This collection of 13 essays deals with a range of topics concerning Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese merchants, commodities and commerce in maritime Asia in the early modern period from c. 1585-1800. They are based on exhaustive research and careful analysis of diverse sets of archival materials found around the globe. Written by a leading authority on global maritime economic history and the history of European Expansion, each individual essay addresses a topic of fundamental importance to those interested in knowing more about what merchants did (with which resources and under what conditions) and how they did it, what were the commodities that were incorporated into local, regional, intra-regional and global economies, and what was the role and function of early modern maritime trade and commerce in economic development in general and especially in Asia in the early modern era, from c. 1585-1800. A number of them, in particular, relate the individual or collective merchant experience to specific European (Portuguese and Dutch) imperial projects and their contestation amongst themselves and their indigenous neighbours over portions of the period. Collectively, they form an exposition of a utilitarian view of human activity under a wide-ranging different set of circumstances and conditions but with similar patterns of behaviors and responses that are largely independent from ethnic, racial or religious stereotyping. The work therefore should raise new issues and avenues of research concerning these agents and objects in European Expansion, Asian and Global History.
Contents: Preface; Part I Introduction: Maritime trade and politics in China and the South China Sea. Part II Portuguese and Other Merchants and Administrators: Portuguese country traders in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, c. 1600; Imperial defense and finance and the colonial city in the tropics: the Senada da Camara of Cochin and the relief of Malacca, 1587-1598; Commerce and capital: Portuguese maritime losses in the South China Sea, 1600-1754; Portuguese colonial administrators and inter-Asian maritime trade: Manuel de Sousa de Meneses and the Fateh Moula affair; Agency, monopoly, and commerce: the administrators of the Junta do Tabaco in Asia and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and global economies; The VOC's price current records in the long 18th century: commodities and prices in global, intra-Asian and regional Asian maritime economic history; An anatomy of commerce and consumption: merchants and opium at Batavia over the long 18th century. Part III Commodities and Commerce: Ballast goods: Chinese maritime trade in zinc and sugar in the 17th and 18th centuries; Country trade and Chinese alum: raw material supply in Asia's textile production in the 17th and 18th centuries; Developing habits: opium and the Company: maritime trade and imperial finances on Java, 1684-1796; Global commodities and commerce in the early modern world: the case of Sri Lankan cinnamon; Index.
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