Before Race Mattered: Geographies of the Color Line in Early Colonial Madras and New York

Slave, Convict, and Indentured Labor and the Tyranny of the Particular

“…28 However, as the forum on conceptualizing the Atlantic world published in the William and Mary Quarterly in 2006 29 and subsequent discussions about the limitations of an oceanic basin approach to historical studies indicate, 30 defining oceanic worlds largely, if not exclusively, in geographical terms can easily inhibit a fuller understanding of the ways in which the peoples and places in these worlds interacted with or were connected to one another. 31 Research on the Dutch East India Company's multinational labor force, 32 the politics and ideology of the early East India Company state, 33 the geography of color lines in Madras and New York, 34 the geographies of colonial philanthropy and British imperial careering, 35 trans-oceanic humanitarian and moral reform programs, 36 Réunion's role in the development of the so-called "blackbird" trade of Melanesian laborers to New Caledonia and Queensland, 37 and legal institutions and personnel in the eighteenth-century French colonial empire 38 demonstrates that we ignore the complex movement of information, ideas, and people within and between these oceanic realms at our peril.…”

European Slave Trading, Abolitionism, and “New Systems Of Slavery” in the Indian Ocean

“…42 Some historians of empire also demonstrate a growing appreciation that if there were significant differences between the British experience in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, there were also important similarities between these two components of a single imperial entity (Marshall 2003). Work on the impact that public knowledge about and perceptions of empire had on British politics and identity (Oldfield 1995;Osborn 2002;Nechtman 2010), the politics and ideology of the early British East India Company state (Stern 2007), and the geography of colour lines in colonial Madras and New York (Nightingale 2008) demonstrate the value of approaching European activities in these two 'worlds' from a pan-oceanic perspective.…”

History and Historiography of the English East India Company: Past, Present, and Future!

“…106 Company India has quickly become a popular point of comparison for American historians, such as Carl Nightingale, who has argued for parity in the perception of race and of colonial cities in early eighteenth-century New York and Madras. 107 Others, like Elizabeth Mancke, have begun to incorporate the Company into a rethinking of the relationship between empire and state and the transformation from corporate enterprise to national empire, which finds its historiographical roots in a concern with the Atlantic. 108 In general, it seems as if there is a rising tide -possibly a threatening flood -of interest in the ways the Company and Company India was reflected in the colonial Atlantic and in the new American republic, from debates on liberty in anticipation of the American Revolution to ones on slavery in the run-up to the Civil War.…”