Eighteenth-Century Gujarat TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Interaction Edited by Leonard Blussé and Cynthia Viallé VOLUME 11 Eighteenth-Century Gujarat The Dynamics of Its Political Economy, 1750-1800 By Ghulam A. Nadri LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009 The TANAP programme is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nadri, Ghulam A. Eighteenth-century Gujarat : the dynamics of its political economy, 1750-1800 / by Ghulam A. Nadri. p. cm. — (TANAP monographs on the history of Asian-European interaction, ISSN 1871-6938 ; v. 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17202-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Gujarat (India)--Economic conditions—18th century. 2. Businesspeople—India— Gujarat—History—18th century. 3. Gujarat (India—Politics and government—18th century. I. Title. II. Series. HC437.G85N25 2009 330.954’750296—dc22 2008045747 ISSN 1871-6938 ISBN 978 90 04 17202 9 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all right holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands To my father and the memory of my mother SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD Probably nowhere in the world have such profound changes in historio- graphy been occurring as in the nation states of Monsoon Asia that gained independence after the conclusion of the Pacific War in 1945. These tra- ditionally outward-looking countries on the rims of the Indian Ocean and the Eastern Seas have been interacting with each other through maritime transport and trade for more than two millennia, but the exi- gencies of modern nation-building have tended to produce state-centred historical narratives that emphasise a distinctive heritage and foster cultural pride and identity on the basis of such heroic themes as anti-colo- nial resistance. No one will deny the need for and utility of such ‘nation- building’ agendas, but an inward-directed national historiography does not necessarily prepare one’s citizens for our present age of regional co- operation and globalisation. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the coastal societies of Monsoon Asia witnessed the entry of European traders, the emergence of global maritime trading networks, and the laying of the foundations of colonial empires that reached their apogees in the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries. The difficulties of studying this pre-colonial and early colonial past should not be underestimated. Local sources are often rare because of wars and the frequent changes of both indigenous and colonial regimes. The hot and humid tropical climate is also unkind to the preser- vation of manuscripts. The mass of western-language data preserved in the archives of the former East India Companies and those of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in Asia often have an undeniably Europe-centred character and bias. Thus we face not only a highly imbalanced supply of source material, but also the very complex problem of how to decode the hidden agendas that often colour these primary materials. Over the past fifty years there has been a pronounced effort in academ- ic circles in North America, Australia and the former European colonial nations to ‘decolonize’ historical writing on Asian-European interaction, albeit for reasons totally different from those in their Asian counterparts. Increasingly doubt has been cast on such longstanding paradigms as the superiority of the dynamic West over static Asian societies. Historians of international trade such as the late Holden Furber, whose description of this period as ‘The Age of Partnership’ inspired the name of the TANAP programme, have taken an interest in the various ways and means by which Asian-European interaction began in various kinds of competition, rivalry, collaboration, diplomacy, and military confrontation. This viii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD approach has forced historians to return to the archival sources and the places where these events unfolded with the result that new frontiers of research have opened up in which close partnerships between Asian and European historians, with their specific cultural tool kits and linguistic backgrounds, are now starting to bear fruit. In anticipation of the four hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, members of the History Department of Leiden University proposed the establishment of an inter- national research programme aimed at training a new generation of Asian historians of Asian-European interaction in the early modern period. It was taken for granted that any such drive towards international educa- tional co-operation should be carried out in carefully planned collabora- tion with the National Archives in The Hague, the Arsip Nasional of the Republic of Indonesia in Jakarta, and the archives of Cape Town (South Africa), Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Chennai (India), which together hold several kilometres of archival records from the former Verenigde Oost- indische Compagnie. The TANAP—Towards a New Age of Partnership —educational and archival preservation programme was started in 2000 thanks to generous grants from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands Organi- zation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), the Netherlands UNESCO Commission, and Leiden University. Twelve universities in Asia sent some thirty young lecturers to Leiden during 2001-2003. Under the auspices of the Research Institute for Asian-African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), these historians participated in an advanced master’s programme that included intensive courses on historiography, palaeo- graphy, and the old Dutch written language. With additional funding from several Asian foundations, in 2002 seventeen of the TANAP graduates from Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Africa, and the Netherlands began working towards a Ph.D. degree at Leiden. Three others went on to pursue their doctorates at universities elsewhere in the world. The TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Inter- action, which include two studies on early modern South African society, are the offspring of their doctoral theses defended at Leiden. Leonard Blussé, Leiden University CONTENTS Acknowledgements xiii Abbreviations xvi Glossary xvii Notes on weights and currency xxi Maps xxii Introduction 1 Euro–Asian context 3 South Asian context 5 Regional context 6 Sources 7 Chapter One: State and Political Power 9 Mughal rule in Gujarat and the rise of Surat 10 From the Mughals to the Marathas 13 The English political ascendancy in Gujarat 15 Local hereditary chiefs 19 Conclusion 21 Chapter Two: Market Economy, Labour, and Wages 23 Surat’s textile industry 24 Caste, labour, and inter-professional mobility 27 Weavers, merchants and the English East India Company 29 Labour market 33 Carpenters and bricklayers 34 Maritime proletariat: the sailors 35 Organisation of the labour market and methods of recruitment 36 Wages and remuneration 40 Local navies and the maritime proletariat 41 Service sector 45 Conclusion 47 Chapter Three: Asian Merchants of Gujarat and Indian Ocean Trade 51 Merchant communities: family, diaspora, and network 52 Some prominent merchants and shipowners of Surat 54 Petty shipowners and freighters 60 Institutional dynamics of trade 66 x CONTENTS The network: agents and intermediary merchants 66 Financial intermediation 69 Commercial intermediation: brokers 73 Merchants and the eighteenth-century political economy 76 Conclusion 83 Chapter Four: Gujarat in Asian and Euro–Asian Trade: The Dutch East India Company 85 The VOC’s response to the early-eighteenth-century crisis 86 Disposal of imports: the VOC and its brokers 88 The VOC’s imports into Gujarat 90 Fine spices: cloves and nutmeg 95 Pepper 101 Copper 103 Sugar 111 The VOC’s exports from Gujarat 116 Methods of procurement: the VOC and its ‘leveranciers’ 123 European competition: growing challenges and the VOC’s response 124 Conclusion 127 Chapter Five: The Gujarat Economy: Potentiality and Performance 129 Mid-century economic recovery 131 Scale of demand and supply 135 Agricultural production: food grain and commercial crops 140 Cotton prices 143 Who benefited from economic growth? 145 Imports and consumption 147 Conclusion 149 Conclusion 151 Notes 157 Appendices 1. Farming of the English share of the customs revenue of Bhavanagar and Mowah 197 2. Labour wages at Surat 198 3. The family tree of three merchants of Surat 202 4. Annual values of the VOC’s imports, sales, and profits at Surat, 1711–1793 204 5. Annual imports and sales of cloves and nutmeg by the VOC at Surat, 1702–1791 207 CONTENTS xi 6. Annual imports and sales of pepper by the VOC at Surat, 1702–1792 210 7. Annual imports and sales of copper by the VOC at Surat, 1702–1791 213 8. Annual imports and sales of sugar by the VOC at Surat, 1702–1792 216 9. Purchase and sale prices, 1707–1792 219 10. Annual values of the VOC’s exports from Surat, 1751–1792 221 11. Five-yearly average annual values of the VOC’s exports from Surat, 1672–1792 222 12.