Die Stadt Suratta.

Title

Die Stadt Suratta.

Description

Het gezandtschap der Neêrlandtsche Oost-Indische Compagnie, aan den grooten Tartarischen Cham, Den tegenwoordigen Keizer van China: waar in de gedenkwaerdigste geschiedenissen... beneffens een naauwkeurige Beschryvinge der Sineesche Steden, Dorpen, Regeering... Gewassen, Dieren... Published by W. Waasberge in Amsterdam, a.d. 1693.

ca. 1693

Artist

Nieuhoff (1618-1672)

Johan Nieuhof was a Dutch globetrotter. Nieuhof stayed in Brazil from 1640 to 1649. It was the time when the Dutch West Indian Company tried to take trading bases from the Portuguese. Unlike in Indonesia, the Portuguese managed to undo the initial successes of the Dutch and thus keep Brazil to themselves. Nieuhof got to know China as a member of a Dutch delegation to the Imperial Court of Beijing (1655–1657). The long journey from Canton to Beijing, by land and water, is the subject of the first part of Nieuhof's China report. The second part of Nieuhof's China book is devoted to a systematic description of "country and people" and the history of the country. Two reasons may explain the book's popularity at the time: There was the most comprehensive account of China to date, based on Nieuhof's own observations as well as the most important and Jesuit sources of the time. In addition, the 150 engravings gave the European reader the most realistic visual image of China to date. At the beginning of the 1660s, Nieuhof came to India. He was part of the armed forces of the East Indian Company that took a number of trading towns on the south coast of India from the Portuguese. From 1663 to 1666, he was director of the company's branches on the Malabar coast. Then, however, there were disputes with the governor general in Batavia. First Nieuhof was transferred to Sri Lanka, 1667 he left the service of the company. Nieuhof's experiences in India and Indonesia appeared in a separate work, which was bound together with the work on "West India" (Brazil). Nieuhof's reports on India and Indonesia are all the more valuable as a source because he knew many of the described areas from his own experience and in these cases did not have to refer to older literature. Johan Nieuhof gave one of the best descriptions of old Batavia, where he lived from 1667 to 1670 as a private person. In 1672 the ship he was sailing to Batavia anchored off Madagascar. Together with a landing party, Nieuhof went ashore to look for drinking water and remained missing with his companions. Because of his desire to travel, Joan Nieuhof never had the time to write a book. His brother Hendrik worked on and published his three works based on his notes.

Historical Description

After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity and religion, repeatedly overran South Asia's north-western plains, leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206. The sultanate was to control much of North India and to make many forays into South India. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs. By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia, setting the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north. The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire. Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control much of peninsular India and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards. n the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors. The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule. Instead, it balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty, expressed through a Persianised culture, to an emperor who had near-divine status. The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets. Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience. By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial and political dominance being increasingly blurred, a number of European trading companies, including the English East India Company, had established coastal outposts. The East India Company's control of the seas, greater resources, and more advanced military training and technology led it to increasingly flex its military muscle and caused it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite; these factors were crucial in allowing the company to gain control over the Bengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies.