Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T07:18:16.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Brokers in Western Indian Port Cities Their Role in Servicing Foreign Merchants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

M. N. Pearson
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales

Extract

The merchant who arrives in a locality unknown to him must also carefully arrange in advance to secure a reliable representative, a safe lodging house, and whatever besides is necessary, so that he is not taken in by a slow payer or by a cheat.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘The Book of Knowledge of the Beauties of Commerce and of the Cognizance of Good and Bad Merchandise and of Falsifications’, in Arabic, 1318, quoted in Radwan, Ann Bos, The Dutch in Western India 1601–1632 (Calcutta, 1978), p. 16.Google Scholar

2 Annesley of Surat, quoted in Chaudhuri, K. N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 71;CrossRefGoogle Scholar quoted again in Chaudhuri, K. N., Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 226, with one change.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The Cambridge Economic History of India [CEHI], vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 340–5Google Scholar by Raychaudhuri, T.; and pp. 418–25 by Ashin Das Gupta for sea-going merchants.Google Scholar

4 Gupta, Ashin Das, Malabar in Asian Trade, 1740–1800 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 103–23.Google Scholar

5 Chicherov, A. L., India: Economic Development in the 16th–18th Centuries (Moscow, 1971), passim.Google Scholar

6 Gupta, Ashin Das, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, c. 1700–1750 (Wiesbaden, 1979), pp. 7488;Google ScholarGokhale, B. G., Surat in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1979), pp. 117–36;Google ScholarRadwan, Ann, Dutch in Western India, pp. 1620;Google ScholarGopal, Surendra, Commerce and Crafts in Gujarat (New Delhi, 1975), passim, but especially pp. 218–37;Google ScholarMehta, M. J., ‘Some Aspects of Surat as a Trading Centre in the Seventeenth Century’, Indian Historical Review, I, ii, 09 1974, pp. 247–61.Google Scholar

7 Wolf, Eric R., Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, 1982), p. 84.Google Scholar

8 Braudel, F., Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, 3 vols (New York, 19811984), esp. II, 114230, 374–457, III, 125.Google Scholar

9 Chaudhuri, K. N., Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, op. cit.Google Scholar

10 Curtin, Philip D., Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and see Chaudhuri, , Trade and Civilisation, pp. 224–6 for a critique of the basic concept.Google Scholar

11 Curtin, , Cross-Cultural Trade, pp. 23.Google Scholar

12 Lieber, Alfred E., ‘Eastern Business Practices and Medieval European Commerce’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXI, 1968, pp. 230–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Fairbank, J. K., East Asia: The Modern Transformation (Boston, 1965), pp. 73–8.Google Scholar See also a short but more up-to-date account in Curtin, , Cross-Cultural Trade, pp. 242–5.Google Scholar

14 Gupta, Das, Surat, pp. 84–5.Google Scholar

15 Qaisar, A. Jan, ‘The Role of Brokers in Medieval India’, Indian Historical Review, I, ii, 09 1974, pp. 220–46;Google ScholarRaychaudhuri, T. in CEHI, I, 342.Google Scholar

16 Wolf, , Europe, pp. 7980.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 82–4. See also a succinct analysis in Chaudhuri, K. N., Trade and Civilisation, p. 16.Google Scholar

18 Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974), p. 331.Google Scholar

19 Gupta, Das in CEHI, I, 420.Google Scholar

20 Qaisar, , ‘Brokers’, p. 225,Google Scholar and see my ‘Indian Seafarers in the Sixteenth Century’, in Coastal Western India (New Delhi, 1981), pp. 116–44.Google Scholar

21 Radwan, , Dutch in Western India, p. 17.Google Scholar

22 Khachikian, Lvon, ‘Un marchand armenien en Perse, en Inde et au Tibet’, Annales ESC, 22nd year, 0304 1967, pp. 231–78;Google Scholar see also Khachikian, Lvon, ‘The Ledger of the Merchant Hovannes Joughayetsi’, Journal of the Asiatic Society (Calcutta), VIII, 1966, pp. 153–86.Google Scholar

23 Chaudhuri, K. N., The Trading World of Asia, p. 150;Google ScholarCEHI, I, 424, 343.Google Scholar

24 Barbosa, Duarte, The Book of Duarte Barbosa, 2 vols (London, 19181921), I, 110–11.Google Scholar

25 Qaisar, , ‘Brokers’, p. 224.Google Scholar

26 Quoted in Braudel, , Civilization and Capitalism, III, 489.Google Scholar

27 Qaisar, , ‘Brokers’, pp. 223 f.n., 230–1, 235.Google Scholar

28 The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema (London, Hakluyt, 1863), pp. 168–9.Google Scholar

29 Bouchon, G., Mamale de Cananor (Paris, 1975), p. 182.Google Scholar

30 Barbosa, , II, 73.Google Scholar

31 Varthema, , Travels, p. 151.Google Scholar

32 de Barros, Joāo, Da Asia, 4 vols (Lisbon, 19451946), I, vi, 5.Google Scholar

33 Husain, Mahdi, The Rehla of Ibn Batuta (Baroda, 1976), p. 189.Google Scholar

34 de Bragança Pereira, A. B. (ed.), Arquivo Portugués Oriental, I, ii, p. 140.Google Scholar

35 de Castanheda, Fernão Lopes, História do descobrimento e conquista da India pelos Portugueses, 9 vols (Coímbra, 19241933), I, xiii.Google Scholar

36 Barbosa, , II, 77.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., 76.

38 For these events see Barros, , Da Asia, I, v, 67;Google ScholarCastanheda, , História, I, xix, xxxvi, xxxviii–xxxix.Google Scholar The Portuguese accounts also contain much detail on the government structure, and role of merchants, in Malacca before 1511. Details of this, and of these merchant' attempts to counter the Portuguese, can be found in Barros, II, vi, 3, 6, 7; Pires, Tomé, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, 2 vols (London, 1944), II, 254–5, 264–5, 273;Google ScholarCorreia, Gaspar, Lendas da India, 4 vols (Lisbon, 18581864), II, 253;Google ScholarThe Commentaries of Afonso Albuquerque, 4 vols (London, 18751884), III, 87–8, 128–9, 166–7.Google Scholar

39 Pires, , Suma Oriental, I, 78.Google Scholar

40 Barbosa, , II, 76.Google Scholar

41 Abd er Razzack in Major, R. H. (ed.), India in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1857), p. 14.Google Scholar

42 Le Blanc, Vincent, The World Surveyed (London, 1660), p. 58.Google Scholar

43 Varthema, , Travels, p. 168.Google Scholar

44 Pereira, Bragança, Arquivo, I, ii, p. 134.Google Scholar

45 Barbosa, , II, 77.Google Scholar

46 Varthema, , Travels, pp. 91–2.Google Scholar

47 van Linschoten, J. H., Travels, 2 vols (London, 1885), I, 58.Google Scholar

48 Studia, nos. 13–14, p. 86; no. 10, p. 191.Google Scholar

49 For his career see my Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 6773.Google Scholar

50 As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo, IV, 216.Google Scholar

51 Castanheda, , História, II, lxxv;Google Scholarcf. Barros, , Da Asia, II, ii, 9.Google Scholar

52 The Mirat-i Sikandari, Persian text edited by Misra, S. C. and Rahman, M. L. (Baroda, 1961), p. 274.Google Scholar Braudel notes that foreign merchants in Venice in the fifteenth century were subjected to a considerable degree of state control: Civilization and Capitalism, III, 125.Google Scholar

53 Merchants and Rulers, pp. 1516.Google Scholar

54 Misra, S. C., The Rise of Muslim Power in Gujarat (London, 1963), pp. 63–4, 67, 96.Google Scholar

55 Husain, , Ibn Batuta, p. 172.Google Scholar

56 Pires, , Suma Oriental, I, 41–2.Google Scholar

57 See on this Pires, ibid., I, 41–7; II, 269–74; Castanheda, , História, III, cxxx;Google ScholarBarbosa, , I, 154–6;Google ScholarVarthema, , Travels, pp. 105–11;Google Scholar Conti in Major, (ed.), India in the Fifteenth Century, p. 20;Google Scholar Santo Stephano in ibid., p. 9; for Gujaratis overseas see Pereira, Bragança (ed.), Arquivo, I, ii, 139;Google Scholar Barbosa, passim; Linschoten, , Travels, I, 252–6.Google Scholar

58 Published in Hakluyt, Richard, The Principal Navigations, 12 vols (Glasgow, 19031905), V, 375–6.Google Scholar

59 Blanc, Le, World Surveyed, p. 47.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., p. 48.

61 Penrose, Boies, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance (Harvard UP, 1952), p. 219.Google Scholar

62 Blanc, Le, World Surveyed, p. 43.Google Scholar