【Date】
June 20 (Tue), 5:00-6:30 p.m.

【Venue】
Ground Floor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo

【Speaker】
Ali Humayun Akhtar (Bates College, USA)

【Title】
Reorienting the Dutch East India Company: Europeans as Inter-Asian Brokers in Jakarta and Nagasaki

【Commentator】
Yoko Matsui (Professor, Historiographical Institute, The University of Tokyo)

【Abstract】
This talk aims to reconceptualize the role of European maritime companies in inter-Asian cultural history. At the heart of this talk are two questions: In the era of Japan’s sakoku (seclusion) period in the 1600s, why did Japanese diplomats choose to wear silk textiles with Persian, Indian, and Southeast Asian designs? Given that Japan developed cultural connections with other parts of Asia long before the arrival of the Dutch, can historians understand the early Dutch merchants as “inter-Asian cultural brokers”? Bringing together visual examples of textiles and objects, this presentation highlights the two-way movement of objects and ideas between Japan and various parts of Asia during the Edo era.

※Seminar will be held in English.