Biota Barons, 'Neo-Eurasias' and Indian-New Zealand Informal Eco-Cultural Networks, 1830s–1870s

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-164
Author(s):  
James Beattie
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Environmental Modification ◽  
White Settler ◽  
Ecological Imperialism ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
Different Parts

This article examines informal (private and commercial) imperial networks and environmental modification by former English East India Company (EIC) employees in New Zealand, as well as the introduction of subcontinental species into that colony. Several very wealthy settlers from India, it argues, single-handedly introduced a cornucopia of Indian plants and animals into different parts of nineteenth-century New Zealand and used money earned in India to engage in large-scale environmental modification. Such was the scale of their enterprise 'in the business of shifting biota from place to place' and in remaking environments in parts of New Zealand that these individuals can be considered 'biota barons'. A focus on the informal eco-cultural networks they created helps refine the thesis of ecological imperialism. It also expands the more recent concept of neo-ecological imperialism, by highlighting the role of non-European natures and models in the re-making of Britain's colonies of settlement and by tracing exchanges between white settler colonies and colonies of extraction. In sum, the paper demonstrates the influence of particular private individuals with the necessary wealth and will to effect certain kinds of environmental change, and tentatively suggests that we might usefully consider Australasia as 'neo-Eurasias' rather than 'neo-Europes'.

scholarly journals Indigenous ethnic identity, in-group warmth, and psychological wellbeing: A longitudinal study of Māori

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Houkamau ◽  
Petar Milojev ◽  
Lara Greaves ◽  
Kiri Dell ◽  
Chris G Sibley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Identity Centrality

AbstractLongitudinal studies into the relationship between affect (positive or negative feelings) towards one’s own ethnic group and wellbeing are rare, particularly for Indigenous peoples. In this paper, we test the longitudinal effects of in-group warmth (a measure of ethnic identity affect) and ethnic identity centrality on three wellbeing measures for New Zealand Māori: life satisfaction (LS), self-esteem (SE), and personal wellbeing (PW). Longitudinal panel data collected from Māori (N = 3803) aged 18 or over throughout seven annual assessments (2009–2015) in the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study were analyzed using latent trajectory models with structured residuals to examine cross-lagged within-person effects. Higher in-group warmth towards Māori predicted increases in all three wellbeing measures, even more strongly than ethnic identity centrality. Bi-directionally, PW and SE predicted increased in-group warmth, and SE predicted ethnic identification. Further, in sample-level (between-person) trends, LS and PW rose, but ethnic identity centrality interestingly declined over time. This is the first large-scale longitudinal study showing a strong relationship between positive affect towards one’s Indigenous ethnic group and wellbeing. Efforts at cultural recovery and restoration have been a deliberate protective response to colonization, but among Māori, enculturation and access to traditional cultural knowledge varies widely. The data reported here underline the role of ethnic identity affect as an important dimension of wellbeing and call for continued research into the role of this dimension of ethnic identity for Indigenous peoples.

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.

scholarly journals William Tolly and His Canal: Navigating Calcutta in the Lake-Eighteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-92
Author(s):  
Kaustubh Mani Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Arduous Task ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material History ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
A Company

This article studies the making of one particular canal in the port-city of Calcutta during the early years of English East India Company rule in Bengal. Major Tolly, a Company-servant, proposed to undertake the arduous task of opening up a navigable route connecting Calcutta with the eastern districts of the province for better trade and communication facilities. In the process, he was hopeful of making a good fortune for himself as well. But the sailing was not smooth. Tolly had to enter into various negotiations with the Company government regarding land, the right to hold property in Calcutta, and the role of the Company in defining those rights. He also faced difficulties with the local zamindars regarding collection of tolls, and the issue of maintenance of the canal. The Company administrators were also not unanimous in their opinions regarding these issues, which sometimes compounded the problem for Tolly. Through a discussion of the material history of this canal, this article proposes to look at the ways in which a mercantile power sought to create and consolidate its hold over a coastal enclave in a largely riverine province, negotiating and redefining a maze of seemingly incomprehensible political-economic considerations.

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.

scholarly journals Weak Ties in a Tangled Web? Relationships between the Political Residents of the English East India Company and their munshis, 1798–1818

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (05) ◽  
pp. 1574-1612 ◽  
Author(s):  
CALLIE WILKINSON
Keyword(s):  
Political Influence ◽  
East India Company ◽  
British India ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
Cultural Intermediaries ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
And Control ◽  
Developing System

AbstractAlthough historians have long recognized the important role that Indians played in the English East India Company's operations, the focus has usually been on the mechanics of direct rule in ‘British’ India. Yet, the expertise of Indian cultural intermediaries was arguably even more important, as well as more contested, in the context of the Company's growing political influence over nominally independent Indian kingdoms. This article examines the relationships between the East India Company's political representatives (Residents) and their Indian secretaries (munshis) at Indian royal courts during a period of dramatic imperial expansion, from 1798 to 1818. The article considers how these relationships were conceptualized and debated by British officials, and reflects on the practical consequences of these relationships for the munshis involved. The tensions surrounding the role of the munshi in Residency business exemplify some of the practical dilemmas posed by the developing system of indirect rule in India, where the Resident had to decide how much responsibility to delegate to Indian experts better versed in courtly norms and practices, while at the same time maintaining his own image of authority and control. Although the Resident–munshi relationship was in many respects mutually beneficial, these relationships nevertheless spawned anxieties about transparency and accountability within the Company itself, as well as exciting resentments at court. Both Residents and munshis were required to negotiate between two political and institutional cultures, but it was the munshi who seems to have borne the brunt of the risks associated with this intermediary position.

Merchant Capitalism and the Great Transition

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Erikson
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East India Company ◽  
The West ◽  
New Organizational Forms ◽  
Great Transition ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Development Of Economic Theory ◽  
Merchant Capitalism

This chapter sets out the stakes of the book's argument, situating the English East India Company with respect to some of the larger processes of transition and change in the early modern period and the dawn of modernity in the nineteenth century. The issues addressed are large-scale macro-historical outcomes, such as economic development in the West, underdevelopment in Asia, growth in state capacity, the development of economic theory, and the emergence of new organizational forms. All are linked to and intertwine with the story of the English East India Company. In addition, these developments have at times been indirectly linked to the Industrial Revolution, which the chapter also briefly touches upon.

scholarly journals The Despotic State? : The Nature and Role of 18th Century Mughal Administration in the Great Divergence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sagnik Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Government ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
English East India Company

Why Europe grew rich and ‘Asia’ became poor is the substance for the fiercely contested ‘Great Divergence’ debate where the prevailing Eurocentric view posits that European exceptionalism was responsible for the former’s success. The essence of the picture painted in the arguments against ‘oriental states’ is a despotic and extractive one that hinders commercial activities. This paper tries to address this debate through looking at the nature and role of Mughal the administrative machinery and challenge image of despotic hegemony. In order to address the issue of commensurability of sources, the present author has only used European accounts and correspondences produced by the English East India Company and the Dutch VOC. The paper argues that the Eurocentric perspective essentially paints an ahistorical picture of the Mughal state by investigating European responses to the deaths of important Mughal emperors (Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb) and the economic consequences following it. Additionally, this paper also provides evidence of a strong role of bankers in the internal commercial system further undermining the image of the extractive state and supporting the ‘Great Firm theory’ of Karen Leonard. In conclusion, it is argued that the European-exceptionalism theory is fundamentally based on an orientalist imagination of South Asia and essentially suffers from the pitfalls of the ‘historiography of decline’ that plague the history of other ‘Asian’ empires such as the Qing and the Ottomans. Eighteenth century South Asia shows considerable similarities with early modern Europe and its commercial viability and agility does not appear to be dependent on the central government or the abilities of the emperor.

History as Self-Representation: The Recasting of a Political Tradition in Late Eighteenth-Century Eastern India

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 913-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumkum Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Eastern India ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
English East India Company

If power is mediated by knowledge, then the early decades of British colonial rule in India were indeed, as Ghulam Hussain Khan Tabatabai, the intellectual and historian par excellence of those times wrote, a time of ‘half-knowledge’.The decades between 1757 and 1772 witnessed the implantation of this colonial regime in Eastern India through the transformation of the English East India Company from a mercantilist trading corporation into the paradoxical status of ‘merchant-sovereign and the sovereign merchant’ at the same time. The role of sovereign thrust upon the officials of the company the far from easy task of administering this society in ways that were most conducive to the extraction of the largest possible surplus from it for its new masters.

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