HIST/SISRE 225
The Eurasian Trade from the 16th-18th Centuries
I. Steensgaard and Eurocentric interpretations of the Asian trade.
A. The Portuguese century.
B. The taking of Hormuz and rise of the Dutch and English companies.
II. Some evidence regarding overland trade routes:
A. Hovhannes, the quintissential "peddlar," 1682-1693.
B. Goës and the route to China, 1603-1607.
C. Steel and Crowther on the Mughal-Safavi route in 1616-17.
II.. The political economy of "early-modern" Asian states.
A. The Mughals as an economic "super-power."
B. The state-controlled economy of Safavid Shah Abbas.
C. The security of the trade routes.
III. Commercial organization and indigenous merchant communities.
A. "Peddlars" or "family corporations" and questions of
capitalization and sophistication of commercial techniques.
B. The Armenians and the silk trade.
C. Indian merchants on the routes from India to Russia.
IV. The rise and significance of the Russian routes.
V. European competition and the decline of the caravan trade.
VI. Epilogue: The Silk Road in the 20th Century and beyond.
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Recommended reading:
Niels Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century: The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade (UChicago Pr. PB, 1974). Sophisticated but Euro-centric interpretation.
Levon Khachikan, "The Ledger of the Merchant Hovhannes Joughayetsi," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 4th ser., 8/3 (1966), pp. 153-186. Armenian merchant who was in Persia, India and Tibet in 1682-1693.
John Chardin, Travels in Persia 1673-1677 (NY: Dover PB, 1988). One of best contemporary descriptions, with a lot on economy.
Rudolph P. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambr. UP, 1999). Sophisticated synthesis of Safavid political economy.
Edmund Herzig, "The Iranian raw silk trade and European manufacture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries," Journal of European Economic History, 19/1 (1990), 73-89. Good overview of importance of Iran's silk production.
Edmund M. Herzig, "The Rise of the Julfa Merchants in the Late Sixteenth Century," in Charles Melville, ed., Safavid Persia (I.B.Tauris PB, 1996), pp. 305-322. Armenians in Silk trade.
Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah's Silk for Europe's Silver: the Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India (1530-1750) (Scholar's Pr., 1999). Strongest (exaggerated?) argument for corporate organization and importance of Armenians.
Halil Inalcik, "Bursa and the Commerce of the Levant," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, III/2 (1960), 131-147. Pioneering discussion of role of Ottoman merchants in overland trade.
Stephen Frederic Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750 (Cambr. UP, 1994). Revisionist argt. about commercial sophistication of Indian merchants, using esp. documents from colony at Astrakhan (mouth of Volga R.).
Irfan Habib, "Merchant Communities in Precolonial India," in James D. Tracy, The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750 (Cambr. UP, 1990), pp. 371-399, but esp. pp. 379 ff. on Banya merchants.
Audrey Burton, The Bukharans: A Dynastic, Diplomatic and Commercial History 1550-1702 (St. Martin's Pr., 1997). Undigested compendium of everything there is to know about subject. Part 2 deals with trade.