NEWSLETTEROctober 2010 University Center for International Studies - University of Pittsburgh

In This Issue:1 Titas Chakraborty re-searches the impact of Euro-pean trade on the port city ofBengal.

2 Calendar of Events.

3 Roland Clark studies fas-cist communities in Romaniain the 1920s and 1930s.

4 Fellowships, Grants, and Op-portunities.

5 Mdlina Vere examinesthe impact of cartography onHabsburg imperial frontiers inthe late 18th century.

7 A Note from the ActingDirector

European Union Center of ExcellenceEuropean Studies Center

Impact of European Trade on Work and Society of a Seventeenth-CenturyPort City in Bengal

by Titas Chakraborty, PhD Student

Department of History, University of Pittsburgh

Titas Chakraborty was the recipient of a European Studies Dissertation Research award for thesummer of 2010.

On September 13, 1676, Streynsham Master set sail in a kedge, the Arrivall, anda sloop, the Ganges, on the final leg of his voyage to Hugli. A crew consisting of twentylascars and five Englishmen on board the Arrivall and fourteen lascars and fourEnglishmen on the Ganges deftly maneuvered the vessels through the sandbanks andshoals. On entering the River Hugli, the kedge and the sloop were unable to moveupstream in the shallow, placid water. A Dutch flyboat whose skipper was a Yorkshireman came to the rescue. Master and crew boarded on a bajra, a locally made luxurycraft, which made its way towards Baranagar, the Hog Market of the Dutch. A fewmiles further up the river, at seven in the morning, they encountered a Dutch ship beingloaded with rice. Soon the bajras reached the Dutch factory, a bustling place. Surroundingthe factory, on the right bank of the river, were thatched hovels. Dockworkers andsailors were busy loading and unloading the ships. Five or six ships had already beendispatched. Master was little surprised to see the Hannibal, the English ship captured bythe Dutch at Surat, plying the river with the Dutch flag fluttering on its top. At seven inthe evening, Master and company reached the factory of the English East India Company.

Seeing Hugli, a seventeenth century port in Bengal, through the eyes of anofficial of the English East India Company is Eurocentric. But such a reconnaissancecaptures the vibrancy of the expanding port. The economic prosperity of seventeenthcentury Bengal has been the recurrent theme in the works of economic historians likeSushil Chaudhury or Om Prakash. They agree that in the seventeenth century productionand trade in Bengal increased for both domestic and international purposes, the lattercarried out by various European trading companies. Even scholars of economy ofMughal India, like Irfan Habib, while examining the internal impetus of change withinthe Mughal economy, suggest that European overseas trade was instrumental in growthand reorganization of the artisanal industries.

The value of European trade through Hugli was enormous. The East IndiaCompany trade became profitable for the Dutch from the middle of the seventeenthcentury. The average annual value of the Companys exports rose from florins 1,464,685in the 1660s to florins 2,785,373 in 1690s. The exports from Bengal either furnished theCompanys intra-Asian trade with Japan and Batavia (present-day Jakarta) or they wereshipped to Europe. Between 1660 and 1680 the bulk of the exports went to Batavia.Inthe 1690s, this trend changed and the majority of the exported commodities went toEurope. The English East India Company made an even more humble beginning in the

CHAKRABORTY Continued on page 6

2CALENDAR OF EVENTS

please contact Karen Lautanen atkal70@pitt.edu. Sponsored by: EuropeanStudies Center, European Union Centerof Excellence, Humanities Center.

Friday, November 5thTucci Lecture: Dante and theCartography of the Inferno

Ted Cachey, Professor of Italian atNotre Dame, will present. 5:00 p.m. -6:00 p.m., location TBD. Sponsoredby: European Studies Center, EuropeanUnion Center of Excellence,Department of French and Italian.

Monday, November 8thPanel: Cultural, Historical, and

Social Change in Europe:Christianity, Islam, and the EU

Arpad v. Klimo, University of Pittsburgh,Carolyn Warner, Arizona StateUniversity, and Franois Foret,Universit Libre de Bruxelles, will present.12:00 noon - 3:00 p.m., location TBD.For more information, please contactKaren Lautanen at kal70@pitt.edu.Sponsored by: European Studies Center,European Union Center of Excellence,Global Studies Center.

Tuesday, November 9thLecture: Phillip Gassert

Philipp Gassert, University ofAugsburg, will present. 4:00 p.m. - 6:00p.m., History Lounge, Posvar Hall.For more information, please contactKaren Lautanen at kal70@pitt.edu.Sponsored by: European Studies Center,European Union Center of Excellence,Department of German.

Monday, October 18thVideo Conference: The United

States and Europe: An Agenda forEngagement

Philip H. Gordon, Assistant Secretary,Bureau of European and EurasianAffairs, U.S. Department of State, willpresent. Daniel Hamilton, Director ofthe Center for Transatlantic Relations atJohns Hopkins University, will moderate.12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m., 211 DavidLawrence Hall. For more information,please contact Karen Lautanen atkal70@pitt.edu. Sponsored by:European Studies Center, EuropeanUnion Center of Excellence.

Wednesday, October 20thLecture and Visit by the Austrian

Consul GeneralErnst Peter Brezovszky, AustrianConsul General, will present. 12:00 noon- 1:30 p.m., 4130 Posvar Hall. For moreinformation, please contact KarenLautanen at kal70@pitt.edu. Sponsoredby: European Studies Center, EuropeanUnion Center of Excellence.

Thursday, October 21stPizza & Politics

Will Daniel, PhD Student in PoliticalScience, will present. 1:30 p.m., 4217Posvar Hall. For more information,please contact Karen Lautanen atkal70@pitt.edu. Sponsored by:European Studies Center, EuropeanUnion Center of Excellence.

Tuesday, October 26thVideo Conference and Lecture:

2010 European Financial Crisis:Implications for Fiscal

Sustainability, Growth, andFinancial Markets

Matthias Peter Sonn, Minister,Economics and Science Department atthe German Embassy, Washington, D.C.,and Patrick Crowley, internationaleconomist and Professor of Economics

at Texas A&M, will present. 12:00 noon-1:30 p.m., 211 David Lawrence Hall.For more information, contact KarenLautanen at kal70@pitt.edu. Sponsoredby: European Studies Center, EuropeanUnion Center of Excellence.

Thursday, October 28thDiscussion: Worlds Made by

WordsDiscussion of Anthony Graftons WorldsMade by Words. 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.,602 Cathedral of Learning. For moreinformation, please contact VictoriaDuerr at vad16@pitt.edu. Sponsored by:Humanities Center.

Monday, November 1stLecture: All in the Family:

Screening the New Europe at theEurovision Song Contest.

Katrin Seig, Georgetown University, willpresent. 12:00 noon-1:30 p.m., 4130Posvar Hall. For more information,contact Karen Lautanen atkal70@pitt.edu. Sponsored by: EuropeanStudies Center, European Union Centerof Excellence.

Wednesday, November 3rdDiscussion: Gender and theMedieval Renaissance French

NationDaisy Delogu and KatherineCrawford will lead a discussion aroundFrench primary texts. 2:30 p.m.,Babcock Room, 40th floor, Cathedralof Learning. For more information,contact vad16@pitt.edu. Sponsored by:Humanities Center.

Wednesday, November 3rdLecture: How Jesus Celebrated

Passover: Renaissance Scholarshipand the Jewish Origins of

ChristianityAnthony Grafton, Princeton University,will present. 5:00 p.m., Frick Fine ArtsAuditorium. For more information,

NEW EU FOCUS AVAILABLECopies of the September 2010 issueof EU Focus (Global Partners, Glo-bal Challenges: The EU, Latin America,and the Carribbean) are now avail-able at the EUCE/ESC. Please takeone from the current literature displayor see a staff member for copies.

3Fascist Communities in Romanian Archives

by Roland Clark

PhD Candidate, Deparment of History

Roland Clark was the recipient of a European Studies Summer Dissertation Research Award.

Almost all fascist regimes began as social movementswith grassroots followings. In the 1920s and 1930s, fascistgroups offered their members communities of like-mindedpeople, but how did they build these communities of activists?My doctoral thesis addresses this question by focusing on thecommunity formed by the rank and file members andsympathizers of one of the largest and longest-lived fascistmovements in interwar Europe, the Legion of the ArchangelMichael, also known as the Iron Guard. I analyze the everydaylives of legionaries by reading fascist rituals, symbols, andgatherings to see how Romanian fascists created culture andcommunity in the absence of a centralized regime. Thanks tothe generous support of a European Studies SummerDissertation Research Award, I was able to follow the tracesleft by legionaries through a variety of archival collections inRomania. This is neither the beginning nor the end of myresearch, but this grant allowed me to explore regionalcollections previously untouched by historians interested in suchquestions.

My summer began in Cluj-Napoca, a city in northernTransylvania known for its large universities and vibrant studentlife. Many legionaries were also students, and student groupsprovided the main organizational framework for mobilizingfascist activists during the 1920s, before they were slowlysubsumed into the more broadly-based Legion. Anti-Semiticprotests began in Cluj-Napoca in 1922, when Christian studentsbegan complaining that Jewish medical students should not beallowed to dissect Christian corpses. Romanias Jewish leadershad forbidden the use of Jewish corpses for auto