Why read The Company and the Shogun?

Book cover of The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan

Book description

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This study focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Company and the Shogun as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Cees Heere

Author

Histories of Japan’s encounter with the West typically start from the premise that prior to its “opening” by the American Commodore Perry in 1853, Japan was a “closed” society that shunned contact with the outside world. This book, which explores the relationship between the Tokugawa shogunate and the Dutch East India Company (the VOC), presents a radically different story: one in which one of the world’s most ruthless commercial operators was forced to humble itself before the shogun. It’s an essential corrective to anyone who equates “world history” with the rise of the West.

From Cees' list on East Asia in the age of empire.