Introduction Toward a Framework to Debate World History: Bringing South India and the Indian Ocean Back In
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Notes Introduction Toward a Framework to Debate World History: Bringing South India and the Indian Ocean Back In 1. In Tokugawa Japan, agricultural production in 1850 was some 25 percent higher than in 1730 (Sugihara Kaoru 2003: 11–12). 2. This claim has been disputed by Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta (2006) who dismiss without examination the possibility that the higher yields of lands under wet-rice cultivation and the reduced subsistence require- ments (clothing, shelter, and fuel) in warmer areas may have contributed to higher living standards in the Yangzi delta, Bengal, and the Coromandel. Additionally, while they argue that despite the failure of higher “silver” wages to translate into higher “grain” wages in northwestern Europe due to an “industrious revolution,” again without examination, they rule out the possibility of a similar spurt of industriousness in the rice-growing tracts of India and China. Moreover, when prices of cloth fell, weavers were often able to pass on the cost reductions to spinners and thus maintain their own profit margins (Parthasarathi 2011: 42–44). 3. Domestic creditors may have been easier to fend off as they could be paid in debased currencies, or their assets could be seized as England’s Henry VIII did to the monasteries, or they could be expelled as the Jews were from thirteenth-century England by Edward I (Thompson and Runciman 2006: 543–44). 4. Based on the assumption that in the early second millennium 120 acres of grazing land was required to support one horse per year, Denis Sinor (1972: 181) estimated that the Hungarian Plain could provide pasture for only 205,920 horses compared to the Mongolian grasslands, which could sup- port 2,500,000. 5. The original translation of this passage had translated Braudel’s rapport de force as “balance of power” rather than as “relationship of force.” The latter interpretation is suggested by Immanuel Wallerstein (1991: 210). 6. Unlike prior ventures when partnerships were dissolved after a predetermined span of time and the assets divided among the partners, the internalization of 226 Notes protection costs made the Dutch East India Company a new form of enter- prise as it was necessary to treat its capital stock as permanent and to allo- cate as much of its profits as possible as circulating capital. By spreading its fixed costs over as large a volume of trade as possible, it could increase returns to its investors over a long period of time. However, as some investors were not willing to wait for an indefinite period, it led to the separation of ownership and control, thereby allowing investors to dispose of their shares in the market. Here again monopolies were crucial—and often times gov- ernments endowed company officials with ambassadorial status to facilitate their transactions with foreign princes (Pearson 1991: 89–92, 109–10, 113). 7. The creation of a salt administration since the Tang dynasty was designed to provide a stable source of revenue for the government since salt could be produced only along the coasts and in some marshes and interior lakes while it was universally consumed. Hence, it was easy to levy a tax at source and as the returns would be higher if the incidence of the tax was small, there was an incentive to keep the tax low (Adshead 2004: 50). A monopoly on iron was implemented to facilitate collection of taxes or the distribution to merchants on a quota basis rather than to generate substantial profits. 8. Rulers of small port-cities and local officials of ports, when these were part of larger jurisdictional entities, were certainly more conscious of the need to protect commercial interests of local merchants. Or, as Ashin Das Gupta (1982: 421–22) once put it: “Golconda or Bijapur, Vijayanagara or the Mughal Empire never had any serious interest in maritime trade and usually relegated all matters relating to the sea to their local administrations. In an emergency which called for central assistance, it was the local administra- tion and the regional network of mercantile interests which tried frantically to persuade the Olympians to intervene, not usually with the kind of success they desired.” 9. A Portuguese source reported that small yellow and blue beads purchased in Cambay for 1.05 maticals could be sold in 1525 in Sofala for 21.28 maticals and that cloth would sell for five times its purchase price. Others reported that cloth that cost 100 in Gujarat sold for 220 in Malindi and 780 in Sofala (Pearson 1998: 113). A matical or mithqal was an Arabic weight (also known as metical or nitical) of approximately 4.25 grams (Pearson 2001: 32). 10. After Mughal forces commanded by Mir Jumla conquered Assam and returned with many iron guns and Western-style gunpowder in the seven- teenth century, a tradition arose suggesting that guns and gunpowder were invented there and then transmitted to China (Tavernier 1977: II, 216–17; Chaudhuri 1990: 101–02). However, the earliest mention of firearms in Assam according to local records—the burunji—date to the early sixteenth century, suggesting that the Ahom received firearms technology from Tibet (Sun Laichen 2003: 504–05). 11. There is some evidence to suggest that breechloaders had arrived in the southern regions of China by around 1510 and, given that the Portuguese reached Melaka only in 1509, this suggests an extremely rapid pace of tech- nology transfer. The first Portuguese ship to visit a Chinese port was in 1514 (Cipolla 1965: 107; Needham 1986: 372; Di Cosmo 2004: 131). Notes 227 12. Similarly, Blaut (1992: 356) argued that “capitalism would (one suspects) have arrived in any case, but it would have arrived many centuries later and it would not have seated itself in Europe alone (or first) had it not been for European colonialism in America.” And again: “If the Western Hemisphere had been more accessible, say to South Indian centres than to European cen- tres, then very likely India would have become the home of capitalism, the site of the bourgeois revolution, and the ruler of the world” (Blaut 1992: 369). 1 Dynamics of Sociohistorical Change in Societies Based on Wet-Rice Cultivation 1. Burton Stein (1980: 275) who formulated the “segmentary state” model, insisted that “the only possible supra-local, extra-segmentary integration which could occur [in medieval South India] would be of a ritual sort.” See also Appadurai and Breckenridge (1976), Breckenridge (1985a), and Spencer (1969). 2. Korea was an outlier—though rice had been grown there for some two thou- sand years, it accounted for only 36 percent of the cultivated land as late as the 1920s and even then it was mainly dry rice grown along other dry crops such as barley, millet, and soybeans (Latham 1998). 3. According to Slicher van Bath’s calculations, medieval northern European seed-to-yield ratios for barley, rye, and wheat were between 1:3 and 1:4, though ratios between 1:1.6 and 1:2 were more common before the twelfth century (Bray 1983: 28, n. 2; 1986: 225, n.2). On the fields of the bishop- ric of Winchester, Georges Duby (1981: 343) estimates that seed to yield ratios rose from 1:4.22 in 1300–1349 to 1:4.45 in 1400–1449 for wheat, from 1:3.8 to 1:4.31 for barley, and from 1:2.42 to 1:3.62 for oats. Guy Bois (1984: 205) calculates that this ratio was 1:6 on the very best lands in late fifteenth-century eastern Normandy, and slightly lower on less fertile soils. These figures are compatible with Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s estimates in which, however, he criticizes Slicher van Bath’s finding that average French yields rose to between 1:6.8 and 1:6.9 for the years 1500 to 1700 as highly excessive. Le Roy Ladurie (1987:113–15) argues instead, that yield ratios in the range of 1:4 and 1:5 are more plausible. Though even plants like wheat, barley, and rye could theoretically pro- duce a maximum of approximately 400 grains per plant as early as in six- teenth-century Europe, the physiology of the plant and inefficient sowing techniques reduced the seed to yield ratio to about 1:5. The transplantation techniques developed in Asian rice cultivation (on which see below), however, meant that rice had a much higher ratio of about 1:100 (Bray 1986: 15). 4. Even at the turn of the eighteenth century, a French peasant had to reserve 15 to 20 percent of the crop as seed for the next season (Goubert 1987: 203). 5. One of the great technical innovations in twelfth-century European agricul- ture was to plough land under grain cultivation three or four times to increase yields. However, the difficulty of finding forage for livestock meant that plough teams were usually kept below optimal strength (Bloch 1966: 25). 228 Notes 6. Li Bozhing (2003: 153) indicates that the rotation of wet and dry crops also improves the quality of the soil. 7. The earliest reference to transplanting rice in Chinese literature is found in Ssu Min Yüeh Ling, a text of the second century AD (Bray 1984: 519); for transplanting in China and Vietnam, see Bray (1984: 501–04); for India, see Mukhia (1981: 288) and Alayev (1982b: 227). 8. A study of patterns of landholdings in seventeenth-century Yangzi Delta indicates that really large estates of more than 10,000 mou (approximately 1,377 acres) were exceedingly rare, while about 75 percent of the land was held by medium (100–500 mou, or 13.8–68.9 acres) and small (less than 100 mou) landowners (Huang 1974: 158; see also Chao 1986: 92–93; Golas 1980: 302–05).