Soldier and Citizen in the Seventeenth-Century English East India Company

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Stern
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
The Status ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Met Expectations

AbstractThis article examines the role of fortifications, garrisons, and militia service in the English East India Company’s early settlements in Asia and the Atlantic. Affecting everything from the physical space of such a settlement to the status and rights of its inhabitants, the institutions and ideologies of a variety of forms of military service revealed the degree to which Company leadership had early on come to understand their settlements in Asia not as mere trading factories, but as colonial plantations, and their role as a government in Asia. Even if their lofty ambitions rarely met expectations, the Company sought within them to cultivate law, jurisdiction, and a robust civic life that could in turn ensure an active, obedient, and virtuous body of subjects and, in a sense, citizens. The attitudes toward and policies concerning soldiering also revealed the degree to which the Company’s seventeenth-century regime, so often treated as unique amongst English overseas ventures and Europeans in Asia, in fact drew and innovated upon models of governance across Europe, the Atlantic, and Asia.

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.

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.

Banias and the British: the Role of Indigenous Credit in the Process of Imperial Expansion in Western India in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
State Building ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Western India ◽  
Senior Member ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Trade And Exchange ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Service Groups

The pressing preoccupation of the British administration in the early decades of the nineteenth century to clip the wings of the malicious Indian shroffs (Bankers) and their manoeuvres and secret dealings was in sharp and in a sense valid contrast to their earlierperceptions of the Indian shroffs and their Hundi empire. By 1807, Mr Rickards, senior member of the Bombay establishment, was urging the Governor-General in Council to establisha General Bank whose operations would extend throughout India, facilitate remittances andcredit transfers from one part of the country to another, and above all ‘free the mercantile body from losses and inconveniences suffered in the exchange and from the artifices of shroffs’. Their ‘undue and pernicious influence over the course of trade and exchange’ could no longer be treated with forbearance, and the urgency of remedy was stressed. It was both strange and ironical that such advice should stem from a quarter where in the crucial years of political change and transition in the second half of the eighteenth century, the cooperation and intervention of the indigenous banking fraternity and their credit support had proved vital to the success of the Imperial strategy. The experience was admittedly not unique to Bombay and the English East India Company (hence-forth E.E.I.C) and in a sense the guarantee of local credit and the support of service groups for a variety of reasons, was clearly envisagedas a basic ingredient to state building in the eighteenth century.

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.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

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.

scholarly journals Greek mercenaries in Sais Egypt

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-19
Author(s):  
Vladimir Il'ich Shubin
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Origin ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Greek Colonization ◽  
Greek World

This article is dedicated to examination of the history of emergence of Greek mercenaries during the riling time of XXVI Sais Dynasty. The author reviews the status and role of Greek mercenaries in the armed forced of Sais rulers, organization of their service and living conditions. Considering the fact that the use of Greek mercenaries in Egypt army was a part of the traditional policy of Sais rulers and carried mass character, the author refers to the problem  of social origin of the phenomenon of mercenarism in the Greek society of Archaic era. The research applies comparative-historical method that allows viewing the phenomenon of mercenarism in the historical context – based on the comparative data analysis of ancient written tradition. By the time of Sais Dynasty, control over regions that traditionally provided mercenaries to the Egypt army was lost. Under the circumstances, in order to compensate such losses, Egypt conscripted into military service the hailed from the Greek world. Mercenaries became the first Greeks settled on the Egyptian land. The conclusion is made that the Greek colonization, in absence of other ways to enter the formerly closed to the Greeks Egypt, at its initial stage manifested in such distinct form.

scholarly journals The Beginning of Dutch and English Conflict in Banda and Moluccas in the Early Seventeenth Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 162
Author(s):  
A S Shngreiyo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Native Population ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Spice Trade

Why Christopher Columbus did discovered America the new world, why did Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to reach India. They went and risk their life if search of the Spice Islands. The spices that European was searching were found in Indonesia Archipelago, Bandas famous for nutmeg and mace and Moluccas for its clove. After the formation of the East India Company in the early seventeenth century both the Dutch and English were competing against each other and outmaneuver one another for control of the islands. In the end, it was the Dutch who emerge victories. The Dutch established a monopoly on the spice trade from the Moluccas. They gained control over the clove trade through an alliance with the sultan of Ternate. Dutch occupation of the Banda’s gave them control of the nutmeg trade. Dutch control of the region was fully realized when Malacca was captured from the Portuguese in 1641. The Dutch were quite merciless when it suited their purposes; sometime obliterate the whole native population. By its brutal conquest over the Spice Islands they were able to control over the spice trade. Nevertheless, the English were not left behind whenever there is opportunity they set in to take the advantage of the sour relation between the native and Dutch, as the English played a role of more mercantile communities than occupation. The beginning of the seventeenth century is very important for the two companies as it decide the fate of the spices trade. Both companies were not willing to back out.

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