Programme
Venue? VLIZ – InnovOcean Campus; Jacobsenstraat 1, 8400 Oostende
When? 23 and 24 November 2023
Thursday 23 November 2023
9:15 Welcome:
- Jan Mees (VLIZ) & Eduard Somers (Royal Belgian Marine Society)
- Carl Decaluwé (Governor of the Province of West-Flanders)
- Torsten Feys (VLIZ), Frederik Dhondt (VUB), Michael-W. Serruys (Royal Belgian Marine Society) & Stan Pannier (VLIZ)
10:00 Key Note 1: Small companies in a global perspective – Cátia Antunes (Leiden)
11:15 Break
11:45 Session 1 – The Ostend Company and its European merchants and investors
- France and the Ostend Company – Pierrick Pourchasse (Brest)
- The Lisbon link: Uncovering the Portuguese connection of the Ostend Company (1714-1730) – Gijs Dreijer (Leiden), Susana Münch Miranda (Lisbon) & João Paulo Salvado (Évora)
- The Danish Ostend legacy: Supercargo Pieter Van Hurk in Copenhagen – Benjamin Asmussen (Copenhagen)
13:15 Lunch
14:30 Session 2 – The Ostend Company’s European market: Shipping and smuggling
- A Cantonese fairy tale. The Ostend tea trade and smuggle (1718-1756) – Jan Parmentier (Antwerp)
- The Ostend Company and the Sound Toll Registers, Dutch and Frisian skippers in Ostend – Jelle Jan Koopmans (Groningen)
- Lighter and brighter: Indian cottons in Brussels in the first half of the eighteenth century – Veronika Hyden-Hanscho (Klagenfurt)
16:00 Break
16:30 Session 3 – The Ostend Company’s homeport(s) in the Austrian Netherlands
- The Ostend Company and the Port and City of Ostend – Michael-W. Serruys (Brussels)
- A rivalry of maritime aspirations between Bruges and Ostend (1715-1730) – Erik Muls (Leuven)
Friday 24 November 2023
9:00 Key Note 2: Merchants or soldiers? The Ostend Company: local actions, maritime power and military conflicts in China and Bengal – Wim De Winter (Leuven)
10:15 Break
10:45 Session 4 – All on board to Asia
- Commensality on board the Ostend Company’s East Indiamen – Dennis De Vriese (Brussels)
- ‘Le pavillon impérial y est respecté’: on the context of the establishment and functioning of the Ostend settlement of Coblon on the Coromandel coast of India – Karel Stanĕk (Prague) & Michal Wanner (Prague)
- The aftermath of Banquibazar: Dutch takeover, English mansion and Bengal police academy (1745-2020) – John Everaert (Ghent)
- Maritime comradeship and artistic taste. Eighteenth century clay portrait figures of the officers from Ostend and Danish East India Companies – Yi-Chieh ‘Mireille’ Shih (Leiden)
12:15 Lunch
13:30 Session 5 – The Ostend Company and European diplomacy
- David and Goliath? Reassessing colonial competition and the struggle for global empire between the Dutch republic and the Habsburg Monarchy in the case of the Ostend Company – Jonathan Singerton (Amsterdam)
- Law and interest: The politico-legal battle on the Ostend Company and ‘la vie du droit’ (1725-1730) – Frederik Dhondt (Brussels)
- ‘The Emperor himself […] permitted the ships to go to the Indies’: Charles VI and the end of the Ostend Company – Charlotte Backerra (Göttingen)
15:00 Break
15:30 Session 6 – The Ostend Company and new societal ideas
- The Ostend Company: Law of the Sea debates in the Age of mercantilism – Stefano Cattelan (Brussels)
- ‘What if everyone would do it freely?’ The Ostend Company and the invention of modern business practices in eighteenth century St.-Petersburg, Russia – Alexei Kraikovski (Genua)
16:30 Conclusion