Manjusha Kuruppath's Staging Asia is a meticulous historical study of the Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (VOC), and its role in supplying the “mother narrative” for three early modern Dutch plays produced and performed in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch Republic (p. 12). In her discipline-crossing study, Kuruppath bridges literary analysis with archival study, bringing together literary concepts such as representation through the lens of an historical analysis of institutions and “information brokerage” (p. 10). The three plays that constitute the literary subject of Kuruppath's study were written by “stay-at-home” playwrights who relied on VOC-derived reports, stories, travelogues, and information for their source material. As such, Kuruppath declares, “this book emphasizes the idea that as representations of the Orient these plays reveal well-worn trails of information and perspective transfer” (p. 12).

Kuruppath's analysis invokes Said's critique of Orientalism as critical lens, with particular emphasis on the Foucaldian notion that “knowledge is power.” Though agreeing with pre-modern scholars who argue that the interactions between the East and West are less asymmetrical than Said's overgeneralization suggests, and stressing “the role of native agents as co-participants in process of information manufacture,” ultimately Kuruppath finds Said's Orientalist critique valid and particularly apt for the study at hand (p. 22). In the case of Dutch colonial power, Orientalist discourse took the form of consistently portraying the Other as despotic, effeminate, and religiously bigoted.

Kuruppath also relies heavily on Foucauldian methods such as tracing “genealogies of discourse” through her archival research, arguing that “[t]he production of a Dutch discourse on the Orient […] was a multi-dimensional process engaging several agents producing information (native informants, company official, authors, playwrights), various genres, packaging the information produced (Company reports, published accounts such as travelogues and histories, drama), and numerous audiences consuming this information (Company superiors, and the Dutch reading and theatre-going public)” (p. 23).

The book is divided into three body chapters framed by an Introduction and Conclusion. The first chapter focuses on the Dutch theatrical stage as nexus point for the production and consumption of dramatic works. It also tracks the expansion of the VOC role from mercantile company to manufacturer of information. Chapters 2 through 4 are dedicated, respectively, to Joost van den Vondel's Zungchin (1667), Frans van Steenwyk's Thomas Koelikan (1745), and Onno Zwier van Haren's Agon, Sulthan Van Bantam (1769). Each chapter follows a helpfully consistent organizational format: beginning with a literary analysis of each dramatic text, followed by a presentation of Dutch Republic-published sources that informed the play, an outline of historical events and forces in the Orient about which historical information was assembled, a look at the VOC archives, and, finally, back to the play “to consider those facts, political, economic, personal, and genre-related that determined the make-up of the plays” (p. 24). The book's body chapters move chronologically in time and space from China to India to Banten (Batavia, Indonesia), showing how representation of the Other as different from the Self became increasingly problematic as colonization became more vicious, institutionalized, and state-sanctioned.

Chapter 1, “The Republic, Its Stage, and Its East India Company,” demonstrates the extent to which the thriving print culture of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic turned to the VOC, as information broker, for stories coming from the East. The VOC produced so many reports chronicling Asian events, and was so active in the dissemination of the information it collected, that the Company became “Asia's information corridor to Europe” (p. 39). At the same time, “the insatiable thirst of the Dutch reading public for tales of the strange and unknown Orient” (p. 41) incentivized VOC employees to write more reports to meet the public demand – including from Dutch dramatists – to hear tales of the novelty and otherness of the Orient. Tales of the Orient were ushered onto the Dutch stage partly thanks to the abundance of VOC source materials, including at least “five dramas written in the Republic which dealt with contemporary historical episodes from the Company's Orient” (p. 59).

Chapter 2, “When Vonce Looked Eastward: Joost Van Den Vondel's Zungchin (1667),” traces the role of a Jesuit priest's eyewitness reports, documenting the epic fall of the Ming dynasty in China, as source material for Vondel's Zungchin, written twenty-three years after the overthrow of the Chinese Dynasty in 1644. The VOC did not have direct access to China, but the Jesuit Martino Martini had traveled there before coming into contact with the VOC in Batavia (which would become the modern-day city of Jakarta). “In this confluence of the Jesuit and the Dutch channels of information, the VOC was a source of information for Vondel's play and the principal agent involved in information gathering and its transfer” (p. 85). The Jesuits’ “panoptic view of China” (p. 88) and the VOC's perceptions about China “came to dictate the manner in which Europe subsequently imagined China” (p. 86). As such, the Ming dynasty was seen as effeminate and benevolent but despotic – precisely the category of attributes critiqued by Said as adopting an Orientalist perspective.

Chapter 3, “Casting Despots in Dutch Drama: The Case of Nadir Shah in Van Steenwyk's Thomas Koelikan (1745),” casts light on a play that depicts the Mughal Empire as failing for want for virtue. Nadir Shah's invasion of India, the basis of the play, took place six years prior to the writing of Thomas Koelikan. In the play, Nadir Shah is depicted favorably in juxtaposition to the despotic Muhammad Shah that he replaces. Nevertheless, the trope of oriental despotism is retained. Kuruppath ends the chapter arguing that the VOC had “fashioned itself in Europe as a commentator and advocate of the prevalence of Oriental Despotism in Mughal India” (p. 157).

Chapter 4, “Swimming against the Tide: Onno Zwier van Haren's Agon, Sulthan Van Bantam (1769),” focuses on a play written some eighty years after the historical event – the Banten War of the 1680s – that serves as basis for the play. While official VOC reports cast the Company in a positive light, Van Haren's Agon depicts the VOC as a cunning and deceptive actor in their conduct of the war. The play is also critical of the Dutch Republic's role. Agon undercuts prevailing stereotypes about Asian despotism and the Oriental harem affirmed in the VOC reports. As such, “Agon became the ideal example of a drama which not only weaned itself from its sources but grossly contradicted their evaluation” (p. 218). However, Kuruppath argues that this seemingly anti-colonial flair was accidental, rather than purposeful.

Ultimately, Kuruppath's Staging Asia fleshes out the ways in which the Dutch stage “became a register of the VOC's encounter with Asia” and how the three plays, Zungchin, Thomas Koelikan, and Agon, Sulthan Van Bantam, dramatize contemporary historical events in Asia, making them “the embodiment of a lively and complex process of information transfer from and about the Orient” (p. 219). Altogether, Staging Asia offers attentive study to the historical context of actual encounters and “the actors who facilitated and partook in this process of interaction” (pp. 10–11), especially the “native informants” or historical figures that, as argued by Subrahmanyam, quoted by Kuruppath, are often ignored in a literary analysis that is less comprehensive in its historical approach. With its multidisciplinary take on early modern theatre and the Dutch encounter with the Other, Staging Asia will be of interest to both historians and literary scholars, particularly those taking a postcolonial approach. Historians will benefit from a consideration of literary texts and their source materials as historical documents, while literary critics will find on display the usefulness of meticulous archival research to provide deep historical context.