III. ‘Al-Hind’ India and Indonesia in the Islamic World-Economy, c. 700–1800 A.D.

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Islamic conquests of the seventh and early eighth centuries the territory which came under effective domination of the caliphate extended from the Iberian peninsula and North Africa to Central Asia and into the Persian-Indian borderland of Sind which for three centuries remained its easternmost frontier. Beyond Sind a vast area was left unconquered which the Arabs calledal-Hindand which, in their conception, embraced both India and the Indianised states of the Indonesian archipelago and Southeast Asia. In the countless kingdoms ofal-Hindthe Muslims penetrated, up to the eleventh century, only as traders. By the time that Islamic power was established in North India the political unity of the Abbasid caliphate was already lost. Neither India nor Indonesia were provinces of the classical Islamic state. But in the Middle East three decisive developments had occurred and these created patterns which were to survive the political fragmentation of the empire. Most important was that a thoroughly commercialized and monetised economy with a bureaucracy and a fiscal polity had been established which continued to expand. Secondly, from the ninth century onwards, the Islamic military-bureaucratic apparatus had begun to be staffed with imported slaves on an extended scale. And thirdly, from its Arab roots the Islamic conquest state had shifted to a Persianised foundation, adopting Persian culture and the Sassanid tradition of monarchy and statecraft.

Mughal hegemony and the emergence of South Asia as a “region” for regional order-building

“…The conquest of the rich Indus-Gangetic agricultural plains and the maritime regions of Gujarat and Bengal, as well as the control of the overland trade via Kabul, allowed the Mughal Empire to emerge as the richest state in Islamicate Asia. Akbar also monetized the Mughal economy by establishing “a new tri-metallic currency with the silver rupee as the basic coin” (Wink, 1988: 55). Henceforth, all commercial transactions, including taxation and the payment of soldiers’ salaries (especially the cavalry), became dependent on cash.…”

Of Imârat and Tijârat: Asian Merchants and State Power in the Western Indian Ocean, 1400 to 1750

“…It has often been stated that the commercial expansion of the early centuries of the second millenium was part of a phase of Arab dominance of Indian Ocean trade; it is also asserted, more recently, that the years after about 750 AD witnessed the formation of an Islamic world-economy in the Indian Ocean (Wink 1990(Wink , 1988Chaudhuri 1985;contrast Lombard 1965). Two obvious questions arise in this context.…”

Retrospect on J.C. van Leur's Essay on the Eighteenth Century as a Category in Asian History

“…21 Wink too has described the fall of the Mughals and the Safavids as a shift of power, 'a relatively balanced redistribution of resources of a type that had occurred before'. 22 The political order of post-Mughal India is now generally depicted as a relatively stable one of strong successor states, either evolving out of the fiefs of local Mughal governors, as in Awadh, Bengal, Hyderabad or the Carnatic, or from the jurisdictions established by successful rebels, such as Maratha generals or the Sikhs of the Punjab. Such states could tap new agricultural and commercial wealth by more efficient systems of taxation, by revenue farming or by loans from merchants and bankers.…”