European Empires in the East, 1500-1800. A comparative analysis 3104-M3K1-SHS-EEE-OG

The course provides an opportunity to study the European expansion in the East during the early modern period. Starting with an analysis of European familiarization and encounters with the peoples of India, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, China and Japan, the course shall investigate how Europeans traded, built up their presence in the East, exchanged knowledge and ideas, and on what terms. One of the engaging features of this period is that the interaction between European and Asian was fundamentally pre-hegemonic, before European imperialism in its classic sense as understood by historians today, so it was essentially more two-way or interactive. We shall strive to determine whether this reflects on European intentions, or merely mirrors the meagre resources available to them, and the difficulties of implanting colonial society. The course is essentially a comparative one, which means two things. First, although we shall start from the concept of an Indian Ocean world, students will be encouraged to think of Asia not as some great cultural monolith but an array of very different civilizations posing European different challenges and which reacted in very different ways to the arrival of the `Franks'. The second comparative dimension will be to explore the differences in organization and approach of the Portuguese, Dutch and English merchant empires, which largely followed each other in succession.

Coursework projects include:
1. In the eighteenth century, the English East India Company was accused of only being able to reap in the profits `in the future tense’. Explain why the company started to have such problems in running its enterprise successfully.
2. Was the Siamese Court Revolution of 1688 the result of European imperialist intentions being sprung before their time?
3. To what extent was the Black Hole of Calcutta incident an imaginary construct of a British propaganda exercise?
4. The French would-be missionary Nicholas Gervaise observed that the Dutch and English `prefer a good warehouse to a beautiful church’ (Histoire politique et naturelle du royaume de Siam), 1688). What does this tell us about the differentfoundation stones on which competing European powers forged their presences in the East?
5. What did Europeans make of the different religious faiths they encountered in the Indian Ocean world, and where did they feel Christianity could make the greatest headway?
6. How did the Portuguese Carreira da Índia function over the early modern period, and was Dutch or English shipping able to improve upon it?
7. The Massacre of Amboyna was the greatest European atrocity of the seventeenth century'. Discuss.
8. Batavia was built as a clear cut copy of a Dutch town at that time with canals, drawbridges, canal houses, step-gables, a church, church bell-ringing and streets paved with cobble stones. In what ways did the city slowly adapt to the realities of life in tropical Java?
9. Jan Coen defended the Dutch slave trade on the grounds that `the bulk of the slaves employed by the V.O.C. were serfs rather than slaves’; thus more like the poorest classes of society instead of an actual traded object, as Coen believed was the case in the Portuguese system. Discuss.
10. Do the historians who champion the concept of an Indian Ocean world tend to idealise the realities?

Type of course

elective courses
general courses

Mode

Classroom

Prerequisites (description)

Good knowledge of English

Assessment criteria

Students will be assessed via an exam at the end of the course.

Bibliography

This course includes recommended and required readings:

Required reading:
-K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean World,
C.U.P. (1985). (FX7386.CHA).
Recommended readings.
- Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700. A
Political and Economic History, Longmans (1993); for those of you who
read Portuguese, Godinho, `Os Portugueses e o Oriente', in Ensaios,
vol. II, Lisbon (1978).
- C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800, London:
Hutchinson, 1965; C.R. Boxer, Jan Compagnie in War and Peace, 1602-
1799, Hong Kong: 1979, supplemented by Om Prakash, `The Dutch
East India Company in the Trade of the Indian Ocean', in Ashin das
Gupta & Pearson eds., India and the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800, O.U.P.
(1987). George Masselman 'Dutch Colonial Policy in the Seventeenth
Century', Journal of Economic History, vol. XXI (1961), pp. 455-68 is an
old but succinct survey.
- Philip Lawson, The East India Company. A History, 1993; John Keay,
The Honourable Company, HarperCollins 1991; Anthony Farrington,

Trading Places. The East India Company and Asia, 1600-1834, British
Library, 2002. For the early period (up to 1700), there is Nicholas
Canny's The Origins of Empire, from which Peter Marshall's article
deals specifically with the English (`The English in Asia to 1700').
Otherwise, refer to The Oxford History of the British Empire, esp. vol. I,
pp. 264-285 and vol. II, pp. 487-595.
- Glenn Ames & Ronald Love, Distant Lands and Diverse Cultures. The
French Experience in Asia, 1600-1700, Westport CT, 2003.
If you are more interested in chronologically specific survey books, you
might like to start with the old favourite by J.H. Parry, The Age of
Reconnaissance, London (1963). Specifically on the eighteenth
century, there are two traditional studies with lengthy sections on the
East: that of Glyndwr Williams, The Expansion of Europe in the 18th
century: overseas rivalry, discovery and exploitation, New York (1966)
and J.H. Parry, Trade and Dominion. The European Overseas Empires
in the 18th Century.

Otherwise, there are hundreds of relevant articles in the Expanding
World. The European Impact on World History, 1450-1800 series
(general editor Russell-Wood) in 31 vols. published over the last five
years by Variorum (Aldershot, U.K.). You might also like to consult the
Dutch journal Itinerario [JV2501.I75], which comes out three times a
year. There are many relevant contributions in Anthony Disney & Emily
Booth, Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia, O.U.P.
(2000) [G286 G2 DIS], and in Daniel Carey ed. Asian Travel in the
Renaissance, Blackwell 2004.

On the historiography of European empires in the East, you might like
to look at John Wills Jr., `Maritime Asia 1500-1800. The Interactive
Emergence of European Domination', American Historical Review, vol.
98, (1993), 83-105 and L. Blussé ed., Pilgrims to the Past: private
conversations with historians of European expansion, Leiden (1996).
Peter Rietbergen's article 'Varieties of Asia? European Perspectives,
c.1600-1800' in Itinerario, 2001, issue 25, pp. 69-89 (see the PHOTEX
collection) is also insightful. Specifically on Charles Boxer's
contribution, have a look at `Last of the breed', review of Dauril
Alden's `Charles R. Boxer. An uncommon life: Soldier, historian,
teacher, collector, traveller', Times Literary Supplement, 27 July 2001.

For an Asian perspective on the world, you could look at Jeannette
Mirsky ed., The Great Chinese Travelers, University of Chicago Press
(1974).

Regional studies:

- The Cambridge History of Islam, Cambridge U.P. (1977), 2 vols. in 4.
- Toby Falk ed., Treasures of Islam, Bristol: Artline (1985) [N6260.TRE]
- Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, Oxford U.P. (2012)
- Anthony Reid, `The Land Below the Winds', Southeast Asia in the Age
of Commerce, 1450-1680, Newhaven/London (1988);
- The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Cambridge U.P. (1992), vol.
1. [DS514.3 REI]
- K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe. Economy and Civilisation of the
Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge U.P. (1990),
part II.
- Ashin Das Gupta & M N Pearson, India and the Indian Ocean, 1500-
1800, New Delhi, O.U.P. 1987.
- M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian trade and European Influence in the
Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630, The Hague
(1962);
- Denys Lombard, Le Carrefour Javanais, Paris 1990.
- O. H. K. Spate, The Pacific since Magellan, vol. I, `The Spanish Lake',
Minneapolis, 1979.
- Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan, University of California Press,
1993;
- The Cambridge History of Japan, Cambridge University Press, (1986),
vol. IV.
- Jacques Proust, Europe through the prism of Japan, Notre Dame:
2002.
- Joanna Waley-Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing. Global Currents in
Chinese History (New York: W.W. Norton, c. 1999)
- Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilisation and Bureaucracy,
Newhaven/London, 1977;
- The Cambridge History of China, Cambridge U.P. (1978-), esp. vol. 7,
pt. I and vol. 8, pt. II.
- Bradley-Smith & Wan-go Weng, China. A History in Art, London:
Studio Vista, 1973 [DS721.SMI]
- M.N Pearson, `The Spanish ’impact’ on the Philippines, 1565-1770’,
Economic & Social History of the Orient, vol.xii, iss.2, (1969) pp.165-
186 [Photocopy 2384]

Primary sources.
- S. Arasaratnam ed., François Valentijn’a a s Description of Ceylon,
London: Hakluyt Society (1978).
- Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus posthumus or Purchas his pilgrimes :
contayning a history of the world in sea voyages and lande travells by
Englishmen and others, Glasgow (1905-07).
- `A Letter from Baron Aladar, now known by the name of Count
Benyowski, Governor of Isle de France’. [the story of a remarkable
international pirate active in the heavily trafficked waters off
Madagascar, 1773-1786. Photocopy behind LIS issue desk]
- Captain Willem Ysbrandsz Bontekoe, `Memorable Description of the
East-Indian Voyage 1618-25’. [posted to Blackboard].
- `Desideri in Tibet’, http://www.bro-pa.org/Desideri_1.html (actually a
piece of modern writing empathizing with the travails of a great Jesuit
missionary traveller)
- some documents relating to the perception of nature in early modern
Portuguese India, ed. S. Halikowski Smith [on Blackboard]
- `Letter of King of Portugal to the Zamorin of Calicut’, 1500 [on
Blackboard]
Reference texts.
- James S. Olson, Historical Dictionary of European Imperialism,
Westport, CT: 1991. [D217.OLS]
- Schwartzberg, Joseph E. ed. A historical atlas of South Asia, Chicago
(1978). [DS336.SCH] / Ooi Keat Gin, Southeast Asia. A historical
encyclopedia, ABC Clio: Santa Barbara, 2004 [DS525.SOU]
- W.C. Brice, An historical Atlas of Islam, Leiden (1981).
- Bibliography of imperial, colonial, and Commonwealth history since
1600, Oxford Uni. Press, 2002.
- Catherine Pickett ed. Bibliography of the East India Company: books,
pamphlets and other material printed between 1600-1785, London:
British Library, 2011.
- There is good information on the individual Dutch trading posts, as
well as each Dutch vessel sailing for the Indies at www.vocsite.nl, and
a useful list of English language books on the VOC at
http://www.vocsite.nl/boeken/english.html?of=0
- Colonialvoyage.com has interesting features on the vestiges of
European endeavours in the East.

Additional information

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