Commerce and Consumption: Merchants and Opium at Batavia over the 18th Century

The Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao S.A.R. Government will organize an Academic Research Lecture in the Cultural Affairs Bureau Auditorium (Edifício do Instituto Cultural, Tap Seac Square, Macao) at 6:30pm on Thursday March 19. Dr. George Bryan Souza, adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas, will give a lecture on “Commerce and Consumption: Merchants and Opium at Batavia over the 18th Century”. This presentation introduces and discusses an anatomy of commerce and consumption of opium at Batavia, on Java, and throughout the Indonesia Archipelago over the long eighteenth century (c.1684-1796). The anatomy of this commerce is introduced by outlining and identifying the importance of the trade in opium to different locally based, indigenous and foreign merchants and their networks. Based upon archival work on the Dutch materials held in Jakarta, Indonesia, this presentation focuses upon all of the major merchant groups, with emphasis upon Chinese in particular, that purchased, distributed, and sold opium to end consumers. The merchant’s families, identities, backgrounds, occupations, and networks are described and explored with the purpose of determining the overall significance of these merchant groups and the relationship of opium and its commerce to the political economic development of Java, in particular, and over a broader geographical space in Southeast Asia, during the 1740s and until the late 1780s – the beginning of a period from 1740 to 1840 that has been claimed as a Chinese century. George Bryan Souza is an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Educated at Stanford University (B.A. with Departmental Honors in History), the School of Oriental and African Studies, at the University of London (M.A. in Southeast Asian Area Studies), and Trinity College, Cambridge University (D. Phil. in History), he is the author of The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630-1754, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 and numerous articles. Over the past few years, he has received support for his research interests in global maritime economic history, the history of European expansion, and cross-cultural contact and exchanges in the early modern period from the following institutions: affiliated fellow, IIAS, Leiden University, the Netherlands; IANTT/FLAD research grants, Lisbon, Portugal; Bernardo Mendel fellowships, at the Lilly Library, Indiana University; research grant from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies; Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore; Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University and is in Macao on a Fulbright grant. Upon completion in April 2009, Souza will take up his invited appointment as a Mercator Guest Professor at Tubingen University in Germany. The lecture will be given in English with Mandarin, Cantonese and Portuguese simultaneous interpretation. Entrance is free. For further details, please contact Ms. Chu of the Macao Historical Archives of the Cultural Affairs Bureau at 85986537.