For many centuries, colonies of South Asian merchants were present in many ports of the Indian Ocean and of the China seas. These merchants, both Hindus and Muslims, always kept close links with the regions of South Asia where they came from. Trading networks centred on ports or even inland cities in the subcontinent spanned vast distances. The coastal areas of Gujarat and the Coromandel coast were the two regions from where most of these merchant colonies originated. From the fifteenth century onwards, Sind also contributed to this growing diaspora of South Asian merchants. During the Mughal period, some Indian merchants followed the inland routes leading to Iran and Turan, and new land-based networks developed. By the mid-eighteenth century the small town of Shikarpur in Upper Sind became the main centre of this inland diaspora. Some one hundred years later, around 1860, another inland city of Sind, Hyderabad, spawned a new international network. This chapter will therefore be concerned with defining merchant networks and delineating their functions, as well as their evolution over time, as an introductory effort meant to contextualize the study of two merchant networks from Sind. But firstly a look at the role of South Asian merchants in the world economy is needed.

South Asian merchants in the world economy

The earliest evidence of the presence of colonies of South Asian merchants outside the subcontinent comes from medieval Arab sources.