Kirti Chaudhuri - Some Past and Recent Citations To The Work of K.N.Chaudhuri

Some Past and Recent Citations To The Work of K.N.Chaudhuri

1 Fernand Braudel, “In a book from which I have greatly benefited, K.N.Chaudhuri asks why the prestigious Indies Companies stopped short at the point of distribution,” Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of commerce, Civilization and Capitalism 15th to the 18th Century, vol. II, p. 385, London, 1982. “K.N.Chaudhuri finds it very difficult to explain the poverty of weavers…” “Chaudhuri understandably finds it a little puzzling that highly skilled workers … should have been paid such miserable wages …” “This being so, it may have been not so much pressure of English demand as competitive Indian prices, K.N.Chaudhuri suggests, which stimulated technical inventions …” Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World, Civilization and Capitalism 15th to the 18th Century, vol. III, pages 508, 5520, 567, London, 1984.

2 Peter Marshall, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, Kings College London, “Chapter 9 of K.N.Chaudhuri’s massively authoritative The Trading World of Asia and English East India Company 1660 1760, Cambridge, 1978, surveys English involvement in Asian country trade over the same time span.” P.J. Marshall, “Private British Trade in the Indian Ocean before 1800,” in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N.Pearson, ed., India and the Indian Ocean 1500 1800, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, 299.

3 Bruce Watson, “Kirti Chaudhuri’s extremely detailed but immensely difficult study, The Trading World of Asia and English East India Company 1660 1760 is probably the only other book which really recommends itself to the interested student,” in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N.Pearson, ed., India and the Indian Ocean 1500 1800, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, 316.

4 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol I, New York, 1974, pp. 337, 342. Vol. II, pp. 97, 107/8, New York, 1980, vol. III, pp. 136, 139, 149, 153, 179 to 180, New York, 1989.

5 Janet L Abu Lughod, “As Chaudhuri stated so well, before the arrival of the Portuguese … 1498 there had been no organised attempt by any political power to control the sea lanes and the long distance trade of Asia …” Janet L Abu Lughod, Before European Hegemony, The World System A.D. 1250 1350, New York, Oxford, 1989, p. 275.

6 C.P. Kindleberger Spenders and Hoarders: The World Distribution of Spanish American Silver, 1550–1750, New Yori, 1990 This short book is a critique of K.N. Chaudhuri’s theory and description of world bullion flows and an attempt to refute his conclusions.

7 Louise Tilly Presidential address delivered at the American Historical Association meeting in San Francisco on January 7, 1994. American Historical Review, Vol. 99, No. 1. (February 1994): 1-17. Extended discussion of K.N.Chaudhuri’s work on the history of Indian textile industry before the Industrial Revolution.

8 David Kopf, “Asia before Europe, though written by eminent Orientalist and medievalist K. N. Chaudhuri, is what may euphemistically be called a philosophy of history. The book establishes Chaudhuri as a star in the games deconstructionists play. Part 1 constitutes a brilliant analysis of theoretical models from mathematics and the sciences, natural and social, which support a world where reality is perceived only through a chosen set of mental constructs, truth is contradictory, and history is a "complexity of movements" brought about by "the interaction between the physical and mental domains at the level of action" Review Article, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean, The Historian, 1 January 1993, Author: Kopf, David.

9 The Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University, the first of its kind in Canada, is on the cutting edge of a new and expanding field of research. The Centre aims to build a solid academic basis which will place IOW studies alongside the already established fields of Atlantic and Pacific Ocean studies. http://indianoceanworldcentre.com/events.html The foundations for Indian Ocean World history were laid by K.N. Chaudhuri (1985), Anthony Reid (1998, 1993) and other scholars who applied Braudelian (1966) concepts of a ‘maritime’ economy to the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Both were uniquely characterised by a monsoon system that served to regulate agricultural production in the hinterland and facilitate the early development of a long-distance maritime trading network.

10 Markus P. M. Vink Journal of Global History (2007) 2, pp. 41–62 ª London School of Economics and Political Science 2007 ‘new thalassology’* Three historians in particular – Kirti Chaudhuri, Michael Pearson, and Kenneth McPherson – stand out among the early representatives of ‘the new thalassology’ emerging in the 1980s, profoundly influencing the subsequent course of maritime-based studies. In his two seminal works on the Indian Ocean world, K. N. Chaudhuri vigorously asserted that ‘capitalist’, long-distance trade in luxury goods and bulk commodities provided an underlying ‘historical unity’ to the regionon the other hand, provided the contrasts.’

11 Spodek, Howard The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (review) Journal of World History - Volume 15, Number 1, March 2004, pp. 92-96 “Rene … sees this maritime region as constituting an "Indian Ocean World," quite in keeping with the nowadays dominant views of scholars like K.N. Chaudhuri, Frank, and Pearson.”

12 Edward A. Alpers Opening Address to the International Conference on Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World UCLA April 5–6, 2002 “The past two decades witnessed several important efforts to establish the parameters of the Indian Ocean world by very different historians. The best known of these is Kirti Chaudhuri’s major study of the economic history of the region from the rise of Islam to 1750.