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Overview

The East India Company has an astonishing history: from the world’s largest trading company in Asian goods, to the world’s largest imperial ruler in South Asia. How a private trading company went from dealing in spices to conquering much of the Indian subcontinent, with colonies as far afield as the Atlantic to the Pacific, has become a cornerstone of histories of empire and colonialism. Largely, people have understood the East India Company as an example of the ‘relentless rise’ of the British Empire and the conquest of the non-European world in an Age of Empire. On this course, we will put the ’India’ back into the East India Company.

Before its emergence as a dominant imperial ruler in the later 18th century, the Anglo-British presence in Asia was largely shaped by far more powerful forces: from Indian emperors and Javanese sultans, to African naval powers and Japanese samurai. In the 16th to the 18th centuries, the East India Company found itself powerless to dominate such actors, and instead was often forced to accept the demands placed upon it by the non-Europeans it encountered, and adapt its own trade and politics to serve the interests of far more powerful Asian rulers and cultures. On this course, students will discover the significant way in which the emerging British Empire was shaped by Asia in this period, which was very much the centre of the world centuries before Europe usurped its dominant position.

Topics may include: Week 1 – The English East India Company Week 2 – The Indian Ocean World in the Early Modern Period Week 3 – The Limits of English Expansion: Tokugawa Japan Week 4 – The Centre of the World: Merchants and Trade in Asia Week 5 – Asian Suzerains: Farmans, Grants, and English Subordination Week 6 – Finding the Subaltern: Women, Slaves, Soldiers, and Sailors Week 7 – Reading Week Week 8 – Between the Siddi and Angria: Bombay, Piracy, and Maritime Asia Week 9 - The Decline of the Mughal Empire Week 10 – 1757 and All That: Plassey, Buxar, and the Company as Diwan Week 11 – Reconsidering European Expansion in the Early Modern World

Assessment Strategy

Excellent [70%> -A] Excellent students will show strong achievement across all the criteria of the learning outcomes combined with particularly impressive depths of knowledge and/or subtlety of analysis. In written work, they will support their arguments with a wealth of relevant detail/examples. They will also demonstrate an acute awareness of the relevant historiography and give an account of why the conclusions reached are important within a particular historical debate. They may show a particularly subtle approach to possible objections, nuancing their argument in the light of counter-examples, or producing an interesting synthesis of various contrasting positions. Analysis of documents will be sophisticated, with a full understanding of their context, combined with an ability to bring out the significance of particular passages, with real insights into their detailed content.

Good [50%> -B] Good students will demonstrate a solid level of achievement and depth of knowledge in all the criteria of the Threshold range, but will in addition exhibit constructive engagement with different types of historical writing and historiographical interpretation. Ideas will be communicated effectively and written work will include a good range of sources/reading and demonstrate a clear understanding of the issues and of the existing interpretations expressed in a well-structured, relevant, and focused argument. Students at the top end of this band will engage with and critique the ideas that they come across, and synthesise the various interpretations they find to reach their own considered conclusions. Written work will be correctly presented with references and bibliography where appropriate. Analysis of documents will be competent, with a solid understanding of their context, combined with an ability to bring out the significance of particular passages.

Threshold [40%> -D] Students in this band will demonstrate a satisfactory range of achievement or depth of knowledge of most parts of the module, and will make successful, if occasionally inconsistent, attempts to develop those skills appropriate to the study of History at undergraduate level. In the case of the written assessments, the answers will attempt to focus on the question, although might drift into narrative, and will show some evidence of solid reading and research. The argument might lose direction and might not be adequately clear at the bottom of this category. Written work will be presented reasonably well with only limited errors in grammar, punctuation, and referencing, and not to the extent that they obscure meaning. Analysis of documents will be adequate, with an understanding of their nature and some knowledge of their context, though abilities to discuss the significance of detailed content may be limited.

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of specific aspects of the period 1600 - 1765.

• Mastering basic competence in I.T. (at least when recovering bibliographies from the course website; using library catalogues; and word-processing essays).

• The ability to analyse a large body of evidence (especially as students read and select material to use in seminar discussions and essays)

• The ability to think creatively and to communicate effectively (especially through formulating arguments in seminars and essays)

• The ability to work independently at complex and sustained tasks (for example, when researching, formulating and writing essays)