{"id":1280,"date":"2018-03-01T02:03:16","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T02:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2018-03-01T15:46:33","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T15:46:33","slug":"lessons-in-global-commerce-from-an-early-east-india-company-employee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2018\/03\/01\/lessons-in-global-commerce-from-an-early-east-india-company-employee\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons in global commerce (from an early East India Company employee)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily Soon<\/a> is a PhD candidate researching how early modern writers across a range of literary genres perceived the East Indies (principally, China, India and Southeast Asia) in early modern England. This blog was originally posted on Currently @ King’s<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

International trade hurts local communities. It causes economic hardship at home and destroys the environment, while the culture of consumerism it fuels is destroying our values and way of life.<\/p>\n

Similar sentiments to these recur across the media today: this so-called backlash against globalisation<\/a> is said to have contributed to Brexit and the rise of Trump, and to have transformed the shape of political movements across the world. This pent-up frustration seems to be quintessentially twenty-first century, the disillusioned rant of a world no longer charmed by the siren song of free trade and borderless commerce.<\/p>\n

And yet, the sentiments I began with are taken not from a present-day party political tract, but from a play written almost 400 years ago. While William Mountford\u2019s amateur dramatic effort, The Launching of the Mary: Or the Seaman\u2019s Honest Wife <\/em>(ca. 1632-3), may not be able to rival the plays of William Shakespeare or Ben Jonson \u2013 for a start, we do not know if the single handwritten text held in the British Library archives was ever performed \u2013 it does encapsulate, poignantly, the profound anxieties that have long attended the idea of international trade.<\/p>\n

\"Image
Image shows a map of the world. Creative Commons via Pixabay.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For despite the enthusiasm of Tudor adventurers such as Sebastian Cabot,<\/a> Martin Frobisher<\/a> and Walter Raleigh<\/a>, as well as of the founding members of the East India Company, the idea of England becoming involved in global commerce was initially a highly controversial one. When the East India Company\u2019s profits started to dwindle in the 1620s, two decades after the Company first began trading, public discomfort with the practice of investing astronomical sums of money on risky voyages to bring home spices, silks and other luxuries from Persia, India and Southeast Asia intensified.<\/p>\n

As the opponents of the so-called \u2018East Indian trade\u2019 in Mountford\u2019s play put it, England feared that international exchange would lead to \u2018Dearth. Death. Destruction: Beggerie\u2019 \u2013 <\/em>and all for the sake of importing goods that many felt London would be materially and morally better off without.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although the specific details of the complaints against international exchange then and now naturally differ, the essence of many of the concerns debated in seventeenth-century England remain highly relevant today. There was resentment at the government appearing to privilege the rights of the \u2018haves over the \u2018have-nots\u2019 by passing legislation that sanctioned the monopolistic behaviour of the East India Company; frustration at how much-needed resources were being diverted away from the domestic economy to service the putative investment needs of the moneyed elite; and, ultimately, rage at the injustices endured by the working-classes who formed the rank and file of East India Company employees. For the families of Company sailors, it was a constant financial struggle to make ends meet during the eighteen or so months that the ships, or \u2018East Indiamen\u2019, were away \u2013 and given the high mortality rate on Company ships and in Company settlements, the return of the vessels that did make it home was not always a happy one.<\/p>\n

As with any modern multi-national, the East India Company launched a slick public relations campaign to defend its practices, commissioning a series of propaganda pamphlets and perhaps even sponsoring the writing of Mountford\u2019s play.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

William Mountford was an employee of the East India Company, and while The Launching of the Mary <\/em>raises damning criticisms about Anglo-Asian trade, it does so in order to refute them, leading the play\u2019s first editor, John Henry Walter, to conclude that the play was probably penned with the intention of furthering the Company\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n

Hence, in response to the list of \u2018grumbling rumour[s]\u2019 trotted out against overseas exchange within The Launching of the Mary<\/em>, the play\u2019s East India Company officials reel off statistic after statistic to demonstrate that their trade is both necessary and beneficial to England. The Company, it alleges, not only generates employment opportunities and looks after its employees\u2019 families, but also enhances living conditions in local communities by contributing to various charitable causes\u00a0 \u2013 all arguments that continue to feature in the PR-speak of many a multi-national today.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Image shows a graph with an exaggerated downward trend. Creative Commons via Pixabay.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like many present-day corporate videos and political addresses, Mountford\u2019s play supplements its phalanx of purported facts with the affecting case study of a single individual \u2013 in this case, the life-experiences of Dorothea Constance, the titular seaman\u2019s \u2018Honest Wife\u2019. However, unlike so much of the corporate or political spin circulating nowadays, the play does not straightforwardly enlist the audience\u2019s sympathy for the individual in question in order to drum up support for its main message.<\/p>\n

Mountford uses the tale of Dorothea to complicate, even subvert, the play\u2019s glib defence of the East India trade: the Company\u2019s claim that it provides for the families of its employees is undermined by Dorothea\u2019s testimony that she, and \u2018thousands more\u2019 like her, struggle from the \u2018want of means\u2019 during their husbands\u2019 absence at sea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite Dorothea\u2019s defiant insistence that she is \u2018[h]appy\u2019 with her life, the audience cannot help but join the sympathetic Captain FitzJohn in \u2018wish[ing] [\u2026] more\u2019 could be done to alleviate her suffering.<\/p>\n

While, artistically speaking, The Launching of the Mary<\/em> may not have that much to offer aspiring writers hoping to learn the art of writing compelling drama (it is difficult to imagine any audience being enthralled by its lengthy litanies of spice prices) it does, however unwittingly and unexpectedly, offer a pertinent lesson for policy makers today. By interweaving scenes featuring the Company\u2019s supporters dogmatically defending their trade with those highlighting the more complex experiences of Dorothea Constance, the play highlights the very real tension that exists between the long-term, macro-level economic benefits many believe international commerce can deliver, and the immediate, local costs such pursuits often involve.<\/p>\n

Quite simply, the play, as a work of literature, reminds us that there are no easy ways of reconciling the competing demands of the local and the global.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All too often, today\u2019s politicians and policy makers present the public with a series of carefully curated statistics and case-studies calculated to convince their audience that their proposal is the one true solution to the subject at hand. This selective approach perpetuates the fantasy that it is possible to find the perfect panacea for any given social woe, and intensifies public disillusionment when the vaunted solution fails to deliver. Rather than perpetuate this vicious cycle, perhaps it is time to acknowledge openly and \u00a0interrogate earnestly the trade-offs that global trade inevitably generates. William Mountford, for one, would approve.<\/p>\n

\n

You may also like to read:<\/p>\n

Early Modern Verbatim Theatre<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

From Broadcast to Podcast: Reflections on Radio, Resistance and Legacies of the BBC World Service<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Blog posts on King\u2019s English represent the views of the individual authors and neither those of the English Department, nor of King\u2019s College London. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Soon is a PhD candidate researching how early modern writers across a range of literary genres perceived the East Indies (principally, China, India and Southeast Asia) in early modern England. This blog was originally posted on Currently @ King’s. International trade hurts local communities. It causes economic hardship at home and destroys the environment, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":1282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,26,28],"tags":[414,417,416,404,54,419,415,418],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colonial-postcolonial-and-transnational-culture","category-culture-text-and-history","category-early-modern-and-shakespeare","tag-early-modern","tag-east-india-company","tag-exchange","tag-globalisation","tag-modernity","tag-post-modernity","tag-trade","tag-william-mountford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}