scholarly journals Merchants and States: Private Trade and the Fall of Madras, 1746

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Søren Mentz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The State ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Economic Surplus ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Private Entrepreneurs ◽  
British State

Michael Pearson has argued that “rights for revenue” was an important element in the European way of organizing long-distance trade in the early modern period. The state provided indigenous merchant groups with commercial privileges and allowed them to influence political affairs. In return, the state received a part of the economic surplus. The East India Company and the British state shared such a relationship. However, as this article demonstrates, the East India Company was not an impersonal entity. It consisted of many layers of private entrepreneurs, who pursued their own private interests sheltered by the Company’s privileged position. One such group was the Company servants in Asia. The French conquest of Madras in 1746 and the following period of British sub-imperialism in India demonstrate that the state had traded off too many rights. Through the business papers of Willian Monson, a senior Company servant in Madras, the historian can describe the fall of Madras as a consequence of deteriorating relationships between private interests within the Company structure. Directors, shareholders, Company servants and private merchants in India fell out with each other. In this situation, the British state found it difficult to intervene.

Public or private interests? The investment behaviour of public officials in Antwerp during the early modern period

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas De Vijlder ◽  
Michael Limberger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Financial Policy ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Major Factors

Indebted cities were a widespread phenomenon during theAncien Régime. However, some found ways to innovate the management of their municipal debt, whilst others fell prey to over-indebtedness or default. In this article we have left the success stories aside and focused on the latter. Using early modern Antwerp as a case study, we have disentangled the underlying mechanisms that ultimately lead to over-indebtedness and (in some cases) default. Whilst the economic climate and the relationship between city and state have been rightly identified as major factors in the previous literature, our contribution brings another element to the table, namely, the inflexibility of long-established rent arrangements and the entanglement between the ruling elite and therentiers. We show that there was a strong overlap between both groups, which had a huge impact on the financial policy of cities during the early modern period.

Ownership and Inheritance in Sanskrit Jurisprudence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher T. Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Personal Law ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

An account of theories of ownership (svatva) and inheritance (dāya) in Sanskrit jurisprudential literature (Dharmaśāstra). This book examines the evolution of different?juridical models of inheritance—in which families held property in trusts or in tenancies-in-common—against the backdrop of related developments in the philosophical understanding of ownership in the Sanskrit text-traditions of hermeneutics (Mīmāṃsā) and logic (Nyāya) respectively. Ownership and Inheritance reconstructs medieval Sanskrit theories of property and traces the emergence of various competing schools of Sanskrit jurisprudence during the early modern period (roughly fifteenth to nineteenth centuries) in Bihar, Bengal, and Varanasi. The book attends to the ways in which ideas from these schools of jurisprudence shaped the codification of Anglo-Hindu personal law by administrators of the British East India Company during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While acknowledging the limitations of colonial conceptions of Dharmaśāstra as positive law, Ownership and Inheritance argues for far greater continuity between pre-colonial and colonial Sanskrit jurisprudence than accepted previously. Finally, this monograph charts the transformation of the Hindu law of inheritance—through precedent and statute—over the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries.

scholarly journals Mixed Company in the Contact Zone: the “Glocal” Diplomatic Efforts of a Prussian East Indiaman in 1750s Cape Verde

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 423-441
Author(s):  
Felicia Gottmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Cape Verde ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Modern Period

Abstract This article takes a micro-historical actor-centered approach to study the encounter between the officers of a Prussian East India Company Ship and local elites in 1750s Praia, Cape Verde. Combining recent advances in New Diplomatic History and in Company Studies with insights from the study of Contact Zones and transculturation, it analyzes the diplomatic strategies marginalized and hybrid players could adopt to project themselves onto the early modern global stage and locally counterbalance the hegemonic Northern European Atlantic powers. It thus proposes an alternative model of nonprofessional diplomatic interaction in the early modern period.

Towards an Analytical Model of Military Effectiveness for the Early Modern Period: the Military Dynamics of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-316
Author(s):  
Daniel Szechi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Analytical Model ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Military History ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
British State ◽  
The Military

Abstract Early modern European rebellions have long been of interest to military historians, yet, with the exception of the 1745 rebellion led by Charles Edward Stuart, the military history of the Jacobite rebellions against the English/British state is little known outside the Anglophone world. Likewise, though there have been many analyses of particular rebellions no analytical model of rebel military capabilities has hitherto been proposed, and thus meaningful comparisons between early modern rebellions located in different regions and different eras has been difficult. This article accordingly offers an analysis of the military effectiveness of the Jacobite rebels in 1715-16 structured by a model adapted from the ›Military Effectiveness‹ framework first advanced by Allan Millett and Williamson Murray. This is with a view to stimulating military-historical interest in Jacobite rebellions other than the ’45, and promoting more systematic discussion of the military effectiveness of early modern European rebel armies.

15 Legal Conceptions of Statehood

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biaggini Giovanni
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Individual

This chapter traces the evolution of legal conceptions of the state. In relation to the topic, the chapter discusses the structures and boundaries of various state administrations. It first looks at the changing conceptions and characterizations of the term ‘state’ since its first appearance in writings during the early modern period. The chapter then considers the conceptions of statehood and administration together, and their implications for the Europeanization and internationalization of law. Afterwards, the chapter delves into a more thorough discussion of administration as a multifaceted concept. From here, the chapter provides some concluding remarks on the process of Europeanization as a plurality as a result of the different conditions and conceptions of administration within the individual states.

The Organisation of Global Trade: the Monopoly Companies, 1600–1800

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Emmer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Small Companies ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Rapid Economic Growth ◽  
Atlantic Economy

In the early modern period (1500–1800), shipping and trade within Europe were the domain of individual merchants and small companies organised on a temporary basis. Outside Europe, however, new financial and commercial institutions such as permanent joint stock companies came into existence in order to limit the risks. These large institutions played an important role in inter-continental trade and shipping, albeit that their role in Asia differed from that in the Atlantic, where small companies as well as individual merchants remained the dominant form of organisation. In addition, privateers played an important role in the Atlantic economy in times of war while piracy could flourish in those parts of the overseas world where the Iberian trade circuits bordered on those of France, England and the Dutch republic. The conclusion points to the fact that a direct link between the overseas expansion of Europe and its industrialisation might be difficult to construct, but that the creation of long distance trading companies created the institutional environment that must have facilitated Europe's rapid economic growth after the middle of the eighteenth century.

Financing Long-Distance Trade: The Joint Liability Rule and Bills of Exchange in Eighteenth-Century France

2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 690-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Aoki Santarosa
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Liability Rule ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Trade Finance ◽  
Joint Liability ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fundamental Information ◽  
Bill Of Exchange

Over time, international trade expanded beyond the reach of an individual's personal networks. How was long-distance trade among strangers financed without using banks? I argue that the joint liability rule enabled the medieval bill of exchange to become a major form of payment and credit in the early modern period which in turn supported an unparalleled expansion of trade. This article empirically examines the role that joint liability played in ameliorating fundamental information problems in long-distance trade finance.

Republican Visions

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Period

This article examines republican conception of political theory in Europe during the early modern period. It explains that there were two distinct kinds of republican political theory. One was Roman in origin and the other was Greek which valued the natural ordering of the state made possible by the regulation of wealth. The article discusses republicanism in Italy and suggests that the battle between Rome and Greece defined the development of republican political theory throughout the early-modern period.

scholarly journals Fides et Ratio: An Early Enlightenment Defence of Non-confessional Religion by Poiret and his Circle

2010 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri Adrien Krop
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The State ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fides Et Ratio

AbstractIn 1707 an anonymous collection of treatises Fides et ratio was published in Amsterdam. The voluminous work of several authors contains a fierce critique of Locke's notion of faith and the moderate Enlightenment's conception of a reasonable Christianity. The sympathiser with mystic theology Pierre Poiret (1646–1719) wrote the general introduction. In the preface Poiret outlined a counter philosophy. However, the book deserves the interest of modern scholars because of the notions of religion and faith conceived by its authors. They are basically modern. Fides et ratio exemplifies the intense intellectual connections between Great Britain, the Netherlands and the German hinterland during the early modern period. The authors of the collection were part of an international non-denominational web. With some exceptions relations between the philosophes and the counter philosophers among the illuminati are neglected in modern research. In the final parts of this essay it will be argued that the ideas on faith and the ensuing separation of religion and the state created a common ground between Poiret and Christian Thomasius, the luminary of early German Enlightenment, who for some years had been directly influenced by the former's ideas.

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