REALES AND REVOLUTIONS: BULLION FLOWS IN SOUTHERN
. AND WESTERN ASIA,
c- 1500-1700 (abstract)
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Delhi School of Economics
At the present juncture,monetary history offers to the
researcher one of the exciting points of entry into the early
modern period-an incision which by its very nature permits
one to go beyond the compartmentalised approach that a project
such as the one on "Silk Routes hopes to transcend. In recent
years, historians of trade have used flows of coinage metal and
other currency media like cowries to link the history of western
Europe to that of Africa and India, and the history of the New
World to processes taking place in China-thus achieving a sort
of "global history".In the present essay, a modest attempt is
made to extend the ambit of the discussion somewhat by focussing
systematicajly on two areas which are seldom studied together:
namely, west Asia and south Asia. The anajysis will be aimed
at seeing southern and western Asia together in a conjunctional
fashion, focussing in particular on the issue of flows of coinage
metal, which forms one of the principal building blocks of the
economic history of the two regions. The underlying idea, it
shoujd be stressed, is not to construct a Brudelian "super world
economy", which embraces the two regions while ai the same
time setting them apart from the "Rest of the World" Rather,
one wishes to argue that there is more to the "external relations"
of these two regions than their "integration into the European
world-economy”. As such then, this paper may be seen in part
as a plea to widen the comparative perspective rather than an
attempt to narrow it down.
The paper is divided into several sections.We begin by
tracing the 15th and early 6th century profiles, leading upto
the creation in ghal India of a tri-metallic system of coinage,
and in Ottoman Llns oi a system dominated by the akce-i
buzurk. The role of gold and silver flows from the Red Sea
and Persian Gulf to South Asia is highlighted. The second section
then deals with the invasion of the real de a ocho of South and
West Asian economies in the latter half of the 16th century.
in the context of the 17th century, a comparison is made of
the relative importance of the Cape Route and the Levant Route
in transferring bullion from Europe to Asia. This brings us in
turn to the second issue addressed in the paper: Did reales
make revolutions ?That is, did the infjow of precious metals
to West and South Asia from the New World (via Europe) cause
fundamental changes in social, political and economic relations
n the recepient regions ? After examining the evidence and
the construction of the hjstoriography, the paper concludes that
the relationship between reales and revolutions is tenuous.
Western and southern Asia in the 16th and 17th century
wttnessed changes of some importance in their economic and
monetary structures. While these changes were undoubtedly
facilitated by the availability of precious metals from the New
world,Japan and elsewhere, to insist that the inflow of reales
of Japanese kobans in and of themselves causes "revolutions
is a misunderstand in a fundemental way the processes of interac-
in early omdern southern and western China. Reading history
backwards ma be an appealing shortcut, but the destination
to which it leads is usually an unintended one.
