Ports And Their Hinterlands In India 1700 1950

Contributed seminar papers.

This book takes a long-run view of the global maritime trade of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia from 1700 to American Independence in 1776. Land argues that the three cities developed large, global networks of maritime commerce and exchange that created tension between merchants and the British Empire which sought to enforce mercantilist policies to constrain American trade to within the British Empire. Colonial merchants created and then expanded their mercantile networks well beyond the confines of the British Empire. This trans-imperial trade (often considered smuggling by British authorities) formed the roots of what became known as the American Revolution.

In Hinterlands and Commodities: Place, Space, Time and the Political Economic Development of Asia over the Long Eighteenth Century, well-known economic and social historians examine important questions concerning temporal and spatial relationships among central places, hinterlands, commodities, and political economic developments in Asia and the Global economy over the long eighteenth century. These timely essays engage hinterlands and commodities providing novel foci on historical impacts maritime trade on political economic developments involving place, space, and time in Asia, thereby furnishing historical background for current conditions. They contribute to discourse concerning historical interactions among indigenous Asian merchant activities and European commercial counterparts. Contributors are: George Bryan Souza, Dennis O. Flynn, Marie A. Lee, Ghulam A. Nadri, Bhaswati Bhattacharya, Tsukasa Mizushima, Tomotaka Kawamura, Atushi Ota, Ryuto Shimada, and Ei Murakami.

The book is about the colonization of the Sunderbans that began with the coming of the British. For two centuries, land-hungry peasants strove to transform the tidal forest vegetation into an agro- ecosystem dominated by paddy fields and fish culture. The construction of a permanent railroad led to the spreading of the co- operative movement, the formation of peasant organizations, and finally culminated in open rebellion by the peasants (tebhaga).

The advent of the Europeans was crucial in transforming the contours of Maritime Asia. The commercial situation in the Indian Ocean was impacted in many ways over the longue duree from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. To offset the adverse balance of trade and to maximize profits, the Europeans imposed their own coercive and monopolistic systems along the existing trade routes. Systematic exploitation of economic opportunities in Asia by Europeans began with the coming of the Portuguese, followed by other European maritime powers. It culminated with Britannia ruling the Asian waters with warships and a strong merchant marine. A study of the operational and ideological motivations that propelled the European powers’ activities in the Indian Ocean can help to construct a coherent interpretation of the foundations of empire that were being laid, at first insidiously and later, aggressively. This book analyses the mechanism and implications of Europe’s sustained engagement in Intra-Asian trade which is as an essential context to the establishment of colonial empires. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This book examines the role of mercantile networks in linking Asian economies to the global economy. It contains fourteen contributions on East, Southeast and South Asia covering the period from 1750 to the present.

A sweeping account of how the sea routes of Asia have transformed a vast expanse of the globe over the past five hundred years, powerfully shaping the modern world In the centuries leading up to our own, the volume of traffic across Asian sea routes—an area stretching from East Africa and the Middle East to Japan—grew dramatically, eventually making them the busiest in the world. The result was a massive circulation of people, commodities, religion, culture, technology, and ideas. In this book, Eric Tagliacozzo chronicles how the seas and oceans of Asia have shaped the history of the largest continent for the past half millennium, leaving an indelible mark on the modern world in the process. Paying special attention to migration, trade, the environment, and cities, In Asian Waters examines the long history of contact between China and East Africa, the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism across the Bay of Bengal, and the intertwined histories of Islam and Christianity in the Philippines. The book illustrates how India became central to the spice trade, how the Indian Ocean became a “British lake” between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and how lighthouses and sea mapping played important roles in imperialism. The volume ends by asking what may happen if China comes to rule the waves of Asia, as Britain once did. A novel account showing how Asian history can be seen as a whole when seen from the water, In Asian Waters presents a voyage into a past that is still alive in the present.