This volume is a collection of papers that provides rich insights into trade workings of the Indian mind arguing that Indian merchants in the medieval and the early modern period were in no way inferior to other traders and Europeans in terms of their commercial operations and business acumen drawing on a wide range of sources. What emerges is a mosaic reflecting rich commercial heritage. Part I includes four studies relating to the ports, maritime trade and urbanization and emphasis is laid on how they acted as centres of distribution, exploring the dimensions of trade, documenting shipping. In part II the focus of study has been on merchants, middlemen and their business and the authors look at the numerous facets of trade, such as private and official, inland and foreign. Part III contains an extensive study of the inland trade and the role of coins, circulation of money and bullion, emphasizing bilateral trade, regional trade and the impact of the changing global trade policies on India charting a free trade. Thus the book covers the region of Bengal, Gujarat, Coromandel and Malabar in India besides Central Asia, West Asia, South East Asia and the Himalayas covering substantive themes in a commercial perspective, tracing little known world of the trans-Himalayan trade and spectacular rise in Asian trade. Written by well known scholars this book throws new light, raises pertinent questions and takes up fresh perspectives on the growth and development of Asian trade, analyses the continuing and growing importance of Indian traders both on sea and land unearthing new evidences from Danish and Russian.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR S. Jeyaseela Stephen
S. Jeyseela Stephen is professor of maritime History and Coordinator of the special Assistance programme of the UGC at Visva-Bharti. He joined the academy of historians in 1994 at Ecole francaise extreme-orient and went to pune to became Senior Advisor to Tata Central Archives in 2000. He became Head of the Department of History in 2001 at Visva-Bharti University, Santiniketan. He was the editor of revue Historique: Societe de 1st Histoire de Pondichery (1995-97). He had taught at the University of Nebraska, USA in 2004. He is a Member of the Executive Committee in the Indian Historical records Commission nominated by the Government of India. (220-07). Among his many publications are: The Coromandel Coast and its Hinterland: Economy, Society and political System, 1500-1600 (1997), Portuguese in the Rtamil Coast: Historical Explorations in Commerce and Culture, 1507-1749 (1998), Rangappa Thiruvengadam Pillai Naatkurippu, Vol. I (1760-1768) Vol. II, 1762-66, (2000), The Diary of Rangappa Thiruvengadam Pillai, 1760-68: Trnslated from Original Tamil with Notes (2001), Portuguese-Tamil Grammar: Modernisation and Democratisation of Tamil (2001) and Letters of the Portuguese Jesuits from Tamil countryside, 1666-68, (2001). He has also co-edited (with K.S. Mathew) Indo-French Relations, (1999). ) and edited Trade and Globalisation: Europeans, Americans and Indians in the Bay of Bengal, 1511-1819 (2003). He won the best book prize for his book Muthu Vijaya Thiruvengadam Pillai Naatkurippu, 1794-1796, in 1999 (in Tamil which deals with Diary Writing in Tamil during the Eighteenth Century).
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