English Factory Research Articles

A Study of Aromatic Woods in Seventeenth-Century India: Circulation of Aloewood and Sandalwood through Facilitating Port Cities and Trade Networks

Abstract During the seventeenth century, various commodities carved out an economic sphere for themselves across the littoral parts of the Indian Ocean through the interconnectedness of its port cities. The present article focuses on two significant aromatic woods: aloewood and sandalwood, both plant-based materials, and locates them as “commodities” in commercial networks across the maritime space. Various port cities like Surat, Patna, Mausalipatam and Cambay, all central to the trading activities of the European companies, served as chief nodes in the grid of circulation that enabled their mobility, value addition and economic exchanges. Revisiting English factory records, Dutch East India Company documents and European travel accounts, this article explores the neglect of ephemeral objects in the material hierarchy of trading items. It also accounts for the thriving presence of these aromatic woods in the Indian Ocean maritime networks as two key materials in European trading interests and as facilitators of the early modern economy.

Searching for the Famine Remnants in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

In North and South, the Irish are never part of a fully developed plot of their own. The Irish workers' actions, dialogues, and feelings are never clearly presented as a first-hand experience but mediated through third parties who talk about them and act in their name. Most notably, the starving Irish are almost invisible in the mob scene as well as in other scenes where they never appear in person. They are in the background, pushed literally and figurately to the remote corners of the mill and the narrative. Theirs is a double silencing by both the English factory owners and the English workers. Although their presence is in shadows and their voices are silenced in the narrative, these workers set the tone for the most climactic and critical moments of the novel.

The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan: Gift Giving and Diplomacy by Michael Laver

Reviewed by: The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan: Gift Giving and Diplomacy by Michael Laver Reinier Hesselink (bio) The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan: Gift Giving and Diplomacy. By Michael Laver. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. xii, 171 pages. $115.00, cloth; $39.95, paper; $103.50, E-book. Having made the case, implicitly as well as explicitly, for the importance of the Nationaal Archief (National Archives of the Netherlands) for the study of early modern Japan,1 I am always happy to see a new book on the Dutch in Japan, especially one that draws upon this archive and the research it has generated over the last century and a half. The Dutch, of course, were not the only Europeans to have left records that help us reconstruct certain aspects of Japanese history. The Jesuit and mendicant orders also produced an impressive number of letters in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Latin between the 1550s and 1630s. The letters and diaries of the members of the English factory in Hirado between 1613 and 1622 contain much valuable material on daily life in Japan as well. The importance of both these types of sources, however, pales in comparison to the volume and duration (spanning three centuries) of the letters, diaries, account books, statistics, order lists, trade analyses, etc. produced by the Dutch. What is more, these Dutch sources cover all of Asia, in the Roman sense of the word, that is, everything east of what is now Turkey. Thus, these sources allow for broad contextualization, and they often offer unexpected glimpses behind the scenes that various native record keepers would have been eager to leave unknown. Michael Laver's topic is gift giving and how it relates to the diplomacy of the Dutch in Japan. Gifts were employed on all levels of the interaction between the Dutch and their Japanese minders. In fact, Laver writes that "the entire VOC presence in Japan was an elaborate pageant meant to demonstrate Dutch submission to the authorities in Edo, and, by extension, shogunal authority in Nagasaki" (p. 35). Gifts, in other words, were the physical evidence that was continuously needed to cement the submission and continue the Dutch trade. In this account of Dutch gift giving, however, we never learn what happened to these gifts once they had been received, as the book pays no attention to how gifts appear in Japanese sources.2 Regrettably, we also do [End Page 183] not learn the details of who received what and how much. Because all gifts presented in Edo and Nagasaki were carefully calibrated as to their quantity and quality by the Japanese interpreters (people much maligned by the Dutch merchants themselves), a study concentrating on these gifts should be able to teach us much about the details of the Tokugawa hierarchy. This is not a study, however, that gives a clear analysis of the minutiae of Dutch gift giving in Japan. We are left with the author's eclectic and sometimes humorous selections of Dutch gifts divided into categories of exotic animals, works of art and craftsmanship, scientific paraphernalia, and food and drink, which correspond to his chapters 2 through 5 and in which examples from some 250 years of gift giving are knitted together. Naturally, the book's contribution to the history of the Dutch in Japan between (roughly) 1600 and 1850 will have to be judged against its use of the primary sources available in the Nationaal Archief. It is here, however, that this reviewer has found himself disappointed. The author states that this archive has been "the major archival source" for his book, but he ends the same paragraph by noting that "most of the sources for this book come from the edited versions of these archives" (p. 153), referring to excerpts made for the volumes of The Deshima Daghregisters, published in Leiden by the Institute for the History of European Expansion. Using these translations (made by people exclusively trained in Dutch paleography), however, is a recipe for disaster for those who want to use them to write Japanese history. A few instances will illustrate the problematic use of primary sources in Laver's book. Throughout the...

Collective action, opportunism, and class agency under ineffective state enforcement: Marx on English Factory Laws

AbstractThe paper focuses on a previously unexamined aspect of Marx's discussion on the 19th century English Factory Acts, and highlights its broader relevance for contemporary discussions about the role of institutions in a market economy. The capitalists' enlightened self-interest was to better husband their work force by limiting the workday and curtailing child labor, but market competition put them in a Prisoner's Dilemma creating an opportunism hazard. The ‘Factory Acts’ addressed the problem, but the state lacked the capacity to enforce them effectively. Marx held that the organized power of workers played an essential role in how the Factory Laws could gain traction at a time when state enforcement was unreliable. Organized labor's threats of sanction were credible enough to lower the expected benefit of non-compliance, enabling capitalists to commit to acting in their long-term, collective self-interest.

Analysis of labor policies in Brazil: How can Marx contribute?

Abstract This article uses the Marxian analysis of the nineteenth century English factory legislation, to demonstrate how a concrete approach to labor policy in Brazil can be inspired by the guidelines included in the Volume I of Das Kapital. The article covers the period from the regulation established by President Vargas, to the wild deregulation proposed by President Temer, exposing the links between capital accumulation and the Brazilian labor policies.

戸塚秀夫著, 「イギリス工場法成立史論」-社会政策論の歴史的再構成-, 未来社, 1966年4月刊, 本論382頁, 1600円

戸塚秀夫著, 「イギリス工場法成立史論」-社会政策論の歴史的再構成-, 未来社, 1966年4月刊, 本論382頁, 1600円

永積洋子 武田万里子共著, 『平戸オランダ商館イギリス商館日記 : 碧眼のみた近世の日本と鎖国への道』, そしえて、一九八一年一月、三三三頁、四九〇〇円

永積洋子 武田万里子共著, 『平戸オランダ商館イギリス商館日記 : 碧眼のみた近世の日本と鎖国への道』, そしえて、一九八一年一月、三三三頁、四九〇〇円

The Linguistic World of the Early English East India Company: A Study of the English Factory in Japan, 1613–1623

This article looks at the multilingual environment of the English East India Company (EIC) trading post in Japan, 1613–23. Reconstructing the linguistic world of early EIC merchants in Southeast Asia may appear straightforward: the primary lingua francas across the Asian seaboard were Portuguese and Malay. But knowledge of these two languages alone was not enough to conduct business at trading posts in dozens of locations across a region where more than two thousand languages were spoken. To form a complete picture of the linguistic environment of EIC merchants in the East Indies, together with an understanding of the linguistic competence of the English merchants, direct references to language use must be supplemented with indirect evidence drawn from the linguistic record. EIC merchants' letters are full of loanwords and borrowed phrases from foreign languages. An analysis of these words and phrases using quantitative methods borrowed from corpus linguistics bolsters the results gained from the qualitative analysis of the texts in their social contexts. These joined results yield new insights into the daily lives of EIC merchants and open a neglected avenue of investigation into the voluminous records of the English East India Company.

Asian Indentured Labor in the Age of African American Emancipation

AbstractThis article examines transnational connections between African American emancipation in the United States and Chinese and Indian indenture within the British Empire. In an era of social upheaval and capitalist crisis, planters and colonial officials envisioned coolies as a source of uninterrupted plantation labor. This vision was often bound to the conditions of African American emancipation. In British Honduras, colonial officials sought to bring emancipated African Americans to the colony as labor for sugar plantations. When this project failed, interest turned toward indentured Chinese labor managed by white planters from the U.S. South. In India’s North-Western Provinces, the outbreak of famine came to be seen as a “kindred distress” to the crisis in Lancashire’s textile industry. Unemployed English factory workers were seen as suffering from famine due to the scarcity of slave-produced cotton, just as colonial subjects suffered from scarcity of food. While some weavers in the North-Western Provinces were taken into the coolie trade, the emigration of unemployed Lancashire weavers was looked to as a possible alternative to indenture. Drawing upon archives in Australia, Belize, Britain, India, and the United States, this article explores connections between seemingly disparate histories. By focusing upon their interrelation, this article locates the formation of crisis not in raw materials, but rather within a transnational struggle over racialized labor exploitation, or what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “dark and vast sea of human labor.”

Two 17th-century English factories in North Kanara, Karnataka, India: a historical archaeology perspective

Summary: This article presents historical archaeology evidence for two 17th-century English factory sites located in North Kanara, Karnataka, India. The factories were established in the 1630s by a rival to the East India Company known as the Courteen Association to trade for spices and textiles. Documentary and archaeological evidence for the factories’ foundation, setting and structural form is presented and the broader significance of these principal characteristics considered with reference to the study of later East India Company factory sites in south-west India. The article concludes by assessing the potential for further archaeological investigation of the sites.

Occupational Exposure to Hydrazine and Subsequent Risk of Lung Cancer: 50-Year Follow-Up.

PurposeHydrazine is carcinogenic in animals, but there is inadequate evidence to determine if it is carcinogenic in humans. This study aimed to evaluate the association between hydrazine exposure and the risk of lung cancer.MethodsThe cause specific mortality rates of a cohort of 427 men who were employed at an English factory that produced hydrazine between 1945 and 1971 were compared with national mortality rates.ResultsBy the end of December 2012 205 deaths had occurred. For men in the highest exposure category with greater than two years exposure and after more than ten years since first exposure the relative risks compared with national rates were: 0.85 (95% CI: 0.18–2.48) for lung cancer, 0.61 (95% CI: 0.07–2.21) for cancers of the digestive system, and 0.44 (95% CI: 0.05–1.57) for other cancers.ConclusionsAfter 50 years of follow up, the results provide no evidence of an increased risk of death from lung cancer or death from any other cause.

“Like the incense of a bad heart”: The Ethics of Industry in Sophia Hawthorne's and Margaret Fuller's English Travelogues

Margaret Fuller and Sophia Hawthorne aren't often associated with the mid-nineteenth-century debates surrounding transatlantic factory and labor reform, yet both women begin their European travelogues with visits to English textile mills. In her first New-York Daily Tribune dispatch in August 1846, Fuller introduces her readers to an increasingly volatile Europe through a brief discussion of textile mill workers in Manchester and Liverpool. Over two decades later, Hawthorne's 1869 Notes in England and Italy similarly begins with her 1853 visit to a "very ugly" Lancashire mill town that is noticeably absent of workers yet leaves her haunted by the "cost" of industrialization (7-8). These moments are anomalous in both Fuller's and Hawthorne's narratives, yet they are also rare points of commonality in the two projects, which are divergent in many crucial ways. For even as Fuller's work for the Tribune traces her increasingly revolutionary politics, her more frequently discussed dispatches from Risorgimento Italy do not dwell on the effects of industrialization. (1) In contrast, Hawthorne's Notes focuses on ekphrastic descriptions of famous architectural landmarks and Italian masterworks; amid her accounts of museums and churches and interpretations of famous paintings and sculptures, social commentary is rare. (2) While it is important to note the similarities and differences between their texts, I use the women's introductory--and brief--references to English factories and factory workers as a way to think about the larger mid-century, transatlantic conversations surrounding industrialization and ethical labor. (3) Fuller's and Hawthorne's travels may be filled with visits to famous literary and cultural sites, but their (at least partial) "pleasure tours," to borrow William Stowe's term, are all the more striking by beginning in the un-aesthetically pleasing industrial centers of northern England with serious discussions of education and reform (103). Fuller's and Hawthorne's seemingly elliptical descriptions of the mills point to a larger cultural touchstone: they are commentaries on how the increasing pervasiveness of industrialization in the nineteenth century also raises questions about doing fulfilling work and leading meaningful lives. By beginning their respective journeys--and their accounts of those journeys--with these visits, Fuller and Hawthorne reveal how factories and the cloth they produce affect individuals regardless of class, gender, race, and nationality. Moreover, as women visiting northern England, then the industrial center of the Western world, Fuller and Hawthorne call attention to the often invisible labor done, in large part, by women. For if, as Annamaria Elsden suggests, Hawthorne understands her writing as "a way to 'copy' what she sees on her travels and transmit it to readers at home," then perhaps we can understand both Fuller's first dispatch and Hawthorne's Notes as confronting an individual's culpability for the working conditions of the factory operatives--even when physically removed from sites of industrialization and production (74). Ultimately, each woman positions her reflections on her tour as a way to establish common ground with her imagined readers, underscoring the wide-reaching impact of the international textile trade, the growth of factories, and the passage of laws protecting humane working conditions. In fact, Fuller and Hawthorne use their anomalous opening passages as oblique appeals to the middle-class reader--especially the middleclass, American woman reader--urging her to understand how she, too, is affected by these conditions overseas and, in turn, to support industrial reform on both sides of the Atlantic. I explore how Fuller's and Hawthorne's travel narratives are part of a larger mid-century print culture concerned with the transnational textile industry. I first outline Fuller's and Hawthorne's representations of their factory visits and how they pointedly obscure different parts of the industrial landscape: factories for Fuller and people for Hawthorne. …

Отношение к детям на английских фабриках первой половины XIX века (по материалам отчетов и воспоминаний современников)

Отношение к детям на английских фабриках первой половины XIX века (по материалам отчетов и воспоминаний современников)

The Early Expansion of English Trade in Suba Bengal

The coming of the English East India Company to Bengal and their settlement over here was an important landmark in the history of Bengal and India as a whole. It was from the very early stage of the seventeenth century that we could see their efforts to establish their stronghold over Bengal which is known from the letters of Sir Thomas Roe. On the other hand the agents of the Dutch East India Company were also eager to establish their commercial relations with Bengal as is known from the letter of Van Berchem (the Director of the Dutch Factories of Coromandel). The English from their very early phase were interested in establishing a factory at Pipili in Orissa. However their hope did not materialised and they establish their first factory at Patna in Eastern India. Though, the hope of establishing a factory at Orissa by them was never stopped. The English sent two ships again at Pipili. Finally in AD 1633 the English factory established at Balasore which was at that time under the Bengal Suba (province). One of the main reasons behind the establishing of a factory at Balasore was the easy availability of Cotton cloth and above all the direct opening through sea.

LIFTING THE LIDS OFF RIPOLIN: A COLLECTION OF PAINT FROM SIDNEY NOLAN'S STUDIO

A collection of 30 cans of Ripolin paint in 19 different tints from the studio of Australian artist Sidney Nolan provides a unique reference set for the study of this brand of paint. The cans date broadly to the period 1935–1953. All the Ripolin paints in cans from this study were manufactured at the company's English factory in Southall, London, which commenced manufacture in 1932. The paint is of two types, flat and gloss, in a range of colors. Observations made during opening, painting out, and drying the paint have provided information on its working properties. The flat paints with a large proportion of volatile solvents were quick to become touch-dry, whereas the thicker oily liquids present in the gloss paints took up to several weeks to lose tackiness. This observation is supported by Nolan's own frustrations regarding the slow drying of Ripolin. Instrumental analysis has identified the pigments present in each color tint. By using Meth-Prep GC-MS on 10 samples, the presence of heat-bodied drying oils and a fatty acid marker for castor oil in one color were detected. Copal and colophony resins were also identified in a number of colors. The highly oxidized state of the resins suggested significant heat treatment during processing.

Commemorating Failure: The Four Hundredth Anniversary of England’s Trading Outpost in Japan

Commemorating FailureThe Four Hundredth Anniversary of England’s Trading Outpost in Japan Adam Clulow (bio) On 11 June 1613, a strange vessel sailed into the port of Hirado on the western island of Kyushu. Dispatched more than two years earlier by the English East India Company, the Clove brought with it seventy-one mariners, a varied collection of trading goods, and grand ambitions to establish a foothold in the rich Japanese market. After initial negotiations with the local lord, the leader of the expedition, John Saris, set off for central Japan in search of an audience with the retired shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), the last of Japan’s three great unifiers and the founder of a regime that had succeeded in entrenching its power over a fractious archipelago. Arriving at Ieyasu’s headquarters of Sunpu (in modern-day Shizuoka prefecture) in early September, Saris set about obtaining generous trading concessions from Tokugawa authorities. The product of these negotiations was the so-called English factory in Japan, which was established in Hirado in 1613 and placed under the direction of Saris’s trusted deputy, Richard Cocks. There the outpost remained for just over a decade, until December 1623, when Cocks’s superiors made the decision to formally abandon it. The result was the virtual suspension of English contact with Japan until the nineteenth century, when the government that had been founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu began first to totter and eventually to collapse. This year, 2013, marks the four hundredth anniversary of the English factory in Japan. Although all anniversaries are essentially arbitrary, and although the lapse of exactly four centuries since the outpost’s establishment has no particular significance, such occasions do have their uses, prompting if nothing else a moment of reflection on the current state of research concerning the history of the English experience in Japan. They can also be used, perhaps more productively, as opportunities to consider possible directions for future investigation. The starting point for such an exercise is with two incontrovertible, albeit somewhat paradoxical, facts that underpin the history [End Page 207] of the English factory. First, there can be no question that this particular experiment ended in abject failure.1 Unlike the Dutch presence in Japan, which lasted until the opening of the country in the nineteenth century, the English stay ended in what can only be described as a hasty retreat. Ludwig Riess (1861–1928), the Prussian-born professor of Tokyo University who penned one of the most important early studies of the English factory in 1898, noted that the “establishment of the East India Company in Japan was a failure,” while subsequent scholars have dismissed the venture even less charitably as an “unmitigated disaster” or as a “fiasco.”2 A ten-year experiment involving a handful of staff and producing no enduring impact either on Japan or on the parent organization’s balance sheet might have been expected to fade into obscurity. What saved the factory from this fate is the fact that it produced one of the most complete archives of the early modern trading world. In the words of one prominent archivist, “The English factory at Hirado in Japan was a minor episode in the history of the East India Company’s struggle . . . and yet it has left an archive of more than four hundred items which is unrivalled in depth and coverage at this date.”3 While the existence of these materials (the vast majority of them preserved in the India Office Records in London) is striking enough, it is also the case that they are, through the tireless work of staff at two key institutions, almost uniquely accessible. Between 1978 and 1980, the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo published the complete version of Richard Cocks’s diary, a detailed and highly informative account of the factory’s daily workings covering the years 1615–1616, 1617–1619, and 1620–1622.4 And then in 1991 this already-useful resource was massively augmented by the British Library’s publication of the vast majority of the extant correspondence, journals, account books, and other records related to the factory. Compiled and edited with great skill by Anthony Farrington, The...

Azúcar y Modernidad: La experimentación tecnológica de la oligarquía habanera: 1700-1820

The article discusses the mentality of modernization and technological experimentation which accompanied the enlightened elite of the Cuban sugar-producing oligarchy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Data and documents show this powerful Havana group’s noted interest in increasing the production of the sweet produce, what drove them to engage with English factories to produce modern-designed milis and construction materials that made them more durable and powerful. We’ll show the diligence and persistence of the sugar-producing elite to achieve its economic and political goals and how through their spokesman Francisco de Arango y Parreno they demanded the King’s permission for a technologicalindustrial espionage trip through Europe and the Caribbean that helped them to introduce new machines and modern technology. The investment capital accumulated by some members of the elite and the negotiations of the management of the Royal Trading Company of Havana in Cadiz, Bristol and London were fundamental to this process.

The English Chaplains at Aleppo: Exploration and Scholarship between England and the Ottoman Empire, 1620–1760

Between the late 16th and the late 18th century, a small community of English merchants resided in the heart of the old city of Aleppo. Although primarily concerned with the business of international trade, the factors, consuls and chaplains who served the English Levant Company formed an important cultural link between England and the early modern Ottoman Empire. This article surveys the careers of the chaplains, over a period of around 140 years, and explores some of their interests in the fields of oriental studies and antiquarianism. By tracing the ways in which information about the Levant was relayed from Aleppo to English scholars, it argues that the English factory played an important role in the development of these fields as scientific disciplines.

The Destruction of the English East India Company Factory on Condore Island, 1702–1705

AbstractThe English East India Company established a factory on the island of Condore, off the coast of southern Vietnam, in 1702 as part of its plan to maintain a settlement to direct shipping activities between trading ports in China and Southeast Asia and India. For three years, the settlement thrived and was an important part of the China trade network, especially as a stopping point for ships plying the China route. The island settlement also carried out trading activities with neighbouring ports along the Indochina coast and the Malay Archipelago. The setting up of the factory, however, coincided with the emergence of the new entity of southern Vietnam under the Nguyễn family who were expanding their power-base to the south. In the process, the Nguyễn had already subdued the Chams and were coming face-to-face with the Khmers when the English factory was established. This paper will trace the English venture on Condore Island and the reaction of the Nguyễn ruler towards this venture which culminated with the destruction of the factory in 1705. This paper will attempt to explore the following questions: the shifting importance of the islands in the Nguyễn's security and foreign relationsvis-à-visthe English factory, and will also investigate the circumstances that brought about the massacre and destruction of the English factory on Pulo Condore—a historical event that has not been properly explained thus far.

Energy: perspectives, problems, and prospects

PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1. Introduction 2. From Hunter Gatherers to English Factories 3. Energy: what is it and how do we measure it? 4. Wood, Photosynthesis and the Carbon Cycle 5. Coal: Origin, History and Problems 6. Oil: Properties, Origin, History, Problems and Prospects 7. Natural Gas: Origin, History and Prospects 8. Energy from Water and Wind 9. Nuclear Power 10. Steam Power 11. Electricity 12. Automobiles Trucks and the Internal Combustion Engine 13. The Challenge of Global Climate Change 14. Prospects for Carbon Capture and Sequestration 15. Ethanol from biomass: can it substitute for gasoline? 16. Current Patterns of Energy Use 17. Vision for a Low Carbon Energy Future BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX