Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:20:42.325Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vernacular Capitalism and Intellectual History in a Gujarati Account of China, 1860–68

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Michael O'Sullivan
Michael O'Sullivan*
Affiliation:
Michael O'Sullivan (mbosulliv@gmail.com) is a Junior Research Fellow in the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University.
Get access

Abstract

This article examines one of the earliest Gujarati travelogues concerning China, written by Damodar Ishwardas—a Hindu resident of Bombay and a clerk for a Sunni Khoja commercial firm—and published in Bombay in 1868. Based on a three-year trip to the port cities of southern China, Ishwardas's text runs close to 400 pages and was patronized by a prominent stratum of Bombay's Gujarati-speaking commercial and bureaucratic elite. The primary intervention in this article is to analyze Ishwardas's account as a neglected relic of vernacular capitalism and vernacular intellectual history. Furthermore, the text presents an opportunity to reexamine the history of the Indian intellectual and mercantile engagement with late Qing China, especially before anticolonial nationalism and pan-Asianism supplied new paradigms for Indian writing on East Asia beginning around 1900. It further points to the many unstudied Indian materials that have yet to be integrated into the study of modern capitalism in the regions from the South China Sea to the western Indian Ocean.

Keywords

Bombaycapitalismcolonial IndiaGujaratiHong Kongintellectual historypan-AsianismQing Chinatraveloguesvernacular histories
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 267 - 292
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Association for Asian Studies, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

An Account of the Khoja Sunnat Jamat, Bombay. 1969. Karachi: Oxford Book House.Google Scholar
Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. 1972. Private Investment in India, 1900–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1996. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bayly, Martin. 2016. Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, International Relations, and the Anglo-Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckert, Sven, and Desan, Christine, eds. 2018. American Capitalism: New Histories. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickers, Robert. 2016. “Britain and China, and India, 1830s–1947.” In Britain and China, 1840–1970: Empire, Finance and War, edited by Bickers, Robert and Howlett, Jonathan J., 58–83. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Birla, Rita. 2009. Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunero, Donna. 2006. Britain's Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Busch, Allison. 2011. Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catalogue of Books Printed in the Bombay Presidency during the Quarter Ending 30th September 1867. 1868. Byculla: Bombay Education Society's Press.Google Scholar
Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. 1994. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Song-Chuan. 2017. Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cinai, Horamji Pharamji. 1851. The Commercial Calculator, or, Tables of Exchange between England and China, China and Calcutta & China and Bombay: To Which Is Added Tables . . . of Results of Shipments of Cotton from Bombay to China, and of Dollars, Syces, Silver and Gold, from China to Bombay. Bombay: Bombay Summachar Press.Google Scholar
Dadabhai, Sohrabhshah. 1868. Ebisiniyā deś tathā teheno rājā. Bharuch: Bharūc Vartmān Chāpkhānā.Google Scholar
Day, Jenny Huangfu. 2018. Qing Travelers to the Far West: Diplomacy and the Information Order in Late Imperial China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dehlavi, Nusrat Ali Khan. 1900. Çīn u Māçīn [China and Greater China]. Istanbul: Hurşīt Maṭbaʿası.Google Scholar
Dejung, Christof. 2011. “Bridges to the East: European Merchants and Business Practices in India and China.” In Commerce and Culture: Nineteenth-Century Business Elites, edited by Lee, Robert, 93–116. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Dhabar, H. K. 1892. Cīn Deś; Chin Desh, Containing a Succinct View of the Moral and Social Character, Manners, Customs, Language and Religion of Its Inhabitants. Bombay: Union Press.Google Scholar
Farooqui, Amar. 1996. “Urban Development in a Colonial Situation: Early Nineteenth Century Bombay.” Economic and Political Weekly, October 5, 2746–59.Google Scholar
Goswami, Manu. 2004. Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Govardhandash, Keshvaram. 1871. Jñān Nidhī [Treasure house of knowledge]. Bombay: Parsi Printing Press.Google Scholar
Green, Nile. 2018. “The Waves of Heterotopia: Toward a Vernacular Intellectual History of the Indian Ocean,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 123, No. 3, pp. 846–874.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, Bishnupriya. 2015. “The Rise of Modern Industry in Colonial India.” In A New Economic History of Colonial India, edited by Chaudhary, Latika, Roy, Tirthankar, Gupta, Bishnupriya, and Swamy, Anand V., 67–83. London: Taylor & Francis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynes, Douglas. 1991. Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852–1928. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hīnduśthān ane Cīn Vacenā Aphīmanā vepar [The opium trade between China and India]. 1854. Bombay: Daftar Ashkara Press.Google Scholar
Ishwardas, Damodar. 1868. Cı̄nanı̄ Musāpharı̄ [China travels]. Bombay: Nowrojee Framjee.Google Scholar
Jhaveri, Krishnalal Mohanlal. 1924. Further Milestones in Gujarati Literature. Bombay: N. M. Tripathi & Co.Google Scholar
Master, Jinnah, Lavji, Khoja. 1922–23(?). Kāśīthī Karbalā. Ahmedabad: Amir Sinhaji Printing Press.Google Scholar
Karaka, Dosabhai Framji. 1884. History of the Parsis: Including Their Manners, Customs, Religion, and Present Position. Vol. 2. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur, and Singh, Anantdeep. 2013. “Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 61 (3): 503–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lightman, Bernard, McOuat, Gordon, and Stewart, Larry. 2013. The Circulation of Knowledge between Britain, India and China: The Early-Modern World to the Twentieth Century. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Andrew. 2019. “Production, Circulation, and Accumulation: The Historiographies of Capitalism in China and South Asia.” Journal of Asian Studies 78 (4): 767–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Andrew. 2020. Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mainkar, T. N., Bhandarkar, R. G., and Dar, M. N., eds. 1974. Writings and Speeches of Dr. Bhau Daji. Bombay: University of Bombay.Google Scholar
Malcolm, Elizabeth L. 1973. “The Chinese Repository and Western Literature on China 1800 to 1850.” Modern Asian Studies 7 (2): 165–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markovits, Claude. 2009. “The Political Economy of Opium Smuggling in Early Nineteenth Century India: Leakage or Resistance?” Modern Asian Studies 43 (1): 89–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marks, Steven. 2016. The Information Nexus: Global Capitalism from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mir, Farina. 2010. The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris's Directory for China, Japan and the Philippines, Etc. 1870. 1870. Hong Kong: Morris & Co.Google Scholar
Morris, Morris D. 1983. “The Growth of Large Scale Industry to 1947.” In The Cambridge Economic History of India, c. 1757–c. 1970, vol. 2, edited by Kumar, Dharma and Raychaudhuri, Tapan, 553–676. New Delhi: Orient Longman/Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mosca, Matthew W. 2013. From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Moyn, Samuel, and Sartori, Andrew, eds. 2013. Global Intellectual History. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naoroji, Dadabhai. 1887. “Expenses of the Abyssinian War.” In Essays, Speeches, Addresses, and Writings (on Indian Politics) of the Hon'ble Dadabhai Naoroji, edited by Parekh, Chunilal Lallubhai, 51–59. Bombay: Caxton Printing Works.Google Scholar
Patel, Dinyar. 2020. Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patell, Cowasjee Sorabjee Cowasjee. 1844. Account of China: Comprising a View of the Topography, History, Manners, Customs, Languages...of the Chinese Empire... [In Gujarati.] Vol. 1. Bombay: Courier Press.Google Scholar
Peabody, Norbert. 2012. “Knowledge Formation in Colonial India.” In India and the British Empire, edited by Peers, Douglas and Gooptu, Nandini, 75–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitit, Framji Dinshaji. 1889. Yurōp, Amerikā, Jāpān ane Cīn, Pharāmajī Dīnśājī Pīṭītnī Musāpharīnī Nōndh̄ [Framji Dinshaji Pitit's travel notes on Europe, America, Japan, and China]. Bombay: Jam-e Jamshed Press.Google Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon. 2013. “Cosmopolitanism, Vernacularism, and Premodernity.” In Global Intellectual History, edited by Moyn, Samuel and Sartori, Andrew, 59–80. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon, and Elman, Benjamin, eds. 2018. What China and India Once Were: The Pasts That May Shape the Global Future. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Ray, Rajat Kanta. 1988. “The Bazaar: Changing Structural Characteristics of the Indigenous Section of the Indian Economy before and after the Great Depression.” Indian Economic & Social History Review 25 (3): 263–318.Google Scholar
Ray, Rajat Kanta. 1995. “Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800–1914.” Modern Asian Studies 29 (3): 449–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahibjee, Shetjee. 1882. “A Day with My Indian Cousins, VII—The Bohra.” Vanity Fair: A Weekly Show, October 7, 207–8.Google Scholar
Sartori, Andrew. 2014. Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schaflechner, Jürgen. 2017. Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J. Barton. 2015. “Luther in the Tropics: Karsandas Mulji and the Colonial “Reformation” of Hinduism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83 (1): 181–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, J. Barton. 2017. “Translated Liberties: Karsandas Mulji's Travels in England and the Anthropology of the Victorian Self.” Modern Intellectual History 16 (3): 803–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Narayan. 2007. “China as Viewed by Two Early Bengali Travellers: The Travel Accounts of Indumadhav Mullick and Benoy Kumar Sarkar.” China Report: A Journal of East Asia Studies 43 (4): 465–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Tansen. 2017. India, China, and the World: A Connected History. London: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Shulman, David. 2016. Tamil: A Biography. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklansky, Jeffrey. 2014. “Labor, Money, and the Financial Turn in the History of Capitalism.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 11 (1): 23–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2015. “Global Intellectual History beyond Hegel and Marx.” History & Theory 54(1): 126–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2016. “One Asia, or Many? Reflections from Connected History.” Modern Asian Studies 50 (1): 5–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, George P. 1908. The Student's Gujarati Grammar, with Exercises and Vocabulary, Second Edition. Bombay: Thacker & Co.Google Scholar
Thampi, Madhavi, ed. 2005a. Indians in China, 1800–1949. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Thampi, Madhavi, ed. 2005b. India and China in the Colonial World. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Washbrook, David. 1990. “South Asia, the World System, and World Capitalism.” Journal of Asian Studies 49 (3): 479–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Anand A., Sheel, Kamal, and Sheel, Ranjana, eds. 2017. Thirteen Months in China: A Subaltern Indian and the Colonial World. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar