In 1667 the Dutch Republic was at the height of its military and mercantile might. A century and a half later, little of that glory remained as Napoleon wiped the country off the political map.... Show moreIn 1667 the Dutch Republic was at the height of its military and mercantile might. A century and a half later, little of that glory remained as Napoleon wiped the country off the political map. Military Power and the Dutch Republic explores the often overlooked role of the military in the Republic’s remarkable economic rise in the seventeenth century and its subsequent fall. It examines the ways in which the Dutch army and navy were organised and financed, the strategies and tactics that were used, and the operations of military leaders on land and sea. It also investigates methods of recruitment, where and how the army and navy found their troops, how those troops were housed and fed, and how they behaved in battle. And it looks at the various kinds of interaction between the many thousands of ordinary soldiers and sailors and the civilian society whose taxes supported them. Show less
Studying the connections between the coasts and hinterlands is crucial to understanding histories of the early modern Indian Ocean empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals and Manchus. The Mughal... Show moreStudying the connections between the coasts and hinterlands is crucial to understanding histories of the early modern Indian Ocean empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals and Manchus. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s southern campaigns (1682-1707) were part of the Mughal project of integrating the coasts with the heartland of the empire. This dissertation studies the impact that Aurangzeb’s southern campaigns had on the economy of Coromandel, a major textile producing and exporting region of the erstwhile Indian Ocean where the VOC (Dutch East India Company) had extensive commercial stakes. Instead of causing a decline, Aurangzeb’s southern campaigns transformed Coromandel’s economy by reorienting economic centres. The impact of wars was different across Coromandel. In northern Coromandel, Masulipatnam lost its position of a regional entrepot in the Bay of Bengal, while better food security in southern Coromandel – thanks to good rice harvests in the Kaveri delta – helped the region remain immune to the destabilizing effects of wars and attracted textile weavers from the north. The biggest effect of Aurangzeb’s southern campaigns was the relative rise of the port cities of southern Coromandel. Show less
Weaponry is one of the most widespread categories of metalwork from the European Bronze Age. Different lines of evidence point out that violent encounters and martial values played a significant... Show moreWeaponry is one of the most widespread categories of metalwork from the European Bronze Age. Different lines of evidence point out that violent encounters and martial values played a significant role both in communities' lives and ideology. Hence, reconstructing the practices surrounding Bronze Age weaponry is pivotal for the understanding of many aspects of coeval societies. Nevertheless, the study of the functionality and use-life of such items has developed rather late compared to other categories of objects (e.g. flint implements). Currently, experimental archaeology and use-wear analysis concerning metalwork are facing the challenge of leaving the stage of ‘infancy’ to become fully developed fields of study. This paper aims at contributing to such a development by illustrating the potential and the results of an experimental framework for the investigation of combat with bronze weaponry (swords in this paper) which offers a viable compromise between actualism and variable control. We provide an in-depth account of the results by describing both the morphology and the formation mechanics of the features obtained supported by extensive photographic documentation. Furthermore, we discuss our observations regarding the relationship between specific combat movements and the type of marks produced on weapons. Finally, the results of a pilot use-wear study on Bronze Age swords are presented in order to assess the validity of our approach. Show less
Ethnologists inevitably come to their subjects with a certain philosophical baggage which is part of their own, North Atlantic universe of cosmological and moral meaning, and influences the way... Show moreEthnologists inevitably come to their subjects with a certain philosophical baggage which is part of their own, North Atlantic universe of cosmological and moral meaning, and influences the way they gather and interpret their data. This chapter examines one particular, widespread assumption informing Maussian and structuralist theorising on gifts and reciprocity: the idea of violence as a basic tendency of human nature. While most other contributions to this volume focus on detailed archaeological and ethnographic data pertaining to conflict and violence more directly, the present one looks at historical and epistemological backgrounds of one particular, quite influential way of handling such data theoretically and conceptually. Show less
