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On Principals and Agency: Reassembling Trust in Indian Ocean Commerce

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2019

Johan Mathew
Johan Mathew*
Affiliation:
History, Rutgers
*
jm2048@history.rutgers.edu
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Abstract

The role of trust in long-distance trade has been a topic of inquiry and debate among economists, sociologists, and historians. Much of this literature hinges on the social, legal, and economic structures that undergird, if not obviate, the concept of trust. This article draws on assemblage theory to suggest that trust in Indian Ocean trade is better understood as a key component of a commercial assemblage. Laws or social mores are not external to but rather enrolled within an assemblage constituted by people, commodities, profits, and “feelings,” as well as judicial systems. This conceptualization of trust is demonstrated through a close analysis of one trading relationship between a Somali merchant and an Indian merchant based in Aden and trading in the Idrisi Emirate of Asir. They established a partnership to exploit elevated prices in Asir during the First World War. After several months of trading, accusations of fraud and embezzling unraveled the partnership and entangled both men in years of legal battles. By tracing the changing socio-material assemblage of this partnership, the article demonstrates how trust should be understood as a dynamic and contingent factor in the operation of commercial agency.

Keywords

trustassemblageagencyIndian OceanaltruismfatwaAdenlawtradediaspora
Type
Trust
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 242 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2019 

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References

1 See Bang, Anne K., The Idrisi State in Asir: Politics, Religion and Prestige in Arabia (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1997), 105Google Scholar.

2 Ahmed Najoo Khan vs. Ali Ibrahim Noor and Hajj Ibrahim Noor, case no. 72 before the Privy Council in 1923 (Henceforth 72 UKPC 1923). Page numbers are from the “Record of Proceedings.”

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8 See the fascinating exploration of altruism in Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

9 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Brian Massumi, trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, annotated ed. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006); Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

10 For an excellent example of framing law through the prism of assemblages, see Fahad Ahmad Bishara, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 20–21, 247–56.

11 My argument here builds off the notion of “uneasy trust” suggested in Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers, 4–9.

12 This approach was established in large part by the seminal work of Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, and Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade.

13 There is a large and growing literature on the legal history of the Indian Ocean world: see Bishara, Sea of Debt; all of the articles in the special Issue of Law and History Review edited by Renisa Mawani and Iza Hussin, “The Travels of Law: Indian Ocean Itineraries,” Law and History Review 32, 4 (2014); Elke E. Stockreiter, Islamic Law, Gender and Social Change in Post-Abolition Zanzibar (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Nurfadzilah Yahaya, “Legal Pluralism and the English East India Company in the Straits of Malacca during the Early Nineteenth Century,” Law and History Review 33 (2015): 945–64. See also Beshara Doumani, ed., Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), Introduction, and 173–79.

14 Bang, Idrisi State in Asir; Pankhurst, “Trade of the Gulf.” For more general histories of Somalia, see I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, 4th ed. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003); Lee V. Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600–1900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982); Scott S. Reese, Renewers of the Age: Holy Men and Social Discourse in Colonial Benaadir (Boston: Brill, 2008); Scott S. Reese, Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Indian Ocean, 1839–1937 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

15 Bishara, Sea of Debt, esp. chs. 3 and 4.

16 Masud, Muhammad Khalid, Messick, Brinkley Morris, and Powers, David Stephan, eds., Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

17 In a sense, I am only working one side of what Doumani calls the double reading of the Ottoman legal archive, in Family History in the Middle East.

18 See for example: Archive of ʿAbdullah al-Ṭābūr, copies held at Juma ʿal-Mājid Library, Dubai, henceforth Ṭābūr Archive: Abdallah Ṣaliḥ al-Muṭawaʿ to Ahmed bin ʿAbd al-Raḥmān bin Hadid, 28 Shawal 1346 AH; Sala Mohommed Jafferbhoy and Alli Mohamed Jafferbhoy v. Dame Janbai [1897] UKPC 17; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 136–37; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥumayyid Sālimī, Jawābāt Al-Imām Al-Sālimī, ed. ʿAbd al-Sattār Abū Ghuddah (Muscat: Maktabat al-Imām al-Sālimī, 2010), vol. 4, 538a, the fatwas are not numbered separately so I have listed the first, second or third fatwa on a page as a, b or c respectively.

19 Sālimī, Jawābāt, vols. 4, 537–556, and volume 3, 283–87; Abū Bakr ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Khaṭīb Anṣārī, al-Fatāwa al-nāfi ʿah fī masāʾil al-uhūl al-wāqīʿah (Cairo: Muṣṭafa al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1379), 76–79; Kaptein, N. J. G., ed., The Muhimmât Al-Nafâʾis: A Bilingual Meccan Fatwa Collection for Indonesian Muslims from the End of the Nineteenth Century, Seri INIS; 32. (Jakarta: INIS, 1997)Google Scholar.

20 Sālimī, Jawābāt, vol. 4, pp. 537a, 537b, 539a, 541a; Anṣārī, al-Fatāwa al-nāfiʿah, 77b, 78a.

21 Pankhurst, “Trade of the Gulf.”

22 Scholarship on Somalia focuses overwhelmingly on the pastoral society and economy, which was far more important than the small-scale maritime trade. Cassanelli, Shaping of Somali Society; Lewis, Modern History; Reese, Renewers of the Age, ch. 4.

23 Margariti, Roxani Eleni, Aden & the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Goitein, S. D. and Friedman, Mordechai Akiva, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden: Brill, 2008)Google Scholar.

24 Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers, 18. For the cosmopolitan milieu of Aden, see Reese, Imperial Muslims.

25 Examination of plaintiff (Khan), 72 UKPC 1923, 7.

26 Noor to Khan, 6 Dhu al-Hijjah 1334 (3 Oct. 1916), 72 UKPC 1923, 101.

27 Copy of an agreement between plaintiff and defendant, no. 1, 72 UKPC 1923, 34–35.

28 See trial proceedings and judgment of the Assistant Resident, 72, UKPC 1923, 44–50. For an excellent discussion of the overlapping and contested nature of the legal system in Aden, see Reese, Imperial Muslims, ch. 4; For a similar understanding of colonial law in East Africa, see Bishara, Sea of Debt, 137–47.

29 On merchants framing contracts to be legible in multiple legal regimes, see Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 124–26, 150–64.

30 Examination of plaintiff (Khan), 72 UKPC 1923, 6–7.

31 On the prevalence of verbal contracting, see Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 133–35.

32 Judgement of the Privy Council, and Judgement of the High Court of Bombay, 72 UKPC 1923, 78–80.

33 There was an Islamic form of partnership, sharika, but it would have involved both partners contributing capital.

34 Udovitch, Abraham L., Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Margariti, Aden & the Indian Ocean Trade; Aslanian, Sebouh, “The Circulation of Men and Credit: The Role of the Commenda and the Family Firm in Julfan Society,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50, 2/3 (Jan. 2007): 124–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Copy of an agreement between plaintiff and defendant, no. 1, 72 UKPC 1923, 34–35.

36 This resonates with a recent article on contract theory: see Oliver Hart and John Moore, “Contracts as Reference Points,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, 1 (1 Feb. 2008): 1–48.

37 This would be worth a little over £50,000 in 2017, in terms of commodity prices, but as a proportion of the total economic activity of Britain at this moment its value would be at least half a million pounds today. See discussions of purchasing power and economic cost conversions in, “Measuring Worth—Purchasing Power of Pound,” https://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/ (accessed 2 Aug. 2017).

38 India Office Records, British Library: R/20/A/2960, W. Baddeley, Admiralty to Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 22 Sept. 1919; Aden Residency Note, 15 Nov. 1919; Major A. S. Meek, Political Officer, Hodeida to First Assistant Resident, 3 Dec. 1919.

39 Noor to Khan, 16 Sept. 1916, 72 UKPC 1923, 102–3.

40 Ibid.

41 Noor to Khan, 22 Dhu al-Qaʿada (19 Sept. 1916); 6 Dhu al-Hijjah (3 Oct. 1916), 72 UKPC 1923, 104–6.

42 Anṣārī, al-Fatāwa al-nāfiʿah, 76a; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 134.

43 Anṣārī, al-Fatāwa al-nāfiʿah, 76a; Sālimī, Jawābāt, vol. 4, 537a, 537b, 540a, and 554b. There are also exceptions: 552a, 556a.

44 This is a well-established idea in the literature; see Sebouh Aslanian, “‘The Salt in a Merchant's Letter’: The Culture of Julfan Correspondence in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean,” Journal of World History 19, 2 (June 2008): 127–88; Gagan D. S. Sood, “‘Correspondence Is Equal to Half a Meeting’: The Composition and Comprehension of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Eurasia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50, 2 (June 2007): 172–211; and “The Informational Fabric of Eighteenth-Century India and the Middle East: Couriers, Intermediaries and Postal Communication,” Modern Asian Studies 43, 05 (Sept. 2009): 1085–116; Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions; Markovits, Global World.

45 Jayakar, Atmaran Sadashiva Grandin, Omani Proverbs (Cambridge, UK: Oleander Press, 1987), 29Google Scholar, 65. Also see “brotherly” greetings in the Ṭābūr Archive: ‘Abdallah Ṣaliḥ al-Muṭawaʿ to Ahmed bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Hadid, 28 Shawal 1346 AH; ‘Abd al-Rahmān Madfaʿ to Shaikh Jumʿa Mohammed al Mutawaʿ 22 Sha'ban 1356.

46 See letters in 72 UKPC 1923, 101–11.

47 Noor to Khan, 16 Sept. 1916; 22 Dhu al-Qaʿada (19 Sept. 1916), 72 UKPC 1923, 102–6.

48 Statement showing the goods sent for partnership, 72 UKPC 1923, 93–97.

49 Noor to Khan, 22 Dhu al-Qaʿada (19 Sept. 1916); 16 Nov. 1916, 72 UKPC 1923, 104–9.

50 National Archives of the United Kingdom: T161/90 Memo W.M.P. Wood, 1st Assistant Resident, Aden, 6 Sept. 1917; J. M. Stewart, Political Resident in Aden to High Commissioner of Egypt, 31 Aug. 1918.

51 Noor to Khan, 22 Dhu al-Qaʿada (19 Sept. 1916); 16 Sept. 1916, 72 UKPC 1923, 102–3.

52 Statement showing the goods sent for partnership, 72 UKPC 1923, 93–97.

53 Noor to Khan, 16 Sept. 1916, 72 UKPC 1923, 102–3.

54 Statement showing the goods sent for partnership, 93–97; statement showing the goods sold by defendant no. 1, 72 UKPC 1923, 99–100.

55 Noor to Khan, 16 Nov. 1916, 16 Dec. 1916, 72 UKPC 1923, 107–9, 111.

56 Evidence of Sayad Ahmad bin Taha Safi, Sayad Mahamad Mohsin Safi, Sheriff Mahamad Hasson, 39–41; Noor to Khan, 16 Rabiʿ al-Awwal (9 Jan. 1916), 72 UKPC 1923, 98.

57 Sood, “Informational Fabric”; Aslanian, “Salt in a Merchant's Letter”; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chs. 3 and 7.

58 Plaintiff's reply, 24 July 1918, 72 UKPC 1923, 12. For the role of rumors in regulating trading reputations, see Aslanian, Sebouh, “Social Capital and the Role of Networks in Julfan Trade: Informal and Semi-Formal Institutions at Work,” Journal of Global History 1, 3 (2006): 383–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean, 184; Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers, ch. 6.

59 Evidence of Abdul Razzak Fatoo, 72 UKPC 1923, 19–28.

60 Questions put to plaintiff's witnesses (in Arabic), 38; Power of Attorney passed by plaintiff in favor of Abdul Razzak Fatoo, 25 Jumadā al-Awal 1335 (21 Mar. 1917, second translation), 72 UKPC 1923, 112–13.

61 Plaintiff's reply, 24 July 1918, 72 UKPC 1923, 12–13. Regarding the duties and powers of subordinate agents, see Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 135–38.

62 See Lydon, Ghislaine, “A Paper Economy of Faith without Faith in Paper: A Reflection on Islamic Institutional History,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, “The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion and the Law, ” 71, 3 (Sept. 2009): 647–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2009.03.019; Lydon, Trans-Saharan Trails, 294–95, 355, 393; Bishara, Fahad Ahmad, “Paper Routes: Inscribing Islamic Law across the Nineteenth-Century Western Indian Ocean,” Law and History Review 32, 4 (Nov. 2014): 797–820CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Khan's argument about the importance of text might indicate a similarity with what Jessica M. Marglin found in colonial Morocco, in “Written and Oral in Islamic Law: Documentary Evidence and Non-Muslims in Moroccan Shariʿa Courts,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 59, 4 (Oct. 2017): 884–911.

63 Evidence of Sayad Mahamad Mohsin Safi, Sheriff Mahamad Hasan, Ahmad bin Taha Safi, 58–59; Argument of appellants (Noor) to High Court of Bombay, 72 UKPC 1923, 22, 38–41.

64 Sālimī, Jawābāt, vol. 4, 554a, 554b, and 555.

65 Ibid., 556a; see also Bishara, Sea of Debt, 207–10.

66 Anṣārī, al-Fatāwa al-nāfiʿah, 76a.

67 Plaintiff's reply, 24 July 1918, 72 UKPC 1923, 12–13.

68 Kaptein, Muhimmât Al-Nafâʾis, xxi, xxxvii; Anṣārī, al-Fatāwa al-nāfiʿah, 77a, 77b; Sālimī, Jawābāt, vol. 4, 537a, 537b, 539a, 539b, 540a, 547a, and 550a.

69 Lydon, Trans-Saharan Trails, 336–37.