Panel Organizers:

Eva-Maria Hardtmann - Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Jonathan Pattenden - Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK

Abstract

This panel brings together papers which scrutinise social movements and social movement networks through multi-level analyses, ethnographically as well as theoretically from the local level to the transnational.

Subir Sinha, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London.

A Movement of Movements Without Movements: The specificity Deficit in Theorizing the WSF Process.

Much of the theorising of the WSF has taken place at two levels. At one level, the objects of attention are the practices specific to the WSF,as,event, involving writings about open spaces, open software, and the encounters in specific meetings. At another, the WSF is written in transcendental terms: a new global justice movement, another world is possible, etc. The asymmetries ad constraints that are definitive elements of networks, which point to problems in the WSF process, have not received corresponding attention. In this paper, I suggest a social movements perspective on the WSF, looking at some movements from India and their rational for participating in the process, and their reasons for maintaining autonomy from it.

Marie Larsson, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden

‘Podupu Lakshmi' - Small,Scale Saving Groups Among Women in Andhra Pradesh, India

The Podupu Lakshmi (The Saving of Lakshmi) saving scheme originated among the womenfolk in the village of Leguntapadu, Kovur mandal in eastern Nellore district, with the guidance of the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), as a lot of savings would be available within the poor families after the prohibition of arrack in 1993. The success of this model contributed to the formation of similar groups in other parts of the district, and consequently a Thrift, and Credit Program was initiated and implemented by DRDA with the help of local teachers, voluntary organizations and state administrative staffs at village,level.

The aim of this essay is to discuss the role of the growing NGO,sector in this scheme as intermediaries between local women, the state development machinery and commercial banks together with apex financial institutes such as NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development), the rural lending branch of the Reserve Bank of India. I will also touch on the emerging conflict between ‘professionalisation' and ‘voluntarism' within the NGO,sector from the vantage point of the saving groups. The treatise starts with a short review of the Anti,Arrack Movement and the succeeding saving scheme followed by a description of the programme after Chandra Babu Naidu took over as Chief Minister of the state (1995,2004) visible in a growing reliance on neo,liberal principles according to directives of the World Bank. Thereafter I will dwell upon how the programme was implemented in Chinthala Palem, a village in the western part of Nellore district. Finally, the last section discusses how the scheme is embedded within a larger political field in which social movements, NGOs, global institutions and Indian state agencies struggle over material and symbolic resources.

Ravi Raman, Department of Social Anthropology, Manchester University

Against State, Against Corporate Capital: Waves of Indigenous Social Movement Activism in Kerala, India

The Indian state of Kerala, known the world over for its twin legacies of a highly,rated social model of development and a democratic governance, entered the 21st century with the tarnished image of a state that failed to protect the interests of its historically oppressed communities - the adivasis and the dalits. The widely publicized Plachimada water and Muthanga land struggles bear testimony to this. Both were cries for basic human rights and a means of livelihood and the movement activism was blended with both the symbolic and transformative processes. Equally important, both the movements are directed against the structure authorities and the power relations associated with the State and corporate capital, the latter, more specifically, being against the multinational Coca,Cola. Both the struggles continue to draw support not only from the various historically oppressed communities within the state but also from social groups, ecologists and human rights activists all over the country, and indeed, all over the world. A deeper analysis of these two movements and an understanding of their transformative processes is an essential step towards a redressal of the historical wrongs perpetrated on these marginalised communities. The paper looks at how the movement (s) has opened up a new era in the history of subaltern political renaissance and new social movement by advancing the notion of autonomy over resources, resistance identity, state and traditional laws and, human rights which are increasingly under threat in this neo,liberal era. It also addresses the mechanisms through which the local micro,power relations are articulated in such a way that it challenges the macro,structural power relations and how the movement activism attempts to alter the social, political and material relations in favour of the local communities.

Jonathan Pattenden, SOAS, University of London, London, UK
The Karnataka State Farmers Association on the World Stage

Manish Thakur, Goa University

Global Context of a Local Initiative: "Barh Mukti Andolan" in Bihar, India

It has been argued that cross,border contacts as embodied in social movement networks empower and legitimise the demands of otherwise weaker social groups in relation to various social and political issues and, thus, promote ‘pan,human' interests. However, as suggested by the panel organisers, critical analyses of the transformative value of social movement networks for marginalised social groups remain few in number. Against this backdrop, the proposed paper examines the significance of social movement networks in the empirical context of "Barh Mukti Andolan" [Save the River Movement] in Bihar, India. Rather than focusing on the political autonomy of the movement, it seeks to probe if the global networks built around the ideas of local wisdom and ecological sustainability facilitate any alteration in local power structure. Or as the organisers put it, ‘is their function primarily symbolic and limited to macro,level structures?'

This particular movement regards multi,purpose river valley projects as a curse than a cure. Those supporting the movement argue that embankments prevent flood waters from draining, transform once excellent fertile land into stagnant pools of water, and create breeding ground for carriers of different diseases. The movement's focus is on organising communities in flood prone areas to retrieve local decentralised ways of coping with floods. It aspires to launch countrywide educational programme on traditional flood managements with a view to empower citizen groups to establish their cultural ownership over rivers. In this sense, it attempts to create a new paradigm of flood control based on the native wisdom of the locals. While privileging indigenous ways of adapting with riverine ecology, it mobilises public opinion against the currently prevalent flood control paradigm based on scientific knowledge and engineering skills wherein dams, embankments and canals occupy pride of place. As a movement, it draws upon globally circulating discourse on ecology, environment and indigeneity. The point is if the movement transforms the distribution of political and material resources within local society, say, between officials and contractors (the beneficiaries of flood,control programmes) on the one hand and ecological refugees (the victims) on the other.

Kamal Munir, Univerisity of Cambridge.

'Progressive' Movements and Hegemony: Evidence from the Campaign to

Eliminate Child Labour in Pakistan

This paper is an exploration of how many of us, supposedly engaged in counter,hegemonic struggles, are unwittingly co,opted to become part of social movements that further capitalist hegemony. We explore this dynamic in our study of the campaign to eliminate child labour in Sialkot, an industrial city of about 0.4 million in Pakistan. Sialkot is home to a cluster of soccer ball manufacturing firms, which between them manufacture 60,80% of the world's soccer balls. On 6 April, 1995, CBS broadcast a news documentary on the soccer ball industry in Sialkot, which included images of children stitching soccer balls in dark and dank one,room workshops. The CBS report was picked up by the other mass media both in the US and the

global soccer ball industry launched a project to eliminate child labour from soccer ball manufacturing. The movement gathered strength over the next several years orchestrated by the industry in collaboration with their civil society NGO partners. In this process, industry successfully positioned itself as a constructive actor working to remove the bane of

child labour while keeping the industry functional for soccer ball manufacture.

While the goal was ultimately achieved, and accolades were showered internationally on all the organizers of this movement, the whole process resulted in a number of unintended consequences. These included questionable benefits for the children involved, a decline in financial returns for the Sialkot industry, feelings of guilt among NGO workers, and abject misery for the vast majority of women,stitchers and their families. While all these consequences may have been unintended, they were not unanticipated for everyone. Many field workers were aware of these developments and questioned the steps that were taken by the organizers. However, the manner in which the movement was put together and its objective framed, and the parameters within which it had to function perhaps made these consequences inevitable.

Giuseppe Caruso, SOAS

The WSF India at the crossroads of global, national and local civil society politics.

The WSF has presented itself from its inception as a planetary alliance of civil society organisations and social movements; its global scope, however, has been vastly overstated: the stress on the global dimension of the interactions taking place within the WSF space has removed necessary analytical attention from the local and the transnational quality of those interactions. The several spatial dimensions converging in the WSF and the contradictions they express constitute the focus of the present paper.

On the basis of the observation of the WSF2004, Mumbai, I argue here that the WSF2004 process in India exposed a complex interplay of potentialities and limitations to the formation of an integrated political space at the global level between civil society organisations and social movements. However, at the national level it proved successful in accelerating the process of integration of Indian civil society. Moreover, at the local level, at the level of the place where the actual WSF2004 event took place the, Mumbai, the interaction between the process and the local civil society has been patchy and controversial (especially with respect to the interaction with the Muslim community and its civil society organisations). On the basis of these analysis, the paper argues that:

1. The WSF constitutes a privileged locus for the analysis of the complex socio,cultural, political and economic interactions between actors of civil society from the local to the global level

2. The study of the WSF provides interesting insights on the transnational processes that traverse civil society that constitute the interaction between the global and the local.

The WSF exposes potentialities and limitations of global civil society as an analytical tool and as political project

Muzaffar Assadi, Department of Political Science, University of Mysore

Loss and Recovery of the Local/Villages through Networking in India: Discourses, Strategies and Methodology of Farmers Movements

In the imaginations of Indian scholars, including the western , the local or the villages constitute site of harmonious gender and social relations, community raised of culture and a sign for an identity functioning caste. It is also seen interms of romantic utopia, an ideal "Republic". Gandhi saw in the villages "an age,old culture" which is hidden under an "encasement of crudeness. On the contrary Marx would view the Indian villages in terms of "little communities" However there are stereotyped images of villages as "unchanging" or "idlyic" . This is precipated by the notion of universalim: that all the villages in Indian context are alike ; they are all homogenous; they are all socially conservatives and thereby they can not challenge the larger power domain including the fact that they seldom link themselves to the larger issues afflicting them.

In fact the globalization completely changed the notion of locality/villages. There are apprehension that the locality is no more remain as a site of communitarian life, a site of identity, a site of social interaction. This become the major concern of the New Farmers' Movement in Indian context which began to challenge the larger claims of the globalization through a set of new means: networking with the identical or similar social movements both at the national level and global level. This networking was also part of dismantling the stereotyped images about the social categories; taking the "local" or villages beyond nation and nationalities and also to retrieve " local" in the larger context of globalization. However not all the farmers' movement have identical views about recovering "local". The exception came from Maharastra movement, which saw in globalization a panacea for all the problems afflicting "local" including the social categories.

In this context our paper would focus on how the discourse of local /villages is mediated through a critique of globalization in the farmers' movement, taking particularly Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha(KRRS) and partly Bharatiya Kisan Union of Uttara Pradesh. How these movements tried to retrieve the "loss" and "recovery" of the locality through the enactment of different strategies: mimic the historical past or memories, taking out caravans, , destroy the cultural symbolism of globalism, including networking with similar or identical social movements both at the local level and at global level.. How their politics differed from the politics of other civil society groups., particularly the third sector backed by the multilateral institutions. How this notion leads to the construction of binary opposition: powerful and powerless/ domination and dominated, rational/irrational, empire/subject , colonial /colonized. All these makes us to conclude that in the present context of globalization networking has had three consequences: it provided new identities to the social movements, including marginalized social categories; and two, it also provided a space for debate on locality at the global level and finally it has given new framework/meaning to understand the civil society activism as well as globalization.

Session 1: Spatial Continuities

Sebouh Aslanian,Columbia University, Long Beach, USA

The Salt in a Merchant's Letter": The Art of Writing Business Correspondence, the Courier System and Their Role in Julfan Economy and Society

It is widely acknowledged that "information was the most precious good" in the lives of early modern merchant communities. As Claude Markovits has put it: It is the capacity of the merchants to maintain a constant flow of information within the network that ensures its success. This means two things: first, that "leaks" have to be avoided as much as possible to the outside world, secondly, that information must circulate smoothly within the network, both spatially and temporally, as it gets transmitted from one generation to another...in the long run, the most successful merchant networks have been those most able to process information into a body of knowledge susceptible of continuous refinement. This body of knowledge, of a pragmatic nature, which is mostly about markets, is more or less congruent with what is often called the "secrets of the trade."
The crucial role of information flows was particularly important for Armenian merchants from New Julfa who, by the eighteenth century, had branched out from their small mercantile suburb of the Safavid capital of Isfahan to form a global trading network stretching from Amsterdam in the West to Canton (China) and Manila (Philippines) on the rim of the Pacific Ocean in the East. In the case of Julfan society, information sharing was important not only for merchants who accumulated capital, but also for Armenian priests from New Julfa who saw to it that members of the network maintained their ethno,religious identity and remained loyal to their mother Church in Julfa by making generous alms donations and paying their church taxes on time. Moreover, apart from serving mercantile interests, the circulation of information made it possible for Julfan merchants who resided in far away settlements to be kept abreast of the latest news concerning the welfare of their families and their suburb especially in times of political turmoil.

Given that this was the case, the question arises as to how information was circulated in a network such as the Julfan one in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean? Was there a courier system in place in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East in general through which merchants regularly delivered news to each other? What role did the culture of commercial correspondence play in Julfan society and the long distance trade of its merchants?

This chapter will explore these questions in the context of seventeenth and eighteenth century Julfan trade. Relying on Julfan commercial correspondence stored in the archives of London, Venice, and New Julfa, I argue that Julfan society was built on a culture of long distance commercial correspondence. Moreover, based on a close examination of thousands of business letters, I attempt to demonstrate that Julfan merchants had a sophisticated system of circulating information. Following Rene Barendse, I call this system the "intelligence network" of Julfan merchants. Most of my discussion will focus on the presence of this network in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean because our data almost exclusively pertains to these spheres of Julfan activity. In the first section, I examine the culture of commercial correspondence in Julfan society. I do so by analyzing the style and content of Julfan business letters and illustrating the discussion with examples drawn from a broad sample of commercial correspondence. I follow this with a discussion of the uses of the courier network in Julfan society, scrutinizing first the workings of this network in the Indian Ocean followed by an examination of its presence in the Mediterranean zone. Relying on data found in Julfan business letters, I provide statistical information on average "speed" of the delivery of news between the Mediterranean settlements (especially Venice, Livorno, Izmir, and Aleppo) in the network, on the one hand, and the Indian Ocean end of the network, on the other, to the network's node in New Julfa, Isfahan. Statistical tables with figures on speed and mode of mail delivery from both spheres of Julfan commerce will accompany the discussion. This data is important in helping us to understand the confines in which communication in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries circulated and the way in which this circulation of communication was able to overcome what Braudel famously called "distance: the first enemy."

The sources for this study derive from a remarkable archive of eighteenth,century documents I discovered while doing research at the Public Records Office (PRO) in London. This archive consists of approximately 5,000 Julfan mercantile letters seized in the Indian Ocean in 1748 on board an Armenian,freighted ship called the Santa Catharina. The majority of these letters were carried by Armenian overland couriers across the Mediterranean littoral and Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf port city of Basra, where they were relayed to other merchant,couriers traveling by ship to Bengal with the purpose of being delivered to recipients there and further east in China. What makes this collection valuable for the present investigation is that their journey was unexpectedly cut short when the ship they were traveling on was captured as a war time "prize" by a British naval squadron patrolling the waters off the southern coast of India. The letters were then confiscated along with the Santa Catharina's other cargo and shipped to England to be presented as "exhibits" in a high stakes trial in London. Luckily for us, this event not only insured their survival, but also transformed them into a kind of Julfan "geniza." In addition to relying on this vast trove of documents, I shall also use two other collections of business and family correspondence stored in Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV) and the All Savior's Cathedral Archive (ASCA) in Julfa/Isfahan. Both collections are valuable because they contain thousands of commercial letters sent from Europe and India, many of which are examined here for the first time.

Bhaswati Bhattacharya, Leiden Universiteit, Den Haag, The Netherlands
A New Julfa Merchant in India: the Book of will of Khoja Petrus Woskan, (b. New Julfa, 1680, d. Madras, January 15, 1751)

Large scale settlement of Armenians in India followed the forced evacuation of Julfa in Armenia by Shah Abbas in the beginning of the seventeenth century. While proximity of Iran to India, the key,role player in Asian trade in the pre,modern times partly explains the situation, the politico,social developments in New Julfa from the late seventeenth century onwards played an equally important role in the decision of Armenians of New Julfa to seek other bases of operation. Khoja Petrus Woskan, (1680,1751) was such a person who left New Julfa for Madras in 1705.
The 'Book of will', containing the last will and testament that Woskan prepared before he passed away, was translated into English and presented to the Mayor's Court in Fort St. George, Madras. While it is an important document showing the networks of Petrus and the continuous circulation of goods, information, human and capital resources between Iran and India that sustained Armenian trade in that period, it also sheds important light on the historiography of the Armenians of New Julfa and India.

Claude Markovitz, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

Structure and Agency in the World of Asian Commerce during the Era of European Colonial Domination (c.1750,1950)

Based on a study of South Asian merchant networks operating across Asia and beyond during the period of British rule in India, this paper will attempt at delineating a broad format within which we could think about the theme of the "survival" of Asian commerce in the era of European colonial domination in Asia.

Two paradigms have firstly to be considered. In the first one, represented by the dependency school and world system theory, the role of Asian commerce is one of sheer intermediation between the world of local producers of agricultural commodities and that of monopsonic European exporting firms. This view seems hardly sustainable in view of too much evidence of independent operations on the part of many Asian traders.In the second one, with a long Marxist tradition behind it, recently restated in a different guise by Rajat Ray, two kinds of Asian trading networks are contrasted, some which are deemed to have operated mostly in a "compradore" capacity, ie in a position of subordination to colonial capitalism, and others to which a greater degree of agency is recognized.The distinction between these two kinds of networks however appears singularly artificial, and predicated on very questionable criteria.

I propose to focus rather on the question of the dialectics of structure and agency. From a structural point of view, Asian commerce had to be "dominated", otherwise the concept of colonial domination would have been void, but this did not prevent Asian traders from possessing a significant degree of agency. Focusing on what this agency consisted of, and what its limitations were, seems to be the way forward. The paper will therefore try to answer empirically a certain number of questions regarding the actual historical role of Asian trading networks in linking together different areas of the colonized world, taking as its focus a certain number of networks from South Asia.

Takashi Oishi, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Kobe, Japan

Indian Muslim Merchants in the Indian Ocean Regions and Beyond: Intra,regional Networks in Strategic Association with the State Institutions.

In the writings on the history of Indian Ocean trade and South Asian economy in the medieval and early modern periods Indian Muslim merchants often appeared as ship,owning merchants, merchant,princes and other influential traders. On the other hands, scholarship on the entrepreneurs in modern India have until recently emphasized the rise of other elements among Indian merchants like Marwari, which were to shoulder the big businesses in post,Independence India. This paper takes up Indian Muslim merchants from mid,nineteenth century to the beginning of twentieth century, and contends that they did not remain inert but found advantageous positions in some particular fields of economy through extending the commercial networks in Indian Ocean regions and even beyond including East Asia. In particular, the paper is going to focus on their business in various consumer products and services, which was strategically secured in association with state i!
nstitutions. Partly relying on my previous study and contributions by others, I will show some of their undertakings, for example, the trade of miscellaneous light industry products from Japan like matches, celluloid ware, glass ware and porcelains etc; supply of rice and other foodstuffs to the colonial frontiers of southern and eastern parts of Africa; and shipping business for the transportation of hajj pilgrims from India. Through the analysis of the comparative advantages secured in these businesses for those Muslim merchants in rivalry with other bigger traders and indigenous players, I will emphasize their strategic association or the collaboration with the state and its institutions, notably the customs duties, license registration, trademark system. As a whole, I will discuss that though intra,regional networks on the part of Indian Muslim merchants assumed the mobility of persons, goods and services between the states/regions, they did not detach from framework of!state or region, but on the contrary stood on the strategic a!ppropriation of state, whether it may be colonial or other types.

Gagan Sood, Yale University, New Haven, United States

Correspondence and Communication in the Early Modern Arabian Sea Region

Since the 1960s, there has been a growth of interest in the quotidian worlds of merchants in mediaeval and early modern Islamic Eurasia and maritime Asia. However, despite several exemplary and valuable contributions to our knowledge of this realm, outside the central territories of the Ottoman Empire, this interest has rarely been translated into sustained research efforts by scholars. Our appreciation of the sinews of commercial life and, in particular, the institutional frameworks within which premodern merchants operated and helped fashion remains impressionistic and normative at best. It is to be hoped that this is set to change with the forthcoming generation of historians, who are increasingly equipped with the relevant linguistic skills and guided by new approaches informed by recent work in neighbouring disciplines.

My paper forms part of the latest resurgence of interest in these topics, and is based on a contextualised analysis of contemporary private, business, and legal records in several languages (Arabic, Persian, French, Portuguese, and English) that detail the activities of a host of merchants and mercantile communities (Parsi, Armenian, Gujarati, Hindu, Jewish, British, French, and Portuguese) resident at some of the principle commercial ports of the Arabian Sea region in the eighteenth century (Mocha, Masqat, Basra, Surat, Bombay, Goa, Cochin, and Ile de France). The argument is presented in two parts. In the first, I specify the logistics of and the networks through which knowledge and experience was communicated between merchants engaged in trade that spanned the Arabian Sea region. In the second, I examine how these networks and the institutional fabric in which they were embedded evolved over the course of the eighteenth century. It is striking that, despite the considerable political, social, and economic transformations and upheavals that characterised the polities of this region in this period, a large proportion of mercantile relationships, customs, and institutions were able to accommomdate themselves to these significant changes, and even take advantage of them. As a result, the circulation and diffusion of information across long distances and over the many cultural boundaries that distinguished the communities of this plural society par excellence persisted, enabling commercial activities that would otherwise have been curtailed. The ultimate objective of this paper is to understand and explain, in an era of dramatic change, the flexibility and adaptability of these critical mercantile institutions and the networks that were made possible by them.

Session 2: Temporal Continuities

Enseng Ho, Harvard University, Anthropology, Cambridge, USA

Trade Routes and Transregional Society Across the Indian Ocean

This paper traces the development across the Indian Ocean of a network originating in Hadramawt, Yemen, over half a millennium. The shift in major transoceanic trade routes from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, consequent upon the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in the 13th century, energizes connections among a series of port,cities. From Aden to Cambay and Malacca, as Muslim states and polities emerge in these ports, communities of this transoceanic network begin to settle and form. Combining trade with religion and politics, this network has survived the shifting fortunes of history to this day. This paper examines collective cultural representations which formulate both internal continuity and transcultural exchanges simultaneously, thereby spanning larges spaces and times.

Pius Malekandathil, University of Sanskrit, Kerala, India

Winds of Change and Links of Continuity: A Study on the Merchant Groups of Kerala and the Channels of their Trade, 1000,1800

The diverse merchant groups that participated in the maritime trade emanating from the various exchange centers of Kerala during this period acted within the frames of certain socio,economic circumstances that ensured a remarkable degree of continuity as far as their organizational arrangements and distribution networks were concerned. Familiarization with frequent socio,political changes in the maritime exchange centers of Kerala, which were then exposed to frequent expansionist moves of inland rulers in the initial phase and of the European commercial powers in the later periods, gave a great amount of adaptability to the different mercantile groups involved in its maritime trade, capacitating them to develop multiple survival strategies. Different segments of traders, who were unified by the commonality of religion as in the case of the Muslim merchants, developed diverse but better strategies to overcome the Portuguese control systems and to ensure continuity in trade. When the Portuguese targeted regular attacks on Al,Karimi merchants trading in Calicut, who were also the chief agents responsible for the maintenance of Cairo,Venice trade route, the Marakkars and the Mappila Muslim merchants of Kerala managed to survive by presenting themselves as suppliers of food materials to the Portuguese from the Coromandel coast and also of spices from the hinterland. The Jewish traders of Kerala, who operated initially as members of the Anjuvannam merchant guild towards the end of the first millennium and in the beginning of second millennium, continued their commercial activities by getting themselves linked with the channels of international Jewish trade transgressing the various Euro,Asian Diasporas, which linkage later enabled them also to bypass the Portuguese control mechanisms and to realize long,distance movement of commodities. The continuous patronage that the local rulers extended to the principal merchants from the Muslims, the Jews, the Saraswat Brahmins, the Tamil Pattars as well as the indigenous Christians in return for the wealth that they brought for empowering the hands of the rulers, also turned out to be a mechanism that ensured temporal continuity to their commercial ventures. The extent of commercial continuity that each of these mercantile groups succeeded in maintaining depended very much upon their ability to adjust and to respond to the new challenges as well as to use the newcomers as partners in widening their business in the changed situation, as in the case of the commercial partnership that the traders of the region developed with the Portuguese casado traders for their survival in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Ghulan Ahmad Nadri, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

The maritime merchants of Surat: a long term perspective

This paper looks at the two prominent maritime,trade oriented merchant,families, the Parekhs and the Mullahs of Surat, from a long,term perspective. The fortunes of both the families survived the vicissitudes of the seventeenth ,and eighteenth,century political economy. Whereas the affluence of the Parekh family was to a large extent built and sustained through its close association with the English East India Company, that of the Mullah was based primarily on maritime trade of the Western Indian Ocean. The centuries under review posed several occasional but severe challenges to the families (so also to many others) adversely affecting their fortunes, the families could nevertheless come up again and again quickly recuperating their commercial ventures. This paper attempts to trail the trajectory of both the families spanning two centuries and to examine the course of their success and failure. Did the system of inheritance in Western India cause a general lack of intergenerational transmission of undivided wealth? Were there weaknesses inherent in the trading system that lay behind their inability to create institutions that could render the merchant capital impersonal? These and many other issues such as implications of the growing engagements between trade and politics in the eighteenth century as well as consequences of the late,century changes in the nature of the political economy of India will be taken up in detail. Another concern will be to reason out why despite all potentialities they failed to withstand the crisis at the close of the eighteenth century.

Om Prakash, Delhi School of Economics, New Dehli, Inda

Instrumentalities of Trade: Coastal and High Seas Commerce from the West Coast of India in the Eighteenth Century

Throughout the early modern period, India was at the centre of what is commonly referred to as Asian Trade or the Indian Ocean Trade. Besides Indian and other Asian merchant groups, European corporate enterprises as well as private European traders were important participants in this trade. There was a considerable amount of interaction across these various trading entities at a variety of levels. This paper makes an attempt at reconstructing certain aspects of this interaction in the context of the coastal and the high,seas trade from the west coast of India in the eighteenth century.

Prista Ratanagal, Harvard University, USA

Caravan Traders in Port Cities: Manangi Trade Diasporas in South and Southeast Asia.

Overland caravan trade links maritime trade with markets and supplies from the hinterland. The Indian subcontinent is linked with Tibet, China, and Central Asia by trade routes along the river valleys that cut north,south through the Himalayas. Trade in the Tibetan region flourished at least since the rise of Tibetan Empire in the 7th century, and particularly in the 15th century when temples funded long,distance trade. During the colonial period, long,distance traders from Manang valley, on the southern edge of the Tibetan plateau, now belonging to the Nepal nation,state, rode along British ships from Calcutta, Madras, and Rangoon, to Penang and points south. In the 21st century, they fly between Nepal, India, and countries in Southeast Asia.

In this paper, I examine Manangi trade networks through movements of merchants between Nepal and trading sites abroad. Institutionalized social, family, and religious gatherings pool and redistribute funds for trade abroad. Abroad, Manangi pool residence and work space at each trading site. Those who marry local women connect itinerant Manangis with local economies in various ways. The high level of trust and the sharing of information within the Manangi community allow them to substantially reduce their costs and increase their flexibility in trade, while the availability of cheap funds allows their trade to grow. These socially embedded economic relations within the Manangi community -across cultures and societies,, give them a comparative advantage over other trading merchants, national or transnational, through out their trade history.