Befor colonialism : theories on Asian-European relations 1500-1750

The area I have chosen to investigate in these three lectures is approached from a somewhat different perspective than that of several of my distinguished predecessors. Charles Boxer and Holden Furber both discussed areas and times congruent with my own interests when they delivered the Heras Memorial Lectures. My aim is to look at several more general problems and theories. Nevertheless, I do intend to present actual facts, events, and even perhaps people. This empirical data will be derived partly from the work of other scholars in the field, and partly from my own research, but I will do this within the parameters of theoretical work to do with the early European presence in Asia. In this first lecture I intend to present to you the major ideas of the very important contemporary scholar Immanuel Wallerstein, and then go on to discuss some of the general criticisms which have been made of his work. In the second lecture I will test his theories against data concerning the European presence in Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The third lecture will present some alternative general ideas to do with this period. My concern then is test some major theories, especially that of Wallerstein. The present and end result will, I hope, make the case that a concern with theory is of the essence in our historical work. Only in this way can we ask large and important questions; only in this way will our detailed research transcend antiquarianism.