Vernacular Capitalism and Intellectual History in a Gujarati Account of China, 1860-68

Bibliographic Data

ID3624797
AuthorsMichael O’sullivan (0000-0002-9396-9691, corresponding author), Michael O''Sullivan, Michael O'Sullivan (0000-0003-2121-4254)
Year2021
Volume80
Issue2
Pages267-292
Publication date2021-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911820003678
OpenAlexW3134554312
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited46

This article examines one of the earliest Gujarati travelogues concerning China, written by Damodar Ishwardas-a Hindu resident of Bombay and a clerk for a Sunni Khoja commercial firm-and published in Bombay in 1868. Based on a three-year trip to the port cities of southern China, Ishwardas's text runs close to 400 pages and was patronized by a prominent stratum of Bombay's Gujarati-speaking commercial and bureaucratic elite. The primary intervention in this article is to analyze Ishwardas's account as a neglected relic of vernacular capitalism and vernacular intellectual history. Furthermore, the text presents an opportunity to reexamine the history of the Indian intellectual and mercantile engagement with late Qing China, especially before anticolonial nationalism and pan-Asianism supplied new paradigms for Indian writing on East Asia beginning around 1900. It further points to the many unstudied Indian materials that have yet to be integrated into the study of modern capitalism in the regions from the South China Sea to the western Indian Ocean

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Bureaucracy · Capitalism · China · Economic history · Elite · Geography · Gujarati · Literature · Nationalism · Political science · Vernacular · Asian Studies and History · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

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