Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World (Hakluyt Society Studies in the History of Travel)

__Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World__ explores the links between trade, empire, exploration, and global information transfer during the early modern period. By charting how the leaders, members, employees, and supporters of different trading companies gathered, processed, employed, protected, and divulged intelligence about foreign lands, peoples, and markets, this book throws new light on the internal uses of information by corporate actors and the ways they engaged with, relied on, and supplied various external publics. This ranged from using secret knowledge to beat competitors, to shaping debates about empire, and to forcing Europeans to reassess their understandings of specific environments due to contacts with non-European peoples. Reframing our understanding of trading companies through the lens of travel literature, this volume brings together thirteen experts in the field to facilitate a new understanding of how European corporations and empires were shaped by global webs of information exchange. This book explores the links between trade, empire, exploration, and global information transfer during the early modern period. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Acknowledgements 9 List of Contributors 10 1. Trading companies and travel knowledge: An introduction 14 PART I Managing information 34 2. Mapping travel knowledge: The use of maps on the first Dutch voyages to Asia 36 3. Writing that travels: The Dutch East India Company’spaper-based information management 56 4. Written reports and the promotion of trans-oceanic tradein Tuscany and Genoa in the seventeenth century 84 5. Information and encounter in England’s North Americancolonies, 1585–1650 105 PART II Multiple actors and perspectives 126 6. William Hawkins in the Mughal Court, 1608–1611: Cultural, social, and affective boundary-crossings 128 7. Writing the macabre: Travel, taxation, and the Bengalfamine of 1770 152 8. Reading marginalised, non-European agency in EIC-Nepaleseencounters: The expeditions of William Kirkpatrick, 1793,and Maulvi Abdul Kadir Khan, 1795 171 PART III Company lives 194 9. For which company? Guy Tachard S.J.’s unpublished Relation de Voyage aux Indes, 1690–1699 196 10. ‘Passages recollected by memory’: Remembering the Levant Company in seventeenth-century merchants’ life writing 224 11. ‘Blackened and whispered away my reputation’: Fashioninga reputation in the late seventeenth-century Levant Company 253 12. ‘Unburying’ company history: Reconstructing European company narratives through digital cemetery archives 279 13. Afterword 301 Index 310 History,of,Travel;,Hakluyt,Society;,Trading,Companies;,Mapping,travel,knowledge;,travel,writing;,trade,in,early,modern,world;,trans-oceanic,trade;,digital,cemetery;,Northern,European,travel History of Travel,Hakluyt Society,Trading Companies,Mapping travel knowledge,travel writing,trade in early modern world,trans-oceanic trade,digital cemetery,Northern European travel Trading companies and travel writing: an introduction / Aske Laursen Brock, Guido van Meersbergen and Edmond Smith -- Part One. Managing information -- Mapping travel knowledge: the use of maps on the first Dutch voyages to Asia / Djoeke van Netten -- Writing that travels: the Dutch East India company's paper-based information management / Guido van Meersbergen and Frank Birkenholz -- Written reports and the promotion of trans-oceanic trade in Tuscany and Genoa in the seventeenth century / Giorgio Tosco -- Information and encounter in England's North American colonies, 1585-1650 / Edmond Smith -- Part two: multiple actors and perspectives -- William Hawkins in the Mughal Court, 1608-1611: cultural, social, and affective boundary-crossings / Jyotsna Singh -- Writing the macabre: travel, taxation and the Bengal famine of 1770 / Amrita Sen -- Reading marginalised, non-European agency in EIC-Nepalese encounters: the expeditions of William Kirkpatrick, 1793, and Maulvi Abdul Kadir Khan, 1795 / Sam Ellis -- Part three: company lives -- For which company? Guy Tachard S.J.'s unpublished relation de voyage aux indes,1690-99 / Stefan Halikowski Smith -- 'Passages recollected from memory': remembering the levant company in seventeenth-century merchants' life writing / Eva Johanna Holmberg -- 'Blackened and whispered away my reputation': fashioning a reputation in the late seventeenth-century levant company / Aske Laursen Brock -- 'Unburying' company history: reconstructing European company narratives through digital cemetery archives / Souvik Mukherje "Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World explores the links between trade, empire, exploration, and global information transfer during the early modern period. By charting how the leaders, members, employees, and supporters of different trading companies gathered, processed, employed, protected, and divulged intelligence about foreign lands, peoples, and markets, this book throws new light on the internal uses of information by corporate actors and the ways they engaged with, relied on, and supplied various external publics. This ranged from using secret knowledge to beat competitors, to shaping debates about empire, and to forcing Europeans to reassess their understandings of specific environments due to contacts with non-European peoples. Reframing our understanding of trading companies through the lens of travel literature, this volume brings together thirteen experts in the field to facilitate a new understanding of how European corporations and empires were shaped by global webs of information exchange"-- Provided by publisher