From the Cape to Canton: The Dutch Indian Ocean World, 1600-1800 — A Littoral Census

As an exercise in trans-oceanic history, this article focuses on the Dutch Indian Ocean World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the Dutch East India Company or VOC’s permanent colony at Cape Town, South Africa, in the Far West to its seasonal trading factory at Canton (Guangzhou), in the Far East. It argues that the ‘seismic change’ after 1760 noted by Michael Pearson and associated with the British move inland from their Bengal ‘bridgehead’ should be extended to the contemporary polycentric Dutch expansion into the interior of, most notably, South Africa, Ceylon, Java, and East... Mehr ...