Page 38 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

economic growth. Chinese porcelain was seen as a luxury commodity that facilitated

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the consumer revolution in Europe.

The most recent and important contributions to the field are works from the

project Trading Europe's Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830. Led by

Professor Maxine Berg, three postdoctoral fellows, a research assistant and a PhD

student, the project focused on a comparative study of Europe’s trade with India and

China by drawing on the records of Europe’s East India companies. Apart from

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various workshops, seminars and conference, this project also produced three

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46
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monographs, one edited book, and a Ph.D. dissertation. This is by far the
largest and most comprehensive research project on the examination of the East India

Companies, Asian goods and the impact of this trade on Europe. Engaging with the

trade of Asia, it addressed the role of Asia’s trade in the origins of the Industrial

Revolution. As noted in their objectives, researchers also attempted to bring together

the study of trade, consumption and production to set different histories alongside

economic history.

Another collaborative project with a single focus on the English East India

Company, the East India Company at Home, and 1757-1857: The British Country

42 Recent examples include Robert Batchelor, ‘On the Movement of Porcelains: Rethinking the
Birth of Consumer Society as Interactions of Exchange Networks, 1600-1750,’ in J. Brewer and
F. Trentmann (eds.), Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories,
Transnational Exchanges (Oxford: Berg, 2006), pp.95-121; Maxine Berg, ‘Asian Luxuries and
the Making of the European Consumer Revolution,’ in Maxine Berg (ed.), Luxury in the
Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (London: Palgrave, 2003), pp.228-
244.
43 For a general introduction of this project, please visit the project website,
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/eac/
44 Chris Nierstrasz, Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles The English and Dutch East India
Companies (1700-1800) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Gottmann, Global Trade;
Hodacs, Silk and Tea in the North.
45 Berg (ed.), Goods from the East.
46 Meike von Brescius, ‘Private Enterprise and the China Trade: British Interlopers and their
Informal Networks in Europe 1720-1750’ (Ph.D thesis, University of Warwick, 2016).
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