Presentations and discussion. Refreshments provided.

All are welcome.

The creation, collection and dissemination of materials relating to global trade and travel transformed the ways participants in early ‘globalisation’ understood and interacted with the world. This ranged from using commercial knowledge to beat competitors, shaping debates about empire, to the reassessment of worldviews due to contacts with foreign peoples. This paper is based on a collaborative project that explores the multiple intersections between early modern trading companies and travel writing. After a general outline of the project, we will examine two case studies, namely the Dutch East India Company's use of writing instructions as a tool of corporate information management, and the New England Company's difficulties in enforcing regulations in contested spaces on the edges of its fledgling colony.