Inventing the Amboyna Massacre

2020 ◽  
pp. 76-111
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
English Language ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
True Relation

The English East India Company turned the Amboyna conspiracy into the Amboyna massacre in 1624. Massacre was a relatively new word in the English language. This chapter analyzes how the company drew on this new word, detached the incident from its Indian Ocean origins, and obscured the participation of non-Europeans in creating the massacre. At a time of renewed Anglo-Dutch alliance, the company could not use the word massacre in print, so it created this powerful message in other ways, especially in a pamphlet called the True Relation and through illustrations of tortured traders. By linking the executed English traders to martyrs, miracles, and acts of divine providence, the company crafted an enduring history of the Amboyna Massacre. The Habsburg Empire printed its own works in an effort to sever the alliance. This chapter charts the tension between the EIC and the English government as the government sought to secure the Dutch alliance and suppressed multiple works connected to Amboyna.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
British Empire ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Regional Setting ◽  
European Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
English Culture

A conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators in the Indian Ocean in 1623 caused a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known in English culture for four centuries as the Amboyna Massacre. This introduction explains the European context of the Anglo-Dutch alliance that helped produce the conspiracy and that in turn enabled the English East India Company to create the massacre. In creating the incident as a massacre, the English East India Company yoked the episode to a new word, “massacre”; detached the conspiracy from its regional setting; and created new histories for the episode—as a massacre and as a story of violence against English innocents that would in turn become foundational to the history of the British Empire.

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.

The Novel in English in Malaya and Singapore to 1950

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Asia ◽  
English Language ◽  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
East India Company ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
The Novel ◽  
English East India Company

This chapter looks at the representations of the former British Straits Settlements in English fiction from 1819 to 1950, discussing both British literary works that are located in South East Asia and English-language novels from Singapore and Malaysia. Although over the centuries, Europeans of various nationalities had located, intermarried, and established unique cultures throughout the region, writing in the English language at first remained confined to travel accounts, histories, and some largely anecdotal fiction, mostly by civil servants. English East India Company employees wrote about the region, often weaving anecdotal sketches into their historical, geographical, and cultural descriptions. Civil servant Hugh Clifford and Joseph Conrad are the two most prominent writers of fiction set in the British Straits Settlements during the nineteenth century; they also epitomize two opposing camps in representing the region.

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.

The Long Road to Livorno: The Overland Messenger Services of the Dutch East India Company in the Seventeenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
René J. Barendse
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Portuguese Empire ◽  
Thin Thread ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company

The overland communications between Asia and Europe were of crucial importance to the economic and military survival of the East India companies. This applies equally to the English, French and Dutch East India companies - and even to the Portuguese empire.At some of the most crucial moments of its history, the very survival of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) depended on the thin thread connecting it overland to Europe. One of these crises occurred in the mid-seventeenth century when during the first Anglo-Dutch war, English fleets challenged Dutch naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean. Reflecting on the defeat of the British fleets and the near eradication of the English East India Company or EIC's naval presence there in 1654, the Dutch director of Surat commented: ‘We would never have gained such an easy victory if the English had reacted more promptly or had we not received warnings so promptly [tijdig].’ Similarly, the catastrophic defeat suffered at a later date by the French admiral De la Haye is normally attributed to De la Haye's hesitations. Yet is is doubtful whether the VOC would have been able ot assemble a fleet quickly enough to destroy De la Haye's fleet had the VOC not received messages overland.

Shāh ‘Abbās, the English East India Company and the Cannoneers of Fārs

Itinerario ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Paul Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Profit Sharing ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Preliminary Step ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
European Technology

To nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship, the early modern expansion of powers like Spain, Portugal, England and Holland, was a necessary preliminary step towards Europe's ultimate domination of the Asian and African continents. Moreover, the relative ease with which colonial powers manhandled regions like North Africa and the Indo-Pak subcontinent suggested that their early modern ‘pioneering’ counterparts must have shared similar experiences. While some historians highlighted superior business concepts (joint-stock companies, profit-sharing) or superior shipbuilding and navigation techniques as the means with which trading powers like the Estado da India and the English East India Company penetrated and overwhelmed Indian Ocean commerce, other scholars boiled it down to the European affinity for using ‘men-of-war, gun, and shot’. The critical underlying assumption of any of these teleological explanations s i that ‘encountered’ cultures were unable to adequately respond to European technology, of course hinting at some deeper and more profound deficiency. Scholarship in recent decades has shorn such confidence and begun to scrutinise this seedling period of interaction between Europe and non-Europe, suggesting that the initial playing ground between ‘encounterer’ and ‘encountered’ was perhaps more level than previously portrayed.

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