Dr Guido van Meersbergen

Associate Professor in Early Modern Global History

Director of the Global History and Culture Centre (GHCC)

Office: FAB 3.73 (third floor, Faculty of Arts Building)

Email: g dot van-meersbergen at warwick dot ac dot uk

Office hours: Wednesday 11-12 & Thursday 11-12 (please book here)

Faculty of Arts Building, 6 University Road
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7EQ

+44(0)24765 22163

Academic Profile

2023-: Associate Professor in Early Modern Global History, University of Warwick

2019-2023: Assistant Professor in Early Modern Global History, University of Warwick

2016-2019: Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of Warwick

2015-2016: Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute, Florence

2015: Teaching fellow, Universiteit van Amsterdam and Universiteit Leiden

2010-2014: PhD, History, University College London

Research

My research focuses on early modern global trade, diplomacy, travel, and the activities of the Dutch and English East India Companies in the Indian Ocean world, particularly in the Mughal Empire. My first monograph, Ethnography and Encounter: The Dutch and English in Seventeenth-Century South AsiaLink opens in a new window, maps the role of ethnographic ideas and assumptions in the management and operations of the Dutch and English East India Companies (VOC and EIC). Focusing on encounters in the realms of commerce, diplomacy, and colonial governance, it analyses the ways in which corporate writing cultures and early modern ethnography both reflected and drove the Companies’ engagement in cross-cultural contacts. I am the co-editor of a volume of essays entitled Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern WorldLink opens in a new window and one of the coordinators of an international collaborative project on the embassy of Sir William Norris to Mughal India (1699-1702), which will result in a scholarly edition of Norris' embassy diaries published by the Hakluyt Society. I am the PI on the AHRC Research Networking Grant 'Towards a Global Diplomatic History, c. 1400-1900', which aims to replace existing Eurocentric narratives of diplomatic history with a new understanding of the global origins of inter-polity exchange.

My ongoing research, started as a Leverhulme Trust ECF, draws on approaches from diplomatic history, cultural history, and global history to reconsider the place of European actors within the diplomatic world of early modern South Asia. It questions established Europe-centred narratives of the rise of early modern diplomacy by highlighting the significance of Asian actors and polities in this wider development. With Birgit Tremml-Werner and Lisa Hellman I coordinate the Global Diplomacy Network, an international network that seeks to advance the fields of global and diplomatic history by fostering a comparative, trans-regional, and connected understanding of the development and practice of inter-polity relations across the globe in the period between 1400 and 1900. Furthermore, with Natalya Din-Kariuki, I am co-editing a volume of essays on decolonial approaches to the study of global travel. At Warwick, I direct the Global History and Culture Centre. Beyond Warwick, I serve as one of the co-editors of Journal of Global History.

Teaching

A Global History of Travel: Odyssey to Aeroplane (HI3K2)Link opens in a new window

Go-Betweens: Crossing Borders in the Early Modern WorldLink opens in a new window (HI2B2)

Caravans and Traders: Global Connections, 1200-1500Link opens in a new window (HI2B8)

Galleons and Galleys: Global Connections, 1500-1800 (HI2C1)Link opens in a new window

Themes & Approaches to the Historical Study of Empire (HI995) (MA)Link opens in a new window

Supervision

I welcome postgraduate students and postdocs interested in working on the global history of diplomacy, travel, trade, empire, or ethnography in the early modern world. Prospective applicants are encouraged to explore the resources and research activities of the Global History and Culture CentreLink opens in a new window.

PhD projects supervised

Nitya Gundu, 'Local Responses to Early Modern Global Contact in Peninsular India in the 17th and 18th centuries'

Andrew Steels, 'English Merchant Families and the Organisation of Trade in the Levant, 1600-1750'. EportfolioLink opens in a new window.

Luchen Pan, 'Comparing Overseas Commercial Organisation: British and Chinese Private Traders in East and Southeast Asia (17th-18th Centuries)'

Alfisha Sabri, 'Mussoorie and Other Colonial Hill Stations through the Tourist Gaze and Local Perception'.

Anna Bruins, 'In Pursuit of Planting: Scientific Travel and the VOC's Quest for Botanical, Environmental and Agricultural Knowledge in the Indian Ocean World (1600-1800)'. EportfolioLink opens in a new window.

Publications

Monograph

Ethnography and Encounter: The Dutch and English in Seventeenth-Century South AsiaLink opens in a new window (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022).

Edited volume

Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern WorldLink opens in a new window, co-edited with Aske Laursen Brock and Edmond Smith (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2022).

Articles

'Afterword: On Diplomatic Gifts and their Meanings', Revue française de civilisation Britannique 29.3 (2024), open accessLink opens in a new window.
'The Dutch East India Company in South Asia', Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (2023). OnlineLink opens in a new window.
'"Intirely the Kings Vassalls": East India Company Gifting Practices and Anglo-Mughal Political Exchange (c. 1670-1720)', Diplomatica 2.2 (2020), 270-290. LinkLink opens in a new window.
'Introduction. Gift and Tribute in Early Modern Diplomacy: Afro-Eurasian Perspectives' (with Birgit Tremml-Werner and Lisa Hellman), Diplomatica 2.2 (2020), 185-200. Link.Link opens in a new window (open access)
'The East India Company's Relations with the VOC and South Asian Powers in the 17th-18th centuries', East India CompanyLink opens in a new window, Adam Matthew (2020).

'The Diplomatic Repertoires of the East India Companies in Mughal South Asia, 1608-1717', The Historical Journal 62.4 (2019), 875-898. LinkLink opens in a new window.
‘Writing East India Company History after the Cultural Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Seventeenth-Century East India Company and Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie’, Journal of Early Modern Cultural StudiesLink opens in a new window 17.3 (2017), 10-36.
‘‘In goede en vertroude handen’: Communicatie en beleid bij de VOC tijdens de Hollandse Oorlog (1672-1678)’, De Zeventiende Eeuw 27.1 (2011), 80-101.

‘De uitgeversstrategie van Jacob van Meurs belicht: De Amsterdamse en ‘Antwerpse’ edities van Johan Nieuhofs Gezantschap (1665-1666), De Zeventiende Eeuw 26.1 (2010), 73-90.

Chapters

'Writing that Travels: The Dutch East India Company's Paper-Based Information Management' (with Frank Birkenholz), in: Aske Laursen Brock, Guido van Meersbergen and Edmond Smith (eds.), Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern WorldLink opens in a new window (Abingdon and New York: 2022), 43-70.
'Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge: An Introduction' (with Aske Laursen Brock and Edmond Smith), in: Aske Laursen Brock, Guido van Meersbergen and Edmond Smith (eds.), Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern WorldLink opens in a new window (Abingdon and New York: 2022), 1-20.
‘Trade’, in: Charles Forsdick, Zoë Kinsley, and Kathryn Walchester (eds.), Keywords for Travel Writing Studies: A Critical GlossaryLink opens in a new window (London: Anthem Press, 2019), pp. 256-258.
'Diplomacy in a Provincial Setting: The East India Companies in Seventeenth-Century Bengal and Orissa', in: Adam Clulow and Tristan Mostert (eds.), The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 55-78. Open accessLink opens in a new window.
'The Merchant-Diplomat in Comparative Perspective: Dutch and other Embassies to the Court of Aurangzeb, 1660-1666’, in Tracey Sowerby and Jan Hennings (eds.), Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c.1410-1800Link opens in a new window (New York: Routledge, 2017), 147-165.
‘Dutch and English Approaches to Cross-Cultural Trade in Mughal India and the Problem of Trust, circa 1600-1630’, in Cátia Antunes and Amélia Polónia (eds.), Beyond Empires: Global, Self-Organizing, Cross-Imperial Networks, 1500-1800Link opens in a new window (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 69-87.
‘Kijken en bekeken worden: Een Nederlandse gezant in Delhi, 1677-1678’, in Lodewijk Wagenaar (ed.), Aan de overkant: Ontmoetingen in Dienst van de VOC en WICLink opens in a new window (1600-1800) (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2015), 201-216.

External roles & professional membership

Co-editor, Journal of Global History
Council Member of the Hakluyt SocietyLink opens in a new window
Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA)
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS)

Link opens in a new window

Media and presentations

'Source-Based Collaborations in Global HistoryLink opens in a new window', Reimagining Primary Sources, Maritime Museum Liverpool, 2023.

'Decolonising Travel StudiesLink opens in a new window' (with Natalya Din-Kariuki), Reimagining Higher Education, Demontfort University, 2023.

'The British East India Company and Migration, 1600-1858Link opens in a new window', Massolit, 2024.

'Decolonising Travel Studies: Notes for the Hakluyt SocietyLink opens in a new window' (with Natalya Din-Kariuki), Hakluyt Society Annual Lecture, Royal Asiatic Society, 2024.