Delicious Day Off! (1)

[tamaranth]

22,543 / 50,000 (45.0%)

But was forced to get up and log on, just now, as my book collection does not tell me what I need to know: to wit, the date of the Dutch annexation of Ponticherry*. If I ever polish this into a fit form for publication, I shall need a good book about European trade in India and Indonesia 1685-1695. The Confusion, though wonderful in many respects, is too distracting, and anyway skips the bits I want to know about.

Since I am out of bed (ten hours' sleep and almost two chapters since I crawled into it last night) I might as well go to the sorting office and pick up my latest mystery parcel. Though if I spam LJ just a little longer, it'll be shut, and I'll have to wait ...

*1693, reclaimed by the French in 1699. Too damned late for my narrative, anyway. Dampier says only, "I have heard since it was taken by the Dutch": but he is writing in 1697 about events of 1691.

Comments

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

I shall need a good book about European trade in India and Indonesia 1685-1695

You might find some inspiration in the works of the late C R Boxer, who specialised in the history of the Dutch East India Company; his The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140136185/qid=1100010558/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_9_1/202-3388533-5396652) is (from what I remember of it from when I read it some ten years ago) a good overview.

Not read (by me), although well-regarded by others, is the late Richard Hall's Empires of The Monsoon: A History of The Indian Ocean and Its Invaders (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0006380832/qid=1100010783/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_10_1/202-3388533-5396652). I suspect, from its title, that it has less to say about Indonesia than Boxer's title (and probably lots about East Africa and India which Boxer wouldn't have bothered with).

Both have bibloigraphies of further work, albeit a bit dated by now.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Thanks for these recommendations!

Boxer (sad that he's unavailable affordably) comes up quite a bit in the biobliographies of various papers contained in 1688: the Seaborne Alliance and the Glorious Revolution -- the proceedings of a conference at the Maritime Museum in 1988, bought for 50p in the shop around 1990, and somehow not discarded before I found a use for it! Am guided by this, plus the patchy Dampier bio, plus various scanned pages from Dampier's original New Voyage Around the World which Amazon are unable to supply in a timely fashion. Also Times Atlas of World History.

Shall keep an eye out!