Europe’s Asian Centuries: Material Culture and Useful Knowledge 1600-1800 Introduction

2^ Key books setting the framework for such studies have been Ken Pomeranz, The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World (Princeton, 2000); A.G. Hopkins, Globalization in World History (London: Pimlico, 2002);J. Osterhammel and N.P. Petersson, Globalization. A Short History (Princeton, 2005);Also see B.K. Gills and William Thompson, eds., Globalization and Global History (Rethinking Globalizations) [Paperback] (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2006); John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires (London; Penguin, 2007). Earlier comparative studies of Empire setting some of these comparative frameworks were J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale, 2006) and P.J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires. Britain, India and America c. 1750-1783 (Oxford, 2005).

3^ Ian Morris, Why the West Rules- for Now

4^ The Divergence debate generated many studies which first appeared in the conferences of the Global Economic History Network (Gehn) with a number published afterwards in Itinerario, The Journal of Global History, The Economic History Review, and The Journal of Economic History.

5^ Stephen Broadberry and Steve Hindle, ‘Editor’s Introduction’ , Special Issue. Asia in the Great Divergence, The Economic History Review, 64 (S1), 2011, p. 7.

6^ E.A.Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change: the Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 1988), followed by Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (Cambridge,2010). The case is reiterated in Paul Warde, Energy Consumption in England and Wales 1560-2000 (Rome, 2007) and Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009).

7^ Robert Allen, ‘The great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 38, (2001), pp. 411-47; Also see S.N. Broadberry and B.Gupta, ‘The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Eruope and Asia, 1500-1800’, Economic History Review, LIX (2006, pp. 2-31; Robert C. Allen, Jean-Paul Bassino, Debin Ma, Christine Moll-Murata and Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘Wages, Prices and Living Standards in China, 1738-1925: in Comparison with Europe, Japan, and India’, Special Issue. Asia in the Great Divergence, Economic History Review ( 64 (S1), 2011, pp. 8-38; Robert C. Allen, ‘Why the Industrial Revolution was British: Commerce, Induced Invention, and the Scientific Revolution’, Economic History Review 64 (2011), pp. 357-384.

8^ Rostow

Deane,

9^ François Crouzet, Capital Formation in the Industrial Revolution (London: Methuen, 1972); Stanley Engerman, ‘Reflections on the Standard of Living Debate: New Arguments and New Evidence’ in John A. James and Mark Thomas, eds., Capitalism in Context: Essays on Economic Development and Cultural Change in Honour of R.M. Hartwell (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 50-79; C.H. Feinstein, ‘Capital Formation in Great Britain’, in P. Mathias and M.M. Postan, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. 7 (Cambridge: CUP), pp. 28-96;

10^ Richard R. Nelson, ‘Recent Exercises in Growth Accounting: New Understanding or Dead End, ‘ American Economic Review, Vol. 63, 1973, pp. 462-8.

11^ N.F.R.Crafts, ‘Industrial revolution in Britain and France: some thoughts on the question “why was England first” Economic History Review, Second Series, XXX, (1977), pp. 429-41.

12^ Joel Moky, ‘Has the Industrial Revolution been Crowded Out? Some Reflections on Crafts and Williamson.’ Explorations in Economic History, vol. 24 (1987), pp. 293-319, pp. 318-19. Recent articles by Allen and Broadberry and Gupta draw on data and data sets of wages and prices compiled between the 1930s and early 1980s. See Allen, ‘The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War’, Explorations in Economic History, 38 (2001), pp. 411-47; S. Broadberry and B. Gupta, ‘The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500-180’, Economic History Review, LIX (2006), pp. 2-31.

13^ Key recent exhibition and curatorial volumes include: Rose Kerr, Luisa E. Mangoni, Ming Wilson, Chinese Export Ceramics (2011);

Rosemary Crill, ed., Textiles from India: the Global Trade (London, Seagull Books, 2006).

Ruth Barnes

Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer, Encounters

14^ Philip J. Stern, ‘History and Historiography of the English East India Company: Past, Present, and Future!’ History Compass 7/4 (2009), pp. 1146-1180; Huw Bowen, The Business of Empire. The East India Company and Imperial Britain 1765-1833 (Cambridge, 2006);H.V. Bowen, Margarett Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby, eds., The Worlds of the East India Company (Suffolk/Rochester, NY; Boydell Press, 2002); Anthony Farrington, Trading Places: The East India Company and Asiua, 1600-1834 (London, British Library, 2002); Donald C. Wellington, French East India Companies : A Historical Account and Record of Trade (Lanham: Hamilton, 2006); Philipe Haudrère, La Compagnie française des Indes (Librarie de l’Inde, 1989) ; Martin Åberg, The Swedish East India Company 1731–66. Business Strategy and Foreign Influence in a Perspective of Change. Scandinavian Journal of History 15 (2), 97–108, (1990); Leos,Müller, “The Swedish East India Trade and International Markets: Re-exports of teas, 1731-1813”, Scandinavian Economic History Review , 2003; Ole Feldbæk “The Danish trading companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”, The Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1986; Parmentier, Jan "The Private East India Ventures from Ostend: The Maritime and Commercial Aspects, 1715-1722”, International Journal of Maritime History, 5, 1993; J.R. Bruijn and F.S. Gaastra, eds., Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and their Shipping in the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th Centuries

15^ cited in Giorgio Riello, Global Cotton: How an Asian Fibre Changed the World Economy , (forthcoming CUP) Part 2, chap. 4, p. 18)

16^ Jan de Vries, ‘The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World’, The Economic History Review, 63 (2010), pp. 710-733,p. 718.

17^ Riello, Global Cotton, p.

18^ Robert Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: the Culture of Porcelain in World History’, The Journal of World History, vol. 9 (1998), pp. 141-188, p. 168; also Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley: Univeristy of California Press, 2010.

19^ K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, Appendix 5 Table C8; Lorna Weatherill, ‘The Growth of the Pottery Industry in England 1660-1815. Some New Evidence and Estimates’, PostMedieval Archaeology. Vol. 17 (1983), pp. 15-46. Table A-3, 33-35.

20^ H.B. Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading the China 1635-1834, Vol. 1-V (Oxford: OUP, 1929), pp. 113-114, 121-2. See Maxine Berg, ‘Britain’s Asian Century: Porcelain and Global History in the Long Eighteenth Century’ in Laura Cruz & Joel Mokyr, The Birth of Modern Europe. Culture and Economy, 1400-1800 (Leiden, Brill, 2010), pp. 133-156, pp.143-145.

21^ Chaudhuri, Trading World, . 287; Christian J.A. Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (The Hague: Springer, 1982), ppp. 102-8; Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain, 59, 78, 95-104.

22^ On British consumption of porcelain see my Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: OUP, 2005), pp. 220-232.

23^ Toby Barnard, Making the Grand Figure. Lives and Possessions in Ireland, 1640-1770 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 125-133.

24^ Anne MCants, ‘Poor Consumers as Global Consumers: the Diffusion of Tea and Coffee Drinking in the Eighteenth Century,’ The Economic History Review, 61 (2008), pp. 172-200, p. 185; Anne McCants, ‘Exotic Goods, Popular Consumption and the Standard of Living: Thinking about Globalization in the Early Modern World,’ Journal of World History, vol. 18 (2008), pp. 433-462, 456-7; Bruno Blondé, ‘Tableware and Changing Consumer Patterns. Dynamics of Material Culture in Antwerp, 17^th-18^th Centuries’, in J. Veeckman ed., Majolica and Glass from Italy to Antwerp and Beyond: the Transfer of Technology in the 16^th – early 17^th Century (Antwerp: Antwerpen, 2002), pp. 295-311.

25^ Anne E. McCants, ‘Modest Household and Globally Traded Textiles: Evidence from Amsterdam Household Inventories’, in Cruz and Mokyr, eds., The Birth of Modern Europe, pp. 109-131, p. 130.

26^ This is a point made by McCants, ‘Exotic Goods’, p. 457. Also see Beverly Lemire, ‘Consumerism in Preindustrial and Early Industrial England: The Trade in Secondhand Clothes, Journal of British Studies, 27 (1988), pp. 1-24; Beverly Lemire, Dress Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660-1800 (London, 1997)

27^ H.J. Bruton, ‘A Reconsideration of Import Substitution’, Journal of Economic Literature, xxxvi (1998), esp. pp. 908-17; A.O. Hirschman, ‘The Rise and Decline of Development Economics’ in A.O. Hirshman, Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 1-24; D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson and J.A. Robinson, ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation’, American Economic Review, 91, pp. 1369-401; World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (Washington D.C. World Bank, 1993); World Bank, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform (Washingon, D.C.: the World Bank, 2005); J.Y. Lin, ‘Development Strategy, Viability and Economic Convergence’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 53, 2003, pp. 277-308.

28^ I have pursued this discussion of quality in relation to cotton textiles in ‘

29^ Mokyr, Joel, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton and Oxford, 2002). Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy. An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009); Joel Mokyr, ‘The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 65, 2005, pp. 285-351.

30^ Berg, Maxine, ‘The Genesis of “Useful Knowledge” in Special Issue ‘Reflections on The Gifts of Athena’ edited by Berg of History of Science, 45 (2), (2007), pp. 123-135. Epstein, S.R., ‘Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe’, Journal of Economic History, 53 (1998), pp. 684-713;Epstein, S.R., ‘Transferring Technical Knowledge and Innovating in Europe, c. 1200-1800’, Working Paper on ‘The Nature of Evidence: How Well Do Facts Travel?’ 1 May 2005, LSE web site; Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, CUP, 2009).

31^ Mokyr, ‘Intellectual Origins’.

32^ Mokyr, Joel, ‘Useful Knowledge and Industrial Revolutions: a Reply’ ‘Special issue edition of History of Science: ‘Useful Knowledge’ and Industrial Revolutions’, edited set of papers by Maxine Berg, Joel Mokyr, Larry Stewart, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Kristine Bruland;45 (2007), pp. 122-196, pp. 186-196.

33^ Malachy Postlethwayt, The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, 4^th edition, 2 vols. (London, 1744), p. v.

34^ Ibid., ii, ‘Porcelain’.

35^ George Unwin, Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1924), p. 7.

36^ Ibid., p. 63.

37^ Cited in George Daniels, The Early English Cotton Industry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1920), p. 129.

38^ See my account in ‘In Pursuit of Luxury’, pp. 113-5. On Father Gaston Coeurdoux see John Irwin and K.B. Brett, Origins of Chintz (London, 1970). Also see Jean Ryhiner, Traité sur la fabrication et le commerce des toiles peintes [1766](1865).

39^ Desmond, The European Discovery of the Indian Flora, p. 41.

40^ Michael T. Bravo, ‘Mission Gardens: Natural History and Global Expansion, 1720-1820’, in Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, pp. 49-65; Sujit Sivasundaram, ‘”A Christian Benares”: Orientalism, Science and the Serampore Mission of Bengal’, Indian Economic & Social History Review, 44 (2007), pp. 111-45; David Arnold, ‘Plant Capitalism and Company Science: The Indian Career of Nathaniel Wallich’, Modern Asian Studies, 42 (2008), pp, 899-928. For the most recent research on the scientific and medical researches of the Halle and Moravian missions in Tranquebar see Niklas Jensen, ‘Making it in Tranquebar: Science, Medicine and the Circulation of Knowledge in the Danish-Halle Mission, c. 1732-44’, Unpublished paper presented to theEUI Workshop Mission, Science and Medicien in Colonial South Asia: Situating the Tranquebar Mission(s) in the Field’, 18 March, 2011, and Pratik Chakrabarti, ‘Materials and Materia Medica in India’, chapter four of Materials and Medicine: Trade, Conquest and Therapeutics in the Eighteenth Century, (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2010). For other material on the religious and print and material culture of the Tranquebar missions see Hanco Jürgens, ‘German Indology avant la lettre: The Experiences of the Halle Missionaries in Southern India, 1750-1810’ in D.T. McGetchin, P.K.J. Park, D.SarDesai, Sanskrit and ‘Orientalism’. Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750-1958 (Manohar, 2004), pp. 41-81; Esher Fihl and A.R. Venkatachalapathy, eds. Indo-Danish Cultural Encounters in Tranquebar: Past and Present, Special Issue, Review of Development & Change, xiv (2009); Martin Krieger, ‘Material Culture, Knowledge, and European Society in Colonial India around 1800: Danish Tranquebar’, in Michael North ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900 (Franham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 53-72.

41^ See Chakrabarti, Materials and Medicine, chap. 4 [pp. 178-180]

42^ India Office Records Private Papers. Roxburgh Ms. Eur D809, British Library, Letter from John to Roxburgh, 29 Sept. 1789. Later letters also pined for pieces of chintz. ‘The chints for my family & the Hyderabad seeds are not yet arrived. Pray by what conveyance have you sent them? In my last letter I had mentioned some samples of cloth & chints for Mrs. John, which the wind or another accident had carried away…’ (John to Roxburgh, 29 June, 1791).

43^ Ray Desmond, The European Discovery of the Indian Flora, pp. 39-80.

44^ Marika Vicziany, ‘Imperialism, Botany and Statistics in Early Nineteenth-Century India: the Surveys of Francis Buchanan (1762-1829)’, Modern Asian Studies, 20 (1986), pp. 625-660; Arnold, ‘Plant Capitalism and Company Science’, pp. 899-928; Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and The English Enlightenment, pp. 201-8.

45^ Tracts, Historical and Statistical, on India: with Journals of Several Tours through Various Parts of the Peninsula: also an Account of Sumatra in a Series of Letters (London, Robert Baldwin, Paternoster-Row, 1814).

46^ Tracts, p. 248.

47^ India Office Records, British Library, Board of Control F/4/1, p. 135.

48^ Tracts, p. 101.

49^ Tracts, p. 97.

50^ IOR,BL, MsEur809, p. 11

51^ Tracts, p. 96.

52^ IOR, BL, Eur809, p. 24.

53^ Ibid., p. 218.

54^ Ibid., p. 219.

55^ IOR, BL, Eur809, p. 18.

56^ IOR, BL, Heyne, Cursory Observations made on a Tour from the Banks of the Kistna to Timmericatah,Ms.Eur D809, p. 18.

57^ Tracts, p. 364.

58^ George Pearson, ‘Experiments and Observations to Investigate The Nature of a Kind of Steel, Manufactured at Bombay and there called Wootz’, Read before the Royal Society, June 11, 1795, p. 5). Also see David Mushet, ‘Experiments on Wootz’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 95, 1805, pp. 163-75; J. Stodart and M. Faraday, ‘On the Alloys of Steel’, Philosophical Ransactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 112, 1822, pp. 253-70)