JSPS Source Discussion Workshop 'Terms in Circulation, Categories at Work, c.1600-1850'

1. Michael Bycroft

Theme: ‘qualité’ in the England-France-India gem trade
Category: ‘qualité’, i.e. the quality of goods and how this was judged in practice
Source: John Chardin Correspondence, 1671–1719

2. Anne Gerritsen

Theme: ‘soya sauce’
Category: Foodstuff and taste. The tastes and flavours of Asia were only slowly integrated into the Dutch diet, but there is some indication for demand in the category of a flavouring sauce (i.e. not individual spices). I am interested in how this taste changed over time, how this category of trade good was identified, and to what extent it was clear to traders in both China and Japan that there was this demand.
Source: Daghregisters.

3. Robert Fletcher

Theme: ‘interior/奥地 (okuchi)’
Category: landscapes/geographical imaginaries. In the 1920s and 1930s Japanese consular reports on East Africa sought to provide potential domestic manufacturers with concise descriptions of unfamiliar markets. In doing so, the reports’ authors sometimes recirculated British colonial publications, including annual reports. I am interested in the geographical imaginaries of both these Japanese and British quasi-official publications. One important concept, for both, was their use of ‘the interior’ or ‘okuchi’, often as a shorthand to describe and demarcate the ecologies and peoples of East Africa in this period. I’m looking to explore some of the meanings and uses of interior/okuchi, including, if possible, variations between these concepts.
Source: Report of Japanese Mombasa Consul Kuga Shigemi (1934 and 1935) , together with miscellaneous British administrative and commercial reports.

4. Kazuo Kobayashi

Theme: ‘guinée’
Category: Trade and material culture. This type of Indian cotton textiles was known as blue (indigo-dyed) and white in the eighteenth century, but nineteenth-century sources, at least Senegal–Pondicherry-related ones, noted that they were indigo-dyed. I would like to explore the change of the definition (if possible).
Source: accounts by travellers and entrepreneurs, and sample cloth

5. Fuyuko Matsukata

Theme: ‘Hof’ in Japan
Category: In Dutch, ‘hof’ (court in English) is a clear concept, but it is very difficult to translate into Japanese. I would like to explain how we are translating it.
Source: Nederlandse Factorij Japan, especially dagregisters van de opperhoofden

6. Guido van Meersbergen

Theme: Pishkash (tribute/gift)
Category: Diplomacy and political relations. In Mughal political culture, pishkash was the key category of material exchange that structured hierarchical relations. As part of their incorporation into the Mughal imperial order, the gifts and payments presented by the European East India Companies to the Mughal rulers and their representatives were also conceptualised as pishkash. I am interested in the way the term came to be adopted by the Companies and how the resultant relationships were understood and managed by the various parties.
Source: VOC and EIC correspondence and diaries.

7. Tomoko Morikawa

Theme: Corpses
Category: Human beings / Traded Goods. Shi’ite Muslim corpses and bones were transported to holy shrines in Iraq to be buried nearby their saints' mausoleums. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, taxes were imposed on corpses at customs offices and quarantine stations. How were corpses on board and how did Europeans perceive them?
Source: Travel accounts.

8. Shohei Okubo

Theme: ‘Opium Smokkelhandel (Smuggling)’ in the Dutch East India Company’s Plakkaten (Edicts) during the Eighteenth Century
Category: Smuggling, Smuggler, and Territory. People in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago took opium at war and for work, and started smoking tobacco with opium for leisure from the 17th century, so that opium became one of the most lucrative materials in the East Indies. Due to this new phenomenon, the Dutch East India Company obtained exclusive rights from the local rulers in Java, Sumatra and other islands of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago from the late 17th century. However, many other traders or Company’s servants “smuggled” this narcotic luxury into the “Company's monopoly area.” I am interested in how this drug influenced the term/concept of smuggling, smuggler, and territory in the High Government at Batavia during the 18th century.
Source: Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakaatboek, 1602–1811; Generale resoluties van de Hoge Indische Regering te Batavia.

9. Giorgio Riello

Theme: ‘The price of cloth’
Category: quality and material culture. I am interested in the ways in which categories of quality were established in the procurement of cloth by the East India Companies in India. These were mapped through prices and related to discounts imposed on merchants.
Source: English EEC correspondence.

10. Ryuto Shimada

Theme: Rijksdaalder in Asian and global perspectives
Category: Currency. Dutch rijksdaalder is a sort of silver dollar coin. The Dutch East India Company brought a huge amount of silver into Asia from the Netherlands as a means of payment for procuring Asian products for the European market. Some Asian countries received Dutch rijksdaalder coins and reminted them to produce their own currency. On the other hand, Dutch rijksdaalder was in circulation in some parts of Asia competing with other silver currency such as Spanish silver real coins. My focus is particularly on analyzing and finding the variety and principle of the Asian currency system in the early modern period.
Source: Archives of the Dutch East India Company

11. Miki Sugiura

Theme: ‘Manufacturen’ in the Dutch East India Trade
Category: Traded Goods, Recognition of Skills.What goods were perceived or presented as 'manufactured' and how the evaluation changed over time.
Source: Nederlandsch-Indisch plakaatboek, 1602–1811

12. Hideaki Suzuki

Theme: slaver/slave ship
Category: Trade and global/local gap of recognition. Slave trade in the western Indian Ocean reached its peak in the 19th century; simultaneously, global abolition also reached this sphere. The major patrolling force was the British Royal Navy who had succeeded in suppressing slave trade in the Atlantic. Carrying their successful experience in the Atlantic, the RN tackled slave trade in the western Indian Ocean, and eventually the slave trade itself was ceased largely by the early 20th century. However, this process was not straightforward. Looking carefully at reports and records of the naval captains as well as consulate staff in the Persian Gulf and Zanzibar, they were always confused between slave trade in their mind and slave trade in reality. Such confusion has been concentrated into a word “slaver” or “slave ship” in their records. How they managed to overcome this gap is the main concern of mine.
Source: Various RN officers' writings