India Company Research Articles

17th Century Protestant Thoughts and the Sermons of the English East India Company

The aim of this article is to show the religious thoughts of the Reformation and its effects in England and how prayer guides and prayers were written for the English East India Company during the 17th century. The religious changes of the Early Modern Era can be found even in the relation of trading companies to religion. Religiousness was very important in that time, not only in the motherland but also on the seas and in foreign lands. Next to theological theories, 17th century sermons, prayers and prayer guides were also consulted in the writing process of this article. Religion and trade did not exclude each other, the contemporaries thought that these mutually helped each other and the merchants were the link that connected the two even more.

Commercialisation and landed proprietorship on the Malabar Coast in the eighteenth century

This article proposes a systemic connection between cash-crop gardening, commercialisation and individually-owned landed property in late eighteenth-century Malabar on the southwestern coast of India. The discussion starts with a focus on the English East India Company’s (EIC) early nineteenth-century investigations into land tenure and land tax. It identifies an agreement of opinion between two EIC revenue officers, Thomas Munro (d. 1827) and Francis Whyte Ellis (d. 1819), otherwise known to occupy rival intellectual positions. Both of them agreed on the existence of privately-owned landed assets in the region. This article calls this agreement ‘the Malabar consensus’ and argues that it was founded on an objective, if not intimate, examination of a set of specific historical conditions. The first section explores the tenurial category janmam or the aṭṭipēṟu of the eighteenth century and describes certain procedural innovations in the realm of landed and agrarian assets which mark a generalised transition along the coast of Malabar during the early modern centuries. The second section attempts to explain a set of economic opportunities that the aṭṭipēṟu stakeholders, finding themselves in a political and economic transition, found available in the eighteenth century. These innovations and the opportunities they provided were instrumental in creating a substantial class of parvenue landowners, and also an equally significant social class of share-croppers and wage-earners whose emergence characterised the early modern Malabar experience.

Brian Houghton Hodgson. At the origins of European Buddhology

The article describes the life and work of Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801–1894), who was servant of the Honourable East India Company (HEICo) in Nepal in 1820−1843. After this he worked as an independent scholar in Sikkim until 1858. Hodgson was among the first European scholars of Buddhism, and the article focuses on the analysis of his views on Buddhism, as well as his efforts to collect Sanskrit manuscripts of classical Buddhist texts. The life and scientific research of Hodgson is considered a typical example of the activities of the first Western Orientalists, who combined service in the colonies with the study of the languages and culture of the Asian peoples. Hodgson received special training for colonial officials and worked for many years as a servant of the HEICo in Nepal, where, along with his official duties, he studied natural history, ethnography and religion of the region. Hodgson collected and donated to universities, libraries and museums in Europe more than four hundred manuscripts of Sanskrit Buddhist writings, previously either completely unknown to European science, or known only in Chinese and Tibetan translations. The study and translation of these manuscripts laid a solid foundation for European Buddhology. In his own works on Buddhism Hodgson identified and characterized four philosophical schools of Indian Buddhism, outlined the Buddhist concepts of the "primordial Buddha" (Adi-Buddha), "contemplation buddhas" (dhyani-buddhas), described Buddhist cosmology and a number of other Buddhist concepts. In addition, he classified the genres of Buddhist literature, took part in the discussion about the original language of the Buddhist canon, showed the inconsistency of the ideas that existed at that time about the African origin of Buddha Shakyamuni. Hodgson's Buddhist views gained recognition in the 19th century, but the accumulation of scientific knowledge about Buddhism showed the fallacy of many of the concepts he put forward. Nevertheless, they played a role in the formation of Western Buddhology, and understanding the history of the study of Buddhism in the West is completely impossible without taking into account Hodgson's works.

“The East India Company was proved to require no desperate remedy…”: The problem of the British administration in India in a James Boswell’s pamphlet “A letter to the people of Scotland”

“The East India Company was proved to require no desperate remedy…”: The problem of the British administration in India in a James Boswell’s pamphlet “A letter to the people of Scotland”

Christianity in India: From the Apostle Thomas to the Present

The first Christians appeared in southwestern India during Antiquity; they belonged to Nestorianism and were fully incorporated into Indian society. The descendants of the Christian settlers and the descendants of the converts formed different castes. In the mid-16th century a Catholic diocese was established in the Portuguese possession of Goa, and most of the local Christians were converted to Catholicism. Protestantism began to spread in the early 18th century in the Danish colony of Trakenbar on the southeast coast. The East India Company did not permit missionary activity on its lands. The evangelical revival movement in the late 18th century led to the establishment of missionary societies focused on the Christianization of new lands, and they sought permission to establish missions in British possessions. Subsequently, the British administration did not provide much support for missionaries, using the confessional controversy to consolidate the power of the empire. Preaching was most effective among tribal and Dalit peoples. Missionaryism among Dalits caused serious discontent in society and contributed to the emergence of reform movements in Hinduism. In independent India, several states enacted "anti-forced conversion" laws to limit conversions to Christianity and Islam. The rise of Hindu nationalism, which viewed Christianity as an alien religion, proved to be a deterrent to the spread of Christianity. In the second half of the 20th century new trends in Christianity developed most rapidly: Pentecostal and non-denominational Protestant churches, as well as Catholic charismatic movements. The share of Christians in India's population has not changed much in the last 70 years. Conversions to Christianity have been offset by lower birth rates in Christian families. Christians now constitute about 2.6% of the country's population; Christianity has spread most widely in the states of the Northeast, where Christian denominations have actually been able to replace tribal religions and in Kerala, where Christianity took hold almost two thousand years ago.

Evolution of Chinese Ancient Tea Technology and Its Transfer to British India

From recorded history, tea has emerged as a refreshing drink for humans. Tea-producing technology has developed through various dynasties in China. The Silk Road trade and maritime silk route exported tea to destinations in the east, west, south, and southeast Asian counties and African and southern European ports. When the thirst for tea increased in the western countries and their colonies, Europeans began tea trading in the 17th century by establishing the East India Companies. British East India is one of the European traders to exchange silver with China for buying tea. However, Britain found it a costlier trade for them to pursue for a long time. Thus, it found an alternative in the land of the Assam region in northeast India. Tea seeds and farmers were initially brought from China to establish the tea industry. It has also planted teas in other areas of India and tested the possibility of tea production using ancient tea cultivation knowledge from China. Therefore, the British successfully transferred ancient knowledge and tea manufacturing technologies from China to establish the tea industry in India. The paper will analyze the evolution of ancient tea manufacturing knowledge of China and inquire how Britain transferred it along with the tea seeds and farmers for establishing and developing the tea industry in British India.

The Saints and the State: The Mormon Troubles in Illinois

The Saints and the State: The Mormon Troubles in Illinois

A Tribute to Sir Archibald Galloway (1779–1850) A Scholar of Islamic Law and Chairman of the East India Company

A Tribute to Sir Archibald Galloway (1779–1850) A Scholar of Islamic Law and Chairman of the East India Company

Displacement in Sea of Poppies

In Sea of Poppies, Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh presents the nineteenth-century British imperialist activities including the cultivation of opium as a cash crop in India for the Chinese market, the transportation of the Asiatic to work on sugar plantations in Mauritius Island, the introduction of the free trade, and the approach of opium wars. This paper will look how the environmental injustice created social injustice. British imperialists’ intensification of the production of the poppy planton the bank of the River Ganga to maintain the opium trade between India and China transformed local people first to peasant labour and then to the indentured workers. Ghoshre imagines their loss of local place and dispersion in global place as the indentured labour. He plots the afterlife of a former slave ship, the Ibıs, which was in the service of the East Indian Company to carry the indentured labour. This paper sets out to discuss how its traumatic movement to sugar plantations characterized diaspora; the ship became shared past, home, parent for the diverse characters. The emphasis will be put on Ghosh’s construction of identity in relation to the place from postcolonial eco critical perspective. In his engagement with the connection of place and people, both place and displacement are the essential parts of identity construction. Both places and identities are related and changed through the experience of displacement, mobility. The characters went beyond developing personal identification, fixity, and attachment to a local place within a national border, they were situated in a world of mobility and flexibility which promoted cultural and self-development.

Folk Performances and the European Gaze in Bengal in the Nineteenth Century

Cultural anthropologists acknowledge the primacy of the spectator’s gaze in assigning hierarchical space to performances within the public sphere. Equations of power and transactions between agents of performance and the consumer or between the language of the entitled spectator and subject performers determine the category assigned to a given performance: folk or elite, classic or popular, high or subaltern. The late eighteenth – early nineteenth century in Bengal was a period of political and social transition and of realignment along religious, spatial and intellectual lines. The birth and growth of the metropolitan urban centre (Calcutta), an increasing presence of European residents of both genders in Calcutta and Bengal and the shift of power and influence from Muslim military aristocracy to an European merchant company (The British East India Company), meant that traditional indigenous performances were often thrown open for commentary and judgment to an audience who were largely outsiders and to whom the nuances of language, caste, class, region, ritual signification were matters of academic interest only occasioning descriptive commentaries on the practices in an alien country. In the travelogues and memoirs of Maria Nugent or Fanny Parkes, for instance, rituals, customs or performances were viewed as exemplifying the picturesque ‘otherness’ of an alien race. This paper will focus on evidences within British colonial writings of the early nineteenth century describing what appeared to observers as performances, with which they attempt to conceptualize the native ‘other’ as a cultural trope.

VALLABHBHAI PATEL’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE UPLIFTMENT OF WOMEN

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was son of Ladba, his mother and Zaverbhai, his father, who was possessed of awe, thinker of patriotic thoughts after contemplating them and implementer. He was the hero of the earth of Charotar.Even breeching in Karamsad, a small village of Kheda district (now in Anand district), he possessed soft but hard personality which can detect to foreigners due to his own grace. He was so bold that he told Mahatma Gandhi what he meant, even though he honored him well.After stabling of British reign in Indian starting of 19th century modern education was started. The chief pioneers were British and Khristi missionaries. The East India Company started teaching to local Indians who particularly working in army and government administration. Under The Chapter of Act 1813 A.D. British rulers and Khristi missionaries were full of renaissance and logical thinking with industrial revolution and capitalism.

Identifying Place Names in Johan Nieuhoff’s First Dutch Embassy to China from 1655 to 1657

The paper aims to identify place names in illustration titles in John Nieuhoff’s An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperour of China (English in 1669, Dutch in 1665). Nieuhoff’s text was very popular with the 17th century European public. After its first publication in Dutch it was translated into French, German, Latin and English and reprinted fourteen times in many European countries. In particular, his illustrations were highly appreciated because they provided realistic and vivid images of China to Europeans at a time when there had been little information about China. It had a great influence on the fever for Chinese style in Europe in the 18th century. Nieuhoff’s illustrations were frequently applied to everyday painted objects such as furniture, screens, wallpaper, textiles, and dishes. About 80% of illustrations present scenery in the area where the Dutch embassy anchored or passed by on their journey from Guangdong to Beijing. However, the place names which were transliterated into Dutch and other European languages are a major obstacle for following Nieuhoff’s travelogue. It is not easy to infer the Chinese regional names from either the Dutch or the English text. Therefore, the paper identifies Chinese regions in the text by mainly comparing Nieuhoff’s information and transliteration with Martino Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis (1655).

A Clubbable Man: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture in Honor of Greg Clingham

A Clubbable Man: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture in Honor of Greg Clingham

“I did as others did and as others had me do”: Postcolonial (Mis)Representations and Perpetrator Trauma in Season 1 of Taboo (2017-)

Neo-Victorian fiction has been concerned with historically oppressed and traumatised characters from the 1990s onwards (Llewellyn 2008). More recently, neo-Victorianism on screen has shifted its attention to the figure of the perpetrator and their unresolved guilt, as in the TV series Penny Dreadful (Logan 2014-2016) or Taboo (Knight, Hardy and Hardy 2017-present). However, perpetrator trauma is an under-theorised field in the humanities (Morag 2018), neo-Victorian studies included. This article analyses Taboo as a neo-Victorian postcolonial text that explores the trauma of its protagonist James Delaney, an imperial perpetrator who transported and sold African slaves in the Middle Passage for the East India Company. Although the series is not set in the Victorian period, neo-Victorianism is here understood as fiction expanding beyond the historical boundaries of the Victorian era and that presents the long nineteenth century as synonymous with the empire (Ho 2012: 4). Thus, I argue that postcolonial texts like Taboo should be considered neo-Victorian since they are set in the nineteenth century to respond to and contest (neo-)imperial practices. However, neo-Victorian postcolonialism offers ambivalent representations of the British Empire, as it simultaneously critiques and reproduces its ideologies (Ho 2012; Primorac 2018). This article examines the ways in which Taboo follows this contradictory pattern, since it seemingly denounces the imperial atrocity of the slave trade through Delaney’s perpetrator trauma, while simultaneously perpetuating it through his future colonizing trip to the Americas. Hence, Delaney is portrayed as an anti-hero in the series, given that he is both the enemy and the very product of the British Empire.

Lemon Valley, St Helena: an East India Company and British Colonial landscape in the South Atlantic

SUMMARY This article presents the results of an historical and archaeological survey of Lemon Valley, in the South Atlantic island of St Helena. The valley was periodically used by 16th-century mariners during the early years of the Age of Discovery and permanently settled by the English East India Company from the 1660s. The survey reveals a palimpsest landscape which preserves extensive military and civilian ‘plantation’ remains. Together, these provide a rare insight into the character and evolution of the English settlement of the island from the late 17th century, through to the abandonment of the valley in the mid-20th century.

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ON CONSUMER PREFERENCE OVER JIO & AIRTEL NETWORK SERVICES

A customer’s choice refers to the types of service. If you are selling or providing a service knowing your customer’s preference however you can only fulfill your customers desires if u learn as much as you can about them. Anticipate their requirements and exceed their standard. Customer satisfaction is a metric that measures a customer’s level of satisfaction with company’s services. India's telecommunication network is 2nd biggest in number of Mobilepatrons as of January 31st, 2021, with 1179.49 million customers. It’s about every global smart phone rate, made it possible beyond large tele companies, flighty-conflict amongst its Bharat possesses every sphere has every second-biggest Internet user base. Dominant part of the Indian telecommunication business is Mobile phone, industry of internet and television broadcasting in India which is currently undergoing transformation into a to come-cohort lattice, hireling a comprehensive complex of current lattice constitute comparatively Modern phone transfer, polarize, At the core, media portal winking are interrelated beyond an extensive range of conveyance apparatus based on tendril perceiving either fryer Marconi impart lattice. Every way in lattice that links to every patron to every basic is hugely diverse, utilizing various russet-twain, ocular-fibril, also cellular mechanics. DTH is a newer podcasting mechanics gained considerable fame via every small screen fragment every incorporation about non- government FM own stated Marconi podcasting in India a boost. Telecommunications in India evolved powerfully the country's INSAT system, where world's biggest domiciliary sputnik complex has provided support. India has diverse network that connects every duchy via phone, net, Marconi, small screen, also spacecraft. Ago every 1990s, every Indian telecom enterprise familiar hasty trade broadens along widening, also it is at International Journal of Scientific Research in Engineering and Management (IJSREM) Volume: 06 Issue: 12 | December - 2022 Impact Factor: 7.185 ISSN: 2582-3930 © 2022, IJSREM | www.ijsrem.com DOI: 10.55041/IJSREM17020 | Page 2 present every sphere identical merciless also one of the rapid spreading telecom markets. Telecom network services own succor India's retrench improvement it backed to bridge every rural- urban cybernetic cleave to a certain extent Using the introduction about e-governance to a certain extent Using the also contributed to increased transparency in governance. The government has used modern technology. Telecommunications infrastructure to deliver mass education programmers to agricultural Indians. Technological modernization is widely recognized as a predicted requirement for all countries in today's age of progress and affluence. Thanks to enhanced technology and increased competition via initiated enterprises, Tele communications have invaded a phase of improvement. The telecoms sector's technological developments are tied to the mobile industry's continued expansion. Providers of services major intention are to establish a devoted client base by monitoring their efficiency and retaining existing customers so that they can Profit from their devotion. The purpose of this paper is to address these concerns. Every introduction of the telegraph in India marked the beginning of telecommunications. The postal service and telecommunications India's industries are among the oldest on the planet. The first trial electric telegraph cable was constructed from Calcutta to Diamond Harbor mod 1850. It had been opened in 1851 for the British East India Company's use. At every time, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs washoused in a nook in the Public Works Department Development of Broadcaster: Radio transmission began in 1927 however did not become a state obligation until 1930. All India Radio was granted to it. In 1937, also, it's been known as Akash Vani since 1957. Television programming with limited duration began in 1959, with full broadcasting following in 1965. Prior to the 1991 economic reforms, the owned and operated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting country's equipment for audio-visual communication, such as a televisionDoor Darshan. Under the Prasad Bharti Act, an autonomous body called Prasar Bhartiwas established in 1997 to oversee public service broadcasting. All India Radio and Door Darshan are two services that previously working with the Ministry of I&B as media organizations, they turn into members the bodies. Stats from before liberalization: During every British occupation, all of the country's significant towns and cities were wired utilizing telephones, but there were only about 80,000 telephones in 1948. Because the telephone was viewed as a prestige symbol rather than a useful tool after independence, expansion was modest. The number of telephones steadily increased from 980,000 in 1971 - 1981, 2.15 million to 5.07 million was the number in 1991. That’s when country's economic reforms began.

The Royal Navy and Disease in the Straits of Malacca, 1794–1815

The article explores the British Royal Navy’s encounter with disease in the Straits of Malacca from 1794 to 1815. Naval patrols normally protected vessels visiting the entrepôt cities of Penang and Malacca from piracy and privateering, and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe raised fears of a potential threat posed by French and Dutch warships. Naval vessels carried out repairs and purchased provisions in the ports, sharing facilities with the British East India Company. Their crews needed access to medical care to treat a variety of diseases, some endemic on the ships and others, such as malaria, contracted on land, and Penang provided some hospital care. Illness caused attrition among seamen on board Royal Naval vessels, and finding replacements locally was impossible. The Straits of Malacca was healthier than Bengal and Batavia but owing to poor hygiene and a lack of understanding of the aetiology of tropical diseases, death rates remained high.

Market Formation in Assam: Nature of Trade in and around the Brahmaputra Valley, C. 1826–1905

The British East India Company (EIC) and other European traders entered Assam for trade. The region thrived on traditional places of exchange. These were haats (markets at the village and district level held at regular intervals), duars, fairs and chawkeys (trading posts of Ahom-age). The Treaty of Yandabo (1826) marked the entry of EIC in parts of Assam. Regimental towns, documented as bazaars in government records, appeared in the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, census towns also emerged. These towns accommodated regular markets, periodic haats, fairs and other trading places. This article is based on primary sources of Buranjis, travelogues, military reports, journals, memoirs and archival records. The theoretical works of Walter Christaller (1966) and Philip D. Curtin (1984) and works of literature have been used to understand the growth and operation of marketplaces. This article finds that modern bazaars were connected to the traditional haats, fairs and chawkeys. Bazaars served the colonial regime by acting as the agent of the colonial commercial economy. The colonial regime also often used traditional market places to further their commercial interests. The haats and fairs supplemented the overall commerce of the region and acted as nodes in the commercial networks in the region.

Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom by Marcus Langdon

Reviewed by: Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom by Marcus Langdon Kwa Chong Guan Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom, by Marcus Langdon. Penang: Entrepot Publishing, 2021, 505 pp. ISBN 978-967-17008-6-0 This is the third volume of Marcus Langdon’s massive and monumental collation of the archived records on Penang’s history between 1805–1830. Volume One was published in 2013 and reviewed by John Bastin in volume 87, part 1 of this Journal. Bastin noted that Langdon “is a British-born Australian amateur historian who first visited the island in the mid-1970s, attracted by a family legend relating to an ancestor employed in the Penang Botanical Garden. The word ‘amateur’ in the present context is hardly appropriate as the book is unquestionably one of the most professionally conceived and well-written works published in an area of Malaysian history.” Volume Two was published in 2015 and we now have volume 3 published in 2021, which continues the structure of the preceding two volumes of collating [End Page 146] the archived records on Penang according to the issues preserved in the archives. Volume One collated the records for the elevation of the twenty-year old British settlement on Penang into an East India Company (EIC) Presidency of India equivalent to Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, all governed by the Company from its Bengal offices. Volume One also detailed the records of the men charged with the administration of Penang, from Francis Light to Kenneth Murchison, the Governor from 1833 to 1836. The other issues examined in Volume One are the construction of the two buildings which were the centres of government: Government House which survives today as part of the Convent Light Street and Suffolk House, also standing today as heritage building. Volume Two looked at the central structure constructed by the EIC to defend its settlement: Fort Cornwallis. In this context, Fort Cornwallis performed a central function similar to Fort St George in Madras, Fort William in Calcutta and Fort George in Bombay. Similarly, Fort Canning and a series of other artillery forts protected Singapore in the nineteenth century. In earlier centuries, a series of forts defined the port cities of the Dutch and the Portuguese. Besides Fort Cornwallis, Volume Two also examined four institutions in Penang’s historical development: The Free School, St. George’s Church and the Spice and Botanic Gardens and the Library. Two issues which challenged the development of Penang are also covered in this volume. They are the fires in George Town and seashore erosion threatening Penang’s north shore. Volume Three continues this institutional history of Penang with a review of issues in the building of an aqueduct for the provision of potable water to the growing town; and critically, the development of the Jetty or quay central to Penang’s raison d’être as a port-city. The volume also collates the records on the establishment of the public hospital and the introduction and administration of law and order in the settlement and the jail as part of an evolving colonial penal system. Finally, the volume looks at the early newspapers published in Penang from which Langdon draws much information for this history of Penang. Langdon has systematically combed the records of the East India Company in its Straits Settlement Records archived in Singapore and in London, and the India Office Records for this history on the formative twenty-five years of Penang’s history. The salient feature of this history is that Langdon has summarised or reproduced in extenso much of the records he found, so enabling others to draw upon them for their own interpretation of Penang’s early history. The issues and events that Langdon has reconstructed from these archived records of the Hon. Company were what preoccupied the administrators of Penang from Francis Light and his successors, including George Caunter, George Leith among others. It is an account of the problems and challenges they confronted in keeping alive the fledgling settlement they had charge of. It is a history of the system and institutions they put in place...

An English East India Company Ship's Crew in a Connected Seventeenth-Century World

AbstractThis contribution to the forum Gender, Intimate Networks, and Global Commerce in the Early Modern Period follows the career of a single late seventeenth-century English East India Company ship and her crew, in order to challenge the claim that long-haul ships were isolated spaces. Specifically, it looks at the many kinds of connections —intimate and otherwise—that characterised early modern ships and their crews. These included connections between and among sailors themselves, between ships at sea, and between ships’ crews and the diverse communities from which they came.