Final Report Summary - TRADE (Europe's Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830)
Europe’s Asian Centuries addresses the question of to what extent Asia’s manufactured products affected Europe’s industrial and consumer culture in the early modern period. It entails a comparative study of Europe’s East India Companies and the private trade to Asia over the period, a study of how products made in Asia were produced, adapted to European tastes and distributed back to Europe, thus forming an export-ware sector, and a study of European consumer, manufacturing and political responses to this trade.
In the first period of this project a varied team with specialist linguistic and research skills was recruited following an international search, then trained and consolidated in frequent regular team meetings throughout the first three years of the project. The team was well embedded in the active Global History and Culture Centre and the History department at Warwick and made strong connections with other scholars working in its field though its seminar series, project conferences and a strong museum network with curators of goods from Asia during the period facilitated by the project’s Museum & Materials Consultant.
The team gathered for this project has, for the first time, allowed a full comparative and connected study of the trade with Asia of a range of European countries. While individual researchers have developed their own methodologies and research focuses within the broad framework of the project all have an individual book proposal. Each team member has regularly shared their work internally and at external project organised events. They have often used new and innovative methods such as databases alongside material culture study of objects in auction and inventory records to demonstrate their findings. They have produced and published literature surveys and have written a major jointly-written journal article together with the Principal Investigator (PI). The PI and postdocs have edited a substantial edited volume, all have published individual articles and book chapters, and the postdoctoral fellows have written monographs to be published in a book series secured by the PI with Palgrave Press.
In this collaborative environment the project has been able to investigate European national archives and consider highly specialist literatures with new questions. A key result is a quite new focus on the role of private trade and the privilege trade conducted by East India Companies. The project demonstrates the enormous range of qualities and varieties of goods imported into Europe, as well as the spread of these goods right through Europe through an important re-export trade. The research has uncovered significant connections across different East India Companies; many merchants and other personnel worked for several different companies. The Companies themselves were also very responsive to markets and market openings, adjusting the range of goods they traded, frequently complementing the markets and goods they traded in. The smaller Swedish and Danish companies adeptly developed sophisticated re-export markets, playing a significant part in developing the China-Europe tea trade. This tea trade also provided the basis for Europe’s major importation of porcelain, silks and other luxury products, goods which poor Scandinavian countries re-exported throughout Europe.
The PI’s investigation of craft skills and Indian export products for world markets has included a special regional study of 18th Century textiles from Gujarat, and an oral history of current craftspeople in the region. This oral history provides insight into technologies, the transmission of skills, and adaptation to world markets. 68 oral histories have been collected with local research assistance. These are digitised, collected on a website, and summarized and translated into English and placed on a public website. This digital archive will have wide impact as a new type of virtual museum and scholarly archive; it will have much wider impact as a publicly accessible resource for the people of Kachchh, based in their own craft practices and their personal and family histories. This part of the project links past and present in studying Asian crafts and products in world markets.
In the first period of this project a varied team with specialist linguistic and research skills was recruited following an international search, then trained and consolidated in frequent regular team meetings throughout the first three years of the project. The team was well embedded in the active Global History and Culture Centre and the History department at Warwick and made strong connections with other scholars working in its field though its seminar series, project conferences and a strong museum network with curators of goods from Asia during the period facilitated by the project’s Museum & Materials Consultant.
The team gathered for this project has, for the first time, allowed a full comparative and connected study of the trade with Asia of a range of European countries. While individual researchers have developed their own methodologies and research focuses within the broad framework of the project all have an individual book proposal. Each team member has regularly shared their work internally and at external project organised events. They have often used new and innovative methods such as databases alongside material culture study of objects in auction and inventory records to demonstrate their findings. They have produced and published literature surveys and have written a major jointly-written journal article together with the Principal Investigator (PI). The PI and postdocs have edited a substantial edited volume, all have published individual articles and book chapters, and the postdoctoral fellows have written monographs to be published in a book series secured by the PI with Palgrave Press.
In this collaborative environment the project has been able to investigate European national archives and consider highly specialist literatures with new questions. A key result is a quite new focus on the role of private trade and the privilege trade conducted by East India Companies. The project demonstrates the enormous range of qualities and varieties of goods imported into Europe, as well as the spread of these goods right through Europe through an important re-export trade. The research has uncovered significant connections across different East India Companies; many merchants and other personnel worked for several different companies. The Companies themselves were also very responsive to markets and market openings, adjusting the range of goods they traded, frequently complementing the markets and goods they traded in. The smaller Swedish and Danish companies adeptly developed sophisticated re-export markets, playing a significant part in developing the China-Europe tea trade. This tea trade also provided the basis for Europe’s major importation of porcelain, silks and other luxury products, goods which poor Scandinavian countries re-exported throughout Europe.
The PI’s investigation of craft skills and Indian export products for world markets has included a special regional study of 18th Century textiles from Gujarat, and an oral history of current craftspeople in the region. This oral history provides insight into technologies, the transmission of skills, and adaptation to world markets. 68 oral histories have been collected with local research assistance. These are digitised, collected on a website, and summarized and translated into English and placed on a public website. This digital archive will have wide impact as a new type of virtual museum and scholarly archive; it will have much wider impact as a publicly accessible resource for the people of Kachchh, based in their own craft practices and their personal and family histories. This part of the project links past and present in studying Asian crafts and products in world markets.