In the history of empires, especially commercial empires, forms of social and economic history have always dominated, whether on a macro or micro level. The history of knowledge and science has added another layer, most recently the history of ignorance: How were empires also epistemic structures fed and driven by Western and indigenous knowledge and its dark side, ignorance? These three volumes—this first volume concentrates on book history—contribute to the latter line of research by asking what kind of books, news, and newspapers European merchants and company agents read, imported, and owned abroad. In this first volume, my focus is on the small size of European foreign libraries in the Mediterranean and India until about 1750. I emphasize their careful selection of content, their diversity, and, perhaps counterintuitively, their high degree of specialization and the exclusivity of their individual collections to be analyzed in household and auction inventories, registered after the death or bankruptcy of a person in the consular chancery or company court registers. This reflects the “truly early modern” character of the cultural side story of European global economic expansion. The second volume focuses on the reception and reading of Western news and newspapers abroad in their coexistence with indigenous news circulations such as the Indian akhbārāt. The third volume revisits the study of book ownership in the Mediterranean and India after 1750 and shows, mainly for Bengal, the emergence of a new form of standardized, if not “mass,” libraries owned by the British servants of the East India Company. This brings with it the manifestation of a (first?) standardized Western canon in Asia, despite a still high degree of specialization and purposeful selection of library contents, which is a truly “early modern” sequence of developments. The first chapter of this first volume provides an overview of the established historiography of book ownership in Western cities, highlighting the French and southern European traditions rooted in cultural history, the Dutch and British traditions often rooted in the history of consumption, and the German and Scandinavian additions to this broad picture. Overall, early modern ownership of Western books outside of Europe remains an understudied field. The small size of the libraries and their purposeful selection due to the limitations of transportation leads to a methodological point: In this early period it is more a matter of a “bibliothecography,” not of describing an “average” character. I propose that the characterization of each library should not be equated with the “biography” or mental map of its owner, but that it should at least allow one to approach the aggregated sum of the sequence of choices manifested by such a list or catalog of titles. Hence, the history of book ownership does not result in a complete sociohistorical prosopography of imperial agents. However, it does contribute to an understanding of the cultural formation of trading empires abroad.

Introduction

章节
发表日期：

2026年

查看全文

Cornel Zwierlein

摘要

In the history of empires, especially commercial empires, forms of social and economic history have always dominated, whether on a macro or micro level. The history of knowledge and science has added another layer, most recently the history of ignorance: How were empires also epistemic structures fed and driven by Western and indigenous knowledge and its dark side, ignorance? These three volumes—this first volume concentrates on book history—contribute to the latter line of research by asking what kind of books, news, and newspapers European merchants and company agents read, imported, and owned abroad. In this first volume, my focus is on the small size of European foreign libraries in the Mediterranean and India until about 1750. I emphasize their careful selection of content, their diversity, and, perhaps counterintuitively, their high degree of specialization and the exclusivity of their individual collections to be analyzed in household and auction inventories, registered after the death or bankruptcy of a person in the consular chancery or company court registers. This reflects the “truly early modern” character of the cultural side story of European global economic expansion. The second volume focuses on the reception and reading of Western news and newspapers abroad in their coexistence with indigenous news circulations such as the Indian akhbārāt. The third volume revisits the study of book ownership in the Mediterranean and India after 1750 and shows, mainly for Bengal, the emergence of a new form of standardized, if not “mass,” libraries owned by the British servants of the East India Company. This brings with it the manifestation of a (first?) standardized Western canon in Asia, despite a still high degree of specialization and purposeful selection of library contents, which is a truly “early modern” sequence of developments. The first chapter of this first volume provides an overview of the established historiography of book ownership in Western cities, highlighting the French and southern European traditions rooted in cultural history, the Dutch and British traditions often rooted in the history of consumption, and the German and Scandinavian additions to this broad picture. Overall, early modern ownership of Western books outside of Europe remains an understudied field. The small size of the libraries and their purposeful selection due to the limitations of transportation leads to a methodological point: In this early period it is more a matter of a “bibliothecography,” not of describing an “average” character. I propose that the characterization of each library should not be equated with the “biography” or mental map of its owner, but that it should at least allow one to approach the aggregated sum of the sequence of choices manifested by such a list or catalog of titles. Hence, the history of book ownership does not result in a complete sociohistorical prosopography of imperial agents. However, it does contribute to an understanding of the cultural formation of trading empires abroad.