Clulow Amboina, 1623

Fear and Conspiracy on the Edge of Empire
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-0-231-55037-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 312 Seiten

In 1623, a Japanese mercenary called Shichizo was arrested for asking suspicious questions about the defenses of a Dutch East India Company fort on Amboina, a remote set of islands in what is now eastern Indonesia. When he failed to provide an adequate explanation, he was tortured until he confessed that he had joined a plot orchestrated by a group of English merchants based nearby to seize control of the fortification and ultimately to rip the spice-rich islands from the Company’s grasp. Two weeks later, Dutch authorities executed twenty-one alleged conspirators, sparking immediate outrage and a controversy that would endure for centuries to come.

In this landmark study, Adam Clulow presents a new perspective on the Amboina case that aims to move beyond the standard debate over the guilt or innocence of the supposed plotters. Instead, Amboina, 1623 argues that the case was driven forward by a potent combination of genuine crisis and overpowering fear that propelled the rapid escalation from suspicion to torture, that gave shape and form to an imagined plot, and that pushed events forward to their final bloody conclusion. Based on an exhaustive analysis of original trial documents, letters, and depositions, this book offers a masterful reinterpretation of a trial that has divided opinion for centuries while presenting new insight into global history and the nature of European expansion across the early modern world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Clulow, Adam

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Note to the Reader
Acknowledgments
Maps of Southeast Asia, Amboina, and the Banda Islands
Introduction: The Company and the Colony
Part I, Amboina in 1623
1. With Treaty or With Violence
2. We Cannot Exist Well Without Slaves
3. Dangerous and Difficult to Govern
4. The English Serpent
5. The Trial
Part II. Remaking a Conspiracy Trial
6. The War of the Witnesses
7. Compensation and Calamity
Epilogue: The Fearful Empire
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Adam Clulow is an associate professor at Monash University. He is the author of the prize-winning The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia, 2014) and the creator of the Amboyna Conspiracy Trial website.