Suchergebnisse

Scholars are looking again at banking and mercantile families in India's early modern history, responding to the challenge issued by Claude Markovits in the epilogue of his 2008 volume,Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs, to "return the merchant to South Asian history." Some of the underlying assumptions and questions being asked are old and some are new. My own longstanding assumption, upon which this article relies, has been that bankers and merchants played multiple and important roles with respect to states in South Asia, and that their relations with non-kin officials and other political actors determined their success or failure and sometimes the success or failure of a state, most notably, the Mughal state. Questions are again being raised about "trust," assumed to be a leading attribute of and asset to financial networks (especially in long-distance trade diasporas), and the notion so commonly put forward by scholars to explain the success of Hindu banking and mercantile communities. Recent work by Francesca Trivellato has found that membership in the Sephardic trade diaspora facilitated but did not guarantee trust or cooperation: the Sephardic merchants relied on non-Jewish as well as Jewish agents and networks of information, and evolving legal norms guided their business activities.

Scholars are looking again at banking and mercantile families in India's early modern history, responding to the challenge issued by Claude Markovits in the epilogue of his 2008 volume,Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs, to "return the merchant to South Asian history." Some of the underlying assumptions and questions being asked are old and some are new. My own longstanding assumption, upon which this article relies, has been that bankers and merchants played multiple and important roles with respect to states in South Asia, and that their relations with non-kin officials and other political actors determined their success or failure and sometimes the success or failure of a state, most notably, the Mughal state. Questions are again being raised about "trust," assumed to be a leading attribute of and asset to financial networks (especially in long-distance trade diasporas), and the notion so commonly put forward by scholars to explain the success of Hindu banking and mercantile communities. Recent work by Francesca Trivellato has found that membership in the Sephardic trade diaspora facilitated but did not guarantee trust or cooperation: the Sephardic merchants relied on non-Jewish as well as Jewish agents and networks of information, and evolving legal norms guided their business activities.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction /Alka Patel and Karen Leonard -- Representation of Social Groups in Mughal Art and Literature: Ethnography or Trope? /Sunil Sharma -- "Maid Killing a Snake" and "Dervish Receiving a Visitor": A Re-Examination of Bijapuri Masterpieces through the Lens of the Lucknow Copy /Keelan Overton -- Literary Moments of Exchange in the 18th Century: The New Urdu Vogue Meets Krishna Bhakti /Heidi Pauwels -- Darbārs in Transition: The Many Facets of the Mughal Imperial Image after Shah Jahan As Seen in the ex-Binney Collection in the San Diego Museum of Art /Laura E. Parodi -- From Miniatures to Monuments Picturing Shah Alam's Delhi (1771-1806) /Yuthika Sharma -- Mercantile Architectural Patronage in Hyderabad, Late 18th-19th Centuries /Alka Patel -- Indo-Muslim Culture in Hyderabad: Old City Neighborhoods in the 19th Century /Karen Leonard -- Interrogating "The East," "Culture," and "Loss," in Abdul Halim Shararʾs Guzashta Lakhnaʾu /C. M. Naim -- Zaheer v Ali: Dissenting Views on the Early Years of the Progressive Movement in Urdu Literature /Carlo Coppola -- Index -- Color Plates -- Black and White Plates.

Contents -- About the Author -- Preface -- Part I: Historical Overview of Muslims in the United States -- Chapter 1. The Development of Ethno-Racial Muslim Communities in the United States -- Chapter 2. Converging Histories in the Late Twentieth Century -- Chapter 3. Historical Research Issues -- Part II: Contemporary Research Issues -- Chapter 4. Contemporary American Muslim Identities -- Chapter 5. Muslims in the American Landscape -- Chapter 6. Islamic Discourses and Practices -- Chapter 7. Becoming American -- Part III: Further Research -- Chapter 8. Contemporary Research Agendas