London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549–1689, by Robert K. Batchelor

Abstract

London: The Selden Map and Making of a Global City, 1549-1689, by Robert K. Batchelor. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2014. vi, 334 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). How did become a global city? Traditional answers to that question emphasize its physical growth during early period and its dominance of markets first within Britain, then Europe and finally Atlantic world. But for Robert K. Batchelor this is only a part of story, and in this book he sets out to that encounters and exchanges with trading cities of Indian Ocean and East Asia were also a crucial component in London's rise. Representative of these interactions is a seventeenth-century map of China and Chinese trade routes that was collected by scholar and antiquarian John Selden (1584-1654), which reveals, according to Batchelor, how knowledge of Asia and its markets was translated within London. The concept of translation--how meaning is carried across linguistic, cultural, economic, and political boundaries--is central to book and is used to make an argument not only for global character of but also for global processes behind origins of modernity. To demonstrate power of translation, narrative of book is structured around chapters on five traditional points in of London (p. 22). By time of conclusion, however, these are seemingly turning points in British history (p. 241, my emphasis); in spite of book's title, and its inhabitants disappear from it for long periods. The initial point is Edwardian Reformation, during which time London's first joint-stock company was founded, while second is late Elizabethan period, when London's growing global ambitions resulted in formation of East India Company. Chapter three focuses on investigations undertaken between 1620s and 1650s by figures such as Selden into contractual and legal agreements about trade that devolved authority from monarchy, while fourth chapter charts emergence of imperial monarchy and English absolutism between 1660s and 1680s. The Asian roots of events of 1687-89 that led to Glorious and Newtonian Revolutions and the birth of modern is subject of fifth and final chapter. Aside from an annoying number of typos and exceedingly small endnotes, University of Chicago Press deserve congratulations for book's production. Amidst ever-increasing cost of academic monograph, it is refreshing to see a book that is reasonably priced--the more so when it contains numerous illustrations (but why is there no list of these in book's front matter? …