At the Crossroads of Empire and Nation-State
Partition, gold smuggling, and port cities in the western Indian Ocean
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3655124 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nisha Mathew (0000-0001-5776-8705, National University of Singapore, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 898-929 |
| Publication date | 2020-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x18000173 |
| OpenAlex | W2980233455 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 35 |
This article investigates gold smuggling in the twentieth-century western Indian Ocean. It illustrates how gold, condemned as a 'barbarous relic' by international monetary economists and central banks in the immediate post-war period, created an economy in the intermediate zone between a retreating empire and emerging nation-states in India and the Persian Gulf. Bombay and Dubai-connected by mercantile networks, trading dhows, migrants, and 'smugglers'-were the principal constituencies and key drivers of this trans-regional economy. Partition and the concomitant flight of Indian mercantile capital into Dubai becomes the key to unlocking the many dimensions of smuggling, including its social organization and ethnic constitution. Looked at in such terms, gold smuggling reveals a transnational side to both partition and the post-colonial history of Bombay which has drawn little critical attention from historians. Consequently, it expands the analytic space necessary to explain how Dubai was able to capitalize on the arbitrage possibilities offered by import regulations in India, tap into the global networks of trade and finance, and chart its own course of development as a modern urban space throughout the latter half of the twentieth century
Ancient history · Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Colonialism · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Geography · Partition (number theory · Political science · Port (circuit theory · State (computer science · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Engineering · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History
Diasporic convergence, sustained transience and indifferent survival
Strongmen and informal diplomats
Sovereignty on the move
Amphibious Media Histories
Ripples of Partition
Bibliography of urban history 2021
Dubai’ as a Place of Memory in Malayalam Cinema
Salt, Smuggling, and Sovereignty
Chen Mengzhao's storeroom in Park Street, Calcutta. Wartime India-China smuggling, 1942–1945
Separating arms and the arms that carry them
Funny Money Circulation and Fabric Exports From China to Dubai Through Indian Trading Networks
Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat C. 1700-1750
Producing India
Asia before Europe
Impossible Citizens
Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean
Global Networks, Linked Cities
The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947
The Global City
Labour migration to the Arabian Gulf
Interconnected synchronicities
Afterword
Indo‐British relations in the post‐colonial era
The accidental traders
International labour migration in the Arab middle east
Central Bank Cooperation at the Bank for International Settlements, 1930–1973
South Asians in the Indian Ocean World
The Bombay Country Ships 1790-1833
Cargoes of the East
Histories of city and state in the Persian Gulf
Merchants’ role in a changing society
The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj
International Migration and Development
Cargoes of the East
War and gold- the bank of England, the London gold market and South Africa's gold, 1914-19
Capital and Crowd in a Declining Asian Port City
Banias and the British
| Citations per year | 2.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |