Bhaswati Bhattacharya
Profiel
Part-time lecturer, Faculty of Arts and History, Erasmus University
Courses taught: Globalization and History; Comparative Area Studies (South Asia)
Coordinator, Asia-Link Project, Leiden University
A heritage project initiated at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and funded by the European Union. The project involves making a documentary on Indo-Dutch heritage.
Reviews editor, The Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Research Project: Colonial Commodities and Indigenous Modernity: Tea and Coffee in Asia, 1850- 2000 (tentative title).
New commodities/drinks are linked with the rise of modernity in the West--industrial time, work discipline, notions of nation/empire, urban life, practices of gender, class and family. The main question is: What has been the long-term impact of the process of adopting modernity on the production relations?
Has taught different courses on socio-economic history of South Asia in the modern period and international commerce in the Indian Ocean in the early modern period in the university of Leiden, the Netherlands and Rabindra-Bharati University, Kolkata, and Vidyasagar University, Medinipur, West Bengal India
Areas of interest: Socio-economic history with special reference to commercial networks; Indian Ocean commerce / global history in the early modern period; networks of Armenian commerce; culture of production and consumption of colonial commodities
Other activities: Has collaborated as advisor and researcher with the production of two documentaries on the Nobel Prize winner Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore: Rabindranath Tagore (OHM, 1995), and 'Wie kijkt er door mijn ogen' (Feniks Film Company (2007) Free lance translator for asylum seekers, especially from Bangladesh.
Major Publications since 2003
'Making money at the Blessed Place of Manila: Armenians in the Madras-Manila Trade in the Eighteenth Century', Journal of Global History, 3, (2008), 1- 20.
The "Book of Will" of Petrus Woskan (1680-1751): Some Insights into the Global Commercial Network of the Armenians in the Indian Ocean, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 51, 1 (2008), 67-98.
Co-editor, together with Gita Dharampal-Frick and Jos Gommans, "The World of Asian Commerce: Temporal and Spatial Continuities" theme issue Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient,50 (2007): 2-3.
'Armenian-European relationship in India, 1500-1800: No Armenian foundation of the European Colonial Empire?' Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO), 48 (2005), 2: 277-323.
'Between Fact and Fiction: Khwaja Gregory or Gurguin Khan: the 'evil genius' of Mir Qasim' in Jos Gommans and Om Prakash eds. Circumambulations in History: Essays in Honour of Professor D. H. A. Kolff, Leiden, 2003, 133-158.
'Networks of Asian Merchants of Coromandel', in Om Prakash ed., The World of Asian Merchants, History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, general editor D. P. Chattopadhyaya, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
'Armenian merchants in the Indian Ocean world', in Om Prakash ed., The World of Asian Merchants, History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, general editor D. P. Chattopadhyaya, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
'Khoja Petrus Woskan, an Armenian Merchant in India, 1680-1751: a study of his 'Book of Will' Editing together with D. Heijlijgers, De Indische Reis van J.K. de Cock, 1909-10 (The Indian Diaries of J. K. de Cock)