Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, a distinct form of Islamic thought and practice developed among Muslim trading communities of the Indian Ocean. Sebastian R. Prange argues that this 'Monsoon Islam' was shaped by merchants not sultans, forged by commercial imperatives rather than in battle, and defined by the reality of Muslims living within non-Muslim societies. Focusing on India's Malabar Coast, the much-fabled 'land of pepper', Prange provides a case study of how Monsoon Islam developed in response to concrete economic, socio-religious, and political challenges. Because communities of Muslim merchants across the Indian Ocean were part of shared commercial, scholarly, and political networks, developments on the Malabar Coast illustrate a broader, trans-oceanic history of the evolution of Islam across monsoon Asia. This history is told through four spaces that are examined in their physical manifestations as well as symbolic meanings: the Port, the Mosque, the Palace, and the Sea.

Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast

India’s rapid economic growth over the last decade has been coupled with a Maoist insurgency that competes with the state for rural allegiance. In response to the threat, the Government of India ha...

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Hearts and mines: A district-level analysis of the Maoist conflict in India:

Ocean of Trade offers an innovative study of trade, production and consumption across the Indian Ocean between the years 1750 and 1850. Focusing on the Vāniyā merchants of Diu and Daman, Pedro Machado explores the region's entangled histories of exchange, including the African demand for large-scale textile production among weavers in Gujarat, the distribution of ivory to consumers in Western India, and the African slave trade in the Mozambique channel that took captives to the French islands of the Mascarenes, Brazil and the Rio de la Plata, and the Arabian peninsula and India. In highlighting the critical role of particular South Asian merchant networks, the book reveals how local African and Indian consumption was central to the development of commerce across the Indian Ocean, giving rise to a wealth of regional and global exchange in a period commonly perceived to be increasingly dominated by European company and private capital.

Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c.1750-1850

Cross-cultural exchange has characterized the economic life of India since antiquity. Its long coastline has afforded convenient access to Asia and Africa as well as trading partnerships formed in the exchange of commodities ranging from textiles to military technology and from opium to indigo. In a journey across two thousand years, this enthralling book, written by a leading South Asian historian, describes the ties of trade, migration, and investment between India and the rest of the world and shows how changing patterns of globalization have reverberated in economic policy, politics, and political ideology within India. Along the way, the book asks three major questions: Is this a particularly Indian story? When did the big turning points happen? And is it possible to distinguish the modern from the pre-modern pattern of exchange? These questions invite a new approach to the study of Indian history by placing the region at the center of the narrative. This is global history written on India's terms, and, as such, the book invites Indian, South Asian, and global historians to rethink both their history and their methodologies.

India in the World Economy: From Antiquity to the Present

Migrant worker remittances often take place outside the scope of government enforcement. Through an examination of the informal remittance transfer system of hawala, this paper argues that self-enforcing exchange mechanisms can support high volume trade in the absence of formal contract enforcement. Hawala networks employ ex post reputation mechanisms between agents and ex ante signaling to uphold obligations under conditions of contract uncertainty. JEL Codes: D85, F33, G29, N25, P48, Z13

Remittances and Reputations in Hawala Money-Transfer Systems: Self-Enforcing Exchange on an International Scale

During the second half of the eighteenth century, Surat was still a large city and an important centre of trade. One of the most successful sectors of its merchant class was made up by shroffs, namely businessmen specializing in money-exchanging, money-lending and the giving and discounting of bills of exchange. By the late 177os, the fortunes of the shroffs, who were mainly Hindu, were on the rise. According to knowledgeable observers, the Hindu businessmen, but most particu-

Trapped inside the Colonial Order: The Hindu Bankers of Surat and their Business World during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

In a recent and thought-provoking article, Dr Lakshmi Subramanian has forcefully made the case that, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the history of the West Coast of India in general and the history of the city of Surat in particular are explained by the rise of what she terms the ‘Anglo-Bania order’, namely ‘a mercantile and political order distinguished by the mutually beneficial cooperation of the English East India Company and the Bania bankers and merchants of Surat and Bombay’.More specifically, Dr Subramanian claims that the rise of the Anglo-Bania order is at the roots of the first Hindu—Muslim communal clash about which a reasonably good documentation has survived, namely the ‘great tumult’ of August 1795, when ‘the lower orders of the Muslim population fell upon the shops and houses of the Bania residents of the city, looting grain, demolishing the images of their gods and tearing up their account books’.

Surat During the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century: What Kind of Social Order?: A rejoinder to Lakshmi Subramanian

This paper is about the small war that ended with the British conquest of Surat castle in 1759. This event brought about the establishment of English paramountcy in Surat, which, in turn, was the first step taken by the English on their way to empire along the Western coast of India. As such, the developments leading to the take-over of Surat castle represent a case study of some importance in the early rise of British power in India and the reasons behind it.

Mughal Nobles, Indian Merchants and the Beginning of British Conquest in Western India: The Case of Surat 1756-1759

Narendra Modi’s spectacular victory over Congress in the 2014 Indian general elections was made possible by many factors. However, the main and overarching cause of Modi’s victory was the process which, starting in 2009 with the backing of the Indian corporate sector, built up the image of Modi as a kind of fearless and unblemished hero who, having raised his home state, Gujarat, to an extraordinary level of economic development, was now in a position to replicate the same feat at the all-India level. ‘Modi’s legend’ first conquered the middle class’ imagination and, then, was spread among the masses and, transversally, among first-time voters by that same middle class, with the help of RSS volunteers. Thus, a juggernaut was created and deployed with devastating effects, not only against Congress but, as shown by the cases of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, against some of India’s strongest regional parties.

The ‘Modi Wave’: Behind the Results of the 2014 General Elections in India

The model of periodization that is nowadays hegemonic in Indian history, squarely based on the colonial model first articulated by James Mill, is both heuristically unsatisfactory and politically dangerous. From a heuristic viewpoint, it refers only to the ‘religious’ composition of the ‘ruling class’ (and, by the way, not even the whole of the ruling class). From a political viewpoint, it stresses the divisive elements present in the Indian historical tradition, by implicitly equating ‘Hindu’ with ‘Indian’ and ‘Muslim’ with ‘invader/foreigner’. The present article aims at sketching out a scientifically more inclusive and politically less dangerous new model by building on the assumption that Indian history is part of world history and, consequently, that the main socio-economic developments in the Indian subcontinent are part and parcel of the most relevant socio-economic developments world-wide. The resulting model de-emphasizes the divisive elements of the Indian experience, represented by the separate...

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Michelguglielmo Torri

Papers

Trapped inside the Colonial Order: The Hindu Bankers of Surat and their Business World during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

Surat During the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century: What Kind of Social Order?: A rejoinder to Lakshmi Subramanian

Mughal Nobles, Indian Merchants and the Beginning of British Conquest in Western India: The Case of Surat 1756-1759

The ‘Modi Wave’: Behind the Results of the 2014 General Elections in India

For a New Periodization of Indian History: The History of India as Part of the History of the World