Foreigners in the Bay of Bengal during the Long Eighteenth Century: A Periphery or Centre of the global Economy? (Double Panel) Part 2

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D Multivocality in Global History

Foreigners in the Bay of Bengal during the Long Eighteenth Century: A Periphery or Centre of the global Economy? Panel 2

Event Details

Date

III. Thursday, 11th September, 11:00-13:00
Location
K1050
Theme
D Multivocality in Global History

Convenor

Ryuto Shimada (University of Tokyo)

Chair

Tomoko Morikawa (University of Tokyo)

Panelists

Tomoko Morikawa (University of Tokyo)
Mathias Istrup Karlmose (Stockholm University)
Ryuto Shimada (University of Tokyo)
Bhaswati Bhattacharya (University of Göttingen)
Wim de Winter (KU Leuven)
Chisa Mizobuchi (University of Tokyo)

Papers

Tomoko Morikawa

Iranians in the Bay of Bengal. Persian as Koine in the Early Modern Indian Ocean World

Iranians in the Bay of Bengal. Persian as Koine in the Early Modern Indian Ocean World

From the fifteenth century onwards, the Iranians expanded into the Indian Ocean even more than before. The Persian source entitled The Ship of Sulayman is a record of a mission sent from Iran to Siam at the end of the seventeenth century, and vividly depicts the Iranians in the maritime world of this period. As is clear from this source, their expansion reached its peak in the mid-seventeenth century, and after that they disappeared from the limelight of the Indian Ocean world. This was largely due to the fall of the Qutb Shahi Sultanate of Golconda by the Mughal Empire in 1687, which had been active in the commercial activities in the Bay of Bengal, particularly in the diamond trade. However, the “legacy” of Iranians extensive activities in the Indian Ocean world continued through the use of Persian as an international maritime lingua franca for centuries. In Japan, in 1796, interpreters in Nagasaki compiled textbooks to be used when receiving foreign merchant ships, and alongside Chinese, Vietnamese, Dutch and Portuguese, there is a text in a language called “Mouru”. This Mouru (a variant of Moor) is actually Persian, and the vocabulary sometimes includes Hindi(and Telugu). In this paper, I will trace the activities of Iranians in the early modern period through these two sources written and reflected in the Persian language, which was a common maritime language throughout the region.
Mathias Istrup Karlmose

The Battle for Dannemarksnagore - The Danish Presence in Mughal Bengal, 1698-1714

The Battle for Dannemarksnagore - The Danish Presence in Mughal Bengal, 1698-1714

In 1714, the Danish trading lodge of Dannemarksnagore, in the trading port of Serampore on the Ganges River in Bengal, was attacked several times by Ramkrishna, the local Mughal karori. In response the Danish commander Erasmus Hansen Attrup seized the Mughal trading vessel Fakirmony on the Ganges River, causing a diplomatic and military stand-off that involved several layers of Mughal diplomacy, in addition to the other European traders in Bengal, chiefly the French and the British. The stand-off was the final confrontation in a Danish-Mughal conflict that had taken place throughout the Bay of Bengal since 1640, yet which had formally been ended in 1698, with a peace that allowed the establishment of Dannemarksnagore. Just 16 years later, war erupted again. The purpose of this paper is to look at this short-lived Danish presence in Bengal as an example of the entwinement of trade and violence in the Asian trading world of the early 18th century. The conflict involved both land-based Mughal assaults on the Danish trading lodge, and the water-based Danish seizure of the Fakirmony, allowing the observation of how both sides saw violence as a means to achieve their commercial and diplomatic goals, as well as how both justified it within their own diplomatic and political framework.
Ryuto Shimada

The Dutch East india Company in the Eighteenth Century: Rise and Decline in the Bay of Bengal

The Dutch East india Company in the Eighteenth Century: Rise and Decline in the Bay of Bengal

This paper provides a quantitative overview of the business of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Bay of Bengal during the eighteenth century. In this region, the VOC established the three branches: Ceylon, Coromandel and Bengal. Each branch had its main office in Colombo, Nagapattinam and Hooghly, and had numerous sub-offices. Recent research, including that by the author, has revealed that the VOC's business in the Bay of Bengal was in a state of growth until the mid-eighteenth century. The main products for export were cotton textiles from the Coromandel Coast and Bengal. In addition to the traditional Southeast Asian market, the Western European market also emerged from the late seventeenth century. Besides cinnamon, coffee cultivation also began on Ceylon, and the demand for Bengal opium increased in Insular Southeast Asia. The VOC was an important player for international trade in these products. However, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the VOC's trade began to decline. The first reason was the growth of the British East India Company in Bengal, but more fundamentally, the traditional company style of monopoly trade became outdated and was unable to keep up with the growth of the Bay of Bengal economy. Non-Dutch East India Companies participated in the trade on larger scale, while the power of private merchants rose. Amid this, the VOC suffered a devastating blow when it lost many vessels in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in the early 1780s.
Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Armenians in the Bay of Bengal in the Long Eighteenth Century

Armenians in the Bay of Bengal in the Long Eighteenth Century

Armenian merchants were a distinct but tiny minority with a significant presence in the Indian Ocean region in the early modern period. Ports around the Bay of Bengal, each with its own network of production centres and markets, had been part of the structure of Armenian trade. Whilst they had developed a symbiotic relationship with the Mughals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth century saw Armenians gradually gravitating towards the English, emerging on the political scene in India. The period of this transition also witnessed an alteration in the structural pattern of the trade in the Indian Ocean, leading to Calcutta being transformed into an important node in the interconnected webs of British Imperial trade and information. Drawing partly on testamentary information and partly on other primary and secondary sources, this paper will shed light on the economic activities of Armenian merchants based in Madras, and at different locations in Bengal during the long eighteenth century. It will argue that there was a constant flow of new Armenians emigrating from Iran exploring the newer economic opportunities provided by the colonial imperial economy. As part of adjustment with the needs of the changing times, investing in enterprises, rising as part of the colonial political economy of extraction for the benefit of the core, was part of the process.
Wim de Winter

Armenian Merchants in 18th Century Bengal and Beyond: Agents and Intermediaries at the Nexus of Trans-oceanic trade

Armenian Merchants in 18th Century Bengal and Beyond: Agents and Intermediaries at the Nexus of Trans-oceanic trade

In the 17th and 18th century, Armenian merchants’ operations spread out from a central point in the Safavid Empire to the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, and most of the then-known world, as language, intercultural aptitude, and credit gained them partners in Asian maritime trade linking numerous seafaring communities. Using the seafaring of others, including Chinese, French, or Portuguese navigators, they learned much about seasons and ‘strange and unknown countries’ by the sea. Towards the later 18th century, less emphasis lied on the intra-Armenian ‘trade network’ and other forms of collaboration came to the fore. Several characteristics appear which single out Armenian merchants as not only exceptional merchants, but astute intercultural agents as intermediaries for European and Persian merchants. The paper uses newly uncovered shipboard source material and correspondence to look into aspects contributing to their intercultural aptitude in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, and argues that while this aptitude enabled great commercial and diplomatic success, in the second half of the 18th century it eventually made Armenian merchants into a target for violence by those European commercial groups which earlier relied on their mediation for survival. This necessitated a search for other collaboration and opportunities, which the Bay of Bengal provided.
Chisa Mizobuchi

Elephants in the Bengal Presidency of the British East India Company 1765-1842: Sovereignty, Science and Social Life

Elephants in the Bengal Presidency of the British East India Company 1765-1842: Sovereignty, Science and Social Life

This paper examines the use of elephants in social spaces by people from Europe, particularly high-ranking officers of the British East India Company (EIC). The EIC began to expand its presence in Bengal in the mid-eighteenth century and developed a consolidated ruling system in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. European officers of the EIC engaged in various activities not only in commerce, but also in governance, scientific research, and social meetings. They adopted the elephant-use practices of India’s ruling class, which resulted in the reconstruction of the local tradition. First, the Governor-General of Bengal used elephants to symbolise his sovereignty. Following the example of former Indian rulers, he kept elephant guards. Elephant parades were regularly held at the villa of the Governor-General of Bengal in Barrackpore, located upstream of Calcutta. Elephants were also used for receptions in the diplomatic arena. Second, elephants contributed to advances in zoological science. Richard Wellesley, the Governor-General of Bengal from 1798 to 1805, established a facility called Menagerie at a villa in Barrackpore to collect Asian animals, enabling natural historians to observe elephants on site, record their behaviors, and make drawings. In addition, local knowledge of elephants was collected by EIC officers.

Abstract

The Bay of Bengal region underwent a great transformation from the 1680s to the 1820s to form the fundamental conditions for modernization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This double panel session attempts to place this transformation during the long eighteenth century in the context of global history. While some areas in the region were colonized by the British, the Bay of Bengal region began to experience the economic development as a whole, which was generally caused by growing global demand for export products, such as cotton textiles, opium, cinnamon and coffee. The region had been a sort of periphery in maritime Asia in terms of international trade, compared with the Arabian Sea region and the South and East China Seas region. Yet, faced with political and socio-economic changes, it became a center for supplying primary products to the global market throughout the long eighteenth century. The panelists focus on foreigners and clarifies the process of transformation in the Bay of Bengal region through foreigners’ eyes. Foreigners not only from Europe but also from other part of Asia came to this region for business, settlement and colonization, and many foreigners were concerned with political and/or socio-economic changes with local people. Keeping this in mind, the six panelists shed light on various aspects of the transformations from foreigners’ perspectives of not only the Dutch and British, but also Iranians, Armenians, Danes and so on. This panel session is also an attempt for multi-linguistic global historical studies. Focusing on a specific region in Asia, historians consult sources in several languages for a global history. In this sense, the panel session can be a model case study for reconsidering the methodology of global history.

Foreigners in the Bay of Bengal during the Long Eighteenth Century: A Periphery or Centre of the global Economy? Panel 2

Event Details

Convenor

Chair

Panelists

Papers

Iranians in the Bay of Bengal. Persian as Koine in the Early Modern Indian Ocean World

The Battle for Dannemarksnagore - The Danish Presence in Mughal Bengal, 1698-1714

The Dutch East india Company in the Eighteenth Century: Rise and Decline in the Bay of Bengal

Armenians in the Bay of Bengal in the Long Eighteenth Century

Armenian Merchants in 18th Century Bengal and Beyond: Agents and Intermediaries at the Nexus of Trans-oceanic trade

Elephants in the Bengal Presidency of the British East India Company 1765-1842: Sovereignty, Science and Social Life

Abstract