Ward argues that the Dutch East India Company empire manifested itself through multiple networks that amalgamated spatially and over time into an imperial web whose sovereignty was effectively created and maintained but always partial and contingent. Networks of Empire proposes that early modern empires were comprised of durable networks of trade, administration, settlement, legality, and migration whose regional circuits and territorially and institutionally based nodes of regulatory power operated not only on land and sea but discursively as well. Rights of sovereignty were granted to the Company by the States General in the United Provinces. Company directors in Europe administered the exercise of sovereignty by Company servants in its chartered domain. The empire developed in dynamic response to challenges waged by individuals and other sovereign entities operating within the Indian Ocean grid. By closely examining the Dutch East India Company's network of forced migration this book explains how empires are constituted through the creation, management, contestation, devolution and reconstruction of these multiple and intersecting fields of partial sovereignty.
Author(s): Kerry Ward
Series: Studies in Comparative World History
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Commentary: 44928
Pages: 358
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series-title......Page 5
Title......Page 7
Copyright......Page 8
Dedication......Page 9
Contents......Page 11
List of Maps......Page 13
Acknowledgments......Page 15
1 Networks of Empire and Imperial Sovereignty......Page 19
Defining Imperial Networks......Page 24
Split Sovereignties in the Evolution of the VOC Empire......Page 32
Defining Legal Identities......Page 35
Historiographies of Empire and Nation......Page 43
Migration and the Peopling of Empire......Page 47
Organization of this Book......Page 59
2 The Evolution of Governance and Forced Migration......Page 67
The VOC Charter......Page 69
From Company Charter to Company Empire......Page 73
Shifting Fortunes of Trade Networks and Territorial Nodes......Page 75
Communication and Administration in the VOC......Page 82
Structures of Government and Law in the VOC......Page 84
The Statutes of Batavia and the Principles of Jurisprudence......Page 88
Company Law and Indigenous Law......Page 92
Company Personnel: Incapacitation and Incarceration......Page 95
Slave Trades in the Indian Ocean and VOC Slavery......Page 99
3 Crime and Punishment in Batavia, circa 1730 to 1750......Page 103
Status and Crime in Batavia......Page 104
The City of Batavia......Page 108
Batavia’s Inner City and Hinterland Population......Page 113
The Chinese Massacre and Batavia’s Decline......Page 116
Batavian Courts in the Mid-Eighteenth Century......Page 120
Penal Transportation to the Cape......Page 134
The VOC Network of Penal Transportation and Exile......Page 142
4 The Cape Cauldron: Strategic Site in Transoceanic Imperial Networks......Page 145
Ships at the Cape before the VOC Settlement......Page 146
The “Caabse Vlek” – The Cape Village......Page 149
The Cape’s Southwest Indian Ocean Sub-Circuit......Page 164
Free and Forced Migration and Sojourns at the Cape......Page 167
Consolidation of Company Control at the Cape......Page 170
VOC-Khoekhoe Relations to the End of the Seventeenth Century......Page 176
The Van der Stel Dispute......Page 182
Cape Town as a Transoceanic Port City......Page 187
Tavern of the Seas......Page 193
5 Company and Court Politics in Java: Islam and Exile at the Cape......Page 197
Performative Practice, Contracts, and the Culture of Legality......Page 198
Exile as a Tool of Empire......Page 203
Court Politics: The Protocols of Exile......Page 205
The Java-Makassar-Cape Nexus......Page 212
Shaykh Yusuf in Islamic and Company Networks......Page 217
Javanese Royalty at the Cape......Page 230
Returning Exiles: Cape Islam and Javanese Politics......Page 240
Exile and Islam at the Cape......Page 249
6 Forced Migration and Cape Colonial Society......Page 257
Contours of Colonial Society at the Cape......Page 260
The Cape Government’s Response to Forced Migration......Page 262
Crime and Punishment at the Cape in the Mid-Eighteenth Century......Page 266
Bandieten and Bannelingen at the Cape......Page 276
The Company Caffers......Page 282
Robben Island as a Place of Banishment......Page 287
Status, Ethnicity, and Transgression on Robben Island......Page 288
Shifting Security Priorities......Page 298
7 Disintegrating Imperial Networks......Page 301
The Barbier Rebellion......Page 305
The Emergence of the Cape Patriots......Page 308
From Dutch East India Company Empire to British Empire......Page 315
Networks of Empire......Page 317
Cape Town Archive Repository (CA) – Cape Town, South Africa......Page 327
Nationaal Archief (NA) – The Hague, The Netherlands......Page 328
Published Primary Sources......Page 329
Select Secondary Sources......Page 332
Index......Page 349
