INDIAN MERCANTILE COMMUNITIES

 Explain the role played by mercantile communities in the structure of Indian mercantile trade.

Enumerate some of the mercantile communities and analyze their functions and practices.

Fishermen, Sailors and Merchants

The first mariners were drawn from the coastal fishing communities. They are silent actors of history. Though they provided a vital pool of labor and maritime skills, they were dominated politically and economically by merchants and ruling elite.

The long-distance trade at the beginning of the present century was mainly for the luxury products and the number of merchants involved in it was relatively small. The trade was complex but encouraged the formation of the earlies migrant merchant communities.

Centuries before industrial revolution (1750 AD), the commerce – both maritime and land bound in Europe and Asia was in the hands of small businessmen. There were merchant princes, who were similar to the eighteenth-century Muslim magnet of the Gujarat Port of Surat, Mullah Abdul Gafar who owned seventeen vessels.

By the early sixteenth century, Gujarati merchants were in the trade network on the Bay of Bengal trading with East Africa and the Middle East. Next to them were the merchants from the Malabar Coast and the Port of Bengal. Many of these South Asians were Muslims, Hindus, and Jains. Gujaratis were prominent in the coastal trade of India and the trade linking Southern India with SriLanka and Maldives.

The merchants of the period 1500 to 1750 were quite rich and their wealth could be compared with the merchant princes of Europe. The Surat merchant Virji Vora was the wealthiest man of his time. Hirnanda Sahu a Marwari banker from Amber came to Bihar in the seventeenth century as a banker of Maharaja Mansingh. His son Manik Chand, the first Jagat Seth (Banker of the World) acquired enormous wealth and power.

There were also small traders whose activities were confined to a particular locality. They were the Banjaras – divided into four tribes, dealing with corn, rice, pulses and salt. They lived in camps or dandas.

The social base of the trading community was confined to a small group of caste – banjas, bohras and Parsis in Gujarat, Hindu and Jain Marwaris in Rajasthan, Chettis and Komatis on the East Coast, Muslim merchants mostly of foreign origin but settled in India were important in the trade of Gujarat, Deccan and Bengal. The majority of the Hindu traders established in Bengal were Gujaratis. By eighteenth century, Marwaris were found in most ports of India as bankers and financers. Hindus act as bankers for Muslim merchants and employed their ships for overseas trade. The other social groups that moved form other occupations into commerce because of opportunities were weavers, parawas, pearl divers and boatmen who took small scale commerce.

The backbone of the seaborne traders were ship owners and operators. Some magnets owned fleets of vessels based mainly in Surat and Masulipatnam. In another category of overseas merchants who did not own ships but hired space in ships of others to transport goods and sold them in overseas market. In the third category of overseas merchants there were kings, princes, the members of the royal family, administrative and military officers, nobles who took to trading. The Malabar state rulers were traditionally traders. They invested heavily in ship building. The rulers of Malabar ran several coastal and ocean-going vessels. Mughals used ships for prosperous freight traffic. Prominent merchants were brought to help the commercial operations.

The Nachodas played an important role in overseas commerce. They were specialist sailors, a sea captain and navigator. Initially they did not concern themselves with trade but gradually the owners of goods who could not sail in the ships and had no agent, entrusted the task of handling goods to the Nachodas. They were available in large numbers in Gujarat and Coromandel.

Another major category of merchants were financers – shroffs. they came from the Hindu and Jain Baniya caste and formed great financial houses throughout India. In the seventeenth century, Indian merchants were a remarkable mobile group.

Among Indian trading region, the most powerful concentration of merchants was in Gujarat. Muslims of various ethnic groups were united by long domicile in Gujarat. These were Turks, Arabs, Khorasans, Pathans, Sunnis, Shias, Boras and Ishmaelites. There were also Parsi merchants. The others were baniya Hindu and Jain merchant caste communities who were active in commerce. Parsis were becoming more important in the state of Surat in the second half of the seventeenth century as ship owners and ship builders.

When the Dutch established factory int eh Port of Vengurla, they dealt with a number of Hindu merchant suppliers of the neighborhood. Hindu merchants – konkanis and Saraswats were located southwards in the Kanarese Ports and Goa. They traded in the Bijapur ports of Vengurla and Raybagas tradaers of pepper and rice.

Large number of Hindu, Kannada and Komatti, Chettiers, Konkani and Saraswats, Mapilla, Muslims came from Malabar to trade in the ports of Bashrus, Bhatkal, Honvar, Konkani merchants were involved in coastal trade upot Surat and Sri Lanka with pepper, rice and coconut produce.

The Saraswat Brahmins of Goa also entered into land based activities. The Hindu merchants of Malabar engaged in small boat coastal traffic, southwards upto Madura and Tanjavur. They were mainly Tamil and Telugu Chetti class.

Jews were another group of merchants settled in the port of Cochin. They traded under the Dutch protection.

The Malabar rulers of the large and small principalities had themselves been merchants owning and sailing ships on their own behalf.

In the Coromandel coast, Hindus in great majority were engaged in trade though Muslims were significant in the key sectors. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, long distance shipping was in the hands of Hindus. Hindus of various Chetti subcaste dominated the trade of all sectors. Three Telugu caste dominant in overseas and coastal trading in this period were balija chetties, berry chetty and Komatties. The Tamil Chetties had concentrated themselves in south Coromandel and Madura bay ports and were busy in overseas trade.

Coromandel Muslims of diverse origin were a flowing force in the trade. They were mainly busy in overseas trading. The Chulia Muslims i.e., the Tamil Muslims were the descendants of Arab settlement, were prominent traders in South Coromandel.

Coromandel Muslim merchants were mainly dealing with cotton textiles, the major export of the region. They were the most mobile groups and sometimes even migrated for short term settlement overseas particularly in South East Asia.

Thus, all the above accounts show that various Indian communities settled on the coastal lines of India, were busy in Coastal and seaborne trade right from ancient times till modern times. It is also here that many indigenous mercantile groups survived the impact of western economic and political penetration right from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. European trade within the Indian Ocean depended mostly upon indigeneous collaboration. The economies of colonial India, Burma, Singapore, Mauritius, Aden, Malaya, Indonesia, were sustained by the vital activities of Indian mercantile groups engaged in the age-old commercial activities of their ancestors.