Enlightenment and Empire,Mughals and Marathas: the Religious History of India in the work of East India Company servant,Alexander Dow

This article situates the work of East India Company servant Alexander Dow (1735–1779), principally his writings on the history and future state of India, in contemporary debates about empire, religion and enlightened government. To do so it offers a sustained analysis of his 1772 essay ‘A Dissertation Concerning the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan’, as well as his proposals for the restoration of Bengal, both of which played an influential part in shaping the preoccupations with Mughal history that dominated the contemporary crisis in the Company’s legitimacy. By linking these texts to his earlier work on ‘Hindoo’ religion, it will argue that Dow’s analysis of the relationship between certain religious cultures and their civic qualities was rooted in a deist perspective. It doing so it restores the enlightenment components of Dow’s thought, and their impact on the ideology of empire, in a crucial period of British expansion in India.     

Warwick: report on the excavation of an early 17th‐century English shipwreck in Castle Harbour,Bermuda

Warwick, a colonial merchantman owned and operated by Sir Robert Rich, Second Earl of Warwick, sank in Castle Harbour, Bermuda, in1619. Between 2010 and 2012, Warwick's hull remains and associated artefacts were excavated and recorded. Built early in the 17th century, Warwick’s structure revealed a traditional shipbuilding style. Covered with two layers of planking and a layer of sheathing, the ship was purpose‐built for extended transatlantic voyages. Not exceeding 200 tons, Warwick was an average‐size vessel with sufficient burthen to bring supplies and passengers to the colonies and return with tobacco.     

Peers,Politics and the Price of Pepper: Skinner v. the East India Company

The case of Thomas Skinner v. the East India Company brought parliament to a standstill in 1668 in a confrontation between the Houses over their respective privileges that lasted nearly two years. There is no doubt that the case was exploited for political advantage by presbyterians anxious to block the passage of a new conventicles act, but that is far from being the whole story.  This article examines for the first time the details of the case and reliability of Skinner's claims against the East India Company.  It reveals that Thomas Skinner was somewhat of an obsessive fantasist who, far from being a presbyterian sympathiser, was close to the household of James, duke of York. At one stage his daughter was even reputed to be the mother of the ‘pretended’ prince of Wales. It concludes that Skinner was himself an unscrupulous opportunist, eager to exploit political and commercial uncertainty for private gain.     

Two 17th-century English factories in North Kanara,Karnataka, India: a historical archaeology perspective

Summary: This article presents historical archaeology evidence for two 17th-century English factory sites located in North Kanara, Karnataka, India. The factories were established in the 1630s by a rival to the East India Company known as the Courteen Association to trade for spices and textiles. Documentary and archaeological evidence for the factories’ foundation, setting and structural form is presented and the broader significance of these principal characteristics considered with reference to the study of later East India Company factory sites in south-west India. The article concludes by assessing the potential for further archaeological investigation of the sites.     

Aspects of the Contact between the Sixth Panchen Lama and the British East India Company

This paper summarizes previous research on the contacts between the sixth Panchen Lama of Tibet and the British East India Company (EIC). Extensive research has been done on the archives and travelogues written in English, yet further attention needs to be paid to the significance of these contacts to the Panchen Lama’s historic visit to the Qing court around the same time. Although little is available in Chinese and Tibetan sources on this event, important questions have yet to be raised and discussed. Drawing upon what has been done on this topic, the author makes further use of Tibetan materials and the catalog of Manchu archives in the First Historical Archive of China, and concludes that the plan and efforts for the EIC to open its trade route to China through Tibet were essentially based on wishful thinking or false hope without thorough understanding of Tibet or Qing court, or the delicate relations between the two. Even though the EIC’s late 18th century efforts through the Hindu merchant monk Gosain Purangir were in vain, examining the many contacts between the sixth Panchen Lama and the EIC and Purangir’s trip to Beijing provide a novel perspective on the relations between Tibet and the Qing court in the second half of the 18th century. This inquiry also demonstrates that during the same period, Tibet was not a land of isolation; on the contrary, it was an integral part of “the pre-modern globalization” process.     

State policy,institutional framework and technical monopoly in early modern Spain: invention patents in the Crown of Aragon during the seventeenth century

This paper examines invention patents in the Crown of Aragon during the seventeenth century. Patents were granted by the Council of Aragon, the Royal Council responsible for political and legal issues arising in the Spanish territories belonging to the Crown of Aragon. The Council's functions in the area of patents arose out of the monarchy's interest in extending the validity of royal patents from Castile to Aragon in order to enhance its control over technical discoveries and developments, and to raise fresh revenues for the treasury. Both foreign and Castilian inventors applied for patents, which were immediately applicable, but the privileges they entailed were accepted only with difficulty by the Aragonese institutions. This reluctance severely curtailed the number of applications. Meanwhile, the Council's desire to cooperate with the monarchy led it eventually to define criteria for the grant of patents. However, the legal and institutional structure of the Crown of Aragon made it difficult for inventors to enforce and defend their rights. The lack of new patent applications to the Council in the later seventeenth century illustrates how the existence of a separate jurisdiction obstructed the consolidation of a patents system in the Crown of Aragon, hindering the spread of technical progress in Spain.     

Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch Colonial Cape of Good Hope, South Africa: A History of Local Production and Typology of Products

Coarse earthenware production at the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Cape settlement began shortly after the Company established its mercantile entrepôt on the shores of Table Bay in 1652. Made by European Company potters, these vessels reproduced the forms of the homeland in the raw materials of the colony. A history of VOC pottery manufacture and a typological examination of the products illustrates how the global movements of mercantile capitalism combined with the local circumstances of the Cape settlement to create a material form reminiscent of Europe, but purely colonial in the dynamics of its production and use.     

Structural power, agency and national liberation: the case of East Timor

The struggle for independence in East Timor, which came to fruition in 1999, illustrates both that agency can be exercised in ways that change social structures and that changing structural relations are necessary for the effective exercise of agency. This paper presents a basic Marxist theoretical framework for analysing structural power, contrasting this with the understanding of structure developed by structurationists. It then examines the Timorese independence struggle at two crucial turning points, showing how differing structural contexts enabled different outcomes at those turning points.     

Geopolitical boundary narratives, the global war on terror and border fencing in India

This article investigates how expansive new security projects have gained both legitimacy and immediacy as part of the 'global war on terror' by analysing the process that led to the fencing and securitising of the border between India and Bangladesh. The framing of the 'enemy other' in the global war on terror relies on two crucial shifts from previous geopolitical boundary narratives. First, the enemy other is described as not only being violent but also as outside the boundaries of modernity. Second, the enemy other is represented as posing a global and interconnected threat that is no longer limited by geography. These two shifts are used to justify the new preventative responses of pre-emptive military action abroad and the securitisation of the borders of the state. This article argues that in India the good and evil framing of the global war on terror was mapped onto longstanding communal distinctions between Hindus and Muslims. In the process, Pakistan, Bangladesh and increasingly Muslims generally are described as violent, irrational and a threat to the security of the Indian state. These changes led to a profound shift in the borderlands of the Indian state of West Bengal, where fencing and securitising the border with Bangladesh was previously resisted, but now is deemed essential. The article concludes that the framing of the war on terror as a global and interconnected problem has allowed sovereign states to consolidate power and move substantially closer to the territorial ideal of a closed and bounded container of an orderly population by attempting to lock down political borders.     

清代安庆方志中的“忠节”书写及其演变——以抗清殉节者的“忠节”书写为中心

清代安庆方志的"忠节"书写对象,包括鼎革之际的各种"忠节"者,尤其抗清殉节者。清代安庆方志中"忠节"书写的不断变化,体现了满清政权为重构易代之际历史,重建伦理道德秩序,以确立在意识形态领域的统治,而逐步调整针对抗清殉节者的旌表政策,最终采用以"教化"而"去政治化"的历史书写范式的过程。当然,体现清廷意志的国家话语贯彻到方志书写的过程中,也不可避免地会与凸显地方意识的地方话语产生纠缠甚至争夺,并最终在"教化"的层面上趋向了一致。     

通识 专精 信念——瞿林东教授著《20世纪中国史学散论》读后

瞿林东教授勤于笔耕,著述丰富。他在中国古代史学史研究取得大量成果的基础上,对20世纪中国史学的研究又表现出特殊的重视。近十多年来,不断发表关于20世纪中国史学的长篇大作,在史学界产生了较大影响。瞿教授选取有代表性的论文24篇,另选2篇作为附录,结集为《20世纪中国史学散论》(以下简称《散论》)。     

Local knowledge is required: a rhythmanalytical approach to the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland, UK

This is a paper about blurring the boundaries between people, land and water in the past and of appreciating the importance of the wider environment in our accounts of prehistory. Maritime approaches to time/space are shown to offer new ways of looking at how people engage with the world around them. Informed by these approaches, and building on Lefebvre’s concepts of lived space and rhythm, current tensions within archaeology between cartesian and phenomenological approaches to the past will be shown to be unconstructive. These issues are all addressed in relation the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland. Here a rhythmical, maritime approach will be shown to offer us a subtly different view of life during this period.     

文化认同的传承与创新：印度加尔各答华人的多元化宗教信仰研究

作为对印度加尔各答华人研究的一部分,本文基于田野调查获得的资料,从文化认同的理论视角,探讨了在南亚唯一唐人街及华人社区生活的加尔各答华人多元化宗教信仰。通过对其宗教信仰中“中国传承”和“住地创新”两方面内容的归纳分析,揭示出在印度加尔各答华人社区内,独特的中国及印度元素兼备的华人多元化身份特征及文化认同。