Manjusha Kuruppath’s research while affiliated with Leiden University and other places

In the early modern Dutch Republic, three playwrights wrote dramas based on political revolutions that were occurring at that same time in Asia. Reflecting on this remarkable phenomenon, Staging Asia traces the transmission of the stories surrounding the seventeenth-century Asian events and their ultimate appearance in Europe as Dutch dramas. Manjusha Kuruppath explores the nature of the representation of the Orient in these works and evaluates how this characterization was influenced by the channels, including some connected to the Dutch East India Company, that the dramatists relied on to gather information for their plays.

By 1745, the Persian ruler Nadir Shah (also known as Tahmasp Quli Khan) had made a name for himself as a conqueror in Asia. In the same year, the Dutch playwright Frans van Steenwyk scripted a play titled Thamas Koelikan in Amsterdam. The play not only chose Nadir for protagonist, but also identified his conquest of Mughal India as the backdrop to the drama. Just as Van Steenwyk’s drama reflected the curiosity of his peers in Nadir Shah, another image of Asian rulers circulating in Europe at the same time also featured in the play—the image of the Oriental Despot. Although the theme of Oriental Despotism was a generic appli-cation to Asian rulers, the relationship of this label with Nadir Shah was more intimate. From the late eighteenth century onwards, any mention of Nadir Shah meant a reference to Oriental Despotism. This article analyses the nature of representation of Nadir Shah in Van Steenwyk’s Thamas Koelikan. It studies the means by which the notion of Oriental Despotism features in the play. It argues that the observations made in this regard should be seen in the light of the sources that the playwright employed in penning his play. This related closely to the world of the Dutch East India Company in South Asia.