Cultural Hybridisation and Early Modern Globalisation: 17th Century English Corporations and the Development of a Global Dialogue about Governance

本项目探讨了17世纪英国在海外的显著商业扩张与她的政府（政治和商业）的深刻变化之间的关系，这些变化定义了17世纪英国的国内历史。它考察了17世纪英国跨国贸易公司的国际和国内业务。它展示了这些公司如何为将非欧洲的政治和商业政府的思想和做法引入英国提供了一个渠道。它揭示了17世纪英国参与全球化的一个未被重视的特点：海外经历如何混合了英国人关于政府的思想和实践，以及这种混合如何催化了全球化。17世纪英国的宪法改革与其同时进行的海外扩张之间的联系还有待探讨。这个项目使用了我之前对17世纪英国贸易公司在国内外的文化和政治运作的研究。在试图向海外展示和谈判英国利益的过程中，这些公司吸收了大量非欧洲监管（政治和经济）技术。这种吸收使英国人拓宽了他们对治理的理解，超越了传统的人文主义刻板印象，即“专制”或“自由”政权，到商业、自由、政治经济的概念多样性和弹性。通过这种方式，他们在国外的文化敏感性为英国人在政府管理方面提供了更大的概念和实践灵活性。这种灵活性有助于解释17世纪的宪法和经济变化，以及随后几个世纪英国人（当时的英国人）持续的国际扩张。这个项目有助于我们理解英国内外的宪法、政治、经济和意识形态变化的国际、文化决定因素。它通过从思想史，文化地理学，商业史到后殖民批判理论的各种文献，将早期现代，全球，宪法，帝国和经济史带入新的和令人兴奋的方向。该项目重点关注东印度、黎凡特、弗吉尼亚、马萨诸塞湾、皇家非洲、哈德逊湾和俄罗斯公司作为国际政治和经济监管的载体。这些公司为文化融合的所有四个阶段提供了思想、人员和基础设施：刻板印象、翻译、适应和“反馈”。这些公司的特许状通过将其非欧洲贸易伙伴定型为野蛮人来证明其垄断权利的正当性。他们的海外官员翻译了他们遇到的非欧洲文化，并吸收了这些文化提供的教训。这些公司的海外高管与伦敦董事之间的通信表明，他们在海外（例如在孟买）形成的混合型治理如何影响了国内的治理方式。这些公司提供了一个统一的制度和文化背景，以理解治理文化的混合，就像芬廷人、易洛魁人、莫古尔人和费城克里奥尔人一样多样化。该项目将在国际上传播其研究成果，包括一篇经过评审的期刊文章、一篇国际会议的会议论文和一篇研究专著。它还将通过安排两个研讨会，与参与国际政策、商业和慈善文化的专业人士一起反思全球化和文化混合。这些课程将提供17世纪的文化混合案例研究，以聚焦英国如何在21世纪管理其国际关系，以提高英国公共服务的有效性，并加强英国经济的辩论。通过这种方式，该项目的研究和影响雄心与AHRC的翻译文化重点通知相结合。

This project explores the relationships between England's remarkable commercial expansion overseas in the 17th century and the profound changes to her government (political and commercial) that define England's domestic history in the 17th century. It examines the international and domestic operations of England's 17th century multinational trading companies. It shows how these companies provided a conduit for the importing of non-European ideas and practices about political and commercial government into England. It uncovers an unappreciated feature of England's involvement in globalisation in the 17th century: how experience overseas hybridised English thought and practice about government and how this hybridisation catalysed globalisation. Connections between constitutional change in 17th century England and her concurrent overseas expansion are yet to be explored. This project uses my prior research into the cultural and political operations, at home and abroad, of England's 17th century trading companies. In trying to project and negotiate English interests overseas, these companies absorbed a wide array of non-European regulatory (political and economic) techniques. This absorption allowed the English to broaden their understanding of governance beyond traditional humanist stereotypes, which involved either 'despotic' or 'free' regimes, to the conceptual variety and elasticity of commercial, liberal, political economies. In this way, their cultural sensitivity abroad provided the English with greater conceptual and practical flexibility when it came to government. This flexibility helps explain the constitutional and economic changes of the 17th century and the continued international expansion of the English (then British) in subsequent centuries. This project contributes to our understanding of the international, cultural determinants of constitutional, political, economic, and ideological change inside and outside England. It takes early modern, global, constitutional, imperial, and economic history in new and exciting directions by engaging diverse literatures from intellectual history, cultural geography, business history, to post-colonial critical theory. The project focuses on the East India, Levant, Virginia, Massachusetts Bay, Royal African, Hudson's Bay, and Russia Companies as vehicles of international political and economic regulation. These corporations provided the ideas, personnel, and infrastructure for all four stages of cultural hybridisation: stereotyping, translation, accommodation, and 'feedbacking'. The companies' charters justified their monopoly rights by stereotyping their non-European trading partners as barbaric. Their overseas officials translated the non-European cultures they encountered and accommodated the lessons these cultures offered. Correspondence between the companies' overseas officials and their London directors demonstrate how the hybrid governance they developed overseas, (in Bombay, for example) influenced domestic approaches to government. The companies provide a uniform institutional and cultural context to understand the hybridisation of governance cultures as diverse as the Fanteen, the Iroquois, the Moghul, and creole Philadelphia.The project will disseminate its research findings internationally in a refereed journal article, a conference paper at an international conference, and a research monograph. It will also reflect on globalisation and cultural hybridisation with professionals involved in the international policy, business, and charity cultures by scheduling two workshops. These will offer 17th century case studies of cultural hybridisation to focus debate about how Britain might manage its international relations in the 21st century to enhance the effectiveness of British public services and strengthen the British economy. In this way, the project's research and impact ambitions engage with the AHRC's Translating Cultures highlight notice.