(Vortrag bei der 11. Arbeitstagung der AG Frühe Neuzeit / Conference "Rethinking Early Modern Europe in a Global Perspective", Heidelberg)

Early modern lives were potentially global. Through letters, individuals living such global lives were able to establish functioning „we relationships“ over long temporal and spatial distances. Based on the surviving letters in the Prize Papers, it is possible to understand on a micro level how early modern individuals faced and handled their own globality.

Frühneuzeitliche Leben waren potentiell global. Mit Hilfe von Briefen konnten Individuen, die solch globale Leben lebten, funktionierende „We Relationships“ über lange räumliche und zeitliche Distanzen hinweg etablieren. Auf Grundlage der überlieferten Briefe in den Prize Papers ist es möglich, auf der Mikroebene nachzuvollziehen, wie frühneuzeitliche Individuen sich ihrer eigenen Globalität stellten und wie sie mit ihr umgingen.

In 1689 The English East India Company settlement of Bombay came under siege by forces loyal to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, with whom the East India Company had unwisely gone to war. That siege, which lasted over a year, decimated the English garrison and virtually destroyed the town. Ultimately the Company was forced to sue for peace on unfavorable terms, and the blow to its prestige almost led the English parliament to abolish the Company entirely.

The Siege of Bombay poses many questions for the historian, about English and Mughal conceptions of racial and religious difference, about early modern warfare, about boundary crossing, and about the long-lasting effects of traumatic memory.

This presentation first looked at the Siege from a microhistorical perspective, using eyewitness accounts to explore the stresses and strains on both the attacking army annd the defenders. It then stepped back to ask how this kind of microhistory can help us rethink master narratives about early European expansion and point us to new narratives of connectedness, causality and change over time.

(Young Researcher’s Workshop “Becoming ‘Self’, becoming ‘subject’. Perspectives and Theories on the question of Subjectivation”, Université Paris 7 – Diderot, Paris)