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3 books match the query '1600 - 1800'

cover of Asian Port Cities, 1600-1800: Local and Foreign Cultural Interactions

Asian Port Cities, 1600-1800

Local and Foreign Cultural Interactions

Haneda Masashi

National University of Singapore Press, 2009

Asian port cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the site of intensive cultural contact involving a broad spectrum of participants from across the world. These interactions raised questions of communication for merchants who conducted business in the port cities and of regulation and control for the officials who governed them. By drawing comparisons among the port cities of East, Southeast and South Asia where European East India Companies maintained trading centers, this volume goes beyond national histories to examine cultural interactions on a regional basis. The authors draw on the rich literature relating to cross-cultural interactions between the Dutch and the Japanese in Nagasaki in discussing issues that range from architecture, mercantile and artistic communication, business transactions and dispute settlement to family issues, clothing, housing, and social relations associated with food. Their work yields intriguing new interpretations of the Asian maritime world that will interest historians concerned with Europe or Asia during the early modern period, as well as students of material culture.
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cover of Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 1600–1800

Feeding Globalization

Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 1600–1800

Jane Hooper

Ohio University Press, 2017

Between 1600 and 1800, the promise of fresh food attracted more than seven hundred English, French, and Dutch vessels to Madagascar. Throughout this period, European ships spent months at sea in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but until now scholars have not fully examined how crews were fed during these long voyages. Without sustenance from Madagascar, European traders would have struggled to transport silver to Asia and spices back to Europe. Colonies in Mozambique, Mauritius, and at the Cape relied upon frequent imports from Madagascar to feed settlers and slaves.

In Feeding Globalization, Jane Hooper draws on challenging and previously untapped sources to analyze Madagascar’s role in provisioning European trading networks within and ultimately beyond the Indian Ocean. The sale of food from the island not only shaped trade routes and colonial efforts but also encouraged political centralization and the slave trade in Madagascar. Malagasy people played an essential role in supporting European global commerce, with far-reaching effects on their communities.

Feeding Globalization reshapes our understanding of Indian Ocean and global history by insisting historians should pay attention to the role that food played in supporting other exchanges.

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cover of Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800

Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800

Holden Furber

University of Minnesota Press, 1978

Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 was first published in 1976. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This volume presents an account of European expansion in Asia through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - the story of the rivalries of the East India companies and the growth of British maritime dominance which forged the Pax Britannica destined to keep Asia under European control until 1941. The author explains that it is called Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient because the few thousands of Europeans who built these empires thought of themselves primarily as merchants rather than as rulers.

The book consists of two parts, the first, narrative, the second, interpretive. The story of European commercial activity in the East is told in three chapters, the first ending with the Dutch conquest of Ceylon in 1656 and the reorganization and revival of the English East India Company as a permanent joint stock company under Oliver Cromwell's charter of 1657. The second chapter ends with the European peace settlement at Utrecht in 1713, and the third with the establishment of British preponderance in the East India trade at the close of the eighteenth century.

In the second part the author discusses the organization and structure of East India companies, the commodities in East India trade, the nature, growth, and development of the "country trade," and the relations between Europeans and Asians with some reference to the growth of European knowledge of Asia and the influence of the European presence in Asia on social history in both Asia and Europe.

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