1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910227343703321

Autore

Feddersen Carl Fredrik

Titolo

Principled Pragmatism: VOC Interaction with Makassar 1637-68, and the Nature of Company Diplomacy / Carl Fredrik Feddersen

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Oslo, : Cappelen Damm Akademisk/NOASP (Nordic Open Access Scholarly Publishing), 2017

[s.l.] : , : Cappelen Damm Forskning, , 2017

ISBN

9788202566609

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (375)

Soggetti

Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Sommario/riassunto

In this study of the Dutch East India Company the author uses the Company's seventeenth century diplomatic interaction with the trading Sultanate of Macassar, on the southwestern tip of present day Sulawesi, as a case in cross cultural diplomacy. The author argues that the outlook of the Company's agents both home and overseas was pragmatic, as was the nature of the solutions to the problems they faced. In doing so, the author challenges propositions of Company ethnocentric tunnel vision in its thinking about, and practice of overseas diplomacy. He also run counter with propositions that the communication between Company agents and their Asian friends and foes represented a miscommunication caused by structural cultural barriers. The study is based on analysis of the political language of the Company at the respective levels of operation.