Panel Organizers:

Dr. B. Bhattacharya - affiliated fellow IIAS, the Netherlands
Dr. J. Gommans - Leiden University, the Netherlands
Prof. Dharampal-Frick - University of Heidelberg, Germany

Abstract
   

This panel addresses the survival strategies of early-modern Asian merchant communities and networks across time and space. Contributors are stimulated to take a longer-term and interregional perspective, preferably with a special eye for the comparative and the connective.

1. Transgressing Time (1000-1800)

Abstract

This theme aims to reexamine the social and political position of the Indian merchant in the various regional political economies of the subcontinent. In the context of India's failed transition to industrialism, the study of the Indian merchant too often suffered from explanations that highlighted the dangerous and insecure political and economic conditions under which merchants - be it peddlers or portfolio-capitalists - had to do business. But amidst considerable political upheaval and economic insecurities, Indian merchant communities did remarkably well in continuing their existence over the generations. In fact, it appears that the lives and careers of e.g. political elites were far less secure. In this panel, scholars will be invited to reexamine the existing literature on the successful or failed continuity of maritime merchant communities in a particular region. This should highlight the maritime merchant's various positions in society and his survival strategies in the context of the specific political and social-economic circumstances of that region for the period from c.1000 to 1800, that is, by transgressing the conventional caesura of 1500. From this longue durée perspective, a first step could be made towards a better understanding of the temporal and spatial disparities in what appears to be the very remarkable survival of the Indian maritime merchant.

2. Transgressing Space (1500-1900)

Abstract

This theme aims at focusing on the patterns of network formation among the Asian merchant communities operating in the Indian Ocean region between 1500 and 1900. It is usually thought that the Asian commercial networks developed during the period 1500-1900 did not survive the onslaught of the colonial rule. Recent researches show, however, that trans-national commercial networks of Indian merchants from Sind e.g., connecting India with different parts of the world, were able to span the period between indigenous and colonial regimes. What can we say about other mercantile communities operating in India in the pre-colonial period? Drawing on recent primary research and secondary literature, this panel would like to discuss the nature of the commercial networks of different groups of Asian merchants. Where did the merchant stand? How was information passed? How were the networks formed and sustained? How do we define such networks, especially when members of a community were dispersed over different parts of the globe? Can we talk of ‘independent Asian merchants'during the period under consideration? Is it possible to talk about the existence in the longue durée of a continuing process in the way these networks operated? These are some of the questions that will be dealt with in this panel.

Session 1: Spatial Continuities
 

Sebouh Aslanian,Columbia University, Long Beach, USA

"The Salt in a Merchant's Letter": The Art of Business Correspondence and the Information Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa in the Early Modern Period

It is now widely acknowledged that "information was the most precious good" in the lives of early modern merchant communities. As Claude Markovits puts it, "it is the capacity of the merchants to maintain a constant flow of information within the network that ensures its success."

           This essay will explore the circulation of information within the trade network of Armenian merchants from New Julfa, a suburb of the Safavid capital of Isfahan founded in 1605 by Armenian silk merchants forcibly displaced by Shah Abbas I from a town on the Ottoman-Persian frontier. Relying on Julfan commercial correspondence stored in the archives of London, Venice, and New Julfa, this study argues that the Julfan trade network was built on and unified through a culture of long distance commercial correspondence. Moreover, based on a close examination of thousands of business letters, this study demonstrates that Julfan merchants had a sophisticated system of circulating information. Most of the discussion will focus on the presence of this network in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, examining in particular the uses of a "private-order" courier network in Julfan society, scrutinizing the workings of this network in the Indian Ocean followed by a brief examination of its presence in the Mediterranean zone. Relying on data found in Julfan business letters, this study provides statistical information on average "speed" of the delivery of news between the Mediterranean settlements in the network, on the one hand, and the Indian Ocean end of the network, on the other, to the network's nodal center in New Julfa, Isfahan. The resulting statistical data on speed and mode of mail delivery is important in helping us to understand the confines within which information in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries circulated and how this circulation of information was able to overcome what Braudel famously called "distance: the first enemy."

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
 
Engseng 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 Ratanapruck, 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.