, side by side with dhows from the throughout the Indian Ocean. This textile trade was underpinned by ivory, large amounts of which poured in the city both by caravan and by sea. Even though Surat, or even Gujarat, was not elephant habitat in the early modern period, Surat became a significant port for the import of ivory into India. The need for tusks of an appropriate size for bangles created symbiosis of trade between Gujarati textiles and ivory that directly affected the prosperity of Surat. The chapter thus links Surat to the Indian Ocean World through ivory and demonstrate the interconnected nature of ivory and textiles in the Gujarat region.


Author(s):  
Y. Spyropoulos

Abstract This articles main argument is that in the course of the eighteenth century, the Janissary corps evolved into a powerful platform for the exchange of people, goods, and ideas between different localities covering a vast geographical area. By elaborating on this idea this paper maintains that the Janissaries should be treated as a key institutionfor the examination of Muslim economic and political history in the Ottoman periphery.We claim thatthe studyof their networkshas the potential to drastically redefine our current perception of the sociopolitical and financial role of Muslims in the early modern Ottoman Empire.Such a research can help us create a more balanced and less Eurocentric picture of the trading operations of Muslims in the regionand better understandthe dissemination of ideas and political movements between a number of Muslim communities where the Janissaries had a strong presence.Аннотация Главныи тезис статьи то, что на протяжении XVIII века, корпус янычар эволюционировал в мощную платформу перемещения людеи, товаров и идеи между различными регионами обширного географического пространства. Обосновывая эту идею, автор статьи подчеркивает, что янычары как институт являются своеобразным ключом к исследованию экономическои и политическои истории исламских общин на периферии Османскои империи. На взгляд автора, исследование этих сетеи взаимодеиствия позволяет радикально пересмотреть нынешнее восприятие социополитическои и финансовои роли мусульман в Османскои империи раннего Нового времени. Подобные исследования дают возможность выработать более сбалансированную и менее евроцентричную картину мусульманских торговых операции в регионе, и лучше понять распространение идеи и политических движении среди различных исламских общин в тех регионах, где присутствие янычар было значимым.


Urban History ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Hills

This paper analyses in their political context the festival decorations created by Paolo Amato, architect to the Senate of Palermo, in 1686 for the festival of the patron saint of that city. One of these decorations, that of the main altar in the cathedral, is of particular interest in that it represents a map of the city itself. An analysis of this map in relation to other seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century maps of Palermo reveals its political and social aim and biases, but also shows that it was unusually up to date and accurate as a representation of the city at that date. Such a representation not only marks a striking cul-de-sac in the history of the development of cartography, but sheds light on the relationship between forging politically acceptable identities for a city and their representation in the early modern period. The map in particular, but all the decorations, or apparati, in general are interpreted in the context of the weakened Spanish empire (to which Sicily belonged) and of the internal politics of the island and of Palermo.


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