Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-14T16:58:56.422Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Reflections on the Town and Country in Mughal India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

K. N. Chaudhuri
K. N. Chaudhuri
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There can be few aspects of Indian studies more neglected than that of historical geography. Within this larger area of neglect, urban history occupies a special place. The indifference with which Indian historians have approached the urban heritage of the subcontinent is all the more difficult to understand because to contemporary European visitors, the merchants and other travellers, the towns and cities of Mughal India held a profound fascination. From the time of Tomé Pires and his highly perceptive Suma Oriental down to the end of the eighteenth century, stories of Indian travels and the accompanying descriptions of Mughal urban life continually entertained the popular literary audience. Not all of them understood or reported accurately what they saw. As the Scottish sea captain and country trader, Alexander Hamilton, who had an unrivalled knowledge of the sea ports and the coastal towns of India, pointed out with some candour, one great misfortune which attended the western travellers in India was their ignorance of the local languages. But the manifest contrast between the physical appearance of the European cities and those of Asia provoked some considerable and sensitive analysis of the nature of the urban processes in the two continents. Perhaps the most able and penetrating comments on the Mughal political, economic, and civic order came from the pen of the Dutch merchant, Francisco Pelsaert, and the French physician, François Bernier.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , February 1978 , pp. 77 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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

This paper, was originally read at the Seminar on ‘The City in South Asia’ organized by the Centre of South Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I should like to thank the participants of the Seminar for their helpful comments.

1 Hamilton, Alexander, A New Account of the East Indies, ed. SirFoster, William, 2 vols (London, 1930), I, 7. First published in Edinburgh in 1727.Google Scholar

2 Bernier, François, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668, ed. Constable, A. (London, 1891), pp. 239–40.Google Scholar

3 Hashim, Muhammad, Khan, Khafi, Muntakhabu-l Lubab, translation printed in SirElliot, H. M. and Dowson, J., The History of India as Told by its own Historians, 8 vols (London, 1877), Vol. 7, pp. 414–15.Google Scholar

4 See Redfield, R. and Singer, M. B., ‘The Cultural Role of Cities’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 3 (1954), 53–73;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBenet, F., ‘Sociology Uncertain: the Ideology of the Rural-Urban Continuum’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (10 1963), 1–23;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLewis, Oscar, ‘Some perspectives on Urbanization with Special Reference to Mexico City,’ printed in Southall, A. (ed.), Urban Anthropology: Cross-cultural Studies of Urbanization (London and New York, 1973), pp. 125–38.Google Scholar

5 Weber, Max, The City, ed. Martindale, Don and Neuwirth, G. (New York, 1958), pp. 80–1.Google Scholar

6 Sjoberg, G., The Preindustrial City (Glencoe, Ill., 1960), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

7 For a theoretical discussion of these points, see Mayer, H. M., ‘A Survey of Urban Geography’, printed in Hauser, P. M. and Schnore, L. F., (eds), The Study of Urbanization (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

8 For the emphasis on the industrial function of Mughal towns, see Naqvi, H. K., Urban Centres and Industries in Upper India 1556–1803 (Bombay, 1968), p. 135.Google Scholar

9 Redfield, and Singer, , ‘The Cultural Role of Cities’, p. 60.Google Scholar

10 Sjoberg, , The Preindustrial City, p. 76.Google Scholar

11 Grose, John Henry, A Voyage to the East Indies, 2 vols (London, 1772), I, 98.Google Scholar

12 Renfrew, Colin, ‘Trade as Action at a Distance: Questions of Integration and Communication’, printed in Sabloff, J. A. and Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. (eds), Ancient Civilization and Trade (Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1975), pp. 3–59.Google Scholar

13 Polanyi, K., ‘Marketless Trading in Hammurabi's Time’, and ‘The Economy as Instituted Process’, printed in Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C. M., and Pearson, H. W. (eds), Trade and Market in the Early Empires (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

14 Renfrew, , ‘Trade as Action at a Distance’, p. 11.Google Scholar

15 On the functional hierarchy of cities, see Friedmann, J., ‘Cities in Social Transformation’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 4, No. 1 11 1961), pp. 86–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 von Grunebaum, G. E., Classical Islam; A History 600–1258 (London, 1970), p. 99.Google Scholar

17 Fischel, W. J., ‘The City in Islam’, Middle Eastern Affairs, Vol. 7 (1956), 227–32.Google Scholar

18 Khan, Khafi, in Elliot, and Dowson, , History of India, VII, 296.Google Scholar

19 Pelsaert, Francisco, Jahangir's India: the Remonstrantie of Francisco Pelsaert, ed. Moreland, W. H. and Geyl, P. (Cambridge, 1925), p. 1.Google Scholar

20 The Travels of Pietro della Valle in India, ed. Grey, Edward, 2 vols (London, 1892), I, 30.Google Scholar

21 For the social effects of Aurangzeb's edict of 1669 ordering the suppression of Hindu religious practices, see Letter from the Surat Factory to the East India Company, 26 November 1669, India Office Records, London (I.O.R.), Original Correspondence, Vol. 30, No. 3373.Google Scholar

22 Khan, Khafi, in Elliot, and Dowson, , History of India, VII, 454–6.Google Scholar

23 See Naqvi, H. K., Urbanization and Urban Centres under the Great Mughals 1556–1707 (Simla, 1972), pp. 175–7.Google Scholar

24 Letter from Bombay to the Court of Directors, 26 April 1710, I.O.R., Abstract of Letters Received from Bombay, Vol. 449, para. 14, p. 143.Google Scholar

25 I.O.R., Bombay Public Proceedings,29 November 1723, Vol. 5.Google Scholar

26 Pelsaert, , The Remonstrantie, pp. 58–9.Google Scholar

27 Muhammad Khan, Ali, Mirat-i-Ahmadi, quoted by Commissariat, M. S., A History of Gujarat (Bombay, 1957), p. 43.Google Scholar

28 Pelsaert, , Remonstrantie, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 30.

30 Baptiste Tavernier, Jean, Travels in India, ed. Ball, V.Crooke, W., 2 vols (London, 1925), I, 91.Google Scholar

31 Museum, British, Additional Manuscript 34,123, p. 40.Google Scholar

32 Grose, , Voyage to the East Indies, I, 105–6.Google Scholar

33 Hamilton, , New Account of the East Indies, I, 89–90.Google Scholar

34 I.O.R., Factory Records Surat, 11 January 1747, Vol. 31, p. 50.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 24 February 1748, Vol. 32, p. 139.

36 B.M., Additional Manuscript 34,123, p. 98.Google Scholar

37 I.O.R., Factory Records Surat, 30 May 1737, Vol. 21.Google Scholar

38 For a facsimile copy of the deed, see Commisariat, , History of Gujarat, p. 423.Google Scholar

39 Chaudhuri, K. N., ‘The Structure of Indian Textile Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 9 (1974), pp. 127–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Pelsaert, , Remonstrantie, p. 44.Google Scholar

41 Babur-Nama, tr. Beveridge, A. S., new edn (Delhi, 1970) pp. 487–8.Google Scholar

42 Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri, ed. Sen, S. (New Delhi, 1949), p. 21.Google Scholar

43 I.O.R., Factory Records Surat, 27 September 1742, Vol. 27, pp. 27–30.Google Scholar

44 Letter from Madras to the Court of Directors, 13 January 1736, Records of Fort St. George, Despatches to England 1736–1740, paras 29–30, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

45 Khan, Khafi, in Elliot, and Dowson, , History of India, VII, 263–4.Google Scholar

46 Bernier, , Travels in the Mogul Empire, pp. 281–2.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., p. 246.

48 Tavernier, , Travels in India, pp. 42, 46, 96, 100, 105.Google Scholar

49 Braudel, F., ‘Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue durée’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, Vol. 13, No 4 (1958), 725–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Fryer, John, A New Account of East India and Persia Being Nine Years' Travels 1672–1681, ed. Crooke, W., 3 vols (London, 1909–1915), II, 159.Google Scholar

51 Pelsaert, , Remonstrantie, p. 5.Google Scholar

52 Tavernier, , Travels in India, I, 52.Google Scholar

53 Bernier, , Travels in the Mogul Empire, pp. 248–9.Google Scholar

54 Fryer, , New Account of East India, II, 241, 249–50.Google Scholar