Christopher Henrik Braad (1728-81) and his extracts in 1760 from the Surat Capuchins' mission diary that they had kept since the 1650s. An Introduction

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 435-448
Author(s):  
Jeremy Franks

AbstractMade in Surat, India, in 1760, these extracts from a confidential diary kept in French by a Capuchin mission there since the 1650s are presented in a 21st-century translation into English. Beginning when Aurangzeb became the Mughal emperor, they record nearly a century of significant events while the mission survived as the city declined. The manuscript of extracts, held by Uppsala University, is the only known evidence of the diary's existence. C.H. Braad (1728-81), a senior trader for the Swedish East India Company when he made the extracts, was a Stockholm-born Lutheran. The Catholic Capuchins' trust that he, alone of countless Europeans in Surat, would keep the diary secret—as he did to the end of his life—is good reason for relying on his accuracy. The introduction provides a context for the extracts by drawing on his extensive, still unpublished writings about India: Surat in 1750-51, Bengal in the mid 1750s and his autobiography from 1781 for this and his voyages in the Indian Ocean.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Hellemans

<p>For the coming ten years, the heart of Europe will turn into a gigantic construction site for works on one of the largest hubs of the continent: Antwerp. The Oosterweel Link is the project whereby the motorway ring around Antwerp is undergoing a metamorphosis to reinvigorate traffic flow and add living space to the City. The project had come to a standstill for several years as a result of protests by assertive citizens, but was given a second lease of life following a large-scale participation project.</p><p>To ensure its successful completion, unparalleled efforts are being made in the field and in the area of digitization. It is therefore with good reason that in Belgium the project is referred to as “the construction site of the century”.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 869 (1) ◽  
pp. 012030
Author(s):  
W B Setyawan ◽  
E Wulandari

Abstract Meulaboh is coastal city that has tourism potential. The city has been facing coastal erosion hazard since a long time from high energy wave activity coming from Indian Ocean. To protect the coast from the erosion hazard, a coastal defence structures were built along the city’s coast overlooking the Indian Ocean. Before the 2004 tsunami, hard structures built on the coast that open to waves from the Indian Ocean were damaged by daily wave activity. This study assess effectiveness of the current coastal protection structures protect coastline in the three coastal segments of the city, namely the Padang Seurahet, Ujung Karang and Kampung Pasir, in order to find out if the construction of the structures is the right choice. Related to the tourism potential of Meulaboh City also studied the possibility to expand the function of the structures. The coastal protection structures data for this study were mainly obtained from field observations in June 2021. Effectiveness of the structures protecting coastline were analysed based on technical criteria. Meanwhile, possibility to expand the function of the structures were analysed according to environmental condition of the coastal segments and types of tourism activity. The results of this study show that the hard structure that now exists on Meulaboh coast can protect the city’s coast from the hazard of erosion without negatively impacting the surrounding coastline. In addition, the structure is considered to be expandable to support the development of tourism potential of Meulaboh City. Thus it can be conclude that the choice of hard structure for coastal protection in most of Meulaboh coastline is appropriate.


Author(s):  
Nathan Marvin ◽  
Blake Smith

France was a latecomer to the Indian Ocean among European powers. After some tentative and short-lived initiatives by private merchants, the first French East India Company was founded in 1664 by a French monarchy eager to catch up with England and the Netherlands, which had founded companies of their own at the beginning of the 17th century. Competing with the English and Dutch to replace the Portuguese as the preeminent European power in the Indian Ocean, France gradually established a network of colonial holdings that included the island colonies of the Mascarenes in the southwestern Indian Ocean (Réunion and Mauritius) as well as a network of trading posts along the shores of the Indian subcontinent. Plans to expand this colonial empire to Madagascar, however, met with repeated failure. Established as a regional power by the middle of the 18th century, France would be reduced by the century’s end to the role of a spectator of Britain’s rising hegemony. Nevertheless, France held on to some of its Indian Ocean territories, including Réunion and Pondicherry in South Asia. These outposts of French imperialism would inspire nostalgia, regret, and new colonial ambitions among metropolitan observers, and they would become sites of cultural hybridity and exchange. Indeed, while France’s empire in the Indian Ocean is often overshadowed by the emergence of British dominance in the 19th century, or by the intensity of French investment in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean was a key area of French military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural interest in the 17th and 18th centuries, and beyond.


Author(s):  
Hannah Weiss Muller

Chapter 5 moves to the Indian Ocean and centers on the vibrant trading community of Calcutta. The East India Company’s assumption of the diwani for Bengal in 1765 and its accelerating territorial expansion in the Indian subcontinent provoked concerns about subject status and jurisdiction over those residing in Company territories. These concerns were never fully resolved by the 1773 Regulating Act and were intimately connected to struggles over authority between the British government and the East India Company. This chapter identifies the range of individuals actually subject to the Supreme Court of Judicature, founded in 1774, at the same time as it focuses on the political and jurisdictional repercussions of subject status. It underlines why the judiciary became a central site for negotiations over subjecthood and how subject status became a malleable tool in the hands of judges.


Zootaxa ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2561 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANÇOISE MONNIOT

Numerous collections of ascidians have been made in the Pacific and Indian Oceans but the inventory is far from complete. Each sampling provides new species. Two new didemnids are described here from Palau and Vanuatu. New records are given for 22 additional species with complementary descriptions and underwater photographs. The tropical ascidian fauna is highly diverse and successive new collections show that many of the species are not only widely distributed from the central to western Pacific but also common to the Indian Ocean.


2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer

This paper surveys the history of dictionary construction and orthographic choice in the Comoros — a former French colony in the Indian Ocean — with special reference to issues of literacy, identity, and politics. Evidence ranging from 16th century wordlists to contemporary bilingual/bidirectional dictionaries, as well as colonial, missionary, and scholarly approaches to lexicography and orthography in the Comoros, are examined and compared. While Arabic-influenced writing systems have a long history in the Comoros, the experiences of colonialism and independence in the 20th century introduced French- and phonemically-influenced systems. As the Comoros move into the 21st century, linguists and ethnographers are attempting to assist with questions of standardization, literacy, and dictionary construction. The situation remains fluid, with considerations of tradition, modernity, nationalism, and representation to be taken into account. This paper seeks to address the complex interrelationships between orthographic choice and ethnic identity in the Comoros, with special reference to the development of the first bilingual/bidirectional Shinzwani-English dictionary.


1992 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sun Guangqi

Zheng He was the greatest navigator in China's history and he conducted major oceanic voyages, before the western ‘Age of Discovery’, at a time when the Portuguese under Prince Henry were just beginning to feel their way down the coast of Africa. Under the orders of Emperor Yongle and then Emperor Xuande in the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He led a fleet which was the greatest in the world in the fifteenth century and made, in all, seven expeditions to the Western Ocean from 1405 to 1433. His fleet sailed across most of the sea areas of the Western Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and visited more than thirty Asian and African countries and regions. This paper will mainly discuss the extraordinary achievements of Zheng He's expeditions and their navigational technology, and will also briefly evaluate their role in navigational history.


2008 ◽  
Vol 82 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 47-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rik van Welie

Compares slave trading and slavery in the Dutch colonial empire, specifically between the former trading and territorial domains of the West India Company (WIC), the Americas and West Africa, and of the East India Company (VOC), South East Asia, the Indian Ocean region, and South and East Africa. Author presents the latest quantitative assessments concerning the Dutch transatlantic as well as Indian Ocean World slave trade, placing the volume, direction, and characteristics of the forced migration in a historical context. He describes how overall the Dutch were a second-rate player in Atlantic slavery, though in certain periods more important, with according to recent estimates a total of about 554.300 slaves being transported by the Dutch to the Americas. He indicates that while transatlantic slave trade and slavery received much scholarly attention resulting in detailed knowledge, the slave trade and slavery in the Indian Ocean World by the Dutch is comparatively underresearched. Based on demand-side estimates throughout Dutch colonies of the Indonesian archipelago and elsewhere, he deduces that probably close to 500.000 slaves were transported by the Dutch in the Indian Ocean World. In addition, the author points at important differences between the nature and contexts of slavery, as in the VOC domains slavery was mostly of an urban and domestic character, contrary to its production base in the Americas. Slavery further did in the VOC areas not have a rigid racial identification like in WIC areas, with continuing, postslavery effects, and allowed for more flexibility, while unlike the plantation colonies in the Caribbean, as Suriname, not imported slaves but indigenous peoples formed the majority. He also points at relative exceptions, e.g. imported slaves for production use in some VOC territories, as the Banda islands and the Cape colony, and a certain domestic and urban focus of slavery in Curaçao.


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