In recent years, there has been a surge of new work focused on maritime Asia. The following are a few resources for additional reading. These can be combined with the readings described in the Maritime Exercise Packet.
Taiwan, the Zheng and the VOC
Adam Clulow and Xing Hang, “Between the Company and Koxinga: Territorial Waters, Trade and War over Deerskins”, in Lauren Benton and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, eds. A World at Sea: Maritime Practices in Global History, 1500-1900 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
Examines how Cambodia and Ayutthaya attempted to navigate the conflict between the VOC and the Zheng maritime organization
Adam Clulow and Xing Hang, “Restraining Violence on the Seas: The Tokugawa, the Zheng Maritime Network and the Dutch East India Company”, in Peter H. Wilson, Marie Houllemare and Erica Charter, eds. A Global History of Early Modern Violence (Manchester University Press, 2020)
Focuses on a key episode of maritime violence that caused a brief rupture in relations between the Zheng and the Tokugawa.
Tonio Andrade, Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011)
A brilliant account of the extended military struggle between Zheng Chenggong and the Dutch East India Company.
John E. Wills, Jr., Pepper, Guns, and Parleys: The Dutch East India Company and China, 1662-1681 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974)
A classic study by one of the great scholars in the field.
Patrizia Carioti, “The Zhengs’ Maritime Power in the International Context of the 17th Century Far Eastern Seas,” Ming-Qing Yanjiu 5.1 (1996): 29-68
Carioti has written widely in multiple languages on the Zheng maritime organization. This article gives some sense of her important scholarship.
Xing Hang, Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620-1720 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
A detailed examination of the rise of the Zheng with particular focus on the maritime oriented state created by Zheng Jing on Taiwan.
Wei-Chung Cheng, War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas, 1622-1683 (Brill: Leiden, 2013)
A ground-breaking study that examines the sweeping conflict between the Zheng and the VOC that took place across East and Southeast Asia.
Leonard Blussé, “No Boats to China: The Dutch East India Company and the Changing Pattern of the China Sea Trade, 1635-1690,” Modern Asian Studies 30.1 (1996)
Important overview of Dutch trade by one of the most influential scholars in the field.
Southeast Asia
Bhawan Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, c.1604-1765 (Leiden: Brill, 2007)
Excellent examination of the long arc of relations between the Dutch East India Company and Ayutthaya (Siam).
Nagazumi Yoko, “Ayutthaya and Japan: Embassies and Trade in the Seventeenth century”, in From Japan to Arabia: Ayutthaya’s Maritime Relations with Asia, edited by Kennon Breazeale (Bangkok: Printing House of Thammasat University, 1999)
Study of relations between Japan and Ayutthaya by a pioneering scholar in the field.
Dhiravat Na Pombejra, “The Dutch-Siamese Conflict of 1663-1664: A Reassessment”, in Leonard Blussé (ed.), Around and About Formosa, Essays in Honor of Professor Ts’ao Yung-ho (Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc., 2003), 291-306
Valuable account of a key episode as the VOC attempted to secure the profits of the deerskin trade.
The Deerskin Trade
Michael Laver, “Skins in the Game: The Dutch East India Company, Deerskins, and the Japan Trade,” World History Bulletin 28:2. Fall (2012): 13-16
Good introduction to the wider deerskin trade and the Japan connection.
Hui-wen Koo, “Deer Hunting and Preserving the Commons in Dutch Colonial Taiwan,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 42.2 (2011): 185-203
Detailed overview of the Company’s transformation of Taiwan into a key node on the deerskin trade.
Tokugawa Japan
Masashi Haneda and Mihoko Oka, A Maritime History of East Asia. Kyoto University Press/Trans Pacific Press, 2019
Brilliant overview history of maritime East Asia.
Adam Clulow, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia University Press, 2014)
Examines how the Dutch East India Company found a place on the peripheries of the Tokugawa order.