Studies in Eighteenth Century Mughal and Ottoman Trade

Author(s): James D. Tracy

Source: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1994), pp.
197-201
Published by: BRILL
Stable 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
(NetherlandsInstitutefor AdvancedStudies,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
SoutheastAsia in the Early ModernEra 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 cannot 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 Tradein Early SoutheastAsia, 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 colonialist 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 agreement 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 sixteenth 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, Merchantsand Rulers in Guyerat:The Response to the Portuguesein 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, Commoditzesand Entrepreneursin Asian Maritime Trade,

c. 1400-1700 (Stuttgart, 1991), 339-352 (reviewed inm

JESHO, 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: LongDtstance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750 (Cambridge and New York, 1990),
371-399

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200

JAMESD. TRACY

the empire4). 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 responsibilityfor its safe arrival at the designated port. Sometimes 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,like the captains themselves, tended to specialize in shipments to a particular destination in the
Levant. Moreover, most of the twelveyaziji 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-CAzizBakr 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 forming 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
Empireand the WorldEconomy(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 Rotherand Entrepreneurs
in Asian Trade,353-362.
mund, Entrepots,Commoditzes
6) Philip Curtin, CrossCulturalTradein WorldHistory(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
give 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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