The Company Fortress

Military Engineering and the Dutch East India Company in South Asia, 1638-1795
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-8728-346-9
Verlag: Leiden University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 4, 308 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Colonial and Global History through Dutch Sources

The remains of Dutch East India Company forts are scattered throughout littoral Asia and Africa. But how important were the specific characteristics of European bastion-trace fortifications to Early Modern European expansion? The Company Fortress takes on this question by studying the system of fortifications built and maintained by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in present-day India and Sri Lanka. It uncovers the stories of the forts and their designers, arguing that many of these engineers were in fact amateurs and their creations contained serious flaws. Subsequent engineers were hampered by their disagreement over fortification design: there proved not to be a single ‘European school’ of fortification design. The study questions the importance of fortification design for European expansion, shows the relationship between siege and naval warfare, and highlights changing perceptions by the VOC of the capabilities of new polities in India in the late eighteenth century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Odegard, Erik

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Geschichte der Architektur, Baugeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Gebäudetypen Palastbauten, Burgen, Festungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents

Introduction

Fortification and urban design

The Military Revolution and its effects on European expansion: fact or fiction?

Method, sources, and structure

1. Artillery fortification at home and abroad

2. “A Company of commerce but also of State”: The VOC in South Asia

3. The Van Goens system: Building the fortifications, 1650-1675

4. Criticism and construction

5. Mughal decline and the Company: From victory at Chowgaht to disaster at Bedera, 1717-1759

6. After Bedara: Attempting to improve defenses, 1759-1780

7. A plague of engineers

8. The Military Committee: The Generality intervenes in the debates, 1787-1792

9. Fall of a fortress

Conclusion: The military evolution of the South Asian states

Appendix 1: Some remarks on terminology and illustrations

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Archival Sources

Printed primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Odegard, Erik
Erik Odegard wrote in Leiden his PhD on Dutch colonial governors in the seventeenth century. He has published on shipbuilding, agency problems, naval warfare and the Dutch chartered companies. Currently, he works at the Mauritshuis museum as head of the research project ‘Revisiting Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits’.