Improvising Empire

Download or read book Improvising Empire written by Sanjay Subrahmanyam and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1990 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the general outline of the history of Portuguese expansion in Asia is rather well-known, many areas that were hubs of trade and settlement have been only briefly studied. One of the most conspicuous of those is the Bay of Bengal, where the Portuguese had an important official and unofficial presence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The product of extensive research in Indian, Portuguese, and Netherland archives, this collection of essays is the first substantial treatment of the Portuguese presence in the Bay of Bengal. The work of an economic historian, the volume offers important insight into the nature of early modern European expansion and imperialism, urban history, and colonial social history.