Transregional Trade and Traders
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780199490684 |
| Open Library | OL21351207W |
| Total publications | 14 |
| Coverage period | 2019 - 2019 |
| Language | EN |
| Cited by | 2 |
| Impact factor | 0.286 |
| h-index | 1 |
Blessed with numerous safe harbours, accessible ports, and a rich hinterland, Gujarat has been central to the history of Indian Ocean maritime exchange that involved not only goods, but also people and ideas. This volume maps the trajectory of the extra-continental interactions of Gujarat and how it shaped the history of Indian Ocean. Chronologically, the volume spans two millennia, and geographically, it ranges from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia. The book focuses on specific groups of Gujarati traders, their accessibility and trading activities with maritime merchants from Africa, Arabia, Southeast Asia, China, and Europe. It not only analyses the complex process of commodity circulation, involving a host of players, huge investments, and numerous commercial operations, but also engages with questions of migration and diaspora. Paying close attention to current historiographical debates, the contributors make serious efforts to challenge the neat regional boundaries that are often drawn around the trading history of Gujarat
The Commercial Network of Gujarat in the Light of the Jewish Documentary Geniza (Eleventh–Twelfth Centuries)
This chapter explores the significance of the Gujarati ports by situating these in the broader background of the maritime commerce in the Indian Ocean (particularly the western sector) during 900–1500 CE phase in the light of epigraphic and textual sources and the letters of Jewish traders. In the background of the western sea-board of the subcontinent, the primacy of Stambhatirtha/Khambayat as a port (velakula) is explained by highlighting its i…
Surat
In the eighteenth century, Surat was perhaps the single most important port city of the Moghul empire, if not the world. Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese ships were called from Africa and Brazil to obtain Gujarati textiles, side by side with dhows from the throughout the Indian Ocean. This textile trade was underpinned by ivory, large amounts of which poured in the city both by caravan and by sea. Even though Surat, or even Gujarat, was not…
Gujarat and Long-Distance Trade in the Indian Ocean Region before the Sixteenth Century
Northwestern India, and particularly Gujarat, played a crucial role in the history of the ancient world by building connections with various Indian Ocean regions. These included the Persian Gulf, southern Arabia, the Red Sea, and the Horn of Africa on one side, and southern India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia on the other. Gujarat benefited from its agricultural potential and acted as a hub for various areas. This explains both its own success a…
Coffee Mocha
The second half of the eighteenth century, witnessed a boom in the trade in coffee in Mocha and Muscat. The Kachchhis traders of Mandvi and Surat based traders were central to this trade. The shifts and circumstances of the eighteenth century disturbed the control and Surat was forced to lose the premier position in coffee supply. The considerable coffee trade was diverted to Muscat in the eighteenth century. Concurrently, the Sultans were runnin…
Migration and Creation of New Societies
The general outline of Indian migration to East Africa is broadly understood, and there have been a number of detailed family histories of prominent people of Indian origin, which sometimes tend to freeze the image of Indians as a homogeneous and separate entity. The author decided to compile a history of his family which had lived in Zanzibar for five generations. He wanted to understand, within the context of much wider migrations and settlemen…
Gujarat in the History of the Indian Ocean
This chapter takes a stock taking exercise of the history writing on Gujarat and Indian maritime history over the last five decades. It identifies the major shifts and emphases that mark the nature of historical knowledge. What these hold for the discipline of history in general and how these inflect the case study of Gujarat in particular are examined. The intention of such a stock taking exercise is also to consider the importance of recovering…
Ratansi Purshottam, the Gujaratis of Muscat, and the Global Connectivity of Indian Ocean Transregional Markets
This chapter provides a case study of the career of Seth Ratansi Purshotam to demonstrate the role of Gujarati Banyans of Muscat, Oman in linking that port’s transregional commercial network of India, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa to the global market. Ratansi, a native of Mandvi, Kachhch, began his career as a clerk in his uncle’s shop in 1857, opened his own shop in 1867, and by the 1880s until his death in 1904 was one of the leading impor…
The Deepest Blue Sea
A misperception has persisted in Indian Ocean scholarship that Indian—particularly Gujarati shipping—had declined precipitously by the middle of the eighteenth century for reasons related to the decline in the great Islamic empires. This chapter argues that this view has exaggerated the diminution of Gujarati shipping in the ocean by largely overlooking the continued and indeed expanded presence of medium-sized ocean-going ships in the western In…
Reaching Across Land and Sea
Although the last nawab of Bharuch was ousted by the East India Company’s forces in 1772, his trusted minister Lallubhai flourished under Company rule. Lallubhai’s influence and income derived from his deep understanding and control of late-Mughal revenue systems and their role in the flourishing cotton supply chain of south Gujarat. As Mughal control waned in Gujarat, revenue entrepreneurs such as Lallubhai virtually ran the military–fiscal appa…
Merchants and Marts
India’s flourishing trade and production economy in the late medieval times has been well studied, particularly from the point of view of the variety of goods that were exported across the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. In this context, the ports, particularly those of Gujarat and the Coromandel Coast, have received considerable attention. This chapter seeks to examine the nature of Gujarat’s connections to the hinterland in the sixteenth and…
Gujarati Merchant Diaspora in South East Asia (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
Gujarat was concentric to the early modern Indian Ocean world. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the fine tuning of long distance trading systems. In South East Asia, the Indo-Portuguese trade network flourished in the sixteenth century, followed by the English and the Dutch in the seventeenth. Equilibrium was established between European and Asian traders, both indispensable to the other. Profitable trade in pepper and spices in …
Early Historic Gujarat and the Trading World of the Western Indian Ocean
The chapter discusses the cultural milieu of seafaring activity in Gujarat between the fourth century BCE and the fourth century CE, the objective being to highlight the cultural factors that impacted trans-oceanic contacts. It underscores the autonomy of trading activity, vis-à-vis political organization in this period. Rulers certainly tapped the revenues from trade, but neither controlled nor initiated trade. Trade involved a complex range of …
Forty Years On
Almost forty years ago, the author published an article on Gujarat and East Africa from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Although several other scholars had written serious historical works either about or including Indian traders in eastern Africa in the modern period, at the time it was a pioneering piece for historians of East Africa. While the author has written and continues to write about the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean w…
Transregional Trade and Traders
Blessed with numerous safe harbours, accessible ports, and a rich hinterland, Gujarat has been central to the history of Indian Ocean maritime exchange that involved not only goods, but also people and ideas. This volume maps the trajectory of the extra-continental interactions of Gujarat and how it shaped the history of Indian Ocean. Chronologically, the volume spans two millennia, and geographically, it ranges from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia…
Transregional Trade and Traders
Blessed with numerous safe harbours, accessible ports, and a rich hinterland, Gujarat has been central to the history of Indian Ocean maritime exchange that involved not only goods, but also people and ideas. This volume maps the trajectory of the extra-continental interactions of Gujarat and how it shaped the history of Indian Ocean. Chronologically, the volume spans two millennia, and geographically, it ranges from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia…
The Commercial Network of Gujarat in the Light of the Jewish Documentary Geniza (Eleventh–Twelfth Centuries)
This chapter explores the significance of the Gujarati ports by situating these in the broader background of the maritime commerce in the Indian Ocean (particularly the western sector) during 900–1500 CE phase in the light of epigraphic and textual sources and the letters of Jewish traders. In the background of the western sea-board of the subcontinent, the primacy of Stambhatirtha/Khambayat as a port (velakula) is explained by highlighting its i…
Surat
In the eighteenth century, Surat was perhaps the single most important port city of the Moghul empire, if not the world. Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese ships were called from Africa and Brazil to obtain Gujarati textiles, side by side with dhows from the throughout the Indian Ocean. This textile trade was underpinned by ivory, large amounts of which poured in the city both by caravan and by sea. Even though Surat, or even Gujarat, was not…
Gujarat and Long-Distance Trade in the Indian Ocean Region before the Sixteenth Century
Northwestern India, and particularly Gujarat, played a crucial role in the history of the ancient world by building connections with various Indian Ocean regions. These included the Persian Gulf, southern Arabia, the Red Sea, and the Horn of Africa on one side, and southern India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia on the other. Gujarat benefited from its agricultural potential and acted as a hub for various areas. This explains both its own success a…
Coffee Mocha
The second half of the eighteenth century, witnessed a boom in the trade in coffee in Mocha and Muscat. The Kachchhis traders of Mandvi and Surat based traders were central to this trade. The shifts and circumstances of the eighteenth century disturbed the control and Surat was forced to lose the premier position in coffee supply. The considerable coffee trade was diverted to Muscat in the eighteenth century. Concurrently, the Sultans were runnin…
Migration and Creation of New Societies
The general outline of Indian migration to East Africa is broadly understood, and there have been a number of detailed family histories of prominent people of Indian origin, which sometimes tend to freeze the image of Indians as a homogeneous and separate entity. The author decided to compile a history of his family which had lived in Zanzibar for five generations. He wanted to understand, within the context of much wider migrations and settlemen…
Gujarat in the History of the Indian Ocean
This chapter takes a stock taking exercise of the history writing on Gujarat and Indian maritime history over the last five decades. It identifies the major shifts and emphases that mark the nature of historical knowledge. What these hold for the discipline of history in general and how these inflect the case study of Gujarat in particular are examined. The intention of such a stock taking exercise is also to consider the importance of recovering…
Ratansi Purshottam, the Gujaratis of Muscat, and the Global Connectivity of Indian Ocean Transregional Markets
This chapter provides a case study of the career of Seth Ratansi Purshotam to demonstrate the role of Gujarati Banyans of Muscat, Oman in linking that port’s transregional commercial network of India, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa to the global market. Ratansi, a native of Mandvi, Kachhch, began his career as a clerk in his uncle’s shop in 1857, opened his own shop in 1867, and by the 1880s until his death in 1904 was one of the leading impor…
The Deepest Blue Sea
A misperception has persisted in Indian Ocean scholarship that Indian—particularly Gujarati shipping—had declined precipitously by the middle of the eighteenth century for reasons related to the decline in the great Islamic empires. This chapter argues that this view has exaggerated the diminution of Gujarati shipping in the ocean by largely overlooking the continued and indeed expanded presence of medium-sized ocean-going ships in the western In…
Reaching Across Land and Sea
Although the last nawab of Bharuch was ousted by the East India Company’s forces in 1772, his trusted minister Lallubhai flourished under Company rule. Lallubhai’s influence and income derived from his deep understanding and control of late-Mughal revenue systems and their role in the flourishing cotton supply chain of south Gujarat. As Mughal control waned in Gujarat, revenue entrepreneurs such as Lallubhai virtually ran the military–fiscal appa…
Merchants and Marts
India’s flourishing trade and production economy in the late medieval times has been well studied, particularly from the point of view of the variety of goods that were exported across the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. In this context, the ports, particularly those of Gujarat and the Coromandel Coast, have received considerable attention. This chapter seeks to examine the nature of Gujarat’s connections to the hinterland in the sixteenth and…
Gujarati Merchant Diaspora in South East Asia (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
Gujarat was concentric to the early modern Indian Ocean world. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the fine tuning of long distance trading systems. In South East Asia, the Indo-Portuguese trade network flourished in the sixteenth century, followed by the English and the Dutch in the seventeenth. Equilibrium was established between European and Asian traders, both indispensable to the other. Profitable trade in pepper and spices in …
Early Historic Gujarat and the Trading World of the Western Indian Ocean
The chapter discusses the cultural milieu of seafaring activity in Gujarat between the fourth century BCE and the fourth century CE, the objective being to highlight the cultural factors that impacted trans-oceanic contacts. It underscores the autonomy of trading activity, vis-à-vis political organization in this period. Rulers certainly tapped the revenues from trade, but neither controlled nor initiated trade. Trade involved a complex range of …
Forty Years On
Almost forty years ago, the author published an article on Gujarat and East Africa from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Although several other scholars had written serious historical works either about or including Indian traders in eastern Africa in the modern period, at the time it was a pioneering piece for historians of East Africa. While the author has written and continues to write about the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean w…
Transregional Trade and Traders
Blessed with numerous safe harbours, accessible ports, and a rich hinterland, Gujarat has been central to the history of Indian Ocean maritime exchange that involved not only goods, but also people and ideas. This volume maps the trajectory of the extra-continental interactions of Gujarat and how it shaped the history of Indian Ocean. Chronologically, the volume spans two millennia, and geographically, it ranges from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia…