On the Edge of Empire: Politics, Trade, and Violence in Coastal Gujarat in the Eighteenth Century

In the historiography of early modern South Asia, the importance of coastal Gujarat has been understood primarily in the context of its role in linking the Mughal Empire with the maritime world of the Indian Ocean. The role of Cambay and Surat as major trade emporia on the coast is fairly well illuminated. There were, nevertheless, several other minor ports and small islands along the coast in the gulfs of Cambay and Kachh that played significant role in shaping the political and economic dynamics of the region. Such ports and coastal principalities were neither fully politically incorporated into the Mughal Empire nor completely integrated into the maritime trade circuit. The efforts of the dominant state of the Mughals or that of the English East India Company to bring them in perpetual subordination were often met with resistance. As a result, both in Mughal and European records, these regions are represented as an abode of recalcitrant chiefs (semi-autonomous zamindars) and pirates playing only a subversive role in the political economy.
If looked from a different perspective, these regions and people would seem to be serving disparate political and economic functions. Many of these ports and islands were politically autonomous and together formed a sub-zone of commercial activities. Based on the information culled from the English, Dutch and some Persian records, this paper explores the political and economic dynamics of some of these ports/islands and their relationship with the major political and commercial players on the coast in the eighteenth century.