Type of Credit: Partially Required
Credit(s)
Number of Students
This course will introduce you to the activities and impact of Europe's East India companies on early modern Asia from about 1600 to 1800. The course will focus primarily on the Dutch Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie and the English East India Company, but we will also learn about the adventures of some of the smaller companies. The geographic focus will be Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, and the course will prioritise an examination of the commercial, political, and cultural interactions between the companies and Asian societies.
能力項目說明
You will gain a familiarity with the history of the East India companies, the ongoing scholarly debates in the field, and the methods past historians have used to study them. You will also develop your skills evaluating historical research in general by critiquing past scholarship. The course's final project, a research paper, will give you experience applying the knowledge and skills you have gained to the formulation of your own arguments.
| 教學週次Course Week | 彈性補充教學週次Flexible Supplemental Instruction Week | 彈性補充教學類別Flexible Supplemental Instruction Type |
|---|---|---|
Over the course of the semester, each of you will present one scholarly monograph to your classmates and then lead a general discussion (20%). For meetings in which you are not presenting, you will need to have read about ten to fifteen pages to prepare for the discussion and to have submited the answers to two or three short response questions in English or Chinese on Moodle (the response questions and discussion together are worth 20%). Each of you will also partner with a classmate to lead one in-class discussion and group activity centred on a short primary source (20%). The in-class activity can be a game, high-speed research project, a debate, or any other activity that helps demonstrate the source's potential value. Finally, you will write a final paper of ten to fifteen pages in English or Chinese on a topic of their choice (25%), and during the last one or two meetings everyone will give a brief presentation on their research (15%).
Tentative Course Schedule:
9/12: Introduction
9/19: Preliminary lecture and discussion
9/26: The Dutch VOC and Japan
10/3: The VOC's Colony on Taiwan
10/10: No Class
10/17: The English EIC's Early Strategies
10/24: The VOC's Adventures in Southeast Asia
10/31: The Companies, Gender, and Knowledge
11/7: The Canton Trade
11/14: Smaller Companies and Competition
11/21: Asian Commodities
11/28: Pirates, Mutinies, & the Slave Trade
12/5: Singapore, the Straits of Melaka, & the Late VOC
12/12: The EIC's Conquest of India
12/19: Presentations
12/26: Final Papers Due
參與及回應單 Participation and response papers: 20%
課堂史料研讀活動 Group source activity: 20%
專書報告 Book presentation: 20%
期末論文口頭報告 Final oral presentation: 15%
期末論文 Final paper: 25%
This course will not have a textbook. During the first week the students will receive a list of potential readings for the remaining meetings. We will then select the texts and the presenters for each meeting of the semester.
If you're interested in reading general overviews of the companies' histories, here are a couple of good surveys you could look for: