Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia Before Dominion 0824804953, 9780824804954

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The Age of

Edited by BLAIR B. KLING and M. N. PEARSON

ISBN 0-8248-0695-3

The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia before Dominion edited by Blair B. Kiing and M. N. Pearson The Age of Partnership is a study of shifting relationships in a time of turbulence from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, "a huge and colorful arena in which were played out a vast variety of contacts between Asians and Europeans." There was rivalry, to be sure, often intense and frequently violent, but there was surprising cooperation as well: between Indian agent and English master in Calcutta; between Jesuit missionary and Chinese clergy in China; between urbane English mind and the exotic features of Hinduism. As Pearson explains in his introduction, "The basic intent is neither to vilify nor to ignore the early Europeans in Asia but rather to place them ... in context." That context was for the most part commercial. Religion had its role to play, especially among the Spanish and Portuguese with their twin motives of "Christians and spices," but the paramount interest was beyond doubt in trade. Thus, most of the essays in this book deal with the scramble for wealth—competition for trade routes, gunboat diplomacy, enterprise, economic pressure. Often, in fact, the Age of Partnership seems but a mirage. Yet, if among major powers the focus is mainly on force, among individual merchants and groups of merchants there is widespread evidence of alliance and accommodation. The range of topics here is wide and kaleidoscopic: the failure of missionaries in China; the mixed success of Dutch force of arms in Malaya; the English attempt to graft the joint-stock concept onto the Indian economic structure; corsairs and corruption in India. Many of the studies are

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