Nadri's book on Gujarat's economy is a stimulating and thorough study of a prosperous eighteenth century region, largely drawn from Dutch and English archives and some important unpublished Persian materials. He concludes that it is misleading to see the eighteenth century as a period of decline after the commercial boom of the late seventeenth century. On the contrary, Gujarat's economy in the late eighteenth century was remarkably robust. The reason, Nadri argues, is that in Gujarat, unlike other regions of South Asia, merchants and producers were relatively free of state supervision. This combination of a relatively “weak” state and “strong” merchants continued even after the East India Company acquired its first political toehold in India through its control of Surat Castle in 1759 (six years before being granted the diwani right to collect taxes in Bengal). For almost half a century, the Company in Surat functioned merely as another local agency without overturning basic relations of exchange and etiquette. As other historians have also shown, it was only in the early nineteenth century that the British extended (limited) direct rule in Gujarat.
Nadri argues that the Mughal-Maratha “dyarchy” that operated in Gujarat at the time and the continuing dynamism of the Surat-centered Gujarati trade is to be credited for slowing down English political takeover in South Gujarat. “The multiple centres of political authority and the fluidity of their mutual relationships did not allow any one of them to fully control commerce and production” (p. 151). Echoing Michael Pearson, who made a similar argument for early sixteenth century Gujarat, Nadri reiterates the state's limited role in the economy throughout the book. The government was concerned only with skimming off a small part of commercial proceedings, in return for which they undertook to provide security. The state was not the “motor of economic change” that other historians have sketched, rather, it was circumscribed by the economy. Merchants, on the other hand, had considerable bargaining power when necessary. The state's lack of oversight and regulatory institutions was a virtue and a strength because it allowed merchants to evolve creative ways to do business and ensure the perpetuation of their fortunes. Eighteenth century Gujarat possessed a relatively “free” and stable market in which actors responded largely to economic forces, not political ones. Political vicissitudes thus had only a marginal effect on trade; upheaval caused by conflict or change of governors was swiftly followed by business as usual in the late eighteenth century, a picture that meshes well with my own understanding of Gujarat three centuries earlier.
Nadri's researches are based heavily on the records of the VOC, a valuable and under-utilized archive for South Asian history. His core analysis of the Dutch materials is found in Chapter 4, in which he is able to demonstrate the crucial and continuing importance of Gujarat to the Dutch trading network in eighteenth century Asia. His picture of eighteenth century Gujarat is a rosy one. Some of the richest merchants in the world lived here. He demonstrates Gujarat's prosperity at this time by showing how many luxuries—spices, copper, sugar, and pepper—were imported into Gujarat. An important contribution of the book is to show that producers such as weavers, carpenters, and spinners were able to live well, at least in comparison with workers elsewhere in South Asia. Weavers, producers of Gujarat's most popular goods, had some bargaining power. Waged laborers, including women, could make a living as there was plenty of work. Maritime labour presented opportunities for young men, especially Muslims, although there is an intriguing suggestion that some took on Muslim names to get jobs! (p. 44) While specialized work was ring-fenced by caste, high demand meant that caste boundaries were sometimes breached, as when the Kunbis learnt fine silk weaving from Khatris (p. 27). A range of commercial and brokerage services were available for the asking, with some evidence of inter-denominational collaboration and deal-making, and ingenious methods of spreading risk and diversifying portfolios.
Why did the state in Gujarat refrain from excessive force and negotiate with merchants and producers? Nadri finds that the existence of the free market constrained the state. “[T]he structure of market relations,” he argues, “did not allow either the state or merchants to subject this relationship to non-economic forces” (p. 23). Money in Gujarat was invested in consumption and not in the institutions of coercion. A further reason is “shared sovereignty” in Gujarat and “a culture of resistance to political authoritarianism” (p. 22), the latter an intriguing notion that is not further investigated in the book. The author certainly demonstrates “shared sovereignty,” with authority spread over many sectors and actors, political decisions taken by merchants and commercial decisions taken by rulers. But these rich descriptions and careful analyses sit somewhat uneasily with the author's rather static notions of “state” and “merchant,” entities that he sees as radically distinct from one another. It is here that one wishes for a more culturally nuanced analysis that investigates this so-called culture of resistance and asks how the “strong” merchant in Gujarat was produced and reproduced. Such an analysis would perhaps require investigating Gujarati (not a single Gujarati work—primary or secondary—is cited) and Persian materials more closely. Nevertheless, the book affords rich food for thought about Gujarat's exceptional history, then and now.
