Markus Vink (Professor of History) will do a presentation at the University of Buffalo entitled 'Mission to Madurai: Dutch Embassies to the Nayaka Court of Madurai in the Seventeenth Century' on Friday, March 11, at 3 p.m. in 532 Park Hall. His talk is sponsored by the UB Department of History and the Asian Studies Program.
Dr. Vink will examine the encounter between the Dutch East India Company (VOC), one of the great chartered companies of the age of mercantilism, and the state of Madurai, one of the 'great southern Nayakas' and successor-states of the Vijayanagara Empire, in southeast India in the second half of the seventeenth century in general. He will focus on three embassies, arguably the most spectacular form of cross-cultural interaction, sent by the VOC from Tuticorin (Toothukudi), seat of the Dutch chiefs of Madurai, to Tiruchirappalli (Trichinopoli), the capital of the Nayakas of Madurai,
in 1668, 1677, and 1689.
Dr. Vink is book review editor for the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO), and associate of the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC) at McGill University.
