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Studies in Eighteenth Century Mughal and Ottoman Trade
Author(s): James D. TracySource: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1994), pp.197-201Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3632255.
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JESHO,
Vol.
XXXVII,
?
E.J.
Brill,
Leiden
STUDIES
IN
EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
MUGHAL AND
OTTOMAN TRADE
BY
JAMES
D.
TRACY
(Netherlands
nstitute or Advanced
Studies,
Wassenaar,
The
Netherlands)
In a format not unfamiliar to
readers
of
JESHO,
the
books
reviewed
in
this
special
issue
on
trade
suggest
themes
that
are
addressed
by
the three
articles.
It is
particularly interesting
that
Anthony
Reid's
edited volume on
Southeast
Asia
in
the
Early
Modern Era raises the same
questibns
that have also
framed
recent discussion of
the
commercial
and
economic
development
of
South
Asia
and the Middle East
during
the
same
broad
period.
Studies
showing
the
continuing vitality
of
indigenous
trading
systems
have
long
laid
to
rest the
idea that
Europeans
came
to dominate
regional
commerce almost
as soon
as
they
arrived in Asian
waters.
Further,
as Kenneth Hall
points
out,
a number
of
scholars
now believe that
developments
after
about 1650
represent
new
configurations
of a
still
vigorous
trade,
rather
than a decline
of the Asian
trading
networks that were henceforth to be
outpaced by
the
European
companies.
To
question
the overall
importance
of
Europeans
in
Asian
commerce
is
of course
also to
question
the relative
weight
of maritime
trade and
overland trade.
The
Begley-De
Puma volume
on
Rome
and India
shows that
this issue is
no
less
important
for the remote
past:
the
discovery
of
Greek
pottery
and other
Mediterranean
goods
along
India's
Malabar
coast establishes
the
importance
of Roman maritime trade
only
if
one
can-
not
imagine
land routes
by
which
these wares reached their eventual
destination (Willem Vogelsang suggests the Iranian plateau, and the article
by
David
Whitehouse
proposes
the
caravan
route
to
the
head
of
the
Persian
Gulf).
Finally, George
Spence
points
out
that in
his
valuable
study
of
Money,
Markets
and Trade
in
Early
Southeast
Asia,
Robert
Wicks
employs
a functional
definition
of
money (so
as to include
rice,
cowrie
shells,
etc.)
which
frees
his
discussion
of
money
from modern
or
Europeanist assumptions,
but
also
blunts
the revisionist force
of his thesis
postulating
a
general
trend towards
monetization
in
Southeast
Asia. In other
words,
insofar as
the
history
of
Asia in the early modern era still has to overcome the remnants of a col-
onialist
bias,
one can
clear the
way
for a
better
understanding
Asian
societies
in
their
own
terms either
by
drawing
on the arsenal of cultural
relativism,
and thus avoid
comparisons
that
may
or
may
not be
invidious,
or
by showing
the
development
of
comparable
institutions
no
less
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198
JAMES
D. TRACY
sophisticated
than their western
counterparts,
but not
by
doing
both at
the
same time.
The articles
presented
here all find
Asian
trading
networks
still
flourishing
at least until the
early
eighteenth
century;
two of them stress
the
greater
importance
of
overland trade relative
to maritime
trade,
and
each
of
the
authors is
rightly
concerned to
indicate,
from the
perspective
of
trade,
parallel
developments
in
Asian and
European
institutions.
The
merchants
who
figure
in
these
pages
may
at times
have
relied on
Europe's
merchant
fleet
(as
at
Damiette),
but
they
needed no lessons in how to
do
business.
Muzaffar
Alam's
study
of
Mughal-Uzbek
commercial
relations,
ca.
1500-1750,
starts
with the sensible
premise
that
the
coming
of
a
Central
Asian dynasty to India would strengthen commercial ties between the two
regions.
He
explores
the
role of
settled
communities of
Indian
merchants in
Bukhara
and
Samarqand,
the
commodities that moved back
and
forth
across the
mountain
passes
(including
some of the
Central
Asian horses
that
are
a focal
point
for
Gommans'
article),
the
Central Asian and
Indian
intermediaries
involved-the latter
principally
Multinis,
Hindu
or
Muslim,
and the
Hindu
Khatris-and
the
strong
concern
of rulers
on both
sides
of the
Himalayas
to
protect
and
enhance
trade routes.
His data
do not
permit a quantitative comparison with the volume of contemporary trade
by
sea, but,
as
he
notes,
one
may
gather
from the
1688
commercial
agree-
ment with the
Armenians
(requiring
the latter to
export goods
from
India
by
sea
rather
than
by
land,
and on
Company
ships)
that the
English
East
India
Company
was
concerned
about overland
competition.
Along
the
way,
Azam
also
puts
question
marks
beside the
relationship
between
trade
and
politics
in
Mughal
India,
as we
now
understand it on
the
basis of
what
scholars have
worked out
in
the last
two decades.
It has been
argued
that
the
Portuguese
were
able to
gain
footholds
on
the Indian
littoral because six-
teenth
century
Mughal
rulers,
with some
exceptions,
took
little
interest
in
the
well-being
of their merchant
subjects,
who in
turn
had
little
influence
at
court');
but
Azam
points
out
that
rulers
on both
sides of
the
mountains
were at
pains
to
protect
and
enhance
overland
trade,
and
that,
at least in
the
early
eighteenth century,
Sikh
Khatris were an
influential
voice at
the
Mughal
court.
Similarly,
it
has been
argued
that
overland
trade
declined
1)
Michael N.
Pearson,
Merchants
and Rulers in
Guyerat:
The
Response
to
the
Portuguese
n
the
16th
Century
Berkeley,
1976);
but see
also
Tapan Raychaudhuri,
The
Commercial
Entrepreneur
in
Pre-Colonial
India:
Aspirations
and
Expectations.
A
Note,
in
Roderich
Ptak,
Dietmar
Rothermund,
Emporia,
Commoditzes
nd
Entrepreneurs
n
Asian
Maritime
Trade,
c.
1400-1700
(Stuttgart,
1991),
339-352
(reviewed
inm
ESHO,
vol.
36,
no.
2).
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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
MUGHAL
AND
OTTOMAN
TRADE
199
In
the
early eighteenth century
because
of the
political
weakness
of
the
Mughal
Empire2),
but Azam
suggests reversing
the
relationship--the
Mughal
treasury
and
the
Mughals
themselves
may
have
been
weakened
because
trans-Himalayan
and other trade routes were
disrupted
by
a
variety
of
local circumstances.
The
eighteenth
century
horse trade studied
by
Jos
Gommans was
part
of
the
pattern
of
interchange
examined
by
Azam,
although
the
routes
along
which
war
horses
came to India
(generally
from
the
northwest)
were
by
no
means
confined to the roads
linking Mughal
and
Uzbek
centers.
Gommans'
results
may
be
compared
with
other studies
showing
that the
volume
of
goods
shipped
from
India
to
Europe
was
dwarfed
by
that
of
the
principal
trades
within the vast subcontinent
itself3).
A conservative estimate of the value of
horses
imported
into
India
in
the 1770s would
still
be
more
than
twice as
much
as the
combined
exports
to
Europe
from
wealthy
Bengal
by
the
Dutch,
English
and
French East
India
Companies.
Land and
sea routes
played
complementary
roles
in
the
horse
trade,
in
part
because
importers
resorted
to the more
expensive
(for
horses)
sea lanes
when inland roads
were
disrupted.
Gommans
too has an
eye
for the
relationship
between trade
and
politics,
and his
concluding suggestion
about
the
relationship
between
war
horses and state-building seems particularly interesting. Nearly all of the
Afghan
states that
emerged
in
the
eighteenth
century
were
carved out
along
the traditional
horse-trade
routes,
meaning
that
the
new
rulers
(one
of whom
started out
as a
horse
trader)
could
put
large
troops
of
cavalry
into
the
field,
at
a
time
when it was still
not
clear
whether horseback warriors
or the
new
British-trained
sepoy
infantry
would
ultimately
prove
more
effective.
Daniel
Crecelius
and
Hamza
cAbb-'al-CAziz
Badr
present
an
analysis
of
shipping manifests unusually rich in detail about the organization of trade
at
a lesser
Ottoman
entrep6t
in the
late
eighteenth
century
Since each
of
the
Damiette
documents
states that
the
captain
has the
authority
of
the
Ottoman
state
to
carry cargo
to other
ports,
and
since
theyaz'i
or
port agent
was
apparently
appointed
by
the local
governor,
there is
at
least indirect
evidence
that
state control
of trade
was still
intact,
at least in this corner
of
2) Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, 1700-1750 (Wiesbaden,
1979).
3)
For
example,
on the
Banjaras
and
their
immense
trains
of
cargo-oxen,
see Irfan
Habib,
Merchant
Communities
in Precolonial
India,
in
Tracy,
The Rise
ofMerchant
Empires:
Long-
Dtstance
Trade
in
the
Early
Modern
World,
1350-1750
(Cambridge
and New
York,
1990),
371-399
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200
JAMES
D.
TRACY
the
empire ).
From
Damiette merchants
shipped mainly
small
quantities
of
rice
to
ports
in the
Levant,
notably
Ladiqiyya;
by
contrast,
from
a
major
entrep8t
like
Alexandria,
ships
that
were
typically
larger
than those
sailing
from Damiette headed for the Ottoman heartland
ports,
such as
Smyrna
or
Saloniki. The
fact that
the
manifests list
only
French
captains
and
their
ships
is
unusual
for
Damiette,
where
most
ships
were
Ottoman-flagged,
but
indicative for
the more
important
trade routes
in
Ottoman
waters;
one
may
venture to
suggest
a
parallel
with maritime trade in
eighteenth
century
India,
where
coastal trafic was in local
hands,
but
Europeans
controlled the
major
routes5).
Perhaps
the
most
intriguing pattern
that
the
authors are
able
to
draw
from their data
concerns
the
role of
theyaziji,
who
received the
merchandise from its owner, certified its lading on board a particularship,
and assumed
responsibility
for
its
safe arrival
at
the
designated
port.
Some-
times
ayazjif
would also sail with a
ship
as
supercargo.
Correlation
of names
and
destinations
suggests
that
a
given
French
captain
would often
use
the
services of the
sameyaziyi,possibly
because
theyaz~ji,
ike the
captains
them-
selves,
tended to
specialize
in
shipments
to a
particular
destination
in the
Levant.
Moreover,
most
of
the
twelve
yaziji
mentioned
in
these
documents
had
names
indicating
that
they
themselves
came from
the
Levant
coast or
the coast of Asia Minor; two can be identified as Syrian Melkite Christians,
a
group
whose
members
were
establishing
themselves in
Damiette
just
in
the
years
in
which
the
ship
manifests are
dated.
Drawing
all of
these
points
together,
it
is
possible
to
glimpse
in
the
evidence
put
forward
by
Crecelius
and
CAbd-'al-CAziz
akr
a
replication
in
modest
terms of
that vital
process
by
which
merchant
communities from
point
A
trading
to
point
B
throw off
small
colonies to
B,
the
better
to
consolidate the
connection.
A
trading
system
in which
(in
Philip
Curtm's
term)6)
new
trade
diasporas
are for-
ming can hardly be considered moribund.
In
sum,
these
articles that
complement
one
another in
building up
for
the
eighteenth
century
a
good example
of
that
more
dynamic
picture
of Asian
trading
systems
that
books
like
those
reviewed
here
are
calling
for.
Azam
makes
a
convincing
case
for
the
interaction
between
trade
and
state
policy
along
the
Himalayan
routes,
Gommans
highlights
the
complex
organization
4)
For
the
importance
of
its
control of
trade
to the
Ottoman
state,
Hurn
Islamoglu
and
Caglar Keyder, Agenda for Ottoman History, in Hun Islamoglu-Inan, ed., TheOttoman
Empire
and
the
World
Economy
Cambridge
and New
York,
1987), pp.
42-62,
especially
pp.
49-52.
5)
Ashin
Das
Gupta,
Changing
Faces of the
Manitime
Merchant,
in
Ptak
and
Rother-
mund,
Entrepots,
Commoditzes
nd
Entrepreneurs
n
Asian
Trade,
353-362.
6)
Philip
Curtin,
Cross
CulturalTrade
n World
History
Cambridge
and
New
York,
1984).
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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MUGHAL
AND
OTTOMAN TRADE
201
and the
great
wealth invested
in
the
trade
in
a
key military commodity,
and
Crecelius and
CAbd-'al-CAziz
ive
us
a rare
glimpse
of the
men
who
could
use
European
shipping
to
help
them create
a
trading
world
that
was
small,
but
nonetheless
vital,
and
stamped
with the
culture
and
traditions
of their
own
region.
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