Jos Gommans

Harriet Zurndorfer

This volume brings together some of the very best of half a century of enduring scholarship in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. The selected articles show how historians have developed their understanding of economic and social change in China and India. As introduced by two of its current editors, these seminal studies not only demonstrate the crucial contributions of JESHO but also reflect the various scholarly tendencies in their respective fields. Hence this volume offers readers a unique opportunity to critically compare the historical and the historiographical roots and routes of the modern development of these two new global superpowers.

Highlights of Fifty Years of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (1957-2007)

Roots and Routes of Development in China and India

The Netherlands and India both experienced a period of economic and cultural prosperity in the seventeenth century. During this shared Golden Age both countries became profoundly influenced by increasing globalization and developed into large global empires. Thanks to the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the two countries met and intensive interaction developed. While the Indian textile caused a small revolution in the Dutch pattern of consumption, the VOC contributed to the monetary stability of the Indian Mogul Empire with its precious metals. In addition to trade contacts, there was an intellectual undercurrent that had connected the countries for centuries: the hidden world of the Neoplatonic imagination that brought about a remarkable artistic similarity between Dutch and Indian artists.

The Unseen World. India and the Netherlands from 1550

This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia. These studies are based on Gommans’ observation that Indian empires always had to deal with a highly dynamic inner frontier between semi-arid wilderness and settled agriculture. Such inner frontiers could only be bridged by the ongoing movements of Turkish, Afghan, Rajput and other warbands. Like the most spectacular examples of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empires, they all based their power on the exploitation of the most lethal weapon of that time: the warhorse. In discussing the breeding and trading of horses and their role in medieval and early modern South Asian warfare, Gommans also makes some thought-provoking comparisons with Europe and the Middle East. Since the Indian frontier is part of the much larger Eurasian Arid Zone that links the Indian subcontinent to West, Central and East Asia, the final essay explores the connected and entangled history of the Turko-Mongolian warband in the Ottoman and Timurid Empires, Russia and China.

Horse and Warband in the Making of Empires

The Indian Frontier

Ariel Lopez

Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities. This volume adds a new global perspective to the history of the Philippines by juxtaposing Iberian, Chinese and Islamic perspectives. By navigating various underexplored archival resources, senior and junior scholars from Asia, Europe and the Americas explore the diverse cultural, religious, and economic flows that shaped the early modern Philippine milieu. By zooming in from the global to the local, this book offers eleven fascinating Philippine case studies of early modern globalization.

Iberian, Chinese and Islamic Currents, C. 1500-1800

Philippine Confluence

Catia Antunes

In 1602, the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands chartered the first commercial company, the Dutch East India Company, and, in so doing, initiated a new wave of globalization. Even though Dutch engagement in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans dates back to the 16th century, it was the dawn of the 17th century that brought the Dutch into the fold of the general movement of European expansion overseas and concomitant globalization. This volume surveys the Dutch participation in, and contribution to, the process of globalization. At the same time, it reassesses the various ways Dutchmen fashioned themselves following the encounter and in the light of increasing dialogue with other societies across the world. As such, Exploring the Dutch Empire offers a new insight into the macro and micro worlds of the global Dutchman in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The result fills a gap in the historiography on empire and globalization, which has previously been dominated by British and, to a lesser extent, French and Spanish cases.

Jos Gommans

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