Wim De Winter

About

Wim De Winter
Interdisciplinary PhD Researcher (Gerda Henkel Stiftung - Düsseldorf)
at Ghent University - History Department
E: wimh.dewinter@ugent.be

http://ugent.academia.edu/WimDeWinter
Member of the 'Indian Ocean World Centre', Team 3 (McGill)
http://indianoceanworldcentre.com/Team_3

Research Interests

- critical world history & 'connected histories'
- cross-cultural interaction and knowledge transfer
- cultural histories of South and East Asia
- methodologies of historical anthropology

PhD Research Project

Trade communities, cultural interaction and foreign exchanges in Canton, Bengal and Nagasaki, 'A comparative approach against the background of China's foreign policy during the Ming-Qing period (18th century)'.
Supervisors - DBC: Michael Limberger, Angela Schottenhammer, Christian Uhl

This PhD.-research is a comparative historical anthropology of cross-cultural interaction and local exchange-relations in late 18th-century China (Guangzhou), Japan (Dejima) and India (Bengal & Ganges-delta region).
In this research, cross-cultural interaction is considered as a specific process consisting of improvised encounters and practical exchanges as performative elements of connected histories. It investigates the cultural dimension and re-contextualisation of such exchanges involving European maritime traders (mostly from an Ostend Company and VOC- background) and Muslim trading networks, through a 'connected comparison' of above-mentioned localities, placed in the wider framework of an Indian Ocean World. Finally, this research also attempts to include a critical theoretical perspective on early-modern 'world history'.

The PhD.-research is part of a larger international & interdisciplinary research project on Chinese global maritime history called  "Seafaring, Trade and Knowledge Transfer: Maritme Politics and Commerce in Early Middle Period to Early Modern China" (funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung and supervised by Prof. Dr. Angela Schottenhammer of Salzburg University).

Publications

Articles

'Gift-Exchange as a Means of 'Handling Diversity': Japanese-European Interactions in the Seventeenth Century', In:
Handling Diversity. Comparative Perspectives on Medieval and Early-Modern India and Europe. Theme Issue, The Medieval History Journal vol. 16.2, 2013, London/Los Angeles/New Delhi: Sage Publications. (in press).

'A Reflection on Cultural Interaction Through European-Chinese Relations in Seventeenth-Century Hirado: Gift-giving in a Context of Blurred Borders between Social Relations, Trade and Smuggling', In: Crossroads: Studies on the History of Exchange Relations in the East Asian World, Großheirath: Ostasien Verlag, 2013, Vol. 7., pp. 95-120.

Book Chapters

'Dining with the Daimyo. Global interactions and Intercultural Crossroads in 17th Century Japan (Hirado).'
In: Schottenhammer A. (ed.), Crossroads Conference Volume 1, 2014. (working title - forthcoming).

with Parmentier J., 'Factorijen en Forten. Zuid-Nederlanders in achttiende-eeuws India'. In: Goddeeris I. (ed.), Het wiel van Ashoka : Belgisch-Indiase contacten in historisch perpectief, Leuven: Lipsius, 2013, pp. 35-50.