Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750—1947: Traders of Sind
from Bukhara to Panama by Claude Markovits
Review by: Dwijendra Tripathi
Source: Asian Journal of Social Science , 2004, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2004), pp. 161-164
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23654691

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Book Reviews

Markovits, Claude (2000) The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750—19

Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama. Cambridge: Cambridge Universit
Press. 327 pages ISBN: 0-52162-285-9.

It is common knowledge that for centuries, Indians have been active

trade and commerce in many countries of the world. Historians, however
have given little attention to their business exploits abroad. The schol
concerned mainly with India assume, perhaps rightly, that the commerci
pursuits of the Indian diaspora form a part of the histories of the co
tries in which they carried out their businesses. For the historians of th
countries, on the other hand, the Indian role in business may have appear
to be too insignificant to deserve special notice. At any rate, business his
tory is yet to develop into an identifiable discipline in most of the co
tries that attracted Indian traders and merchants in the past. Against thi
backdrop, it is to the credit of Claude Markovits that he has opened
a new vista of historical research through this book.
The book does not deal with the entire gamut of the business activiti
of the Indian diaspora in general, contrary to what the principal title ma
lead one to believe. It is concerned only with the traders of Sind, and wit
two specific groups, popularly known as Shikarpuris and Hyderabadis aft
the two separate cities of the province (now in Pakistan), to which most
them belonged. The tide also gives a somewhat misleading indication
the time span covered in the study. The book's main focus is on the activ
ities of these two groups from the mid-19th century onwards. The prece
ing 100 years occupy too limited a space—just a few pages — to justif
as the title suggests, 1750 being treated as the starting point of the stud
The pre-19th century accounts relate primarily to the activities o
Shikarpuri traders, who preceded their Hyderabadi counterparts by s
eral decades in grasping business opportunities in other lands — part
larly in Indo-Central Asia. Their entry into trans-Indian markets wa
according to Markovits, a direct outcome of the rise of the so-called Durra
Empire, founded by a Pasto clan originally based in Kandahar that, as
consequence, came to control the shortest trade route between this c
and northern India. Lying in the vicinity of this trade route, Shikarp
rose to prominence as an important centre of trade and finance, creating
a golden opportunity for its merchant community to emerge as an indis
pensable source of finance for the caravan trade. The ability to trans
large sums of money with the help of the time-honoured Indian system
bill of exchange, known as hundi, was one of their major competitive adv
tages. Their agents, active in the vast region comprising parts of Afghanist

A.J.S.S. 32:1 (161-164) also available online

© 2004 Koninklijke Brill JVV, Leiden see www.brill.nl

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162 • Book Reviews

Iran and Central Asia, acted as their antenna to gauge and instrument to
exploit business opportunities. So firmly were they entrenched in this region
by the beginning of the 19th century that the decline in the Durrani for
tunes had little impact on their business. In fact, the financial power they
had already accumulated enabled them to entrench themselves even fur
ther in the economies of Russian Central Asia, Iran and Sinkiang. It was
not until the mid-1920s that their position in these regions was irrepara
bly undermined in the aftermath of events that they could not foresee —
the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and political turmoils in Iran and the
Sinkiang region. From the 1920s onward, they began to look increasingly
homeward to establish themselves in the unorganized money markets of
the principal cities of India, and the adjoining countries.
If the Shikarpuris' business expansion began with the rise of Durrani
power in the mid-18th century, the fall of Sind to British power in 1843
provided the "push" factor for the Hyderabadis, also known as Sindworkies,
to seek business opportunities elsewhere; as the patronage of the erstwhile
rulers of the province, the principal reason for their business prosperity,
was no more available. At the first stage, they set up selling operations for
Sindhi craft goods — the production of which they had been traditionally
financing — in the growing city of Bombay, with an eye on a substantial
European clientele. Later on, with the assurance of British protection act
ing as a "pull" factor, they established branches in a number of port cities
scattered over practically every corner of the world. The sale of curios, as
the craft goods were generally called, not only produced in Sind and other
parts of India, but also produced in other lands, became their speciality.
To this, trade in silk products was later added as their operations consol
idated and multiplied. Markovits argues, somewhat unconvincingly, that
the "birth of modern tourism" (whatever that means) bolstered their for
tunes. A more plausible explanation for the international success of the
Sindworkies seems to have been their ability to appreciate a potential mar
ket for goods that the local trades did not provide, while community and
clan linkages added to their competitive advantages. Whatever the case,
there is no question that they demonstrated remarkable flexibility and
resilience and have continued to operate, unlike their Shikarpuri counter
parts, in various parts of the world to this day.
Both the "networks", to use Markovit's term, functioned from their
headquarters in their respective cities with their agents or branches attend
ing to their trans-Indian operations. In most cases, the principal promot
ers operating from the headquarters and the agents or branch managers
were bound by some kind of partnership arrangement. The modus operandi
of both the networks was basically similar if we make allowance for the
fact that they were engaged in different kinds of businesses, and conducted
in places with vastly different locational characteristics. This perhaps explains

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 Book Reviews *163

why the Shikarpuris remained much more traditional in their business

methods, relying more on "camels and couriers for the transport of goods
and the transmission of information" (p. 30), while the Sindworkies made
use of more modern facilities such as telegraph and steamships. To con
cludeon this basis, as Markovits has done, that the Hyderabadis "increas
ingly adopted forms of business organisation which were close to those of
large European trading firms" (pp. 287-88) is an obvious exaggeration.
This in no way diminishes the value of Markovit's account of the
operations and methods of the two groups of businessmen he is concerned
with. Based on data and information painstakingly collected from sources —
some of which had never been used before — and imaginatively inter
preted, his description of the lines and processes of business the two groups
conducted represents a solid piece of research. Regretfully, the same can
not be said of his account of what he calls the "community and gender
in two merchant networks" (Chp. 8). He is, of course, on firm ground
when he asserts that community feeling between the Shikarpuri and
Hyderabadi diaspora remained less strong than one would expect among
persons belonging to the same province, claiming a common ethnic origin,
practising a common religion, and speaking a common language. To sub
stantiate his point, he has drawn attention to several cases of violent behav
iour, vitiating the interactions between the two groups. Markovits has not
offered even a shred of factual evidence, however, except feeble allusions
to vague psycho-analytical formulations, to support his conclusion that this
was "decisively" due to the "separation from women for long periods . . ."
(p. 265). Which psychoanalyst has maintained that sexual frustration nec
essarily leads to aggressive behaviour?! It seems to me that while assessing
the impact of what he calls "sexual economy" (another vague and undefined
term) on the behaviour pattern of the Sindhi diaspora, Markovits has been
unduly carried away by European, may I say French, ethos and values.
There is one more aspect about which I have some reservations.
Markovits seems to imply that all the Shikarpuris belonged to Shikarpur
and all the Hyderabadis to Hyderabad. In most cases, however, diaspora
groups named after regions or places are conglomerates of those people
hailing from the places and regions concerned as well as those belonging
to the catchment areas. The term "Marwari" is a case in point. It refers
to the entire Rajasthani diaspora and not only the migrants from the
Marwar region, from where the early batches of business explorers origi
nated. Did something like this also happen with regard to the composi
tion of the two networks, causing the Shikarpuri and Hyderabadi diaspora
to become more heterogeneous in terms of the actual places to which their
members belonged? This could have been a question worth exploring in
a book of this kind. Markovits should have also been a little more care
ful about some factual details. Perhaps the most glaring of such errors is

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164 • Book Reviews

the statement that Srichand Hinduja started his business in 1919 (p. 106).
Srichand is still alive and looks fairly young for a person who would have
been old enough to start a business that early! Markovits, perhaps, means
Srichand's father, Parmanand, or some other Hinduja of that generation.
These, of course, are minor errors of omission and commission that
do not severely mar an otherwise admirable piece of research. The book,
however, fails to achieve one of its major declared aims, that is, to decon
struct the unitary notion of South Asian diaspora "to the point of disso
lution" (p. 4). A really serious effort in this direction would have required
a review of the business behaviour of different South Asian diaspora groups
in the regions or places that attracted the Sindhi trades. Markovits hardly
does so, and whenever he does and howsoever inadequately, as in the
chapter about the politics of merchant networks, his account seems to rein
force rather than dismantle the unitary picture. Though Markovits does
not go into it, the business methods of other South Asian diaspora groups
did not essentially differ from those of the Sindhi traders, and all these
groups — including the Shikarpuris and Sindworkies — made common cause
against threats to their common interests. Besides, in many places, even
where they had their own separate pressure groups, they worked through
trade associations comprising all merchant groups from South Asia. They
depended on British protection as much as other subjects of the British
Indian Empire, and their attitude to the organizations and agencies work
ing from India's freedom was no different from that of the other groups.
The proponents of the unitary notion of South Asian diaspora do not
ignore the diversities and differences that distinguish various collectivities.
What they emphasize is that the commonalities in the behaviour and prac
tices of these collectivities are sufficiently strong for them to be regarded
as elements in a common identity. Markovits has not been able to give a
serious enough jolt to this view, much less demolish it.
Markovits, nevertheless, must be complimented for this pioneering
effort, marked by a sagacious analysis of remarkably rich data. For it is
much more agreeable, to paraphrase Pieter Geyl, to be grateful to an
author for that which is vivifying in his work than to blame him for minor
omissions and blemishes.

Dwijendra Tripathi
Indian Instituk of Management
Ahmedabad

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