All about Money: Maritime Trade in Makassar and West Java, around 1775

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit Knaap
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Maritime Trade ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
West Java ◽  
Nous Permet

AbstractIn the last few decades the debate about the characteristics of early modern maritime trade in Southeast Asia has received extra impetus through the provision of new empirical substance. Amongst others the use of eighteenth-century shipping lists from the archives of the Dutch East India Company has brought the analysis to a higher level. For Makassar, Batavia, Banten and Cirebon this article connects the statistics on ships' volume and commodities exchanged to scattered information about prices of products in order to establish the total value of trade for these ports. By doing so, more light is shed on the leading commodities and the dominant participants in the commerce. Finally, this study addresses whether the eighteenth century in insular Southeast Asia was either a 'Chinese century' or already a 'European century.' Ces dernières décennies, la disponibilité de nouvelles données empiriques a fortement stimulé le débat sur les traits caractéristiques du commerce maritime prémoderne. C'est entre autres en utilisant des inventaires maritimes de la Compagnie hollandaise des Indes orientales du dix-huitième siècle que l'on a pu porter l'analyse à un niveau plus élevé. Pour les villes de Makassar, Batavia, Banten et Cirebon, les statistiques du volume de navigation et des produits échangés seront dans cet article mis en rapport avec des informations éparses sur les prix des produits a fin de pouvoir déterminer la valeur totale du commerce dans ces ports. Cette approche nous permet de mieux comprendre quels étaient les principaux produits échangés et qui étaient les principaux participants au commerce maritime. Finalement, nous nous poserons la question de savoir si en Asie du Sud-Est insulaire le dix-huitième siècle doit être considéré comme un 'siècle chinois' ou bien déjà comme un 'siècle européen.'

scholarly journals Knowledge-making Endeavours of the Dutch East India Company in Malabar, 1663-1795

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Meera Muralidharan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Natural World ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
English East India Company

<p>The Malabar Coast of south-western India, presently comprising the modern state of Kerala, played a unique role in the history of Indian Ocean trade in the early modern period. Of the spices involved in expanding trade networks, the most important was pepper (Piper nigrum), indigenous to the region. Malabar’s fame as a garden of spices (prompting European authors to call it the Pepper Coast) attracted ships from Europe, Africa, Arabia and East Asia. The Portuguese trading company, Estado da India, was the sole European enterprise that traded in Malabar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch challenged Portugal’s monopoly on trade. In 1663, the Dutch successfully captured the Portuguese settlements in Malabar including their major fort in Cochin. The Dutch remained in Malabar for the next hundred and thirty-two years after which the settlements passed to the English East India Company.  The primary motive behind European territorial expansion to Asia was not the production of knowledge; rather, trading networks required a detailed understanding of the natural world, especially its land, flora and fauna. By the late seventeenth century, the pursuit of knowledge, commerce and colonies, and a nascent patriotism were bound together. In this context, the present thesis examines the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Dutch) trade in Malabar. The thesis is set in the period between 1663 (when it first took over the territory from the Portuguese) and 1795 (when the Dutch possessions were usurped by the English East India Company). Two significant themes pursued in this context are how the VOC produced knowledge of the region, and how that knowledge-production relied heavily on patronage from the Dutch Republic as well as inputs from a variety of local actors in Malabar itself, as well as the Company’s other territories. Nowhere can these themes be better explained than in the synergistic relationship of the sciences of botany and cartography.   The study analyses a variety of works produced about Malabar. This includes the Hortus Malabaricus, a seventeenth-century botanical work, which is analysed in the context of the development of botany in the Dutch Republic and early modern European trade in medicinal plants. Alongside natural history works, the study examines the VOC maps, topographical plans, and surveys of forts and gardens in Malabar to understand why the Dutch enterprise in Malabar failed in the eighteenth century. While scientific botany reflected the European need to master the natural world, the science of cartography reflected the need to govern it. In contrast to the Golden image of the Republic (in the seventeenth century), arts and science were not effectively promoted by the Company administration. By re-examining and contextualising official and unofficial records of Dutch trading settlements in Asia, this thesis argues that contrary to dominant historiography, ‘science’ was not used as an effective tool by the Company in Malabar.  Using Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer’s theory of ‘boundary objects’, the chapters in the thesis address the heterogeneity in Company knowledge-production. The first half of the thesis focuses on botanical knowledge-production and the many actors involved in the making of early modern natural history works. The second half of the thesis examines geographical and bureaucratic knowledge-production and a significant shift in the Company policies from trade to land revenue in the second half of the eighteenth century. By historicising how knowledge was produced, the thesis attempts to understand if ‘knowledge-making’ was crucial for ‘profit-making’ in Malabar. This thesis thereby explores the intersectional character of early modern knowledge-production.</p>

scholarly journals Knowledge-making Endeavours of the Dutch East India Company in Malabar, 1663-1795

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Meera Muralidharan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Natural World ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
English East India Company

<p>The Malabar Coast of south-western India, presently comprising the modern state of Kerala, played a unique role in the history of Indian Ocean trade in the early modern period. Of the spices involved in expanding trade networks, the most important was pepper (Piper nigrum), indigenous to the region. Malabar’s fame as a garden of spices (prompting European authors to call it the Pepper Coast) attracted ships from Europe, Africa, Arabia and East Asia. The Portuguese trading company, Estado da India, was the sole European enterprise that traded in Malabar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch challenged Portugal’s monopoly on trade. In 1663, the Dutch successfully captured the Portuguese settlements in Malabar including their major fort in Cochin. The Dutch remained in Malabar for the next hundred and thirty-two years after which the settlements passed to the English East India Company.  The primary motive behind European territorial expansion to Asia was not the production of knowledge; rather, trading networks required a detailed understanding of the natural world, especially its land, flora and fauna. By the late seventeenth century, the pursuit of knowledge, commerce and colonies, and a nascent patriotism were bound together. In this context, the present thesis examines the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Dutch) trade in Malabar. The thesis is set in the period between 1663 (when it first took over the territory from the Portuguese) and 1795 (when the Dutch possessions were usurped by the English East India Company). Two significant themes pursued in this context are how the VOC produced knowledge of the region, and how that knowledge-production relied heavily on patronage from the Dutch Republic as well as inputs from a variety of local actors in Malabar itself, as well as the Company’s other territories. Nowhere can these themes be better explained than in the synergistic relationship of the sciences of botany and cartography.   The study analyses a variety of works produced about Malabar. This includes the Hortus Malabaricus, a seventeenth-century botanical work, which is analysed in the context of the development of botany in the Dutch Republic and early modern European trade in medicinal plants. Alongside natural history works, the study examines the VOC maps, topographical plans, and surveys of forts and gardens in Malabar to understand why the Dutch enterprise in Malabar failed in the eighteenth century. While scientific botany reflected the European need to master the natural world, the science of cartography reflected the need to govern it. In contrast to the Golden image of the Republic (in the seventeenth century), arts and science were not effectively promoted by the Company administration. By re-examining and contextualising official and unofficial records of Dutch trading settlements in Asia, this thesis argues that contrary to dominant historiography, ‘science’ was not used as an effective tool by the Company in Malabar.  Using Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer’s theory of ‘boundary objects’, the chapters in the thesis address the heterogeneity in Company knowledge-production. The first half of the thesis focuses on botanical knowledge-production and the many actors involved in the making of early modern natural history works. The second half of the thesis examines geographical and bureaucratic knowledge-production and a significant shift in the Company policies from trade to land revenue in the second half of the eighteenth century. By historicising how knowledge was produced, the thesis attempts to understand if ‘knowledge-making’ was crucial for ‘profit-making’ in Malabar. This thesis thereby explores the intersectional character of early modern knowledge-production.</p>

Order in the “Arbitrary”: The Distribution, Content, and Temporal Cycles of English Merchant Tribute in Eighteenth-Century Yemen

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-253
Author(s):  
Nancy Um
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Indian Ocean Trade ◽  
Coffee Beans ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company

Abstract Drawing on the documents of the English East India Company, along with comparative material from the Dutch East India Company and sources in Arabic, this article looks closely at the distribution, content, and timing of merchant tribute in relation to the practices of trade in eighteenth-century Yemen. The goal is to uncover the patterns surrounding English commercial gift practices at a time when European merchants were flocking to the southern Arabian Peninsula to procure coffee beans. This study casts gifts as central and regularized parts of the cycle of exchange, rather than as non-transactional or incidental social accessories of the Indian Ocean trade, thereby allocating an important place for gifts within early modern cross-cultural commercial interactions.

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.

Human Taxonomies: Carl Linnaeus, Swedish Travel in Asia and the Classification of Man

Itinerario ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (02) ◽  
pp. 218-242
Author(s):  
Christina Skott
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Species ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Carl Linnaeus ◽  
Eyewitness Reports

AbstractThis article looks at ways in which Swedish travel to Asia informed the classification of man in the work of Carl Linnaeus. In the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae (1758), Linnaeus made substantial changes to his earlier taxonomy of humans. Through two case studies, it is argued that these changes to a great extent were prompted by fresh Swedish eyewitness reports from China and Southeast Asia. The informants for the Homo asiaticus, a variety of Homo sapiens, and a proposed new species of humans, Homo nocturnus (or troglodytes), were all associated with the Swedish East India Company. The botanical contribution by men trained in the Linnaean method travelling on the company's ships has long been acknowledged. In contrast to the systematic collecting of botanical material, Swedish descriptions of Asia's human inhabitants were often inconclusive, reflecting the circumstances of the trade encounter. Linnaeus also relied on older observations made by countrymen, and his human taxonomies also highlight the role of travel literature in eighteenth-century anthropology.

Fast and slow ships from China: The speed of Dutch East Indiamen reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
Johan de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ship Design ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Inland Waterways ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Slow Adaptation ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
New Research

This article questions the commonly held assumption that the ships of the Dutch East India Company VOC were slower than those of other East India companies. Recently, Solar and De Zwart showed that Dutch ships were slower on outward voyages to a number of Asian destinations during the periods 1770–1775 and 1783–1792. They cited as plausible explanations differences in ship design resulting from constraints imposed by the Dutch shallow inland waterways and the slow adaptation of copper sheathing in the late eighteenth century. Research by the author of this article leads to a critical assessment of these explanations. Moreover, additional new research into homebound voyages from China undertaken by ships of four East India companies, for the periods 1730–1740, 1750–1755, 1770–1775 and 1783–1792, leads to the outcome that – concerning speed – Dutch ships could compete very well with those of the English, Swedish and Danish companies.

scholarly journals The Making of the “Malay Pirate” in Early Modern European Thought

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Stefan Eklöf Amirell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Malay Archipelago ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The People ◽  
European Thought

This article traces the long historical background of the nineteenth-century European notion of the Malay as a human “race” with an inherent addiction to piracy. For most of the early modern period, European observers of the Malay Archipelago associated the Malays with the people and diaspora of the Sultanate of Melaka, who were seen as commercially and culturally accomplished. This image changed in the course of the eighteenth century. First, the European understanding of the Malay was expanded to encompass most of the indigenous population of maritime Southeast Asia. Second, more negative assessments gained influence after the mid-eighteenth century, and the Malays were increasingly associated with piracy, treachery, and rapaciousness. In part, the change was due to the rise in maritime raiding on the part of certain indigenous seafaring peoples of Southeast Asia combined with increasing European commercial interests in Southeast Asia, but it was also part of a generally more negative view in Europe of non-settled and non-agricultural populations. This development preceded the notion of the Malays as one of humanity’s principle races, which emerged toward the end of the eighteenth century. The idea that Malays were natural pirates also paved the way for several brutal colonial anti-piracy campaigns in the Malay Archipelago during the nineteenth century.

“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.

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