East India Company 1600-1857

<p>This book employs a wide range of perspectives to demonstrate how the East India Company facilitated cross-cultural interactions between the English and various groups in South Asia between 1600 to 1857 and how these interactions transformed important features of both British and South Asian history. Rather than viewing the Company as an organization projecting its authority from London to India, the volume shows how the Company’s history and its broader historical significance can best be understood by appreciating the myriad ways in which these interactions shaped the Company’s story and altered the course of history. Bringing together the latest research and several case studies, the work includes examinations of the formulation of economic theory, the development of corporate strategy, the mechanics of state finance, the mapping of maritime jurisdiction, the government and practice of religions, domesticity, travel, diplomacy, state formation, art, gift-giving, incarceration, and rebellion. Together, the essays will advance the understanding of the peculiarly corporate features of cross-cultural engagement during a crucial early phase of globalization. </p><p>Insightful and lucid, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of modern history, South Asian studies, economic history, and political studies.</p> <p><em>List of abbreviations Acknowledgement Introduction</em>:<b> </b>The Different East India Companies and the Variety of Cross Cultural Interactions in the Corporate Setting <b>Part I: The Regulatory Worlds of the East India Company 1.</b>The Failure of the Cloth Trade to Surat and the Internationalisation of English Mercantilist Thought, 1614–1621 <i> </i><b>2. </b>Asian influences on the Commercial Strategies of the English East India Company<b> </b><b>3. </b>The East India Company and the shift in Anglo-Indian Commercial Relations in the 1680s <b>4.</b> Indian merchants, company protection and the development of the Bombay shipping pass regime <b>Part II: Religion, Society, Ethnographic Reconnaissance, and Inter Cultural Encounters</b> <b>5</b>. ‘God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem’- The Religious Governance, Religious Sufferance and the Corporate Chaplain in India 1610-1701 <b>6. </b>Maritime Society in an Early Modern Port City: Negotiating family, religion and the English Company in Madras <b>7. </b>Domesticity’ in Early Colonial Bengal <b>8. </b>The Travellers’ tales: The Travel Writings of Itesamuddin and Abu Taleb Khan <b>Part III: Diplomacy, Power, and the Company State - 222 – 322</b> <b>9.</b> Jahangir’s Paintings <b>10. </b>The Contested State: Political Authority and the Decentred Foundations of the Early Modern Colonial State in Asia <b>11. </b>Messing, caste, and resistance: the production of ‘jail-scapes’ and penal regimes in the early 1840s <b>12. </b>A Case of Multiple Existences: The Loyal Bombay Purbaiya and his rebellious cousin in Bengal <i>Index</i></p>