While the English and Dutch factories in the town of Chinsura in West Bengal have long disappeared from the urban fabric, another monument to the town's rich economic history continues to dominate the skyline: the Hooghly Imambara. A Twelver Shiʿi congregation hall, the imambara was established by a
One of the misconceptions in studying the European factories of the Indian Ocean is to assume that they hugged the coasts. Arguably, this is a consequence of a wider maritime bias in the study of early modern Asia's economic history. Yet in several parts of South Asia, in
During the 1780s the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, commissioned his lieutenants to open up a string of “factories,” or trading posts. These factories were earmarked for construction at several points inside and outside of India (Official Documents, Relative to the Negotiations Carried on by Tippoo Sultaun, 43). In establishing
In 1789 the Spanish political economist and merchant Tomás Antonio de Marien y Arróspide published an enormously ambitious treatise cataloging the world’s currencies (Marien y Arróspide, Tratado general de monedas). Over previous decades Marien had acquired some experience trading in the Atlantic world (Goenaga, “Tomás de Marien y Arróspide”
For better or worse, a small set of usual suspects dominate existing accounts of Asian merchant activity in early modern port cities in the Indian Ocean. This is in large measure a reflection of the limitations of existing source material. Because pre-1800 Asian commercial records are sparse for many corners