The ocean has always been the harbinger of strangers to new shores. Migrations by sea have transformed modern conceptions of mobility and belonging, disrupting notions of how to write about movement, memory and displaced histories. Sea Log is a memory theater of repressive hauntings based on urban artifacts across a maritime archive of Dutch and Portuguese colonial pillage. Colonial incursions from the sea, and the postcolonial aftershocks of these violent sea histories, lie largely forgotten for most formerly colonized coastal communities around the world. Offering a feminist log of sea journeys from the Malabar Coast of South India, through the Atlantic to the North Sea, May Joseph writes a navigational history of postcolonial coastal displacements. Excavating Dutch, Portuguese, Arab, Asian and African influences along the Malabar Coast, Joseph unearths the undertow of colonialism’s ruins. In Sea Log, the Bosphorus, the Tagus and the Amstel find coherence alongside the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Written in a clear and direct style, this volume will appeal to historians of transnational communities, as well as students and scholars of cultural studies, anthropology of space, area studies, maritime history and postcolonial studies.

The Western Indian Ocean in the Eighteenth Century is the first of four volumes offering a sweeping panorama of the Arabian Seas during the early modern period. Focusing on the period 1700-1763, the first volume concentrates on daily life in littoral societies, examining long term issues including climatic change, famine, and the structures of fishing communities. The volume examines littoral societies in each of the major coastal areas of the Western Indian Ocean: East Africa, the Red Seas, the Persian Gulf, and its traditional ties to surrounding hinterlands as well as to the west coast of India. While having particular interest to readers concerned with Indian Ocean history, as an absorbing and innovative account of a much neglected albeit critical area and period, Arabian Seas, 1700-1763 will be of great interest to anyone interested in early modern maritime, social, or economic history. Kings, Gangsters, and Companies, volume two of Arabian Seas, 1700-1763 focuses on European relations with the major states and societies of the Western Indian Ocean during the eighteenth century. As such, it traces the major structural changes in African, South Asian, and Middle Eastern societies during this period. Chapters examine European communities and their relations with the societies of the Indian Ocean basin, the daily life of European soldiers and merchants, relations with Indian women, European views on the Indian caste system as well as the governmental systems they encountered. The volume also details the importance of Indian and Persian merchant communities in the Indian Ocean trading system and the impact of war on the economic development of this system during the eighteenth century. Men and Merchandise, the third volume of Arabian Seas, 1700-1763, provides a detailed examination of the economic and social structures in the Western Indian Ocean focusing on key commodities like bullion, textiles, and the slave trade. Readers will also encounter interesting vignettes of daily life: an Indian nautch girl worried about her inheritance, a Portuguese gangster-friar and pariah workers, the infamous buccaneers of Madagascar, coffee-traders from Yemen, Cairo, and the Crimea, and Iraqi and Iranian bankers who all had relevance to this vast economic system. Men and Merchandise provides insights into other traditionally ignored aspects in the traditional historiography including uprisings aboard slave ships, and details of maroon societies involving refugee slaves in India and Mauritius as well as Dutch slave soldiers in the Persian Gulf. As such, it will prove of great interest to any reader concerned with the social and economic history of the Indian Ocean basin. Europe in Asia, the fourth volume and final volume in Arabian Seas, 1700-1763, details the early phase of European territorial empire building in the western Indian Ocean basin. Particular attention is given to the much neglected history of the Portuguese Estado da India and the attempts of the Portuguese Crown to reform its administration and dwindling possessions in the eighteenth century. The volume examines the direct legacies of the longstanding Portuguese imperial presence in the Arabian Seas, including the experiences of Indian Catholic communities as well as the establishment of Indian settlements and communities in East Africa. Finally, the volume provides an exhaustive treatment of the structures and history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and English East India Company (EIC), the establishment of the vast private co...

This book discusses the importance of socio-spatial patterns in cities that are embedded in the cultural heritage and self-understanding of a society, showing that Indian cities follow different urban concepts. In nine episodes (nine is a sacred figure), it highlights the principal influences and social impacts on cities from ancient times to contemporary city developments. As such, it provides planners and architects with insights that can easily be applied in contemporary cities and towns and help foster India’s cultural heritage—a much-needed, but little-discussed approach. Indian cities are the result of various factors, some imposed, others following local traditions that shaped them. They were founded around social needs, landscape conditions and production routines, as well as the religious influences of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and animism. However, Western town-planning models are often implemented, blurring the traditional way of life in cities. For sustainable town development, it is of key importance to find solutions that deal with Indian city models.

Drawing on the rich archives of the Court of Justice of Cochin, a main settlement of the Dutch East India Company, this book presents ten court cases that deal with themes of enslavement and 'enslavebility'. Offering detailed insights into interrogations and testimonies, they paint a unique picture of the complex historical realities in which processes of enslavement and relations of slavery were shaped. Each original Dutch transcript is followed by an English translation, shedding light on the interactions between local systems of bondage and global systems of commodified slavery, and providing a new perspective on the global history of slavery.Analysing slavery in the Indian Ocean and South Asia, these case studies examine the dynamics of bondage, caste and social control, while offering a counterpoint to the traditional focus on Atlantic slavery.

This study of the early modern fortress town of Cochin in India, based on the rarely used VOC archival deposits in the Tamilnadu State Archives in Chennai (Madras), provides an intimate portrait of a Dutch urban community of East India Company servants and their dependents living within the larger social environment of the Malabar coast. It shows how between 1750 and 1830 the population of this Dutch settlement had adapted itself to the fundamental political and economic changes that occurred as a result of local state formation processes, the demise of the Dutch East India Company, and the change of regime that occurred when English administration was imposed on Fort Cochin in 1795.

Description: In Indian history the long eighteenth century between 1650 and 1850 may be seen as a period of transition. In Kerela, the old order of the Nayar-power gradually changed to a more centralized state formation. Upto 1795 the Dutch East India Company participated in this process. In the lands around Cochin the Rajas tried to enhance their power over Nambuthiri and Nayar chiefs and they expanded their influence to the north in their struggle with the Zamorins of Calicut. Advised by Konkanis and Pattars they used the power of the Dutch as much as possible to their own advantage. Based on the archives of the Dutch East India Company this study shows how a special reading of these sources throws a new light on the history of the realm of Cochin in the period 1663-1720.

This volume is a comprehensive companion to the use of the rich archival resources of Dutch East India Company (VOC) as well as other, related collections at the National Archives in The Hague. Apart from detailed inventories, it includes concise historical and historiographical introductions, various regional maps, and an extensive bibliography relating to two centuries of intensive Dutch involvement with the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.

Dutch sources on South Asia c. 1600 - 1825 is a series dedicated to the sources that have been produced by people connected to the Dutch East India Company or VOC.