Securing the emperor, securitising the guns: the strangely delayed dissemination of Ottoman military technology in the late Ming empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s4 ◽  
pp. 112-136
Author(s):  
Barend Noordam
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Relations ◽  
East India Company ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Military Diplomacy

This article analyses the reasons behind the delayed appropriation and adoption of Ottoman harquebuses by the Ming army. Although these weapons had reached the empire by the mid-16th century, their existence was only acknowledged at the end of the century. Through the lens of securitisation, I will argue that this delay was a result of the context of Luso-Ottoman geopolitical rivalries in which these weapons were possibly leveraged as an incentive to form a Sino-Ottoman alliance against the Portuguese. I will argue that a civil bureaucracy averse to assertive activist rulership could have prevented the emperor from participating in the resulting military diplomacy. By comparing this event with a later Dutch East India Company embassy with similar geopolitical intentions, I will argue that the Ming civil officials achieved their goal by controlling the emperor�s perception of Ottoman intentions. In terms of securitisation, this meant that the emperor himself was the main audience and his officials the securitising agents in matters of foreign relations.

The Portuguese Estado da Índia (Empire in Asia)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Biedermann
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Negotiated Agreements ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
English East India Company

The origins of the Portuguese Estado da Índia—the sum of all Portuguese Crown possessions east of the Cape of Good Hope—can be traced back to the late 1400s, most importantly to the inaugural voyage of Vasco da Gama from Lisbon to Calicut (Kozhikode) in 1497–1498. After some initial hesitations, the Portuguese Crown created a governorship for India in 1505, with a seat at Cochin (Kochi) later transferred to Goa, to oversee commercial, military, administrative, and other activities in an increasing number of possessions along the shores of East Africa and Maritime Asia. Portuguese trading posts (feitorias), forts, and fortified towns across the region resulted from conquest or, more frequently, from negotiated agreements with local rulers, on whose cooperation the Portuguese generally relied. The Estado reached its apex in the second half of the 16th century, drawing vast resources from trade around the Cape and within Asian and African waters, while investing increasingly in military and religious campaigns in a variety of regions from southeastern Africa to the Moluccas (Malukus) and Japan. Despite significant losses to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the English East India Company (EIC) during the 17th century, the Estado survived until the 20th century. Goa became a part of the Indian Union in 1961, and Macao integrated into the People’s Republic of China in 1999. The perceived decadence of the Estado during much of its history is at odds with its longevity and has prompted longstanding debates about the nature of Portuguese power in Asia; its reliance on trade, military might, and imperial ideas; and its intertwinement with Asian polities and societies.

scholarly journals Verbond en volkskerk

1986 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. D. Pont
Keyword(s):  
East India Company ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
The Church

Covenant and volkskerk The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk states in its Church Order that it is a volkskerk. This designation does not immediately signify that it is a nationally exclusive church. A historical line is researched to try and assess what the term volkskerk does imply. The 16th century calvinist position is examined and then the situation during the reign of the Dutch East India Company of the Cape from 1652-1795. The Patriot-period is investigated and also the position of the Church of the Voortrekkers as well as in the old Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. Historically speaking, the structure of the covenant of grace and Art 36 of the Confessio Belgica give the true meaning of the term volkskerk as used by the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk till 1899. However, it is clear that the term volkskerk in the contemporary Order has another content than the meaning which it carried in the previous century.

A famine in Surat in 1631 and Dodos on Mauritius: a long lost manuscript rediscovered

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Winters ◽  
J. P. Hume ◽  
M. Leenstra
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into

In 1887 Dutch archivist A. J. Servaas van Rooijen published a transcript of a hand-written copy of an anonymous missive or letter, dated 1631, about a horrific famine and epidemic in Surat, India, and also an important description of the fauna of Mauritius. The missive may have been written by a lawyer acting on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It not only gives details about the famine, but also provides a unique insight into the status of endemic and introduced Mauritius species, at a time when the island was mostly uninhabited and used only as a replenishment station by visiting ships. Reports from this period are very rare. Unfortunately, Servaas van Rooijen failed to mention the location of the missive, so its whereabouts remained unknown; as a result, it has only been available as a secondary source. Our recent rediscovery of the original hand-written copy provides details about the events that took place in Surat and Mauritius in 1631–1632. A full English translation of the missive is appended.

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.

Private Trade and Elite Privilege. The Trial of Nicolaas Schaghen, Director of Bengal

Itinerario ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela McVay
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Board Of Directors ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
High Court ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
At Home

It is common wisdom among the historians of the Dutch East Indies that everyone in the Dutch East India Company engaged in private trade. That is, ‘everyone’ traded in goods supposedly monopolized by the Company and ‘everyone’ abused his or her position to squeeze graft from the Company's trade. It was, supposedly, to get their hands on the private trade and graft that people joined the Dutch East India Company (VOC: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) in the first place. But back in the Netherlands the VOC's Board of Directors (the Heeren XVII) objected vociferously to private trade, which drained Company profits and shareholder revenue. To appease the Heeren XVII back at home, the various Governors-General and Councillors of the Indies (Raad van Indië), who represented the Heeren XVII in Asia, issued annual placards forbidding private trade while the High Court (Raad van Justitie) carried out infrequent desultory trials for private trade. But these prosecutions were inevitably doomed to failure, so the story goes, because everyone engaged in private trade would ‘cover’ for everyone else.

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