Chinese, Tartars and “Thea” or a Tale of Two Companies: The English East India Company and Taiwan in the Late Seventeenth Century

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-426
Author(s):  
Derek Massarella
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
East India Company ◽  
History Of ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Direct Trade

A number of years ago, Dr D. K. Bassett pointed out that the English East India Company's objective in re-entering East Asian waters during the second half of the seventeenth century was the re-establishment of a direct trade with Japan from which the company had withdrawn in 1623. It was a futile pursuit. But, far from being an inconsequential historical footnote, the unintended consequence of this policy was the beginning of a direct trade with China, first mooted in the 1610s and which was to prove of greater consequence to the company's fortunes than the chimera of trade with Tokugawa Japan. It is within this context and that of the changing fortunes of the English company and its Dutch rival as well as the broader East Asian situation that the brief, and largely ignored, history of the company's factory on Taiwan is worth examining.

John Company Armed: The English East India Company, the Anglo-Mughal War and Absolutist Imperialism, c. 1675–1690

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Vaughn
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The Glorious Revolution

During the 1670s and 1680s, the English East India Company pursued an aggressive programme of imperial expansion in the Asian maritime world, culminating in a series of armed assaults on the Mughal Empire. With important exceptions, most scholarship has viewed the Company's coercive imperialism in the later seventeenth century and the First Anglo-Mughal War as the results primarily, if not exclusively, of political and economic conditions in South Asia. This article re-examines and re-interprets this burst of imperial expansion in light of political developments in England and the wider English empire during the later Stuart era. The article contends that the Company's aggressive overseas expansion was pursued for metropolitan and pan-imperial purposes as much as for South Asian ones. The corporation sought to centralise and militarise the English presence in Asia in order both to maintain its control of England's trade to the East and in support of Stuart absolutism. By the eve of the Glorious Revolution, the Company's aggressive imperialism formed part of a wider political project to create an absolute monarchy in England and to establish an autocratic English empire overseas.

Inventing the English Massacre

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
English Language ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
British Culture

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.

This Is an Abridged Account of Delhi Which Is an Old City and One of the Chosen Ones amongst the Cities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirza Sangin Beg
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Work Spaces ◽  
History Of ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The City ◽  
Cost Of Construction

The second part of the translation has three segments. The first is dedicated to the history of Delhi from the time of the Mahabharat to the periods of Anangpal Tomar to the Mughal Emperor Humayun as also Sher Shah, the Afghan ruler. In the second and third segments Mirza Sangin Beg adroitly navigates between twin centres of power in the city. He writes about Qila Mubarak, or the Red Fort, and gives an account of the several buildings inside it and the cost of construction of the same. He ambles into the precincts and mentions the buildings constructed by Shahjahan and other rulers, associating them with some specific inmates of the fort and the functions performed within them. When the author takes a walk in the city of Shahjahanabad, he writes of numerous residents, habitations of rich, poor, and ordinary people, their mansions and localities, general and specialized bazars, the in different skills practised areas, places of worship and revelry, processions exemplifying popular culture and local traditions, and institutions that had a resonance in other cultures. The Berlin manuscript gives generous details of the officials of the English East India Company, both native and foreign, their professions, and work spaces. Mirza Sangin Beg addresses the issue of qaum most unselfconsciously and amorphously.

Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Erikson
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Central Pillar

This chapter presents the volume's main argument: that a decentralized organizational structure—constructed through the combination of private and Company trade—was the central pillar of the English East India Company's continued expansion and adaptability over nearly two centuries as a predominantly commercial operation. It delves into the history of the English East India Company and the reasons for its success. Additionally, the chapter also looks at alternative explanations for the success of the company. Finally, this chapter lays out the study's theoretical approach: by considering the micro-level behavioral patterns and opportunity structures that allowed for the development and transformation of the English Company and, through it, larger patterns of global trade.

Europeans, Mestizos and Slaves: The Population of Colombo At The End Of The Seventeenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit Knaap
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
White Women ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Sexual Contacts ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
English East India Company

In India under the English East India Company, it was said: “Necessity is the mother of invention and the father of the Eurasian”. This saying is based on the widespread belief that, during the first centuries of their presence in Asia, European men were to a large extent dependent on “non-white” women for their sexual contacts. The character of these early colonial settlements is therefore often described as non-European. Their population is characterised as a melting-pot of ethnic groups, dependent on the uneuropean institution of slavery. The cultural values this entailed were far from those of the mother countries, certainly not those of the (Calvinist) Netherlands.

The Trade of the English East India Company in the Far East, 1623–84

1960 ◽  
Vol 92 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 32-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. K. Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Far East ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Far East ◽  
The Subject ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Work Done

Much has been written about British activities in the Far East, particularly in China, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, especially by American historians. Dr. H. B. Morse's monumental Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China was first in the field and Professor E. H. Pritchard and J. K. Fairbank have been worthy successors. English scholarship on the subject is naturally somewhat older but, possibly for that reason, the work done has not usually been as detailed or thorough: an exception is Michael Greenberg's recent book, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42. To find general surveys of Anglo-Chinese relations by British writers which extend back into the seventeenth century, it is necessary to turn to the books of A. J. Sargent and J. Bromley Eames. But as far as the seventeenth century is concerned historical research has been scanty. That Greenberg should have regarded a summary of events before the period with which he was immediately concerned as sufficient for his purpose was only natural. Fairbank's introductory chapters are more comprehensive but show greater interest in the attitude of the Chinese to external intruders than in the efforts of the East India Company to intrude. Sargent, as he himself acknowledged, was mainly concerned with the nineteenth century and his attempt to provide a historical background was very superficial. Eames paid considerable attention to early British contacts with China but was prone to errors of fact which make him unreliable.

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