Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese in Maritime Asia, c.1585 - 1800: Merchants, Commodities and Commerce (Variorum Collected Studies)

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.-- Provided by publisher Cover Series Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Preface I Maritime trade and politics in China and the South China Sea II Portuguese country traders in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, c. 1600 III Imperial defense and finance and the colonial city in the tropics: the Senado da Camara of Cochin and the relief of Malacca, 1587-1598 IV Commerce and capital: Portuguese maritime losses in the South China Sea, 1600-1754 V Portuguese colonial administrators and inter-Asian maritime trade: Manuel de Sousa de Meneses and the Fateh Moula affair VI Agency, monopoly, and commerce: the administrators of the Junta do Tobaco in Asia and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and global economies, 1674 to 1774 VII The VOC’s price current records in the long eighteenth century: commodities and prices in global, intra-Asian and regional Asian maritime economic history VIII An anatomy of commerce and consumption: opium and merchants at Batavia over the long eighteenth century IX Ballast goods: Chinese maritime trade in zinc and sugar in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries X Country trade and Chinese alum: raw material supply and demand in Asia’s textile production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries XI Developing habits: opium and tobacco in the Indonesian archipelago, c. 1619-c. 1794 XII Opium and the Company: maritime trade and imperial finances on Java, 1684-1796 XIII Global commodities and commerce in the Early Modem world: the case of Sri Lankan cinnamon Index