Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Commercial alternatives in India, 1707‐1760

Watson, Iain

doi:10.1080/00856407808722972

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…These new cities permitted the English to exercise ever-greater power over the flows of Indian commerce, and Indian merchants, who had experienced few difficulties competing with Europe in the past and at first eagerly participated in expanding English trade, entered a new period of foreign dependency (cf. Watson 1978). The British continued to rely on local business people in many important ways.…”

Section: The Colonial Impact On Urban Western Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8 Surat, where the effects of the new politico-economic power balance were largely negative during the onset of colonialism, offers an instructive contrast with Ahmedabad. Many of Surat's most lucrative overseas markets disappeared or contracted by the eighteenth century, and, like many old Indian trading centers, it was becoming ever more reliant on English commerce (Watson 1978). As the British gained in power, they took an increasingly large share of the profits from the subcontinent's trade.…”

Section: The Colonial Impact On Urban Western Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the British gained in power, they took an increasingly large share of the profits from the subcontinent's trade. Surat was no longer a center for the shipment of finished textiles throughout the Indian Ocean; it was now a supporting center for Bombay, a conduit for the transshipment of cotton and opium (Watson 1978, Das Gupta 1979.…”

Section: The Colonial Impact On Urban Western Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 Some researchers (e.g., Frank 1998) have recently argued for a much earlier date for the integration of Asian and European economies into a single world system, but the mid-eighteenth century was undeniably a pivotal period for the cities under discussion. 7 Watson (1978), Arasaratnam (1978), Kling and Pearson (1979), Wallerstein (1980:182, 273, 1989:148, 154), Bayly (1983:253, 256), Pearson (1988) and Washbrook (1990) deal with the process of India's changing role in the global economy in greater detail.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Urban Nexus: Flows of Population, Commerce and Culture among Cities in Western India

Menning

1999

City & Society

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Anthropologists Have Often viewed the city either as an isolate or merely as a backdrop for ethnographic research. A perspective analyzing urban centers instead as reservoirs and channels for larger flows of people, resources and culture helps to overcome limitations associated with conventional approaches. An analysis of three major western Indian cities, viewing them as spaces of flows, sheds new light on their role in the development of the world system from the 15th century to the present. [Indian cities, world systems, capitalistic development, urban flows]

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Section: The Colonial Impact On Urban Western Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Colonial Impact On Urban Western Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Colonial Impact On Urban Western Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Urban Nexus: Flows of Population, Commerce and Culture among Cities in Western India

Menning

1999

City & Society

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Chance and Societal Change

Mattausch

2003

The Sociological Review

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This article advances a theory of societal change I am developing: rather than the usual pseudo-evolutionary view which presents each phase of societal change as supplanting its predecessor, I argue that societal change is accumulative in character and that in this process of accumulation chance may play a part. In the first part of the article, using the historically important example of the British rise to paramountcy in Gujarat (now a state in northern India) as a case study, I show that the interventions of chance in this historical episode is undeniable. In the second part, I examine the contemporaneous reactions of historians and others to the British rise to paramountcy and their suppression of chance, then I examine key reasons why chance became obscured in sociological writings and in most present-day evolutionary biological studies of human behaviour. I argue that there is no single, uniform essence of chanciness, that chance events bear a family resemblance, and that the Gujarati case study permits the identification of several sibling forms, two of which are theoretically illuminated, with some qualifications, by the writings of Raymond Boudon and Jared Diamond. I conclude that while there is more theoretical work required to distinguish and accommodate other forms of chance, nonetheless, it is time chance was rehabilitated because its readmittance into the disciplinary fold will not exclude sociological explanations, but it will help to avoid the unsavoury consequences of neglecting the topic whose exclusion is both empirically and theoretically unjustified.

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Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Commercial alternatives in India, 1707‐1760

Cited by 2 publications

References 7 publications

The Urban Nexus: Flows of Population, Commerce and Culture among Cities in Western India

The Urban Nexus: Flows of Population, Commerce and Culture among Cities in Western India

Chance and Societal Change

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