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

Abstract

How best might one address the relationship between trade and state building in early modern South Asia? The question is hardly a new one. To some, like Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’ (d. 1751), a Khatri from northern India who, though not Muslim, had been educated in Persian letters and accounting (siyâgat), trade was more honourable and safer than statecraft or government. The fortunes of the nobility were fluctuating ones, and the means by which they had been accumulated were of a questionable legitimacy. Doubts of this sort did not of course prevent his Khatri brethren from entering into government service during the later Mughal period, and several of them can be counted among the a'yân (notables) of the reign of the Mughal, Muhammad Shah (1719–48) (Alam 1986:169–75). They maintained a tradition begun in the reign of Ak-bar with the famous Raja Todar Mal (d. 1589), also a Khatri from the Punjab.

Indian Muslim Merchants in Mozambique and South Africa: Intra-regional Networks In Strategic Association with State Institutions, 1870s-1930s

“…Moreover, all foreign merchants were now assured of trade on equal terms. Indian merchants took advantage of this new system and further extended their presence in the trading networks, but it 4 This is a tentative chronology which is mainly based on some previous research on this little-studied region (Subrahmanyam 1993(Subrahmanyam , 1995Pinto 1994;Newitt 1995;Pearson 1998). However, stress on the rise of new Muslim merchants in the third period is based on this study of mine.…”

Revisiting “Racial Capitalism”

“…This view still formed a fundamental tenet of the “world-systems theory” propagated by Immanuel Wallerstein and his followers in the 1970s and 1980s. However, this position has come to be increasingly questioned over the past half-century as outlandish ideas like the Asiatic Mode of Production have loosened their stranglehold [Subrahmanyam 1995]. It is now increasingly clear that various forms of merchant capitalism flourished in Asia from at least the late 14th century onwards, both in maritime spaces and along overland trade routes.…”

The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750

“…59 Similarly, alongside Armenian, Arab, Afghan and Turkish groups, the emerging eminence of Parsi merchant communities in Gujarat and Western India and other 'portfolio capitalists' shaped the cultural and commercial character of Mughal maritime society. 60 As the empire's borders expanded, it incorporated and utilised a host of highly autonomous and semi-independent actors, from the African Siddi naval power to the Rajput princes. 61 It was this need to consolidate the state's authority across the subcontinent by recruiting and utilising subordinate entities that provided the opportunities for English Company servants to pursue their ambitious economic and political interests within the Mughal framework, as opposed to against it.…”