When Edmund Burke spoke at\none of the many trials concerned with the impeachment of Warren Hastings\n(1788\u20141795), he offered a scathing diagnosis of the British East India Company.\nAt the heart of his accusation, the idea that the Company was effectively \u2018a\nstate in disguise as a merchant\u2019 has persisted in scholarly works and in\npopular imagination for hundreds of years since. So great is its archival\nlegacy that, over the years, many commentators have remarked that the\nadministrative machinery of the Company more closely resembled that of a state\nthan a corporation (Stern, 2012). Yet like so many former or \u2018almost\u2019 states \u2014\nwhether forgotten through being subsumed by a more powerful successor, or\nsimply transformed beyond recognition over time \u2014 the extensive records of the\nEast India Company have not guaranteed an extensive historiography. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A relatively small number\nof narrative histories form the backbone to this body of scholarship. These\ncan, of course, supply us with the requisite chronology \u2014 but the life and the\ntimes of the East India Company are two very different beasts. As E H Carr noted\nto wide acclaim, historians are not chroniclers (Carr, 1961). It is therefore\nvery striking that so much of the argument over this strange institution\nremains more to do with its chronology than its character. There is, and surely will continue to be, much\ndebate as to the significance of the early period in the Company\u2019s operations\nto its future as a colonial power. Can we isolate in the seventeenth century an\nage of partnership between the EIC and its contacts overseas? Or already in\nthese encounters, can we discern the sinister beginnings of an age of empire:\nthe construction of others and selves, of East and West (Said, 1978), even the\ncreation of the Third World (Fanon, 1968)? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are important\nquestions \u2014 but they are not the only questions, nor are they necessarily the\nbest way of asking them. What is largely missing from these debates, and what\nthis project aims to provide, is an attempt to reconstruct the early world of\nthe East India Company that does not rely exclusively on long-term structures\nand global scales. Instead, this study will give preference to the human actors:\na belated \u2018history from below\u2019 of the merchants and adventurers who sailed\nacross the world four centuries ago, whose actions and decisions form the vital\nnervous system of a corporation which simply could not have existed without the\nnetworks of people on which depended its networks of trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond the Francis Drakes\nand Robert Clives of classroom folklore, it will consider characters such as\nPeter Floris and Lucas Antheunis, two Dutchmen employed by the English East\nIndia Company in 1609 based on their attractive promise of opening a profitable\ntrade not only with the Coromandel coast of India, but across the Gulf of Siam.\nIt will also consider the Company\u2019s early interactions with native populations,\nfrom the so-called \u2018spice islands\u2019 of South East Asia to the court of Mughal\nEmperor, examining a range of accounts from letters and journals in order to\nexamine how these merchants variously invoked and ignored the supposedly\n\u2018national\u2019 character of the Company in order to win greater favour and greater\nprofits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To this extent, at least, the\nproject owes much of its initial scope to the debates of the 1980s, in which\nhistorians first sought to challenge the privileged position of the nation in\ntraditional historiography. No longer perceived as central, universal, or\ninevitable, the cultural force of the nation has since been laid open to\nintensive reevaluation on a local and a global scale. As effective ambassadors\nof their places of origin, transnational actors are naturally of particular\ninterest to such a project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, transnational\nhistory having many of its own roots in the \u2018post-nationalist\u2019 moment of the\n1980s, there have so far been relatively few transnational historians<\/em> willing to write on the subject. Having learned to scorn\nthe \u2018invented tradition\u2019 of national histories (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983), and\nto eschew the anachronism \u2014 even the simple error \u2014 of relying on the nation as\na unit of analysis (Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983; Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983),\nthis should perhaps come as no surprise. Yet, as this project hopes to demonstrate,\nwhether or not nations are necessarily reliable as units <\/em>of analysis, there should be no doubt as to their value as objects<\/em> of analysis, especially when\nexamined at new sites or using new perspectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hence, through a detailed study of these early adventurers and their relationships, both with their fellow Europeans and with the diverse peoples they encountered across the Indian Ocean, this project will seek to interrogate the significance of the nation in the exchanges of the early English East India Company. Fundamentally, it aims to go beyond the question of \u2018when was the nation, and where?\u2019 to ask instead: when did it matter, and why? And, of course, its vital attendant, when did it not? And what mattered more? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Primary Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Birdwood,\nGeorge and Foster, William (eds.), The\nRegister of Letters &c. of the Governor and Company of Merchants trading\ninto the East Indies, 1600\u20141619<\/em> (London, 1893).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burke,\nEdmund, \u2018Trial of Warren Hastings Esq: Third Day, 15th February 1788\u2019, in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund\nBurke<\/em>, vol 13, (London, 1822), pp.1-87.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Foster,\nWilliam (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas\nRoe to India, 1615\u20141619<\/em>: As Narrated\nin His Journal and Correspondence<\/em> (New Delhi, 1990).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Strachan,\nMichael and Penrose, Boies (eds.), The\nEast India Company Journals of Captain William Keeling and Master Thomas\nBonner, 1615\u20141617<\/em> (Minneapolis, 1971).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Secondary Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anderson,\nBenedict, Imagined Communities:\nReflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism<\/em> (London, 1983). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Carr, E H,\nWhat is History?<\/em> (Cambridge, 1961).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chaudhuri,\nK N, The English East India Company: The\nStudy of an Early Joint-stock Company 1600-1640<\/em> (Abingdon, 1999). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hall,\nCatherine (ed.), \u2018Introduction\u2019, in Cultures\nof Empire: Colonisers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth\nCenturies<\/em> (Manchester, 2000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hobsbawm,\nEric and Ranger, Terence (eds.), The\nInvention of Tradition<\/em> (Cambridge, 1983).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fanon,\nFrantz, The Wretched of the Earth<\/em>\n(New York, 1968). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Games,\nAlison, \u2018English Overseas Merchants in an Expanding World of Trade, 1590\u20131660\u2019,\nin The Web of Empire: English\nCosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660<\/em> (Oxford, 2008).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Games, Alison,\n\u2018All the King’s Men: Governors, Consuls, and Ambassadors, 1590\u20131650\u2019, in The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in\nan Age of Expansion, 1560-1660<\/em> (Oxford, 2008).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gellner,\nErnest, Nations and Nationalism<\/em>\n(Oxford, 1983).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gupta,\nAshin Das, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (ed.), The\nWorld of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500-1800<\/em> (Oxford, 2001).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keay,\nJohn, The Honourable Company: A History\nof the English East India Company<\/em> (London, 1993).<\/p>\n\n\n\n McPherson,\nKenneth, \u2018The Age of Commerce, 1450-1700\u2019, in The Indian Ocean: A History of People and the Sea<\/em> (New Delhi,\n1993).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pettigrew,\nWilliam A, \u2018Corporate Constitutionalism and the Dialogue between the Global and\nthe Local in Seventeenth-Century English History\u2019, Itinerario<\/em>, vol 39, no 3 (2015), pp.487-501. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Said,\nEdward, Orientalism<\/em> (New York, 1978).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stern,\nPhilip J, The Company-State: Corporate\nSovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India<\/em>\n(Oxford, 2012). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Winterbottom,\nAnna, Hybrid Knowledge in the Early Easy\nIndia Company World<\/em> (Basingstoke, 2016).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Edmund Burke spoke at one of the many trials concerned with the impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788\u20141795), he offered a scathing diagnosis of the British East India Company. 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