Petrus Woskan, 1680-1750: The Life and Times of an Early Modern Merchant

佩特鲁斯·沃斯坎 (Petrus Woskan)，1680-1750 年：一位早期现代商人的生活和时代

• 批准号: 509084460
• 负责人: Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya, Ph.D.
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/509084460?language=en
• 关键词: Petrus; Woskan; 1680; 1750; Life

Khwaja Petrus Woskan, a Catholic Armenian merchant left New Julfa for Madras in 1705 CE. At his death in 1750 CE, he was the most prominent Armenian in the town. The unique autobiographical last will and testament Petrus Woskan wrote is a text-book example of a rags to riches life-story. This project will bring out a critical annotated edition of this unpublished archival document.How did a merchant, who as per his own testimony had not received any help from family or friends, build his career? What do his achievements inform us about the political economy of the Indian Ocean? Contrary to the accepted wisdom that the network of Armenian commerce was an exclusive coalition of Apostolic Armenians of New Julfa (Aslanian 2011), this unique unpublished document offers crucial information on the role of Armenian Catholics in global commerce. It speaks of a cosmopolitan world in which migrants in a stranger society could, by dint of their own enterprise, arrange capital and build networks of trade spanning at least half the globe. It helps us to understand how an individual merchant negotiated the larger processes and structures of world history as he created cross-cultural and trans-regional networks across imperial borders and created a place for himself in it.Additionally, the information on principal–agent relationship in a merchant network and centre-periphery relations in the document calls for a review of the existing knowledge of these aspects of merchant networks (Aslanian 2011; Braudel 1986; Markovits 2001; Khachikian 1998). I argue that it is necessary to understand the larger context with polyglot ports and the global economic connections providing career opportunities to agents of cross-cultural encounters such as the author of the testamentary account. I shall use insights from the current testament, other legal documents pertaining to other Armenian merchants in view of the theories of institutional economics (Greif 2006; Hart 2017, 1995), business history (Dekker, Kipping and Wadhwani 2015; Roy 2018), Anglo-Indian legal history, the field (Bourdieu 2002) and, Asian cosmopolitanism (Lefèvre et al 2015; Subrahmanyam 2018) to explain the organization of commercial activities of Petrus Woskan and his partners. I also underline the importance of etic sources for a reconstruction of the cross-cultural mercantile culture of the time.The result will be a hybrid product with an e-book, and a paper copy comparable to the recently published edited text of the travel account of Minas Bžškeanć in Eastern Europe (Kovács and Grigoryan 2019). The text with the accompanying annotated introduction will benefit further understanding of the organisation of global commerce in the Indian Ocean and especially, the life of the early modern liminal diasporic merchants.

Khwaja Petrus Woskan是一位信奉天主教的亚美尼亚商人，于1705年离开新朱尔法前往马德拉斯。1750年去世时，他是该镇最著名的亚美尼亚人。独特的自传体最后遗嘱和遗嘱彼得鲁斯沃斯坎写的是一个教科书的例子，一个白手起家的生活故事。这个项目将为这份未出版的档案文件带来一个重要的注释版。一个商人，根据他自己的证词，没有得到家人或朋友的任何帮助，是如何建立他的职业生涯的？他的成就对我们了解印度洋的政治经济有什么启示？与亚美尼亚商业网络是新Julfa的使徒亚美尼亚人的独家联盟（Aslanian 2011）的公认智慧相反，这份独特的未出版文件提供了关于亚美尼亚天主教徒在全球商业中作用的重要信息。 它谈到了一个国际化的世界，在这个世界里，陌生社会的移民可以凭借自己的企业安排资本，建立至少跨越半个地球仪的贸易网络。它有助于我们理解一个商人如何在世界历史的更大进程和结构中进行谈判，因为他跨越帝国边界创造了跨文化和跨区域的网络，并在其中为自己创造了一个位置。本文中关于商家网络中的委托-代理关系和中心-外围关系的信息要求对商家网络的这些方面的现有知识进行回顾（Aslanian 2011; Braudel 1986; Markovits 2001; Khachikian 1998）。我认为，有必要了解更大的背景下与多语言的港口和全球经济联系提供职业机会的代理人的跨文化接触，如作者的遗嘱帐户。我将使用从目前的遗嘱，其他法律的文件有关其他亚美尼亚商人在制度经济学的理论观点的见解（Greif 2006;哈特2017，1995），商业史（Dekker，Kipping和Wadhwani 2015; Roy 2018），盎格鲁-印度法律的历史，该领域（Bourdieu 2002）和亚洲世界主义（Lefèvre et al 2015; Subrahmanyam 2018），以解释Petrus Woskan及其合作伙伴的商业活动组织。我还强调了客位来源对于重建当时跨文化商业文化的重要性。其结果将是一本电子书和一本纸质书的混合产品，可与最近出版的编辑过的米纳斯·布日什凯安奇在东欧的旅行记录（Kovács和Grigoryan 2019）相媲美。文本与随附的注释介绍将有助于进一步了解印度洋的全球商业组织，特别是早期现代边缘散居商人的生活。