The 21st Century has witnessed a new Asian ascendancy over the West. Europe has lost the manufacturing catalyst of textiles, ceramics and metal goods back to India and China. This project, funded by the European Research Council, charts the history of the first global economic shift during the period 1600 to1830. It challenges the long divide between Europe and Asia in history writing, and explores the subject of Eurasian trade in a global context.

Led by Professor Maxine Berg, three postdoctoral fellows, a research assistant and a PhD student are engaged in a comparative study of Europe’s trade with India and China during this period by drawing on the records of Europe’s East India companies, the papers of private traders, and major museum collections. They are exploring how Europe’s pursuit of goods moved it from a premodern to modern trading world, against the backdrop of Europe’s Industrial Revolution and India and China’s displacement as manufacturing and economic world leaders.

Book Announcement Goods From the East, 1600-1800: Trading Eurasia edited by Maxine Berg with Felicia Gottmann, Hanna Hodacs and Chris Nierstrasz	Book Announcement Global Trade, Smuggling, and the Making of Economic Liberalism: Asian Textiles in France 1680-1760 Felicia Gottmann
Book Announcement Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles: The English and Dutch East India Companies (1700-1800) Chris Nierstrasz	Book Announcement Silk and Tea in the North: Scandinavian Trade and the Market for Asian Goods in Eighteenth-Century Europe Hanna Hodacs
Dissertation Announcement Meike von Brescius’s PhD dissertation, ‘Private Enterprise and the China Trade: British Interlopers and their Informal Networks in Europe 1720-1750’ (2016), has now been completed.