Brokering with Caliban: A Literary History of Early Modern English Diplomacy in the East Indies

FAIN: FT-291505-23

Su Fang Ng
Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA 24061-2000)

Research and writing leading to a book on early modern English literary depictions of diplomatic relations with the East Indies. 

In 1682 the Sultanate of Banten (Bantam, Java) sent an embassy to London. The first such from Southeast Asia, the ambassadors were fe^ted as diplomatic guests, processed around London, knighted by Charles II, had their portraits painted, and were taken to the theatre, where they attended a performance of the Restoration version of Shakespeare’s Tempest. The Javanese reframing of the Restoration Tempest that calls Caliban a “linguist,” meaning interpreter, invites us to reread the encounter as a diplomatic engagement. Over the course of the seventeenth century the East India Company conducted a low profile but sustained trade diplomacy in the region. Examining literary allusions to Bantam and the East Indies in English plays from Shakespeare to Dryden, I examine diplomatic issues, such as the problem of mediated representations, arising from negotiated engagements with East Indies polities. Such literary diplomatic thinking shaped ideas of language, race, religion, and difference.