History has always fascinated me as a subject. So, recently when i read a fascinating essay on the 'The unlikely rise of Western India' by Vikram Doctor in one of the supplements of Economic Times, i decided to put a hyperlink of the essay on my blog. Unfortunately, the article was nowhere to be found on the Internet.
So i did the next best thing. I typed out the more meatier passages of the text (Ya i have better things to do in life...but somehow this seemed important too :) Who would have taught Opium could be responsible for the rise of the financial capital of the country. Neways, below are the excerpts:
"During the Mughal period, Surat was one of the richest cities in India, with the Hindu merchants so powerful that even Aurangzeb was conciliatory towards them. And when the gradual silting of the Tapti river diminished Surat’s viability as a port, it was compensated by the growth of Bombay to the South, which had one of the few natural deepwater harbours on the coast.
However, the gap between Surat’s decline in the 17th century and Bombay’s rise at the end of the 19th century is a surprisingly long one, and it fails to explain why the west coast as a whole lagged behind Eastern India’s growth at the same time. From the 18th century till well into the 20th the real economic action was in Eastern India, with Bombay playing an enterprising, but still only a supporting role.
The reason is rooted in geography. The great thrust of the Western Ghats running down most of the West Coast, with no navigable river enabled few easy connections across it to the vast hinterland of the Deccan plateau. This single feature negated Bombay’s deepwater advantages since it meant the city lacked access to the economic resources of its hinterland in the way Calcutta did, with all the products of north and east India – indigo, tea, silk, cotton textiles, jute and coal – flowing down the Hoogly. Lacking an easy outlet Central India failed to develop similar tradable products, and the whole central region of the West Coast developed little external trade other than coastal commerce.
A product was needed to link Western India to global trade, as Indigo initially did in Eastern India. This turned out to be Opium, a product which transformed a backward possession called Bombay. From its start as a part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry Bombay had never lived to British’s expectations: “A poor little island sniffed the diarist Samuel Pepys in 1663.
All this was to change because of opium, a fact often downplayed in Bombay for the later notoriety of the trade. Recently, however, historian Amar Farooqi had refocused attention on it, arguing that it was critical for the city’s early take-off. “Modern Bombay, in a sense, has its genesis in the poppy fields of Bihar” he writes in the Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay. Farooqi notes that of the two centres for opium cultivation in India – Bihar and Malwa, the region around Indore – the former was the first one developed for International trade. Started by the Dutch, the trade was greatly expanded by the British, who saw its potential in the Chinese market, where it could be exchanged for much prized tea.
The trade was such a success that the East India Company moved to monopolise it. In 1773 Warren Hastings abolished free trade in opium, and soon every part of the business was tightly controlled by the Company. This left resentful businessmen, both British and Indian, looking for the ways to break into the trade, and Malwa opium suddenly presented an opportunity. The Company’s presence in Western India was weak, and the influence of local merchants with rulers like the Scindias could thwart any attempts to crack down on opium cultivation. Since opium was not too bulky it could be transported easily, even over the Ghats. And if the Company tried stopping sales through Bombay (which it did) there was always Portuguese Daman close by through which consignments could be routed. Businessman stayed in Bombay, but grew rich on Daman Malwa, as the Western Indian opium was called. “This accumulation together with the capital which had become available through a very strong indigenous presence in the commercial activity of Western and Central India, could be channelised into industrial development at Bombay,” writes Farooqi. Opium also helped develop Bombay’s ship building industry, as the traders needed ships, and opium was also a profitable investment for the ship-builders. But if opium gave Bombay traders their kick-start, they were smart enough not to come to depend on it entirely. They invested their profits in other businesses, in building new trade connections and physically building up both the city and the other centres near it, like Ahmedabad.
Claude Markovitz in his paper ‘ Bombay as a Business Centre in the Colonial Period (paper printed in Bombay, Metaphor for Modern India, edited by Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner) points to this far-thinking and flexible approach of Bombay’s business community as the most important reason for the city’s ultimate success over Calcutta. He notes Calcutta’s many advantages, including direct access to government for most of the Raj period and the greater variety of export products at its disposal. Yet Bombay leveraged opium to get going, and when that declined after 1860, the greater flexibility and the greater capacity for innovation of Bombay’s businessmen meant that the impact was far less than was felt in Calcutta after decline of Indigo.
Opium had connected Bombay with its hinterland, and when that was gone the city found another connection is cotton. This grew well in the Deccan, and providentially started enjoying a huge boom once the American Civil War started in 1861. This ended in a major crash, yet it was a sign of how far Bombay had come that the city soon bounced back. It started marketing yarn and cloth in the domestic market, until Lancashire started competing, with all the backing of the British Empire. Bombay turned to the Far East then, and by 1880, 80% of its yarn production went to China. When the Chinese and Japanese started their own mills, Bombay turned back to the domestic market, weaving yarn into cloth and even riding on the back of Swadeshi movement and sell it"
Fascinating piece on History.
It is about time we start celebrating 'Opium Day' in Bombay. Lol.
I have been typing the whole damn essay for close to an hour. Time for cuppa chai,
More Later
So i did the next best thing. I typed out the more meatier passages of the text (Ya i have better things to do in life...but somehow this seemed important too :) Who would have taught Opium could be responsible for the rise of the financial capital of the country. Neways, below are the excerpts:
"During the Mughal period, Surat was one of the richest cities in India, with the Hindu merchants so powerful that even Aurangzeb was conciliatory towards them. And when the gradual silting of the Tapti river diminished Surat’s viability as a port, it was compensated by the growth of Bombay to the South, which had one of the few natural deepwater harbours on the coast.
However, the gap between Surat’s decline in the 17th century and Bombay’s rise at the end of the 19th century is a surprisingly long one, and it fails to explain why the west coast as a whole lagged behind Eastern India’s growth at the same time. From the 18th century till well into the 20th the real economic action was in Eastern India, with Bombay playing an enterprising, but still only a supporting role.
The reason is rooted in geography. The great thrust of the Western Ghats running down most of the West Coast, with no navigable river enabled few easy connections across it to the vast hinterland of the Deccan plateau. This single feature negated Bombay’s deepwater advantages since it meant the city lacked access to the economic resources of its hinterland in the way Calcutta did, with all the products of north and east India – indigo, tea, silk, cotton textiles, jute and coal – flowing down the Hoogly. Lacking an easy outlet Central India failed to develop similar tradable products, and the whole central region of the West Coast developed little external trade other than coastal commerce.
A product was needed to link Western India to global trade, as Indigo initially did in Eastern India. This turned out to be Opium, a product which transformed a backward possession called Bombay. From its start as a part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry Bombay had never lived to British’s expectations: “A poor little island sniffed the diarist Samuel Pepys in 1663.
All this was to change because of opium, a fact often downplayed in Bombay for the later notoriety of the trade. Recently, however, historian Amar Farooqi had refocused attention on it, arguing that it was critical for the city’s early take-off. “Modern Bombay, in a sense, has its genesis in the poppy fields of Bihar” he writes in the Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay. Farooqi notes that of the two centres for opium cultivation in India – Bihar and Malwa, the region around Indore – the former was the first one developed for International trade. Started by the Dutch, the trade was greatly expanded by the British, who saw its potential in the Chinese market, where it could be exchanged for much prized tea.
The trade was such a success that the East India Company moved to monopolise it. In 1773 Warren Hastings abolished free trade in opium, and soon every part of the business was tightly controlled by the Company. This left resentful businessmen, both British and Indian, looking for the ways to break into the trade, and Malwa opium suddenly presented an opportunity. The Company’s presence in Western India was weak, and the influence of local merchants with rulers like the Scindias could thwart any attempts to crack down on opium cultivation. Since opium was not too bulky it could be transported easily, even over the Ghats. And if the Company tried stopping sales through Bombay (which it did) there was always Portuguese Daman close by through which consignments could be routed. Businessman stayed in Bombay, but grew rich on Daman Malwa, as the Western Indian opium was called. “This accumulation together with the capital which had become available through a very strong indigenous presence in the commercial activity of Western and Central India, could be channelised into industrial development at Bombay,” writes Farooqi. Opium also helped develop Bombay’s ship building industry, as the traders needed ships, and opium was also a profitable investment for the ship-builders. But if opium gave Bombay traders their kick-start, they were smart enough not to come to depend on it entirely. They invested their profits in other businesses, in building new trade connections and physically building up both the city and the other centres near it, like Ahmedabad.
Claude Markovitz in his paper ‘ Bombay as a Business Centre in the Colonial Period (paper printed in Bombay, Metaphor for Modern India, edited by Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner) points to this far-thinking and flexible approach of Bombay’s business community as the most important reason for the city’s ultimate success over Calcutta. He notes Calcutta’s many advantages, including direct access to government for most of the Raj period and the greater variety of export products at its disposal. Yet Bombay leveraged opium to get going, and when that declined after 1860, the greater flexibility and the greater capacity for innovation of Bombay’s businessmen meant that the impact was far less than was felt in Calcutta after decline of Indigo.
Opium had connected Bombay with its hinterland, and when that was gone the city found another connection is cotton. This grew well in the Deccan, and providentially started enjoying a huge boom once the American Civil War started in 1861. This ended in a major crash, yet it was a sign of how far Bombay had come that the city soon bounced back. It started marketing yarn and cloth in the domestic market, until Lancashire started competing, with all the backing of the British Empire. Bombay turned to the Far East then, and by 1880, 80% of its yarn production went to China. When the Chinese and Japanese started their own mills, Bombay turned back to the domestic market, weaving yarn into cloth and even riding on the back of Swadeshi movement and sell it"
Fascinating piece on History.
It is about time we start celebrating 'Opium Day' in Bombay. Lol.
I have been typing the whole damn essay for close to an hour. Time for cuppa chai,
More Later
