Eug Xu is a senior in the history department, also working towards a minor in the digital humanities. Eug is primarily interested in global history, merchant and craft economies, and the history of clothing and textiles. For their history honors thesis, Eug researched patterns in the Dutch East India Company’s (VOC) textile procurement in South, Southeast, and East Asia, with an emphasis on interpreting material samples as historical evidence for early-modern bookkeeping. In the digital humanities, Eug works as a Research Assistant at Research Data and Digital Scholarship, doing work focused on AI ethics, and as a summer 2024 Price Lab Fellow. Eug can otherwise be found doing miscellaneous tasks for their theater group, iNtuitons Experimental Theatre, or the Theatre Arts Council overall. If you cannot locate them there, they are probably in a Penn History Review meeting.
Eug Xu
Wolf Humanities Center Undergraduate Fellow
2024—2025 Forum on Keywords
Eug Xu
History
Modes of Bookkeeping: How Material Samples Illustrate the Limitations of VOC Trading Expertise
Eug makes a twofold argument through examining the textile samples present in the the Dutch East India Company's (VOC) surviving records. First, the VOC had a shockingly poor grasp throughout its entire history on the material qualities and labor behind one of its most important commodities, likely meaning that textile producers in Asia had much more autonomy over their side of the trade equation than realized. Second, non-textual information (i.e. samples taken of or drawings of material objects) consists of a crucial form of bookkeeping that goes under examined by economic historians.