Abstract
Under the influence of the dominant discourse of the West — otherwise known as Eurocentrism — we have long been accustomed to thinking about the worlds of Islam and the West as antithetical entities. Positioned within an imaginary binary Islam occupies a space that stands on ‘the wrong side of progressive history’. While Islam might have had some kind of golden age, it was all for nothing given that it was brought to an end by the exogenous impact of the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, as well as the endogenous impact of regressive religious diktat. Thus, while the fires of commercial trade and development raged across Europe (known at that time as Christendom), they were unable to reach across into the Middle East given that its political and religious structure acted, in effect, as a kind of asbestos barrier. In short, if anything promising had emerged in early Islam it was but an abortive revolution, with the regressive and repressive Muslim religious authorities snuffing out any such progressive light, with the rest of progressive world history being Western.
The worst thing ethically and politically is to let [Eurocentric] separatism simply go on, without understanding the opposite of separatism, which is connectedness. … What I am interested in is how all these things work together. That seems to me to be the great task — to connect them all together — to understand wholes rather than bits of wholes. … In a wonderful phrase, Disraeli asks, ‘Arabs, what are they?’ and answers: ‘they’re just Jews on horseback’. So underlying this separation is also an amalgamation of some kind. (Viswanathan 2004: 260–1, 424) 1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
G. Viswanathan (ed.) (2004), Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews with Edward Said (London: Bloomsbury Publishing).
For a full discussion of this, see J. M. Hobson (2004), The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chs 5–9.
G. F. Hourani (1963), Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Beirut: Khayats), pp. 36–8;
A. Wink (1995), Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. I (Leiden: E. J. Brill), pp. 48–55.
M. Rodinson (1974), Islam and Capitalism (London: Allen Lane), p. 14.
S. D. Goitein (1968), Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: E. J. Brill), pp. 228–9.
M. G. S. Hodgson (1993), Rethinking World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 111–16, 141.
R. R. di Meglio (1970), ‘Arab Trade Relations with Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula from the 8th to the 16th Century’, in D. S. Richards (ed.) Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer), p. 126.
Hourani, Arab Seafaring, p. 62; J. L. Abu-Lughod (1989), Before European Hegemony (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 199;
N. Chittick (1970), ‘East African Trade with the Orient’, in D. S. Richards (1970), Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer), p. 98.
Cited in J. Bloom and S. Blair (2001), Islam: Empire of Faith (London: BBC Worldwide), p. 164.
See E. R. Wolf (1982), Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 37–44.
E. W. Bovill (1933), Caravans of the Old Sahara (London: Oxford University Press), chs 5–6.
F. Braudel (1992), Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 94.
A. Smith (1776/1937), The Wealth of Nations (New York: The Modern Library), p. 13.
For example, D. C. North and R. P. Thomas (1973), The Rise of the Western World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 53.
M. J. Kister (1965), ‘Mecca and Tamīm’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 117ff.
A. L. Udovitch (1970), ‘Commercial Techniques in Early Medieval Islamic Trade’, in D. S. Richards (ed.) Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer), p. 48.
Ibid., p. 78; P. Kunitzsch (1989), The Arabs and the Stars (Northampton: Variorum), pp. 362–7.
S. D. Goitein (1967), A Mediterranean Society, Vol. I (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 197–9;
A. L. Udovitch (1970), Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 61–2.
Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, pp. 173–83; J. Goody (2004), Islam in Europe (Cambridge: Polity), pp. 56–83;
G. G. Joseph (1992), The Crest of the Peacock (London: Penguin), ch. 10;
A. Bala (2006), The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan);
S. M. Ghazanfar (2006), Islamic Civilization: History, Contributions, and Influence (Lanham: Scarecrow Press);
C. K. Raju (2007), Cultural Foundations of Mathematics, Vol. X, Part 4, History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization (New Delhi: Pearson Education).
W. H. Abdi (1999), ‘Glimpses of Mathematics in Medieval India’, in A. Rahman (ed.) History of Indian Science, Technology and Culture, AD 1000–1800 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
S. Nasr (1968), Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), ch. 5.
C. Singer (1956), ‘Epilogue: East and West in Retrospect’, in C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and T. I. Williams (eds) A History of Technology, Vol. III (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 767.
E. S. Kennedy (1983), Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences (Beirut: American University of Beirut), p. 41.
J. Needham and W. Ling (1959), Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 109.
G. Saliba (1994), A History of Arabic Astronomy (London: New York University Press), p. 64.
N. Swerdlow and O. Neugebauer (1984), Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus (Berlin: Springer), p. 295.
J. Goody (1996), The East in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 68, 72.
M. N. Pearson (1987), The New Cambridge History of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 11.
J. Needham (1990), A Selection from the Writings of Joseph Needham, edited by Mansel Davies (Lewes: The Book Guild), p. 176.
Cited in J. Desomogyi (1968), A Short History of Oriental Trade (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung), p. 83.
L. Casson (1971), Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press);
L. White (1978), Medieval Religion and Technology, Vol. I (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 255–60.
G. R. Tibbetts (1971), Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese (London: The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland), p. 49.
E. Savage-Smith (1992), ‘Celestial Mapping’, in J. B. Harley and D. Woodward (eds) History of Cartography, Vol. II, Part 1 (Chicago: Chicago University Press), pp. 12–70; Kunitzsch, The Arabs and the Stars, chs 8 and 10.
Cited in P. Seed (1995), Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 126.
See the graphic description of the return journey reported in da Gama’s diary. Cited in E. G. Ravenstein (1899) (ed.) A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco Da Gama, 1497–1499 (London: Bedford Press), p. 87.
P. M. Holt, A. Lambton and B. Lewis cited in A. Gunder Frank (1998), ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 118.
N. Steensgaard (1974), The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press), pp. 155–69.
N. Haider (1996), ‘Precious Metals and Currency Circulation in the Mughal Empire’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 298–367.
S. Subrahmanyam (1994), ‘Precious Metal Flows and Prices in Western and Southern Asia, 1500–1750: Some Comparative and Conjunctural Aspects’, in S. Subrahmanyam (ed.) Money and the Market in India 1100–1700 (Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 197–201.
H. W. van Santen (1991), ‘Trade between Mughal India and the Middle East, and Mughal Monetary Policy, c. 1600–1660’, in K. R. Haellquist (ed.) Asian Trade Routes (London: Curzon Press), p. 89.
See, for example, W. H. Moreland (1923) From Akbar to Aurangzeb (London: Macmillan);
T. Raychaudhuri (1982), ‘The Mughal Empire’, in T. Raychaudhuri and I. Habib (eds) The Cambridge Economic History of India, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 172–3.
M. Alam (1994), ‘Trade, State Policy and Regional Change: Aspects of Mughal-Uzbeck Commercial Relations, c. 1550–1750’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 225–6.
B. R. Grover (1994), ‘An Integrated Pattern of Commercial Life in Rural Society of North India during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in S. Subrahmanyam (ed.) Money and the Market in India 1100–1700 (Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 238–9.
A. Das Gupta (2001), The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500–1800 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), p. 124.
M. N. Pearson (1987b), ‘India and the Indian Ocean in the Sixteenth Century’, in A. Das Gupta and M. N. Pearson (eds) India and the Indian Ocean 1500–1800 (Calcutta: Oxford University Press), p. 78.
M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz (1970), ‘Trade and Islam in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago Prior to the Arrival of the Europeans’, in D. S. Richards (ed.) Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer), p. 153.
K. N. Chaudhuri (1978), Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 186–7.
J. M. Roberts (1985), The Triumph of the West (London: BBC Books), p. 194.
J. M. Hobson (2012), The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
N. R. F. Al Rodhan (2009), Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (Zürich: LIT Verlag), p. 218.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2012 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hobson, J.M. (2012). Islamic Commerce and Finance in the Rise of the West. In: Al-Rodhan, N.R.F. (eds) The Role of the Arab-Islamic World in the Rise of the West. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230393219_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230393219_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35227-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-39321-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)