Date - June 5, 2025 - June 7, 2025 Location Shanghai Shi, China This conference, jointly organized by the Center for Global Asia, NYU Shanghai, and the CAPASIA Project, European University Institute, examines the role of infrastructure in Asia’s port cities from the thirteenth century to the present. Visual
During the 1780s the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, commissioned his lieutenants to open up a string of “factories,” or trading posts. These factories were earmarked for construction at several points inside and outside of India (Official Documents, Relative to the Negotiations Carried on by Tippoo Sultaun, 43). In establishing
One of the most influential theorizations of the relationship between Asian and European merchant capital in the Indian Ocean is Rajat Kanta Ray’s model of the “bazaar economy” (Ray, “Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800-1914,” Modern Asian Studies 29/3 (1995)
In 1813, and again in 1833, the East India Company (EIC) successfully lobbied to have its charter extended by twenty years. Yet each victory came at a heavy cost: whereas in 1813 the company lost its trading monopoly, in 1833 it forfeited all semblance of its commercial operations. While 1833
Socotra (pt. Socotorá, ar. Suquṭrā) is the largest of the 258 islands dispersed throughout the Arab Middle East. It is located at the easternmost point of the Horn of Africa, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. With its arid climate, hilly terrain, limited natural resources and, as a
At the beginning of 1614, Tokugawa Hidetada (1581-1632) – the second Tokugawa shogun – promulgated the edict called Hai Kirishitan bun with the sanction of his father Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). The edict officially banned Christianity from the whole Japanese archipelago. At that point in history, the order did not surprise Catholic missionaries
When, in 1784, a certain George Gearmain submitted to the Queen of Portugal a plan to found a colony in Bengal, the Portuguese involvement in the lands of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta was already more than two and a half centuries old. The Portuguese were quick in adapting to the geographical
Today Sadras is a sleepy coastal village in Tamil Nadu, 40 miles south of Chennai. Tourists heading 10 miles north to visit the ancient temples of Mamallapuram might easily miss it. Just over a mile away is Kalpakkam, the site of the Madras Atomic Power Station. Between modern and ancient