Readings - week 4

Question 1

Ralph A. Austen, Monsters of Protocolonial Economic Enterprise:
Why does Ralph A. Austen consider the Dutch and English East India Companies and the Atlantic slave plantations proto-colonial?

Answer 1

1. Didn’t significantly involve the colonized people like many other later colonial or postcolonial subjects of studies
   2, Eventually transformed into territorial rule with colonial subjects
2. Violent international coercion (force used against other Europeans to protect their business and maintain enslaved people captive than against indigenous populations)

Question 2

Ralph A. Austen, Monsters of Protocolonial Economic Enterprise:
Who were the main figures of

Answer 2

Private-sector merchants and planters with

Question 3

Ralph A. Austen, Monsters of Protocolonial Economic Enterprise:
Who were the main figures of the Dutch and English East India Companies and the Atlantic slave plantations?

Answer 3

1. Private-sector merchants and planters with claims of citizenship (Europe)
2. Commercial partners (Asia and Africa)
3. Slaves defined as chattel (Caribbean)

Question 4

Ralph A. Austen, Monsters of Protocolonial Economic Enterprise:
Who were the main figures of the Dutch and English East India Companies and the Atlantic slave plantations?

Answer 4

1. Private-sector merchants and planters with claims of citizenship (Europe)
2. Commercial partners (Asia and Africa)
3. Slaves defined as chattel (Caribbean)

Question 5

Ralph A. Austen, Monsters of Protocolonial Economic Enterprise:
When did colonial subjects fully come into existence?

Answer 5

After African and Indian “factories” (coastal trading posts) expand their territorial control inland and Caribbean slaves were emancipated

Question 6

Ralph A. Austen, Monsters of Protocolonial Economic Enterprise:
What compromised the capitalist characteristic of the Dutch and English East India Companies and the Atlantic slave plantations?

Answer 6

Restraints on both markets and labor

Question 7

Ralph A. Austen, Monsters of Protocolonial Economic Enterprise:
How are we to specify the rise and fall of such economic systems within our larger understanding of capitalism?

Answer 7

Classical approach - treat them as examples of pre-capitalist development

More recent approaches - note the distinctions between these institutions and modern industrial capitalism as indicators less of archaism than of precocious resemblances to a“postmodern”global“hypercapitalism.”T