World history, like most academic disciplines, stagnated during the Cultural Revolution. This chapter argues that, with Mao’s death, world-historical studies witnessed a new wave of professionalization within the Marxist ideological framework. Following the liberalization of historical studies in the late 1980s, this ideological framework collapsed – even historians who were famous for their ideological correctness like Lin Zhichun abandoned it. In a series of influential debates, these historians searched for alternative paths to global modernity to replace the Eurocentric schema in Marxist historiography. Through this process, these former Marxist historians became increasingly nationalistic, which filled an ideological vacuum in post-Mao China.

If Indians and Asians had been the leading producers and traders in the first global economy, as chapters 2 through 5 argue, then chapter 6 considers who they were as well as where and how they operated so effectively. It uses the Multānīs as a key example of Indian trading firms that plied the overland caravan routes. This gains added significance because Eurocentrism presumes that the so-called European-dominated High Seas displaced the trade on the overland routes. The chapter places special emphasis on critiquing the Eurocentric model of the Asian pedlar by revealing the rational methods and activities of the large-scale Multānī firms. Indeed, these matched the scale of leading European firms and bankers such as the Rothschilds and Warburgs. And it also problematises the Eurocentric Oriental despotism thesis by revealing the many ways in which the major Asian states—Mughal, Ottoman, Safavid and the Central Asian Uzbek Khanates—provided a highly conducive environment for the Multānī firmsto flourish.