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Number of words: 2,125 In the nineteenth century it was common for Westerners to blame China’s civilizational crisis on the country’s inward-looking culture, particularly the inflated sense of self that was implied in the idea of the ‘Middle Kingdom’, and the pretensions to cultural (and even racial) superiority that led many Chinese to refer to … Read more

Number of words: 700 In time European states did indeed borrow freely from Chinese models of governance. As the historian Stephen R. Platt has noted, the East India Company’s adoption of a competitive examination system in 1806 was inspired largely by what its traders had learned of the Chinese system in Canton. This in turn … Read more

Number of words: 1,056 Defenders of the British Empire’s drug trade often drew parallels between alcohol and opium: like wine and spirits in Europe, went the argument, opium had been used in India for centuries, generally in moderation, so there was no reason why it should not be treated as a source of revenue, just … Read more

Number of words: 333 Nepal and Tibet had long served as China’s principal sources of information on the Indian subcontinent. For Nepal, this function became even more important after 1792, when the Qianlong Emperor sent an expedition against the Gurkha kingdom because of various disputes over the Qing territories in Tibet.” As the Manchu general … Read more

Number of words: 368 Another factor that made it possible for Parsis to operate successfully in Guangzhou was their relative freedom from many of the taboos and dietary restrictions that made socializing with foreigners difficult for orthodox Hindus and Muslims. Indeed, dietary prejudices may have long played an important, though largely unnoticed, role in creating … Read more

Number of words: 417 While all the commercial communities of western India were involved in the China trade, the Parsi role in it was, in one significant respect, different from that of the other groups. Generally speaking. the involvement of Indian merchants in dispatching goods to China did not extend beyond the coast: for some … Read more

Number of words: 735 Throughout the colonial era, Calcutta and Bombay defined the two opposed poles of India’s political economy Opium gave these two cities a major advantage over Madras, the oldest British settlement in India, which had once far exceeded Bombay in its commercial importance. But as Calcutta and Bombay flourished. Madras, lacking an … Read more

Number of words: 271 Today, at a time when the ‘economy’ and ‘business’ are thought to be insulated spheres that function according to their own laws, it has become customary to lionize merchants and businessmen for their shrewdness and entrepreneurialism. But the real lesson to be learnt from the commercial world of western India is … Read more

Number of words: 733 The year 1803 thus marked a critical moment in India’s colonial history in that it finally gave the British a decisive military advantage over the Marathas. Here at last was a golden opportunity to enhance the value of the Company’s Bengal monopoly by annihilating the Malwa opium industry! As instructed by … Read more

Number of words: 484 The hinterlands of Bombay were then controlled by a set of powerful Maratha principalities. These states, the most important of which had their capitals in Gwalior, Baroda, Indore and Nagpur, were founded after the region was wrested away from the Mughal Empire in the seventeenth century by the Maratha leader Shivaji … Read more