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Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- PART 1: TRADE -- 1. Maritime Trade in the Indian Ocean, c. 1600-1800 -- 2. Armenians in Bengal Trade and Politics in the Eighteenth Century -- 3. No Ready Money? No Problem! The Role of Hundis (Bills of Exchange) in Early Modern India, c. 1600-1800 -- 4. Indo-Persian Relations through Traders in the Pre-Modern Era -- 5. Multiple Currencies and their Complementary Relationship: The Indian Scenario: Early Modern Era -- 6. The Armenians in Dhaka -- PART 2: POLITICS

Van Leur, a Dutch official in Indonesia, developed a theory about the pre-colonial nature of seaborne Asian trade. According to him it was large in volume but with minuscule units (pedlars). In contrast, the European companies, because of the advantage secured by them through economies of scale, were able to carry on oceanic trade far more successfully and so prevailed over the Asian pedlars. This thesis, along with its later versions, is examined in the following article, with evidence to show that (a) Asian merchants' establishments could also be very large and (b) could successfully stand up to Europe Companies in fair competition. Moreover, van Leur was further wrong in imagining that pre-colonial Asian maritime commerce was confined to high-priced goods only.

Banking and credit systems were fairly well advanced in pre-colonial India. Large amounts of capital for commercial credit were also available—though at some cost in terms of high interest rates. This article illustrates these conditions by a study of the banking and other activities of the house of Jagat Seths of Bengal in the mid-eighteenth century.

It is almost common knowledge by now, thanks to the penetrating research by several scholars in the field, that Bengal silk was an important commodity in international trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the general assumption so far has been that it was the Europeans rather than the Asians who played the major role in the export of raw silk from Bengal.As a corollary to thi and taking into consideration the dominant position of the European Companies in Bengal textile trade, historians have maintained even in recent studies that around the mid-eighteenth century, European trade was the most important factor in Bengal's commercial economy. 1 There is no denying the fact that the Companies were the most dominant factor in Bengal's seaborne trade but that does not necessarily imply that they were far ahead of Asians in Bengal's export trade as a whole. For the above does not take into account Bengal's export trade by overland routes which had always been extremely significant. It is generally assumed that with the fall of the great empires–Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman–and the consequent decline of ports like Surat, the overland trade was doomed. The reason for this sort of assumption, it seems, was mainly the lack of data regarding India's overland trade compared to the abundance of quantitative material in the Company archives on European exports from Bengal. It is also possible that the fascination of the sea and preoccupation with the European market, as also the nature of the surviving evidence, have obscured the significance of the traditional and continuing trade through the overland route from India. Moreland thought that India's overland trade in the seventeenth century was of small importance and that the important development took place at sea.2

Bengal textiles enjoyed a unique place and an indisputable supremacy in the world market for centuries before the invasion of the machinmade fabrics in the early nineteenth century following the industrial revolution of the West and Political control of the Indian sub-continent by the English East India Company. It need not be emphasized that the products of the Bengal handloom industry reigned supreme all over the accessible Asian and North African markets in the middle ages, and later became one of the major staples of the export trade of the European Companies. Most travellers from Europe starting with Tomé Pires, Varthema and Barbosa in the sixteenth century to Bernier, Tavernier and others in the seventeenth singled out especially textiles of Bengal for comments on their extraordinary quality and exquisite beauty. But it was not only in the field of high qulity cloth that Bengal had a predominant position; it was also the main Production centre of ordinary and medium quality textiles. Long before the advent of the Europeans, the Asian merchants from different parts of the continent and Indian merchants from various regions of the country derived a lucrative trade in Bengal textiles.

The British conquest of Bengal at Plassey, in June 1757, was one of the most significant developments in the eighteenth century. Plassey indeed laid the foundation of the British empire in India. Bengal was the springboard from which the British spread in different directions and ultimately conquered other parts of India. Hence it is imperative to examine closely the background of and the circumstances leading to the conquest. As I have already analysed some aspects of the question elsewhere, in this paper I shall confine myself to the more crucial ones, especially those raised in recent writings and which, strangely enough, tend to perpetuate the traditional explanation of the British conquest of Bengal.