Table Of ContentEXPLORATIONS IN CONNECTED HISTORY
From the Tagus to the Ganges
SANJAY SUBRAHM.ANYA M
OXFORD
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OXFORD
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For L.C.
who loves to laugh
•
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And Kung said 'Wan ruled with moderation,
In his day the State was well kept,
And even I can remember
A day when the historians left blanks \n their writings,
I mean, for things they didn't know,
But that time seems to be passing.
A day when the historians left blanks \n their writings,
But that time seems to be passing'.
Ezra Pound, Canto XIII
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Contents
Preface
.
IX
Acknowledgements
.
JU
Abbreviations
..
XU
CHAPTER 1
On the Window that was India
1
CHAPTER 2
On Indian Views of the Portuguese in Asia, 1500-1700
17
CHAPTER 3
Persianiution and 'Mercantilism'
in Bay of Bengal History, 1400-1700
45
CHAPTER 4
Violence, Grievance, and Memory
in Early Modem South Asia
80
CHAPTER 5
Sixteenth-century Millenarianism
from the Tagus to the Ganges
102
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Contents
v111
CBAPTII 6
European Chroniclers and the Mugbals
138
CBAPTII 7
Manila. M~laka, Mylapore ... :
A Dominican Voyage through the Indies, circa 1600
180
CBAPTII I
Dutch Tribulations in Seventeenth-century Mrauk-U
200
Index
249
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Preface
The essays that are gathered together in the present collection have had a rather
complex evolution, and were written over a period of more than ten years. They
reflect my changing interests from the 1990s, when I was resident in Delhi,
teaching at the Delhi School of Economics, and writing a general work entitled
The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700 (which appeared from Longman in
1993), to later discussions with colleagues working on Latin American history
at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. A
variety of influences will be evident in the pages that follow, notably those of
the Portuguese historian Luis Filipe Thomaz and the late Denys Lombard, but
also of historians such as Mnzaffar Alam, Cornell Fleischer, and Serge Gruzinski,
with whom I have interacted closely over the years.
As I have noted in a companion volume of essays entitled Mughals and
Franks, when the editors at Oxford University Press (Delhi) initially suggested
that I bring together a volume of collected essays, my reaction was one of
reticence, largely because I wished to do more than bring dispersed essays
between two covers. The solution adopted here, as in the other volume, has
hence been to follow a modified version of the formula in an earlier work entitled
Penumbral Visions (OUP, 2001), namely to insist on at least some semblance
of thematic unity, while not forcing the issue to a point that would make it
artificial. So, it came to a question of making up a coherent collection of essays
around a theme or concept, from those that I had published but not yet incor
porated into some other collection.
This volume consists of eight essays, beginning with the inaugural lecture
I delivered at Oxford in February 2003. The essays are usually broad-ranging,
and cover themes such as the relationship of violence and collective memory
in pre-colonial South Asia, to others that attempt explicitly to implement a
programme of what I have termed 'connected history', reworking the history of
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x Preface
South Asia into a larger Eurasian space of conjunctural movements. They follow
the lead of a programmatic essay that I published some years ago, entitled
'Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modem Eurasia',
which appeared in Modern Asian Studies (Vol. XXXI (3), 1997, pp. 735--62) .
. The partial exceptions are an essay on Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio, which
though chronologically of a piece with the others, is rather less South Asian in
its focus than its companions, as also an extended essay on the northern
Burmese kingdom of Arakan, which finds a place in this collection to demon
strate the nature of continuities and connections. As will be seen, the idea of
'connected histories' was in part a reaction to certain mechanistic fonns of
comparative history that I still found prevalent amongst early modem historians
in the 1990s. I have argued in the pages that follow that neither the usual success/
failure dichotomy, nor the retreat to a culturalist exoticism (as is increasingly
being practised in 'post-colonial studies') is of much help. The latter, while
ostensibly new, is often a revival by the back door of the most reprehensible
cliches concerning India and Indian history.
As is usual, these essays have benefited from the comments of a wide variety
of individuals, who heard them presented in oral form, or read through and
commented on draft versions. For specific comments on, or help with, one or
the other essay, I must thank Muzaffar Alam, Jean Aubin, G. Balachandran,
Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, Jorge Manuel Flores, Jos Gommans, Serge Gruzinski,
Oaude Guillot, Denys Lombard, Kenneth McPherson, Geoffrey Parker, Kapil
Raj, Catherine Raymond, Lu(s Filipe Thomaz, and James Tracy. I hope that, in
spite of the differences in both tone and content from its companion volume,
readers will be able to discern a degree of coherence in what has been attempted
in the totality of these essays.
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Acknowledgements
The following chapters have appeared el~where, in the present or slightly
modified form.
Chapter 2 as "'Through the looking glass": some comments on Asian views of
the Portuguese in Asia, 1500-1700', in Artur Teodoro de Matos and Lws Filipe
-
,
F. Reis Thomaz, eds, As Rel<Jfoes entre a India Portuguesa, a Asia do Sueste
e o Extremo Oriente: Actas do VI Seminario Internacional de Historia lndo
Portuguesq, Macau/Lisbon: The Editors, 1993, pp. 377-403.
Chapter 3 as 'Persianiution and Mercantilism: Two Themes in Bay of Bengal
History, 1~1700', in Denys Lombard and 0m Prakash, eds, Commerce and
Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500-1800, New Delhi: Manohar, 1999, pp. 47-85.
Chapter 4 as 'Violence and Identities in South Asia: Grievance and Memory
in Community-Formation', in Jean Racine, ed., La question identitaire en Asie
du Sud (Collection Purusartha 22), Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales, 2001, pp. 47-70.
Chapter 5 as 'Turning the Stones Over: Sixteenth-Century Millenarianism from
the Tagus to the Ganges', The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
Vol. XL, No. 2, 2003, pp. 129-61.
Chapter 6, in small part as, "The Life and Actions of Mathias de Albuquque"
(1547- 1609): A Portuguese Source for Deccan History', Portuguese Studies,
Vol. XI, 1995, pp. 62-77.
Chapter 7 as 'Manila, Melaka, Mylapore ... : A Dominican Voyage through the
Indies, ea. 1600', Archipel, No. 57, 1999, pp. 223-42.
Chapter 8 as 'Slaves and Tyrants: Dutch Tribulations in Seventeenth-Century
Mrauk-U', Journal of Early Modern History, Vol. I, No. 3, 1997, pp. 201- 53.
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Abbreviations
AN Archives Nationales, Paris
ANITT Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo, Lisbon
ARA Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague
BL British Library, London
BN Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
BNL
Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa
.
cc
Corpo Cronol6gico
OBP Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren
OIOC Oriental and India Office Collections
voc
Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie
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