The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resistance. Early modern Asia stood at the center of the global economy and was home to powerful states and sprawling commercial networks. The companies may have been global enterprises, but they operated in a globalized region in which they encountered a range of formidable competitors. This groundbreaking collection of essays explores the place of the Dutch and English East India Companies in Asia and the nature of their engagement with Asian rulers, officials, merchants, soldiers, and brokers. With contributions from some of the most innovative historians in the field, The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia presents new ways to understand these organizations by focusing on their diplomatic, commercial, and military interactions with Asia.

Adam Clulow is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Monash University. He is the author of The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia University Press, 2014) which won multiple awards including the Jerry Bentley Prize in World History from the American Historical Association. He is, most recently, the editor with Lauren Benton and Bain Attwood of Protection and Empire: A Global History (Cambridge University Press, 2017).Tristan Mostert is a PhD candidate at Leiden University. His dissertation focuses on conflicts over access to the clove trade in the eastern Indonesian archipelago in the seventeenth century. His earlier publications include Silk Thread: China and the Netherlands from 1600 (co-authored with Jan van Campen, Rijksmuseum, 2015).

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroductionThe Companies in Asia Adam Clulow and Tristan MostertPart 1: Diplomacy1. Scramble for the spices: Makassar's role in European and Asian Competition in the Eastern Archipelago up to 1616.Tristan Mostert2.Diplomacy in a Provincial Setting: The East India Companies in Seventeenth-Century Bengal and OrissaGuido van Meersbergen3.Contacting Japan: East India Company Letter to the ShogunFuyuko MatsukataPart 2: Trade4. Surat and Bombay: Ivory and Commercial Networks in Western IndiaMartha Chaiklin5. Interdependence, Competition, and Contestation: The English and the Dutch East India Companies and Indian Merchants in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Ghulam NadriPart 3: Violence6. Empire by Treaty??The role of written documents in European overseas expansion, 1500-1800 Martine van Ittersum7. 'Great help from Japan': The Dutch East India Company's Experiment with Japanese Soldiers Adam Clulow8. The East India Company and the foundation of Persian Naval Power in the Gulf under Nader Shah, 1734-47Peter GoodEpilogueThe Dutch East India Company in Global History: A Historiographical Reconnaissance Tonio Andrade