¹ Cf. Gordon, Stewart N., “The Slow Conquest: Administrative Integration of Malwa into the Maratha Empire, 1720–1760,” Modern Asian Studies XI (1977): 1–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the new Maratha land revenue system in Malwa province, the civilian Brahmin collectors employed by the Peshwa (kamavisdars) were under contract to the central regime at Poona to collect land revenues in an area extending from one to five subdistricts (parganas). In this system, the collector paid one-third to one-half of his specified collections in advance to the Peshwa. This was treated as a loan from him and he was entitled to collect both the principal and the prevailing rate of interest from his territory. He, in turn, borrowed his capital from the Poona money market to make his advance installment payments.Kulkarni, G.T. has published the most detailed and authoritative study of the operations of a Maratha family banking firm which we possess: “Banking in the 18th Century: A Case Study of a Poona Banker,” Artha Vijnana (Journal of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics) XV (1973): 180–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Patwardhan firm, functioning as banker to the Peshwas, served the Maratha state through branches in Nasik, Bombay, Aurangabad, and Bijapur. But the founders of the firm began as moneylenders in the town of Nasik in the first decade of the eighteenth century before moving to Poona.

² Little, J.H., “The House of Jagatseth,” Bengal Past and Present XX (1920): 11–200Google Scholar; ibid., XXII (1921):1–119.

³ Ibid. XX(1920):113–14.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 116–17.

⁵ Ibid., p. 119.

⁶ “No record remains of the doings of Manik Chand during these events [the removal of Murshid Quli Khan to Murshidabad]…. Perhaps Murshid Kuli [sic] Khan had already found out the value of his advice…. But this is conjecture.” Ibid., p. 118.

⁷ Ibid., p. 122.

⁸ Because of political pressure put upon them by the governor of Bengal, the British could not purchase cloth directly from the merchants of Bengal. In this situation, they negotiated an agreement with Fatah Chand, Manik Chand's nephew, for him to make the purchase and advance the necessary funds. Ibid., p. 123.

⁹ Ibid., p. 124.

¹⁰ Contrary to Little's assertion, the king-maker Husain Ali Khan Sayyid, governor of Azimabad (Bihar), did not rely upon a loan extracted from the “bankers and principal men of the city” in order to muster a rebel army in anticipation of Prince Farrukhsiyar's arrival from Bengal. Instead, Husain Ali Khan seized the annual treasure shipment en route from Bengal to Delhi which was valued at over ten million rupees. Later, when the prince arrived at Patna, he imposed requisitions in kind upon the urban traders of Patna which totalled two to three hundred thousand rupees. Seizure of goods in the Dutch East India Company warehouses yielded perhaps as much as five hundred thousand rupees worth of goods. But the primary source of funding for the coup was one and possibly two shipments of revenue collections from Bengal. See Irvine, William, Later Mughals, reprinted in 1 vol. (New Delhi, 1977), vol. I, p. 212.Google Scholar

¹¹ Little, , “House of Jagatseth,” XX (1920):131.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., p. 133.

¹³ Habib, Irfan, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (Aligarh, 1963), pp. 75–81Google Scholar. For a detailed description of rural markets and fiscal devices, see the extremely important but little known article by Grover, B.R., “An Integrated Pattern of Commercial Life in the Rural Society of North India during the 17th–18th Centuries,” Proceedings: Indian Historical Records Commission 37 (1966):121–53.Google Scholar

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¹⁶ For the organization of markets in Hyderabad city in the late seventeenth century, see Richards, J.F., Mughal Administration in Golconda (Oxford, 1975), pp. 187–88.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Grover, , “Integrated Pattern,” pp. 127–28.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid. See also, for a translation of the appointment order for the amin of sa'ir, Richards, J.F., The Official Structure of a Mughal Province, forthcoming.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Khan, Khafi, Muntakhab-al Lubab, Bibliotheca Indica (Calcutta, 1869–1925)Google Scholar, passim. For a reliable English translation of Khafi Khan's account of the reign of the Emperior Aurangzeb (1658–1707), see Haq, S. Moinul, “Khafi Khan's History of Alamgir,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 12–20 (1964–1972)Google Scholar; for the 500,000 rupee forced loan extracted by Prince Murad Bakhsh, see ibid., 18 (1970):191–92.

²⁰ Sharma, Ramesh Chandra, “The Ardha-Kathanak: A Neglected Source of Mughal History,” Indica VII (1970)Google Scholar, Part One:49–73, and Part Two:106–20.

²¹ Ibid., Part One, pp. 58–59.

²² Habib notes that in seventeenth century Mughal India “after allowing for all ‘leakages’ the net revenue collection taken completely outside the sphere of rural economy probably amounted in value to a fourth or a third if not a half of the total agricultural produce. “The recipients and controllers of by far the greater part of this massive sum were the emperor and his nobles, i.e., the ruling political elite. Habib, citing computations carried out by A. Jan Qaiser, puts the income of 445 nobles in the year 1647 at 6 1.5 percent of the total income of the empire. Although much of this went for the support of cavalry contingents and for other official obligations, much also remained for conspicuous consumptions. Habib, Irfan, “Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India,” Journal of Economic History 29 (1969):53–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ See Ali, M.Athar, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (Aligarh, 1965), pp. 155–57Google Scholar, for the career of Shaista Khan, who monopolized the internal trade of Bengal in the 1670s.

²⁴ See ibid., pp. 161–62, for a description of the fiscal offices of a noble's establishment.

²⁵ Habib comments that although the individual nobles left behind “vast treasure hoards” (in one instance six million rupees in cash) the “imperial treasure hoard was, in comparison, enormous.” An official account put the Emperor Akbar's treasure at his death in 1605 at seventy million rupees in cash alone. Habib, , “Potentialities of Capitalistic Development,” p. 58.Google Scholar

²⁶ Irvine, , Later Mughals, vol. I, pp.20–21.Google Scholar

²⁷ Sarkar, Jadunath, History of Aurangzib, 5 vols. (Calcutta, 1912–1930), IV:57.Google Scholar

²⁸ Sarkar, Jagdish Narayan, The Military Despatches of a Seventeenth Century Indian General (Calcutta, 1969), pp. 86–89.Google Scholar

²⁹ Manucci, Niccolao, Storia Do Mogor, Irvine, William, ed. and trans., 5 vols. (London, 1907), II:120–21.Google Scholar

³⁰ Sarkar, , Military Despatches, pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

³¹ For the military frontier, see Srivastava, A.L., “A Survey of India's Resistance to Medieval Invaders from the North-West: Causes of Eventual Hindu Defeat,” Journal of Indian History 43 (1965):348–68Google Scholar; and Richards, J.F., “The Islamic Frontier in the East,” South Asia IV (1974):91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² The most reliable and accessible discussion of both pre-Mughal and Mughal Indian Muslim agrarian systems is the summary provided by Habib, Irfan, “The Social Distribution of Landed Property in Pre-British India,” Enquiry, n.s. II (1965):21–80.Google Scholar

³³ Among other writings, see Mellink-Roelofsz, M.A.P., Asian Trade and European Influence (The Hague, 1962), pp. 27–115Google Scholar; Wheatley, Paul, “Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in Sung Maritime Trade,” Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society XXXII (1959):l–140Google Scholar; and Richards, J.F., “Precious Metals and the Pattern of Commerce in the Late Medieval World Economy, 1200–1500 A.D.,” forthcoming.Google Scholar

³⁴ See Habib, Irfan, “Currency System of the Mughal Empire, 1556–1707,” Medieval India Quarterly IV (1961):l–22.Google Scholar

³⁵ See Habib, Agrarian System, for a complete treatment of the Mughal system.

³⁶ See the writings of Irfan Habib cited previously for the arguments in favor of an exploitative system.

³⁷ See Dent, Julian, Crisis in Finance: Crown, Financiers and Society in Seventeenth Century France (London, 1973)Google Scholar. “By 1661, the royal finances had been almost entirely subverted by the search for short-term credit” (p. 232)Google Scholar. Dent describes in detail the configuration of a group of financiers who “became centralizing agents for speculative investment in the financial machine of the state” (p. 65)Google Scholar. See also Wee, Herman van der, “The Financing of the Mercantilist State,” in The Cambridge Economic History, of Europe, Rich, E.E. and Wilson, C.H., eds. (Cambridge, 1977), vol. VGoogle Scholar, for a pan-European view.

³⁸ See Huang, Ray, Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth Century Ming China (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 306–23Google Scholar, for a summary of the limitations inhering in the Ming fiscal system which meant that the central government “had practically no surplus to dispose of” (p. 319).

³⁹ Certainly the royal pepper monopoly cannot be faulted for its return to the crown. Niels Steensgaard and others have calculated a more than 450 percent return on total investment per quintal of Indian pepper sold in Lisbon or Antwerp by contractors to the king. See Steensgaard, Niels, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (Chicago and London, 1973), pp. 81–111Google Scholar, for an analysis of the Portuguese system. Steensgaard argues that, unlike the East India Companies in the seventeenth century, the “parasitic monopoly” imposed by thePortuguese crown on direct Asia-to-Europe trade did not reduce costs. Instead, the Portuguese extracted their protection levy on the sea trade up to the point at which costs might drive traders into use of the overland caravan routes. See also Pearson, M.N., Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 30–56Google Scholar, for another description of the Portuguese structure. Pearson stresses the failure of the Portuguese to achieve their aims fully in either the engrossment of pepper or the control of shipping (largely because of the critical failure to seize Aden, , at the mouth of the Red Sea) (pp. 52–56).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Information on the precious metal imports is derived from Vilar, Pierre, A History of Gold and Money, 1450–1920 (London, 1976), pp. 46–101Google Scholar. Vilar comments that “the flow of silver from West to East to pay for the Oriental trade increased between the beginning and the end of the 16th century from 20,000 kg. to 64,300 kg.” (p. 101).Google Scholar

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⁴² I have not been able to locate any really satisfactory analysis of the institutional development of the joint-stock companies from the loose confederation of traders embodied in the Merchant Adventurers of London to the complex corporate structure of the late seventeenth-century East India Company. The most sophisticated analysis of the mature organization is to be found in a recent work by Chaudhuri, K.N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660–1760 (London, 1978), pp. 19–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The bulk of this remarkable work is devoted to analysis of a full quantitative study of all recorded transactions over a one-hundred-year period. For a full description of the central administration of the Dutch East India Company, see Glamann, K., Dutch-Asiatic Trade 1620–1740 (Copenhagen, 1958)Google Scholar. Although they are not unimportant, I have chosen to ignore the lesser East India Companies (French, Danish, Ostender, etc.) in this discussion.

⁴³ Chaudhuri, , Trading World of Asia, p. 96.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ibid., pp. 91–92.

⁴⁵ Brennig, Joseph J., “The Textile Trade of Seventeenth Century Northern Coromandel: A Study of a Pre-Modern Asian Export Industry” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975) (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms), pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ The impact of the trading companies upon Bengal's economy is discussed in two recent studies: Prakash, Om, “Bullion for Goods: International Trade and the Economy of Early Eighteenth Century Bengal,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review XII (1976)Google Scholar; and Chaudhuri, S., Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal 1650–1720 (Calcutta, 1975).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See Schwartzberg, Joseph E., ed., Historical Atlas of South Asia (Chicago, 1978), p.50, plate VI B2, for a graphic portrayal of the density of European trading stations clustered along India's coasts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ This generalization applies to the tiny community of Indian Zoroastrian Parsees who, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, claimed some of the wealthiest men in India. Before the latter seventeenth century, the Parsees were “farmers, small-scale traders and artisans in rural regions and small seaport towns of Gujerat.” Kulke, Eckehard, The Parsees in India (Munich, 1974), p. 238Google Scholar. It is only after they took on “the role of agents, mediators, and intermediaries” (p. 239)Google Scholar for the British traders at Surat, and later at Bombay, that they became transformed into a community of wealthy traders.

⁴⁹ S. Chaudhuri notes that a Dutch listing of outbound trading vessels from Bengal ports in the period 1682–84 reveals that two private Indian merchants despatched eleven vessels while six Mughal nobles loaded and sent nineteen ships in the same period. Trade and Commercial Organization, pp. 86–94.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See Arasaratnam, S., “The Politics of Commerce in the Coastal Kingdoms of Tamil Nad, 1650–1700,“ South Asia I (1971):1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a similar analysis of the fate of private indigenous merchants confronted with Dutch power in the far south of the subcontinent.