Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750

This 1994 book assesses the economic significance of Indian, mercantile communities trading in Iran, Central Asia and Russia.

Stephen Frederic Dale (Author)

9780521525978, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 August 2002

180 pages, 5 b/w illus. 5 maps
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.303 kg

"This slender and highly readable study is an important and provocative addition to the literature questioning the Eurocentric paradigm." Journal of Middle East Studies

In this remarkable 1994 work of comparative economic history, Stephen Dale studies the activities and economic significance of the Indian mercantile communities which traded in Iran, Central Asia and Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author uses Russian sources, hitherto largely ignored, to show that these merchants represented part of the hegemonic trade diaspora of the Indian world economy, thus challenging the conventional interpretation of world economic history that European merchants overwhelmed their Asian counterparts in the early modern era. The book not only demonstrates the vitality of Indian mercantile capitalism, but also offers a unique insight into the social characteristics of an Indian expatriate trading community in the Volga-Caspian port of Astrakhan.

l. An Indian world economy
2. India, Iran and Turan in 1600
3. The Indian diaspora in Iran and Turan
4. Indo-Russian commerce in the early modern era
5. The Indian diaspora in the Volga basin
6. Imperial collapse, mercantilism and the Mughul diaspora.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Asian history [HBJF]