Overview

The spectacular rise in world trade following the great discoveries of the closing years of the fifteenth century had important implications for each of the major segments of the newly emerging early modern international economy. As far as Asia was concerned, the commercial operations of the European corporate enterprises as well as private traders in the Indian Ocean region between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries had far-reaching consequences for the economies and the polities of the countries of the region. Asian merchants engaged in the Indian Ocean trade interacted with the European intruders into the Ocean in a variety of ways. The twenty-one essays included in this volume are firmly embedded in original archival sources. They deal mainly with issues arising out of the Europeans commercial presence in the Indian Ocean region and the interaction they had with their Asian counterparts. The volume discusses how over a span of three centuries, the Indian economy was integrated into the world economy as a result of these interactions. The macroeconomic implications of the European encounter for the Indian economy are analysed in detail. Another important area explored at some length is the monetary history of the subcontinent in the early modern period. This collection of essays will be of interest of the historians of India and of the Indian Ocean. It will also have a great deal of appeal for the historians of early modern Asia as well as Europe. Those interested in what is being increasingly described as world history will also find the volume useful.

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Professor Om Prakash retired recently as Professor of Economic History at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He is a foreign fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam and of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Haarlem, The Netherlands. His major publications include The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720 (Princeton 1985), European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India, Vol. II. 5 in the New Cambridge History of India series (Cambridge 1998) and Bullion for Goods, European and Indian Merchants in the Indian Ocean Trade, 1500-1800 (Delhi, 2004).

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