India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World

420 Pages·2021·1.452 MB·English

by  Jagjeet Lally

INDIA AND THE SILK ROADS

JAGJEET LALLY
India and the Silk Roads
The History of a Trading World
HURST & COMPANY, LONDON
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by
C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,

41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL
Copyright © Jagjeet Lally, 2021
All rights reserved.
Printed in India
The right of Jagjeet Lally to be identified as the author of
this publication is asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781787383265
This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable
and managed sources.
www.hurstpublishers.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
India and the Silk Roads is based on research for a doctoral dissertation
submitted to the University of Cambridge in 2013. I am extremely
grateful to the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC) for a full studentship to support this research; to the Ellen
MacArthur Fund of the Faculty of History, and Sidney Sussex College,
University of Cambridge, for numerous travel grants; and to the
Centre for History and Economics for a Prize Studentship in the first
year (2010–11) of my forays into the subject of my book. Sujit
Sivasundaram was a wonderful supervisor and mentor, and Polly
O’Hanlon and the late Chris Bayly were excellent examiners of the
thesis (which was subsequently awarded the MacArthur Prize for best
dissertation in economic and social history at the University of
Cambridge). Their collective close commentary has strengthened the
reworked analysis within this book.
I briefly dabbled at rewriting the dissertation as a monograph over
the Lent term of 2013–14 when I was a Moses and Mary Finley
Research Fellow—for which I thank the electors of that fellowship and
the Master and Fellows of Darwin College, Cambridge, for the
extraordinary privilege of a period almost solely devoted to developing
a research career. My tenure as Finley Fellow was cut short by my
appointment to a lecturership at University College London where,
since 2014, the opportunity to teach my own courses in Indian eco-
nomic history, and in the history of empire in the Middle East and Asia,
to attentive and curious students has profoundly shaped this book,
including its historical and historiographical analysis and arguments.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My colleagues, especially Margot Finn, Chris Jeppesen, and Zoltàn
Biedermann, have played an especially important role in my intellec-
tual life as reflected in the following pages; Margot has additionally
offered encouragement during the difficult process of seeing the book
through to completion. To all of them I am most grateful.
The immediate spark for the reorganisation of my doctoral thesis
into the present volume came from Jos Gommans’ invitation to write
a new introduction to the third edition of his seminal Rise of the Indo-
Afghan Empire (2019). Writing that piece coincided with the start of a
sabbatical and proved profoundly generative, stimulating the process of
restructuring and rewriting during the autumn and winter of 2017–18.
Jos’ scholarship had motivated my original interest in the project.
Revisiting his rich corpus breathed fresh life into my understanding of
India’s historic connection to Central Eurasia, and so I must express my
gratitude for his most generous invitation.
The imprint of Chris Bayly’s vast scholarly output can be found
throughout what follows. The most significant source of inspiration for
my book as a whole is Bayly’s Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (1983), which
examined eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India’s commercial life
as part of a larger ecosystem with various spatial, social, ritual, mate-
rial, political, and ethnic or cultural dimensions. There is probably no
chapter in what follows that does not draw some insight from one or
the other of Bayly’s works, while his lucid prose and powers of elegant
yet expansive synthesis remain something of a role model.
India and the Silk Roads has also benefited from numerous conversa-
tions with friends and colleagues—many more than I can note here—in
Cambridge, London, New Delhi, Stellenbosch, and elsewhere around
the world over the years. I am especially grateful to Alexander Morrison,
Andrew Arsan, Anna Winterbottom, Atiyab Sultan, Audrey Truschke,
Beatrice Penati, Beverly Lemire, Bishnupriya Gupta, Christopher
P. Bredholt, David Washbrook, Emma Hunter, Emma Rothschild,

Faridah Zaman, James Hall, James Wilson, John Slight, Joya Chatterji,
Katherine Butler-Schofield, Leigh Denault, Melissa Calaresu, Prasannan
Parthasarathi, Rosamund McKitterick, Shruti Kapila, Stephen
Thompson, Sunil Amrith, Tim Harper, and Tirthankar Roy.
Research in Lahore and Multan would have been impossible had it
not been for an invitation to present my work at the Lahore University
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
of Management Sciences, and my friend Atiyab’s help in arranging for
me to stay in the home of her friend Nazish Afraz. Nazish, her husband
Salman, their energetic children, and indomitable household staff were
for a few weeks my family in my home-away-from-home in Pakistan. I
cannot adequately express my gratitude for their willingness to take in
a total stranger in April 2013.
At the Punjab Archives and Library in Lahore my thanks go to the
Assistant Director, Shamim Jafri, and the staff in the records room. The
bulk of the research for this book was completed in the National
Archives of India, New Delhi, whose staff I must thank for supplying
me with a constant stream of documents. To the staff at the Maharashtra
State Archives (Bombay), the Punjab State Archives (Chandigarh), the
British Library (London), and the Asia Department of the Victoria and
Albert Museum (London) I also owe a great debt.
Audrey Truschke read a very early version of what are now the first
three chapters, her critical comments on the writing and content lead-
ing to tremendous improvements. Fiona Clague read all of chapter 5
and offered much encouragement, and Camille Cole scoured chapter
8 to offer useful suggestions, in addition to the gift of her own develop-
ing—and inspiring—corpus of scholarship. Rukun Advani’s correc-
tions and suggestions have greatly improved the text—although all
mistakes remain my own. I am very lucky to have worked with him and
must thank him and the rest of the team at Hurst.
My sister and Oscar moved by happenstance to Cambridge around
the time I was a student, providing me with shelter there during my
weekly trips from London for seminars, teaching, and research. They
also listened to rehearsals of presentations based on this material, ask-
ing questions—as scientists—that forced me to refine and improve the
expression of core ideas. My parents provided material support and
unwavering encouragement from start to finish. My friends in London,
particularly Fiona, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Jane Hibell, and
Marcus Jaye, provided the encouragement and environment in which
to complete the process of writing this book and seeing it through to
the publisher. And, of course, Annabel Chown, who has brought light
and space into my life.
To all these and other friends and family I am more grateful than
they can know. But my deepest thanks must go to Stephen Cummins,
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
who opened my eyes to the craft of history, who listened patiently to
various iterations of ideas from almost the very beginning of the proj-
ect, whose extraordinary and incomparable intellect was the well-
spring of both incisive critique and intellectual inspiration, who advised
and proofread, and who beyond all this offered friendship and laughter
even in very difficult times. This book is much richer for Stephen’s
intellectual nourishment; while the errors in it remain mine, I hope he
will accept this book as a token of my gratitude as he embarks upon a
new phase of his own journey.
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
BCP Bombay Commercial Proceedings
BL British Library, London
CAS Central Asian Survey
CSSAAME Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East
CSSH Comparative Studies in Society and History
EHR The Economic History Review
ETP Reports and Notes on the (External) Land Trade of
Punjab
IESHR The Indian Economic and Social History Review
IOR India Office Records, British Library
IOSM Indian Office Select Materials, British Library
JAS The Journal of Asian Studies
JESOH Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
JGH Journal of Global History
LOC Library of Congress
MAS Modern Asian Studies
MSA Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai
MSA-SILB Maharashtra State Archives, Secretariat Inward Letter
Books
NAI National Archives of India, New Delhi
NAI-F National Archives of India, Foreign Department
Proceedings
NAI-H National Archives of India, Home Department
Proceedings
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
NAI-M National Archives of India, Military Department
Proceedings
PAL Punjab Archives and Library, Lahore
PAL-P Punjab Archives and Library, Lahore, Political
Department Proceedings
PAL-R Punjab Archives and Library, Lahore, Revenue
Department Proceedings
PSA-F Punjab State Archives (Chandigarh), Punjab Foreign
Department Proceedings
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