European Merchant Tribute in Yemen

Abstract

Drawing on the gift registers of the Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company, this chapter shows that the gifts bestowed by European merchants in Yemen may not be collapsed indistinguishably with other types of offerings, such as diplomatic bestowals, imperial gifts, and acts of pious charity. By contrast, European merchants’ gifts were comprised of relatively routine trade items and were remarkably formulaic in nature, thus overlapping with Indian Ocean commodities in uneven and unexpected ways and drawing their power and meaning from their association with extended commercial geographies. A close perusal of European commercial gifting practices also reveals that foreign merchants became quite adept at the local grammar of giving, even if they decried its legitimacy in their letters back to home offices.