The eighteenth century in South Asian history is a period of great dynamism and a critical phase in the historical trajectory of the subcontinent. This book focuses on the merchants and manufacturers of Gujarat, who amidst complex political developments succeeded in preserving their autonomy and freedom in the market place. By spotting economic growth in the late eighteenth century, this study rejects the constructed dualism between a seventeenth century of great progress and an eighteenth century of chaos and decline.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

India, Modernity and the Great Divergence is an original and pioneering book about India’s transition towards modernity and the rise of the West. The work examines global entanglements alongside the internal dynamics of 17th to 19th century Mysore and Gujarat in comparison to other regions of Afro-Eurasia. It is an interdisciplinary survey that enriches our historical understanding of South Asia, ranging across the fascinating and intertwined worlds of modernizing rulers, wealthy merchants, curious scholars, utopian poets, industrious peasants and skilled artisans. Bringing together socio-economic and political structures, warfare, techno-scientific innovations, knowledge production and transfer of ideas, this book forces us to rethink the reasons behind the emergence of the modern world.

Excerpt from History of Gujarát (Musalmán Period, A. D. 1297-1760) The use of the name Kathiawar, on the other hand, is of recent origin. It was not until after the establishment of Musalman power in Gujarat that any portion of the peninsula came to be called after the tribe of Kathis, and, as noticed above, even as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, the name Kathiawar applied only to one of the sub-divisions of the peninsula. In the disorders which prevailed during the latter part of the last century, the Kathis made themselves conspicuous; and as it was from the hardy horsemen of this tribe that the Marathas met with the greatest resistance in the collection of their tribute, they came to speak of the whole peninsula as the land of the Kathis. This use, adopted in their writings by the early British officers, has since then been continued. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

How did the Kachchhi traders build on the Gujarat Advantage? In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during the dying days of the Mughal empire, merchants from Kachchh established a flourishing overseas trade. Building on a rich legacy of free trade in pre-modern times between the many ports of Gujarat and the Middle East, the Kachchhis dealt in pearls, dates, spices and ivory with the faraway lands of Muscat and Zanzibar. The Kachchhi merchants behaved much like today’s venture capitalists. They knew how to grow capital, seek new markets, and create them where they didn’t exist. They also had a phenomenal risk appetite. What they were able to practise was nothing less than the traits of globalization before its time. This new book in The Story of Indian Business series tells their fascinating story.

Blessed with numerous safe harbours, accessible ports, and a rich hinterland, Gujarat has been central to the history of Indian Ocean maritime exchange that involved not only goods, but also people and ideas. This volume maps the trajectory of the extra-continental interactions of Gujarat and how it shaped the history of the Indian Ocean. Chronologically, the volume spans two millennia, and geographically, it ranges from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia The book focuses on specific groups of Gujarati traders, and their accessibility and trading activities with maritime merchants from Africa, Arabia, Southeast Asia, China, and Europe. It not only analyses the complex process of commodity circulation, involving a host of players, huge investments, and numerous commercial operations, but also engages with questions of migration and diaspora. Paying close attention to current historiographical debates, the contributors make serious efforts to challenge the neat regional boundaries that are often drawn around the trading history of Gujarat.

In recent decades, private investment has led to an economic resurgence in India. But this is not the first time the region has witnessed impressive business growth. There have been many similar stories over the past 300 years. India's economic history shows that capital was relatively expensive. How, then, did capitalism flourish in the region? How did companies and entrepreneurs deal with the shortage of key resources? Has there been a common pattern in responses to these issues over the centuries? Through detailed case studies of firms, entrepreneurs, and business commodities, Tirthankar Roy answers these questions. Roy bridges the approaches of business and economic history, illustrating the development of a distinctive regional capitalism. On each occasion of growth, connections with the global economy helped firms and entrepreneurs better manage risks. Making these deep connections between India's economic past and present shows why history matters in its remaking of capitalism today.

In Hinterlands and Commodities: Place, Space, Time and the Political Economic Development of Asia over the Long Eighteenth Century, well-known economic and social historians examine important questions concerning temporal and spatial relationships among central places, hinterlands, commodities, and political economic developments in Asia and the Global economy over the long eighteenth century. These timely essays engage hinterlands and commodities providing novel foci on historical impacts maritime trade on political economic developments involving place, space, and time in Asia, thereby furnishing historical background for current conditions. They contribute to discourse concerning historical interactions among indigenous Asian merchant activities and European commercial counterparts. Contributors are: George Bryan Souza, Dennis O. Flynn, Marie A. Lee, Ghulam A. Nadri, Bhaswati Bhattacharya, Tsukasa Mizushima, Tomotaka Kawamura, Atushi Ota, Ryuto Shimada, and Ei Murakami.