Rhetorics of globalization are best understood through the concept of risk. This dissertation traces the history of contemporary globalization back to the encounters of the English East India Company (EIC) from the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries with foreign trading cultures through primary journals, records, and guidebooks. I also contrast the EIC approach with the <i>sulh-i-kull</i> approach of the Mughal Empire. I conclude that the EIC cultivated risk to override ethical considerations of the Other, invent the private sphere, and lay the bedrock of contemporary capitalism.

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of how different Christian traditions are described in Sweden during the second half of the 18th century. This thesis presents examples of how Swedes could look at different Christian traditions. The object of study has been Jacob Wallenberg's famous travel writing Min son på galejan and Wallenberg’s view on various Christian traditions. Wallenberg travels as a chaplain aboard the ship Finland which travels for the Swedish East India Company to China. Wallenberg meets several different people, cultures and sees different types of practices on his journey to China, and therefore Min son på galejan can be seen as a book worth analyzing, it is also relevant because it is relatively well known. The theoretical framework in this study is mainly based on Stuart Hall's theory of representation and therefore the focus is largely on trying to understand how different Christian traditions are represented based on the content of Min son på galejan. The method used to answer the research questions is a content analysis, the focus has mainly been on illustrate what the contexts looked like and how different Christian traditions were portrayed, thus shedding light on how these traditions were valued. In summary Wallenberg valued different traditions differently, the Lutheran tradition Wallenberg mainly portrayed as something desirable but there existed examples where Wallenberg criticized persons with Lutheran belief. Non-Lutheran Christian traditions were mostly portrayed by Wallenberg in a critical and satirical manner and were therefore seen as something less desirable compared to Lutheranism.

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From 1613 to 1623, the English East India Company (EIC) maintained a trading post at Hirado, Japan. This trading post was one of the first that the EIC established, and because England was far from the empire it would one day become, Company members had to adjust to local customs and respect the laws of Japan in order to conduct business there. Among the many adaptations the EIC factors underwent, frequent visits to the Tokugawa shogun’s court were required of the EIC. This thesis will investigate the EIC’s journeys to the shogun’s court as well as its time at court to study the way in which the English interacted with the Japanese and conformed to Japanese society. This thesis will also discuss practices of gift giving in which the English participated. This study uses the diary of Richard Cocks, the head of the Hirado trading post, to focus on the period between 1615 and 1622. Alison Games’s concept of “cosmopolitanism” and Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s concept of “connected histories” frame this study to demonstrate how England’s and the EIC’s relatively weak status at the beginning of the seventeenth century required EIC members to assimilate into Japanese society. The EIC’s experiences while traveling through Japan, visiting the shogun’s court, and exchanging gifts emphasized the power difference between the EIC and the Tokugawa shogunate and other high-ranking Japanese. The policies the shogunate enforced to strengthen its authority and prevent rebellions also required the EIC to demonstrate their subservience to the shogun’s power, which affected the Company’s ability to trade. Since the English did not hold the authority to make demands of the shogun, they were forced to abide by the laws and customs of the land, which only further served to emphasize their subordinate position to the shogunate.

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In much existing literature the incidence of sexual violence during Hindu-Muslim conflict has been attributed to the militant ideology of Hindu nationalism. This thesis interrogates this view. It first examines the ideological framework laid down by the founding ideologues of the Hindu nationalist movement with respect to sexual violence. I argue that a justification of sexual violence against Muslim women is at the core of their ideology. In order to examine how this ideology has contributed to the actual incidents, this thesis studies the episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence that occurred in 1969, 1985, 1992 and 2002 in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. An examination of these episodes shows that sexual violence against Muslim women, in both extreme and less extreme forms, were significantly motivated by Hindu nationalist ideology. However, in addition to this ideology, patriarchal ideas that serve to normalize sexual violence as ‘sex’ and sanction its infliction to maintain gendered hierarchies also motivated such crimes. Moreover, this thesis argues that the manifestation of Hindu nationalist and patriarchal motivations in acts of sexual violence was enabled by the breakdown of neighbourhood ties between Hindus and Muslims in 1969 and 2002. By contrast, during the 1985 and 1992 riots Hindus and Muslims strengthened neighbourhood ties despite extensive communal mobilization, which seems to have prevented the perpetration of extreme sexual violence against Muslim women. Thus, by providing a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of Hindu nationalist ideology, and arguing for the significance of the patriarchal ideas and neighbourhood ties in the infliction of sexual violence during conflict, this study contributes to and departs from the existing literature.

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This thesis explores the 1670 to 1683 trading relationship between the English East India Company and the Zheng family, a Ming loyalist organisation that controlled Taiwan in the late seventeenth century. It draws on the available sources of data for the Zheng family’s trading network to create an analysis of how the network functioned and developed, and then applies the available information from the East India Company’s records to understand how the company’s trade to Taiwan developed. The Zheng family’s trade was altered by their participation in the Sanfan Rebellion during the 1670s. The rebellion commercially isolated the Zheng family from mainland China, which in turn gave the East India Company an opportunity to supply substitute goods for the Zheng family’s trade elsewhere. However, the rebellion also weakened the Zheng family and brought about their surrender of Taiwan to Qing China, which ended the company’s trade there as well. / History

The play Batavia re-tells the story of a Dutch East India Company ship, wrecked off the West Australian coast in 1628. In writing Batavia, I consider issues of ethics and pragmatics in deciding how best to use or adapt historical sources--choices often between historical accuracy and effectiveness on stage. The playscript illustrates choices made. The exegesis examines the literature surrounding these considerations, and looks at other writers' comments and approaches to the problem. It suggests a pragmatics of playwrighting is well grounded in philosophy and is a more fruitful approach than the traditional 'ethical' approach.

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