Trade communities, cultural interaction and foreign exchanges in Canton, Bengal and Nagasaki. A comparative approach against the background of China's foreign policy during the Ming-Qing period (18th century)

This PhD research is a comparative historical anthropology of cross-cultural interaction and local exchange-relations in late 18th-century China (Guangzhou), Japan (Dejima) and India (Bengal & Ganges-delta region).In this research, cross-cultural interaction is considered as a specific process consisting of improvised encounters and practical exchanges as performative elements of connected histories. It investigates the cultural dimension and re-contextualisation of such exchanges involving European maritime traders (mostly from an Ostend Company and VOC- background) and Muslim trading networks, through a 'connected comparison' of above-mentioned localities, placed in the wider framework of an Indian Ocean World. Finally, this research also attempts to include a critical theoretical perspective on early-modern 'world history'.The PhD.-research is part of a larger international & interdisciplinary research project on Chinese global maritime history called  "Seafaring, Trade and Knowledge Transfer: Maritme Politics and Commerce in Early Middle Period to Early Modern China" (funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung and supervised by Prof. Dr. Angela Schottenhammer of Salzburg University).