A Wonderful History Book On Global Trade That Gujratis and Jains Would be Very Proud Of

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Subject:	A Wonderful History Book On Global Trade That Gujratis and Jains Would be Very Proud Of
Date:	Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:53:13 -0700
From:	Jas Jain

A Wonderful History Book On Global Trade That Gujratis and Jains Would be Very Proud Of

When it comes to trade on the Indian Ocean the ports of Gujrat (a state in India on the West coast north of Mumbai in the Arabia Sea), on the Gulf of Cambay (Khambhat now) played a central role until at least the Seventeenth Century for more than 4500 years (before the migration of Hindu Aryans to India). From The Indian Ocean by Michael Pearson:

"By the end of the [Sixteenth] century Surat was the greatest market in India, in the Indian ocean, and indeed maybe the whole world. Here we found the fabulously wealthy Hindu and Jain [a tiny minority in India, close to 1% of the total population] communities which so many Europeans wrote of so admiringly. Here also were found products from all over the world, including those that the Portuguese [the first colonizers in Africa, India and East Asia, but only along the coast and in port cities] hoped to monopolize. There was a host of merchant communities: not only Hindus and Jains (and these anyway were often subdivided into castes or to economic specialty) but also Armenians [also a diaspora community at the time], Jews, Portuguese, and Muslims from Persia and Turkey."

 

Not long after the British East India Company arrived in India to Trade and set up a facility in Surat, one Jain trader in Surat, Virji Vora (or Vohra, other variations are Bohra and Bhora, all meaning creditor) was the largest trader in the world, as per the British sources, and he amassed so much wealth from trading that he was also the biggest moneylender to the Mogul emperors, the Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company. He was one of the wealthiest men, perhaps the wealthiest private individual, in the world at the time. The old style capitalism was thriving in Arabia, East Asia, India, Persia and South East Asia before the arrival of Vasco de Gamma. There was another very wealthy Hindu trading community of Chettiars in South India, along the East coast, that made money from trading with the East while the wealthy Gujratis like Vora made money from trading with the West and North, all the way to Europe via intermediaries.

Jas