Rethinking classical Indo-Roman trade : political economy of eastern Mediterranean exchange relations / Rajan Gurukkal.

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Material type: Text

TextLanguage: English Publication details: New Delhi, India : Oxford University Press, 2016.Edition: First editionDescription: xiii, 330 pages : 1 illustration (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 23 cmISBN:

9780199460854
019946085X

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

382.093 23 RAJ

Contents:

1. Introduction: Theoretical Preliminaries and methodology 2. Sources and Historiography 3. Eastern mediterranean overseas exchanges 4. Ports, marts, and ship technology in early south India 5. Exhange relations in early peninsular India 6. Polity, statecraft, and overseas exchange 7. Afterword

Summary: The book is a critical rethinking of the nature of the classical eastern Mediterranean exchange relations with the coasts of the Indian subcontinent. It examines in the light of the extant source material and theoretical insights whether the expression ‘Indo-Roman trade’ is tenable. Characterizing the nature of contemporary exchanges in detail, the book maintains that the expression ‘Indo-Roman trade’ is inappropriate. It starts off with the theoretical premise that the term ‘trade’, if applied uniformly to all kinds of transactions in time and place, will lead to many anachronistic correlations, causations, and generalizations about the nature of early forms of exchange. Contemporary Mediterranean exchange of goods from the eastern world was a combination of multiple forms of exchange in which trade was just one and confined to Rome. The management of this ensemble was a heavily collaborative, extensively networked, and document-based enterprise, with precise notions of weights, measures, rates of rent, interest, price and profit accounted in terms of money. It had necessitated a stratified society, aristocracy, state system, and the entailing political economy of demand for luxury goods from far-off lands. Considering that such institutional and social structures were absent in contemporaneous peninsular India, this book dismisses the claims in south Indian historiography that early Tamil chieftains conducted overseas commerce. Neither there existed adequate naval technology to allow merchant bodies to conduct independent overseas trade nor was it necessary.

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
General Books	CUTN Central Library Social Sciences	Non-fiction	382.093 RAJ (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		41730

The book is a critical rethinking of the nature of the classical eastern Mediterranean exchange relations with the coasts of the Indian subcontinent. It examines in the light of the extant source material and theoretical insights whether the expression ‘Indo-Roman trade’ is tenable. Characterizing the nature of contemporary exchanges in detail, the book maintains that the expression ‘Indo-Roman trade’ is inappropriate. It starts off with the theoretical premise that the term ‘trade’, if applied uniformly to all kinds of transactions in time and place, will lead to many anachronistic correlations, causations, and generalizations about the nature of early forms of exchange. Contemporary Mediterranean exchange of goods from the eastern world was a combination of multiple forms of exchange in which trade was just one and confined to Rome. The management of this ensemble was a heavily collaborative, extensively networked, and document-based enterprise, with precise notions of weights, measures, rates of rent, interest, price and profit accounted in terms of money. It had necessitated a stratified society, aristocracy, state system, and the entailing political economy of demand for luxury goods from far-off lands. Considering that such institutional and social structures were absent in contemporaneous peninsular India, this book dismisses the claims in south Indian historiography that early Tamil chieftains conducted overseas commerce. Neither there existed adequate naval technology to allow merchant bodies to conduct independent overseas trade nor was it necessary.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 298-316) and index.

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