English Merchants Research Articles

The emergence of English commercial law: Analysis inspired by the Ottoman experience

Thirteenth-century England was a commercial backwater whose trade was dominated by foreigners. To accommodate and encourage foreign merchants, England modified its legal system by creating legal institutions that were available to both domestic and foreign traders. Among the most important of these institutions were streamlined debt collection procedures and mixed juries composed of both Englishmen and foreigners. By introducing institutions that treated locals and foreigners equally, England created a level playing field that enabled English merchants to become increasingly prominent in the later Middle Ages. England's ability to modernize its law was facilitated by the secular nature of English law, the representation of merchants in Parliament, and legal pluralism. Medieval England contrasts sharply with the early modern Ottoman Empire. The latter created special institutions for foreign merchants, which eventually put Ottoman Muslims at a competitive disadvantage.

:Anglicanism and the British Empire, c.1700–1850

From the opening of the eighteenth century, according to Rowan Strong in this broad-ranging study, the Church of England articulated a sustained concern with empire. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), founded in 1701, generated, especially through its annual sermons, a discourse that mingled imperial with missionary themes. The result was the construction of an English-British imperial identity based on the traditional ideology of the Christian nation. The Society took North America as its mission field for much of the eighteenth century, sending there no fewer than 309 missionaries by 1783. A bond with successful commerce was perceived from the start: in 1704 a preacher urged English merchants “to join the Cause of Religion with that of Trade” (p. 67). But there was more emphasis on other themes. The author shows, against many earlier understandings of the SPG, that the Society saw its work as being directed not just to colonists but also to indigenous people. There was some tension between the idea that Native Americans deserved to hear the Christian message because of the humanity they shared with those who already enjoyed its blessings and the notion, arising during the 1730s, that before the people of the New World could respond to the gospel they had to be civilized. The conviction of a “common humanity” stressed what made the evangelized similar to Europeans; the supposition that civilization must precede the gospel emphasized what made them different. Slavery complicated the issue. The SPG, as the result of a legacy, maintained plantations in Barbados where the slaves bore the word “Society” branded on their chests; yet, from as early as 1766, the annual preachers denounced the evils of the slave trade.

Avery Odelle Craven: Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860

Avery Odelle Craven’s Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860, originally published in 1925, is a short, highly readable book with a significant place in American historiography. Craven, who died in 1980 at the ripe old age of 94, took classes as an undergraduate at Harvard with Frederick Jackson Turner, and at its core, Soil Exhaustion is an inversion of Turner’s famous ‘‘frontier hypothesis.’’ Whereas Turner proposed that the frontier forged key American traits such as ingenuity, hard work and self-reliance, Craven suggested that on balance, the frontier’s impact on early American history was iniquitous. ‘‘Frontiers, like those who come to sudden wealth, are inclined to be spendthrifts,’’ he observed (22). ‘‘All the natural resources of frontiers suffer... and the soils are no exception’’ (20). This central paradox, which Craven takes as his starting point, will be familiar to anyone who has read at all widely in the early American literature. From the 17th century to the early 19th, travelers and residents alike lamented the profligate, destructive nature of American husbandry. ‘‘The American planters and farmers ... are the greatest slovens in Christendom,’’ ran a representative comment from 1775, ‘‘their eyes are fixed upon the present gain, and they are blind to futurity’’ (Anonymous 1775, 145, 148; quoted by Craven: 21). With respect to the American South, the most common explanations offered by historians for this sorry state of affairs have been threefold, all of them morally weighted: the uniquely soil-depleting nature of tobacco; the easygoing, improvident Southern temperament; or the pernicious effects of slavery. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, from state papers and plantation diaries to the letters of Thomas Jefferson and the writings of travelers like William Strickland and the Duc de la RochefoucauldLiancourt, Craven constructs a more nuanced account emphasizing the role of markets, government policies and the ever-present lure of fresh lands to the west. Craven divides his subject into three periods: Colonial (1606–1783), Post-Revolutionary (1783–1820) and Agricultural Revival (1820–1860), with an initial chapter on ‘‘Soil Fertility and Soil Exhaustion’’ setting forth the terms and issues for discussion. The basic outline of this story is broadly familiar. In the colonial period, early strong markets for tobacco in England encouraged planters to develop a primary reliance on that crop; Crown policy, the use of slave and indentured labor, a scarcity of livestock, and a cycle of indebtedness to English merchants combined to transform that reliance into an absolute dependence. The most common food crop, corn (maize), was also a heavy feeder, placing additional burdens on the land. The lack of good plows led to the formation of a shallow hard pan; heavy seasonal rains washed away unprotected soil. Tobacco was by no means consistently profitable through this period, but given poor infrastructure planters had few alternatives. The basic ‘‘rotation’’ was to clear the trees, plant 3–4 years of tobacco followed by 3–4 years of corn and/or wheat, and then abandon the fields to spontaneous reforestation. As a result, western expansion began early, with tobacco production constantly in search of fresh lands. A few planters experimented with alternative cash crops such as hemp, indigo and flax; others sought to supply a growing domestic and, eventually, overseas market for grain and flour. But it was not until the Napoleonic Wars that wheat became a significantly profitable crop in eastern North America. L. B. Sayre (&) Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, P.O. Box 208209, New Haven, CT 06520-8209, USA e-mail: laura.sayre@yale.edu

The Emergence of English Commercial Law: Analysis Inspired by Ottoman Experience

Thirteenth-century England was a commercial backwater whose trade was dominated by foreigners. To accommodate and encourage foreign merchants, England modified its legal system by creating legal institutions which were available to both domestic and foreign traders. Among the most important of these institutions were streamlined debt collection procedures and mixed juries composed of both Englishmen and foreigners. By introducing institutions which treated locals and foreigners equally, England created a level playing field which enabled English merchants to become increasingly prominent in the later Middle Ages. England's ability to modernize its law was facilitated by the secular nature of English law, the representation of merchants in Parliament, and legal pluralism. Medieval England contrasts sharply with the early modern Ottoman Empire. The latter created special institutions for foreign merchants, which eventually put Ottoman Muslims at a competitive disadvantage.

Arnold Hughes and David Perfect. A Political History of The Gambia, 1816–1994. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2006. xviii + 530 pp. Map. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $90.00. Cloth. - Kenneth Swindell and Alieu Jeng. Migrants, Credit and Climate: The Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834–1934. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. xxxv + 261 pp. Maps. Figures. Notes. Index. $91.00.

Arnold Hughes and David Perfect. A Political History of The Gambia, 1816–1994. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2006. xviii + 530 pp. Map. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $90.00. Cloth. - Kenneth Swindell and Alieu Jeng. Migrants, Credit and Climate: The Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834–1934. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. xxxv + 261 pp. Maps. Figures. Notes. Index. $91.00. Paper. - Volume 50 Issue 3

Hurricanes and Society in British Greater Caribbean, 1624 – 1783

In 2004 and 2005, the Gulf region experienced unprecedented hurricane frequencies, casualties, and material losses. Some hurricane researchers suggest that this reflects a normal period of increasing storm frequency, while others feel that these trends portend heightened activity due to global warming. In this light, Mulcahy’s focus on the period beginning in 1624, as Britain established permanent colonial settlements and exposed its subjects to this new environmental phenomenon, represents an interesting juxtaposition.Seeking to understand processes of “encounter and accommodation” (p. 4) when populations come in contact with new environmental phenomena is not entirely new territory for historians. However, given their devastating impacts, seasonality, and frequency throughout the greater Caribbean, hurricanes provide a unique opportunity to better understand the “dynamic interaction between the environmental conditions colonists encountered and the cultural ideals and institutions they brought with them” (p. 4). Reading how English colonists addressed these issues over three hundred years ago has the potential to enlighten current events.In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, at least one prominent televangelist claimed that God had punished New Orleans for its sinful ways, the federal government’s militaristic response seemed more concerned with “restoring law and order” than saving lives, and some in the media played on these fears and distorted the realities of the situation with almost palpable racial biases. Similar interpretations and fears found full play as colonists addressed hurricanes over three centuries ago. The televangelist’s warning is mirrored in the “providentialism” that Mulcahy identifies as the key interpretive framework employed by colonists, particularly during the first half of the seventeenth century, when hurricanes were seen as signs of God’s wrath. He also traces the emergence and evolution of more naturalistic interpretations, suggesting that increased experience and knowledge among all social strata may have resulted in a more sanguine view of these “disasters” and other calamities in the greater Caribbean than was evident elsewhere in the British Empire. “Hurricanes remained acts of God, but colonists increasingly emphasized that the storms arose from natural forces under his general providence, not as special judgments for the sins of individual colonies or colonists” (p. 64).Fears of social chaos, mass confusion, and loss of social control and authority “influenced how white colonists perceived the storms and how they responded to the disorder that accompanied them” (p. 95). This fear was partially a function of external threats from France or Spain, but even more salient were fears of insurrections by slaves, who in most colonies far outnumbered whites. Mulcahy presents detailed discussions of these concerns and continual calls for military supplies, guns, and ammunition following hurricanes. However, “[A]s with other accounts of slave conspiracies and scares, concerns about hurricanes and social disorder reveal far more about the mentality of planters than actions of slaves” (p. 100); again, this finds echoes in the media coverage and federal response following Katrina.The book also details the economic consequences of hurricanes for plantation agriculture, including the consolidation of smaller plantations into larger plantations, which in turn were consolidated under British merchants due to debt obligations and defaults. Hurricanes also produced modifications in building techniques and other attempts to mitigate potential losses to capital, crops, and commodities.Although Mulcahy focuses on “encounter and accommodation,” he also extends his analysis in at least two important ways. First, he seeks to understand how hurricane impacts are shaped by social, political, and economic structures as he delves into the consequences of these events for variants of plantation agriculture based on crops, scale, and vulnerability. Most significantly, he examines the consequences for those most exploited and vulnerable in these systems: slaves. He also examines religious and private relief efforts in detail, as well as the politics behind efforts undertaken by the British government. His accounts of the emerging broad-based relief efforts undertaken by nongovernmental concerns are particularly illuminating.While every book includes points to quibble about, on the whole Mulcahy offers an informative analysis, rich in primary sources. This book will interest not only scholars interested in how past groups have addressed the challenges of new environmental phenomena but also those interested in how people have learned or failed to learn from these events and how many of the fears and misconceptions of the past still shape and distort our views of disasters today.

Batı Anadolu'nun Dünya-Ekonomiyle Bütünleşme Sancıları ve Gayrimüslim Tebanın Rolü (1876-1908)

İlgili dönem hem Avrupa hem de Osmanlı'daki ekonomik gelişmeler açısından oldukça önemli sayılabilecek bir devredir. 1838 Balta Limanı Ticaret Sözleşmesiyle Osmanlı Devleti 'Dünya-Ekonomi' için bir çevre ülke namzedi haline gelmiş bulunuyordu. Yarı sömürgeleşme olarak nitelendirilebilecek bu süreçle, modernleşme sürecinin başlangıcı kabul edilen Tanzimat arasında bir ilgileşim kurmak her zaman mümkün olsa bile, meselenin bizi ilgilendiren yönü daha ziyade ekonomik ilişkiler olduğu için şimdilik bunun üzerinde durulmayacaktır. Fakat burada işaret edilmesi gereken önemli bir nokta; anlaşma öncesine takaddüm eden bazı askeri ve siyasi gelişmelerle, bu anlaşma arasında kurulabilecek doğrusal ilişkilerdir (Kıray, 1993: 76 vd.). Osmanlı devlet ricali, muhtemelen bu imtiyazların ilgili ülkelere ve bilhassa İngiltere'ye sağladığı avantajlarla, Osmanlı toprak bütünlüğü arasında doğrudan doğruya bir çıkar ilişkisi kurmuş olduğu için (Kasaba,1993: 34); ülke güvenliği açısından bu tarz bir politik yaklaşımı, yegâne çıkar yol olarak görmüş olmalıdır.

Unjust, Cruel and Barbarous Proceedings: Japanese Mercenaries and the Amboyna Incident of 1623

AbstractIn 1623, the Dutch governor of Amboyna, an important clove-producing island in modern-day Indonesia, executed a group of English merchants and Japanese mercenaries accused of plotting to seize control of the VOC castle on the island. After news of these events reached Europe, the Amboyna Massacre, as it came to be called in England, rapidly became invested with great consequences as English and Dutch leaders fought over the issues of blame and compensation. This article examines the Japanese mercenaries accused by the VOC, the silent participants whose cause was not taken up by any national government.

Parliament, Print Culture and Petitioning in Late Eighteenth-Century England

Parliament, Print Culture and Petitioning in Late Eighteenth-Century England James E. Bradley (bio) During the events surrounding John Wilkes and the Middlesex election affair and under the worsening conditions of the American crisis, popular forms of political expression became more and more common. Beginning with the Stamp Act agitation and extending through the association movement and beyond, petitioning as a form of popular political expression arguably acquired greater salience. These years also witnessed the opening of parliament's doors to newspaper reporting for the first time; in addition to the more or less objective reporting of parliamentary debates in the metropolitan press, we find increasingly radical whig expressions of disaffection with the government, and specifically with parliament. While political opinion in the London press has been carefully investigated, we know far less about the relation between popular petitions and attitudes toward parliament as revealed in print culture in the provinces. This paper seeks to explore two closely related questions: the extent of the political divisions in the provincial press over the American crisis, and how petitions were understood to bear upon parliament and issues of representation as illustrated in the local press. In the autumn of 1775 we will find, somewhat paradoxically, that when petitioning agitation shifted from parliament to the crown, it heightened the public's awareness of the issue of parliamentary supremacy and posed new doubts about parliament's viability as a representative institution. The questions to be addressed are the shifting perceptions of the political process during an upheaval like the American revolution and the light that petitioning, as understood in the press, might shed on contemporary perceptions of that process. Local understanding of the whig myth of the reign of George III and how this myth functioned with respect to parliamentary elections will also receive attention, with particular reference to Hampshire.1 Petitioning during the American Revolution In 1775 there were two flurries of petitioning activity, the first to parliament and the second to the crown. In January 1775 English merchants from 13 centres of [End Page 96] trade petitioned parliament in support of peaceful concessions to the colonists.2 Six boroughs had sent loyal addresses favouring coercion, indicating that merchants were already divided over the use of force, and parliament voted to disregard all such documents, a decision grounded in the majority's determination to narrow the conflict to the single question of colonial submission. On 7 February, parliament declared the colonists in a state of rebellion.3 This strategic decision to enforce the coercive legislation of the previous session signaled a shift in the people's approach to the government. From March 1775 forward, petitions from both the colonies and England were addressed to the crown, but in April the king decided to receive no more petitions while seated upon the throne, that is, publicly, in his royal capacity.4 News of the military skirmishes at Lexington and Concord reached England in late May, but it was not until 23 August 1775 that the king declared the colonists in a state of rebellion. The royal proclamation of colonial rebellion triggered dozens of addresses to the crown expressing support for the government and coercion, and these loyal addresses stimulated, in turn, an equally strong reaction in favour of peaceful concessions. Because the king damned 'aiding or abetting' the colonists in 'any manor or degree', some risk was involved in circulating and signing documents in favor of concessions, since in many people's eyes, such acts at home encouraged the rebellion abroad. In 1769, the Middlesex election affair had resulted in petitions from 18 counties and 20 boroughs, but only two of these counties and four of the boroughs had sent opposing petitions favouring the government.5 The American crisis, in contrast, prompted popular documents from 11 counties and 47 boroughs, and of these, five counties and 21 boroughs and unrepresented cities were so seriously divided that they sent signed, conflicting documents over whether coercive or conciliatory measures should be pursued.6 The number of addresses in favour of coercion outnumbered the petitions for peace, but the petitions actually collected more signatures, since many of the addresses came from corporate bodies and were unsigned.7...

English Private Trade in the Western Indian Ocean, 1720-1740

AbstractThe paper first situates the trade carried on by private European traders in the overall framework of the Indian Ocean trade in the early-modern period. It then discusses in some detail the trading network of private English merchants in the Western Indian Ocean with special reference to the Surat-Mocha link in the 1720s and the 1730s. The evidence base is provided mainly by the private papers of Sir Robert Cowan, governor of Bombay between 1729 and 1734 and a major English private trader, operating in collaboration with Henry Lowther, chief of the English factory at Surat. Cette contribution replace tout d'abord les activités commerciales menées par les négociants européens dans le cadre général du commerce de l'Océan indien au cours de la période moderne. Elle examine ensuite avec quelque détail le réseau commercial établi par des négociants anglais privés dans le secteur occidentalde l'Océan indien, plus particulièrement les relations instituées entre Surat et Moka dans les années 1720-1730. Les données présentées ont été tirées principalement de la correspondance privée de Sir Robert Cowan, gouverneur de Bombay (1729-1734) et grand négociant privé, associé à Henry Lowther, responsable du comptoir de Surat.

Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda İngiliz Saatleri ve Topkapı Sarayı Koleksiyonu

Bir zamanların geleneksel Türk köşklerinin ve evlerinin kabul salonlarında, çalışma odalarında olduğu kadar camilerde de önemli birer aygıt olma ötesinde aksesuar olarak yer alan sanat değeri yüksek zarfları ile asma veya oturtma saatleri yanında zarif mücevher zincirle kıyafete iliştirilerek ceplerde taşınan ve adeta sahibinin sosyal sınıfını da simgeleyen mücevher muhafazalı cep saatleri bugün antika müzayede salonlarının nadide parçaları olarak önemlerini korumaktadır. Türkiye'de her ne kadar bağımsız bir saat müzesi olmasa da Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi'nde Hazine'nin bir bölümünü oluşturan Saatler Bölümü, Türkiye'deki en zengin saat koleksiyonu olarak önemlidir.

Louise H. Guenther, British Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Business, Culture, and Identity in Bahia, 1808–1850 (Oxford: Centre for Brazilian Studies, 2004), pp. 211, £20.00; €30.00; $36.00, pb.

Louise H. Guenther, <i>British Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Business, Culture, and Identity in Bahia, 1808–1850</i> (Oxford: Centre for Brazilian Studies, 2004), pp. 211, £20.00; €30.00; $36.00, pb.

The English gentleman merchant at work: Madras and the city of London, 1660-1740

Introduction India and the Private English Merchants: A Historiographical Survey Madras and the City of London -- A Diaspora? Transfer of Capital from England to Private Merchants in India Private Trading Between Madras and London: Remittance of Goods, Bills and Exchange and Respondentias The Significance of the Diaspora for Private Merchants in Madras 1660-1740 The English Gentleman Merchant in Madras: Social Elements of the Diaspora Private Trade, Companies and the British Empire Conclusion Index.

"Prisoners in Silken Bonds": Obligation, Trade, and Diplomacy in English Voyages to Japan and China

"Prisoners in Silken Bonds":Obligation, Trade, and Diplomacy in English Voyages to Japan and China Cynthia Klekar (bio) Formerly Portugal presented tribute; Now England is paying homage. They have out-traveled Shu-hai and Heng-chang; My Ancestor's merit and virtue must have reached their distant shores. Though their tribute is commonplace, my heart approves sincerely. Though what they bring is meagre, yet, In my kindness to men from afar I make generous return, Wanting to preserve my good health and power. —Qianlong, Emperor of China, 1793 (Macartney x) I The poem above, composed by the Chinese Emperor Qianlong to mark the arrival of Lord George Macartney's embassy in Jehol, China, in 1793, invokes a cross-cultural language of gift exchange, reciprocity, and obligation that informed early modern conceptions of international trade and diplomacy. In the mind of the emperor and in accordance with a long-standing Chinese cultural self-perception, Macartney's appearance at the Imperial Court, his letter from King George III, and the presents he offers register solely as a tributary offering: the gesture of a barbarian race to acknowledge and to celebrate China's cultural and religious superiority, and to reinforce the emperor's supreme virtue.1 Acknowledging precedent for the honor by invoking [End Page 84] Portugal's diplomatic standing as a country that has recognized China's greatness and therefore gained the privilege of a trading monopoly in Macao, the emperor interprets the gifts Macartney brings as a sign of deference to a more powerful and advanced society, one whose merit has extended across the globe. Although the gifts the English bring are viewed as "commonplace" and their commercial value in China "meagre," the emperor shows respect for the distance the embassy traveled and the tributary offering they transported by making what he considers an adequate and "generous return"—namely, his kindness. The English perceived the emperor's return of kindness, however benevolent and commensurate it appeared from the Chinese point of view, as an unequal exchange. Their mission—although they understood that China expected a tribute—was to gain in exchange for their innovative and scientifically advanced gifts a diplomatic trading treaty, commercial ports of trade, and compensation for the grievances of the English merchants. However, the emperor's language implies that his reciprocity derives solely from a benevolent nature, that he gives in return out of respect, not out of obligation. This distinction slyly displaces momentarily the obligation implicit in any gift exchange; in other words, Qianlong does not consider himself indebted to the English or required to make a return. Yet, almost simultaneously, the emperor does acknowledge an obligation, though not to the English. The emperor's return gift of hospitality is a submission required of him to a divine authority and to ancestral good fortune, both of which have endowed him with the power to give generously. Furthermore, the emperor anticipates a return for this obedience to authority as well—he gives adequately to the English to preserve the kingdom's honor and so that he may maintain in return "good health and power." Thus, the notion of the gift as an ostensibly disinterested gesture of civility—of an equal exchange between reciprocally respectful nations—becomes problematic: what the English viewed as civility the Chinese interpreted as a ritual of subjection. Qianlong articulates the complex intersections among trade negotiations, diplomatic gift exchanges, and cultural authority. The poem invokes notions of honor, reciprocity, and return, a vocabulary that in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mercantile and political narratives repeatedly qualifies profit-based concerns in the relationships the English sought to establish and extend in the Far East. The English gave to the emperor in expectation of an equal return, an expectation that they articulated only in order to obligate the emperor to grant their requests. Although the English accepted his gifts and other amenities while in China, their expectation of an equal and satisfactory [End Page 85] return necessitated an ongoing diplomatic exchange that deferred the commercial negotiations they sought literally at their own expense. In this sense, the language of the gift, despite its ostensibly disinterested nature, created between the English and their would-be trading partners unequal relations...

British Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Business, Culture, and Identity in Bahia, 1808-1850

British Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Business, Culture, and Identity in Bahia, 1808-1850

奄美大島製糖史における慶応年間白糖製造工場の建築と技術 : イギリス資本から見た集成館事業の研究(3)

The main points of this paper are as follows: - 1. This paper aims to compare Western style mill erected in Keio years with local sugar manufacturing at Amami Oshima islands as an example of various architectural and technological analyses. 2. The local sugar manufacturing building and technology both in Edo and Meiji period at Amami Oshima islands was quite inferior to that of Western style mill in Keio years. 3. The sugar manufacturing at Amami Oshima islands accomplished technical development from Edo period to Meiji period, but the buildings and technology of Western style mill in Keio years was far apart from the technological development at Amami Oshima islands. 4. Because of no technological relation with the local manufacturing the Western style mill in Keio years seemed to be erected as a pilot project or test for the British merchants. 5. Probably the Western style mill erected in Keio years could be established in the cooperation of the Satsuma clan with the British merchants.

The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures: Empire, Travel, Modernity (review)

Reviewed by: The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures: Empire, Travel, Modernity Thomas Beebee (bio) Ralph Bauer, The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures: Empire, Travel, Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xiii + 295 pp. $65. Ralph Bauer's book, in his own words, "places the transformations in Western knowledge occurring during the early modern period in the geo-political context of European settler colonialism in Spanish and British America from 1500 to 1800" (3). Ultimately, Bauer wishes to reveal through his study-examples [End Page 181] how the "epistemic mercantilism" visited on the New World by the Old was resisted and subverted through the writing of Creole subjects of the Spanish and British empires. His grounding of early American writing in history and geography includes a focus on genres specific to the New World—shipwreck, captivity, and travel—that exceeded Europe's catalog of noteworthy writing. He is adamantly comparative, juxtaposing texts in Spanish and English, treating geographies from Chile to New England, but often against the context of how these were published and read in Europe. Bauer thus reveals a North-South dialectic, in the mutual reading and translation of texts in various languages, as well as an East-West dialectic, where discourses of metropole and periphery contest and mutually condition one another. Bauer's first study example, Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios, provides a good example of the latter dialectic. Thrown onto the Florida coast as the result of a failed incursion from Santo Domingo in 1528, Cabeza de Vaca survived an eight-year odyssey back to New Spain and eventually to Valladolid, where he published the "Relación" of his adventures seventeen years later. Bauer's chapter on Cabeza de Vaca begins on page 30, but he only turns to the text itself on page 48. In the meantime, Bauer has done a great deal of detail work in order to establish that the publication of the Relación was very much aligned with the policies of Charles V towards the New World, as the emperor attempted to abolish the feudal relations of the encomiendas granted to individual conquistadores in favor of central bureaucratic control by the empire. Bauer's reading of the narrative finds evidence of this bias in, for example, Cabeza de Vaca's warning to the expedition leader to protect the ships and see them to safe harbor, whereas Narváez insists on traveling by horse. Bauer traces the associations of the metaphor of ship with mother and nation, and of horse with the masculine individualist, arguing that this opposition is symbolic of the political struggle between mother Spain and her unruly Creole children. The densely argued reading of the Naufragios takes place in stereo, as key passages are compared against an earlier version to argue for the author's reshaping of the text away from the rugged and violent epic heroism of the conquistadores towards a spiritual autobiography and—Bauer's main point—an image of a centrally administered empire of peace. Cabeza de Vaca provides a smooth segue into the next chapter, since his relation is one of the many to appear in the Hakluytus posthumus of Samuel Purchas (1625), paraphrased and edited to suit the purposes of an author—so Bauer—who reshapes material from a variety of sources into an empirically oriented cultural geography whose heroes were Protestant [End Page 182] British merchants and traders rather than English (or Spanish) freebooters. The chapter returns to Spanish materials with a mention of Garcilaso de la Vega Inca's Comentarios reales as a source of the first-hand experiential account "from below" found as well in John Smith's General Historie of Virginia (1624), two foundational texts for a specifically Creole historiography and prose narrative. (Garcilaso will return as a source for passages of Carrió de la Vandera's work as well.) The innovative and geographically situated nature of captivity narratives has long been recognized, and Bauer examines two of them, Mary Rowlandson and Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, directly in his next chapter in a good, old-fashioned, point-by-point comparative exercise. The differences between the two texts—length and focus; gender of the narrators; religious...

English-Russian language contacts

The paper reveals the beginning and development of English-Russian language and culture contacts generated by social history. Nine stages of the contact development characterized by different intensity and depth (starting from the sixteenth century until present) have been overviewed. An overview of the history of cultural interactions between Russia and English-speaking countries shows that neither the Russian language nor the English language has been immune to this process. In the case of Russian, the impact of exposure to English culture on the language has gone through various phases. Until recently, English was never the preferred foreign language in Russia, but it has come into and gone out of fashion with the ebbs and flows of Russian (and Soviet) relations with English-speaking nations. At the high tides of cross-cultural contact, linguistic borrowing has occurred in every imaginable field, from literature and finance to science and pop culture. The low tides have never been so low as to completely eradicate the influence of English on the Russian language. In the following pages, we explore briefly the history of these contacts. The history of Russian and British contacts dates back to the mid-sixteenth century when the British ship Edward Bonaventure was anchored in the mouth of the Northern Dvina River on August 24, 1553 1 (Aristova, 1978: 14). Russian Czar Ivan IV (''Ivan the Terrible'') granted an audience to Richard Chancellor, the captain of the ship. Chancellor handed the czar a letter from King Edward VI. The objective of Chancellor's expedition was to open a new market for British merchandise. Both Russia and Great Britain were interested in trading with each other. Improved economic and cultural ties with Western countries would help Russia strengthen its internal and external credibility. Ivan IV supported Russian-British trade by awarding free entry and freedom of movement, as well as tax-free trade, to British merchants from the Moscow Company. This trading company was established in London in 1554. In Russia, British merchants found a vast market for sugar, paper, cloth, weapons, medicine, spices, jewelry, and other imports. Additionally, entree into Russia opened trade routes to the Near East, Central Asia, and India. British and Russian merchants brought the first English words to Russia. These were primarily words the Russian language lacked: mester (<Mister), lord, aldraman (<alderman), etc. The words were transcribed by means of Russian letters according to their sound in oral speech. Thus,many words had a number of graphicand phonetic variants:ser,sar,sor (<sir); erl, erl', ell', er (<earl). Although few Russians visited Britain in the sixteenth century, many British people came to Russia. The Russian government encouraged British professionals - doctors,

The English Cemetery at Surat: Pre-Colonial Cultural Encounters in Western India

During the seventeenth century East India Company merchants settled in several cities of western India under the control of the Mughal Empire. The most important of these was Surat in Gujarat, where an English cemetery of impressive brick and stucco tombs was established. The style and nature of these monuments provide an insight into the cultural interactions that took place between the English merchants and the local population, as well as indicating the political aspirations of the East India Company officials. A description of these tombs, the earliest dating to 1649, is followed by a discussion of the origins of the cemetery, the chronology of the tombs and the identity and status of the dead. It is shown how the adoption of Indo-Islamic architectural styles for the earliest tombs was modified during the eighteenth century by the increasing use of Western architectural features, in line with growing British political power in India during this period. Changing architectural styles are paralleled by the changing attitudes of British visitors to the tombs from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Reflections on Monopolies and Free Trade at the End of the Eighteenth Century: A Tobacco Trading Company between Puerto Rico and Amsterdam in 1784

Even after the passing of the ‘Free Trade’ acts in Europe and America between 1765 and 1803, colonisation still meant trade for European mercantile and maritime powers which were beginning to think of themselves as liberal in the politico-economic sense. As before, the only suitable way of obtaining profits appeared to be economic exploitation, albeit within a politico-institutional structure. This ideal had inspired the inflexible system that had dominated the relations of both Spain and Portugal with their respective transatlantic colonies. Likewise, ever since their first incursions into the New World, northern Europeans had encouraged the creation of commercial companies dedicated to monopolising any of the goods that colonies might possibly have to offer. Dutch, English and French merchants developed farreaching private and state programmes designed to direct trade and colonisation and to encourage the populating of the new lands. During the seventeenth century, some of these companies achieved considerable success. They were able to settle, with or without permission from the Spanish monarchy, in territories formally under Spanish control, such as Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, coastal Venezuela or Guiana, regarded as areas eminently suited to business projects.