Review of Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company

Abstract

In this groundbreaking book, Kerry Ward proposes the idea of a "network" to take forward new ways of thinking about empire, especially in contexts where archival evidence is disconnected and fragmentary. Ward's broad subject area is the Dutch Empire, during the whole period of the East India Company (VOC) and across its entire geographical domain. The VOC operated between 1602 and 1799, and its activities stretched between imperial "nodes" in the Cape, East African coast and Mascarene Islands, and across the Indian Ocean to South Asia, Batavia (its headquarters was in Jakarta), and the Moluccas. Ward defines empire as an intersection of material and discursive networks that exist simultaneously as "paths of circulation" for people, goods, and information, and as "nodal regulatory points" in regional centres.[10] In thinking about "networks" and "nodes" in this way, her aim -which she certainly achieves -is to move VOC historiography beyond simplistic constructions of "metropole" and "periphery." [8-9] Further, it allows Ward to think through the shared historical relationship between Indonesia and the Cape, so addressing important post-colonial questions around the politics 'New York: Cambridge University Press [www.cup.org], 2008. xvi + 340 pp., maps, bibliography, index. £45, US $85, cloth; ISBN 978-0-521-88586-7; paper; ISBN 978-0-521-74599-4; US $68, e-book; ISBN 978-0-511-46071-5.

Navigating Ethical Supply Chains: The Intersection of Diplomatic Management and Theological Ethics

“…In a global supply chain context, cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings or conflicts. However, by combining diplomatic strategies with theological ethics, organizations can approach cross-cultural communication with humility and a commitment to learning from one another [11]. For instance, a business with operations in several nations might run into different celebrations, customs, and working methods.…”

Moving beyond delinking, decoloniality and the pluriverse: reflections on the “decolonizing international business” debate

“…Instead, businesses took economic opportunities once (political) control was established in a colony. This perception contrasts with the argument that multinational corporations such as the British East India Company or the Dutch United East India Company driving colonisation (Robbins, 2012; Ward, 2009), and the role of finance, banking and naval companies during the age of discoveries and the transatlantic slave trade. Systematic research should investigate the role of business in initiating and maintaining colonial control, for example, through institutional work or lobbying for market access, and in exploiting opportunities of the colonial situation.…”

Murder in a quarry: violent encounters and distant intimacy on a Cape convict station

“…The history of the prison and confinement is one place to begin. Carceral histories remain underexamined in pre-industrial Southern Africa, but recent scholarship has connected the Cape Colony, in particular, to global circuits of exile and convict transportation, whether the traffic of convicted people or the circulation of ideas around policies and practices of punishment (Ward 2009;Anderson 2016). The coerced movement of these subaltern lives of criminal precarity reveals the extent to which race, travel and carcerality were common features of maritime-connected empires (Anderson 2012).…”

“…In the words of a convict superintendent, model convicts upon release were ‘valuable acquisitions to the laboring class’, 14 with hard labour increasingly considered the lot of black inhabitants because of lower wages and tighter labour laws. Nevertheless, the very lines between convicts, slavery and indenture had long been blurred within the Cape Colony and globally, especially during the Dutch period, with convicts and bonded labour often working alongside each other (Ward 2009: 239–82). In the post-abolition British Empire, these blurred categories of convictism and indenture continued to be noticeable, as in Mauritius (Allen 2014).…”