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Smuggling India: Deconstructing Western India's Illicit Export Trade, 1818–1870

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posted on 2019-10-22, 11:15 authored by Kate Boehme
In the 1800s it was not only merchants from British India who participated in the expanding trade with China, but also those from the princely states who sought to profit from the increased demand for cash crops. Smuggling—just as most commercial activities unsanctioned by the Bombay Government were labelled—was a source of great anxiety for the colonial authorities in India, especially in the western territories. This article looks at smuggling activity in and around the Bombay Presidency during the first half of the nineteenth century. It will assert that local ‘smuggling’ was, in many cases, the continuation of pre-colonial trade relations, labelled as illegal as a result of ill-defined boundaries and ambiguous legal restrictions. In fact, the success of these activities was less a reflection of widespread criminality than structural weaknesses in the colonial administration. Evidence suggests that British anxieties over smuggling had a greater effect on the political economy of western India than the actual financial damage caused by the illicit trade. The coordinated subversive smuggling network, ultimately, did not exist, and held power largely as a figment of the imperial imagination.

History

Citation

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2015, 25 (04), pp. 685-704

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, ARTS AND HUMANITIES/School of History, Politics and International Relations

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Published in

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP) for Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

issn

1356-1863

eissn

1474-0591

Copyright date

2015

Available date

2019-10-22

Publisher version

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-asiatic-society/article/smuggling-india-deconstructing-western-indias-illicit-export-trade-18181870/BC48C70AE24A69B14B375D30C39DA563

Language

en

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