Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Map 1 Places mentioned in Bengal and Arakan: 5th to 13th centuries
- Map 2 Land and sea routes of the Eastern Indian Ocean: 13th to 15th centuries
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Conceptual Formulations
- 3 Key Issues: Bengal
- 4 Introducing Bengal
- 5 The Debated Century
- 6 Networks and States in South Asia
- 7 Unities of Time and Space in Bengal
- 8 Bengal in the Indian Ocean Centred World Economy
- 9 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Key Issues: Bengal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Map 1 Places mentioned in Bengal and Arakan: 5th to 13th centuries
- Map 2 Land and sea routes of the Eastern Indian Ocean: 13th to 15th centuries
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Conceptual Formulations
- 3 Key Issues: Bengal
- 4 Introducing Bengal
- 5 The Debated Century
- 6 Networks and States in South Asia
- 7 Unities of Time and Space in Bengal
- 8 Bengal in the Indian Ocean Centred World Economy
- 9 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘A great empire which marches with the Kingdomes of Delhi, Ceylon, Cathay and Vijayanagar’ (Roger Barlow, A Briefe Summe of Geographie, F.G.R.Taylor ed. Series II, V.69, London, The Hakluyt Society, 1929–32).
The ‘Primacy’ of Bengal?
From the historical accounts to academic works even today Bengal's inarguably large productive potential is taken to be an indicator of its primacy in business within South Asia and beyond. Its productive capacity is confused with the actual management of its resources and its weak commercial system. By commercial system is meant a system of controlling and diversifying production, dictating the quality of commodities and prices, a knowledge of transport networks and markets outside Bengal, and independent access to markets. Bengal's production system was agrarian-based and therefore doubly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of nature and the fluctuations in international trade. One tends to ignore these in favour of arguments highlighting the immense productivity capacity of Bengal in agriculture and crafts.
These accounts ignore the fact that despite its prodigious production, no independent mercantile activity on a large scale is noted for Bengal, after the first half of the seventeenth century. Thereafter, prominent merchants of Bengal functioned as dadni merchants, that is, as intermediaries between buyer and seller within Bengal, and rarely undertook commerce outside Bengal on their own initiative. Bengal merchants did not organise themselves into a trading combine vis-à-vis other ‘national merchants’ as did the Coromandel merchants from the seventeenth century.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Strange RichesBengal in the Mercantile Map of South Asia, pp. 56 - 158Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2006