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California World History Library
Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea
What is the relationship between trafficking and free trade? Is trafficking the perfection or the perversion of free trade? Trafficking occurs thousands of times each day at borders throughout the world, yet we have come to perceive it as something quite extraordinary. How did this happen, and what role does trafficking play in capitalism? To answer these questions, Johan Mathew traces the hidden networks that operated across the Arabian Sea in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following the entangled history of trafficking and capitalism, he explores how the Arabian Sea reveals the gaps that haunt political borders and undermine economic models. Ultimately, he shows how capitalism was forged at the margins of the free market, where governments intervened, and traffickers turned a profit.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
Published May 10, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 20, 2016
A theoretically and empirically masterful account of how the British imperial incursion into the Arabian Sea ran into existing customary trading networks, and how British efforts to control those networks led to a react whereby the merchants found ways to innovate around (that is, arbitrage) the regulations the British put into place. Along the way, Mathew makes many brilliant insights about the meaning of the "modern" in this context, showing how much of a mistake it is to see the steamship trading network as "modern" as opposed to a "traditional" network of high affect commercial networks and dhows. In fact both systems were rapidly evolving in codependency with one another, and both should therefore be seen as different dimensions of the arrival of the modern in the NW Indian Ocean. The only criticism I have of the book is that a few comparative glances to the coeval developments elsewhere, for example in the Caribbean, would have been most welcome.
April 16, 2023
me (with the help of AI bc I am lazy) wrote an essay on this book so here
Economic figures are often presented as objective and reliable indicators to study the world, but they are not immune to errors, biases, and manipulation. Many factors can affect the quality and accuracy of economic data, such as the methods of collection, the sources of information, the definitions of trade and its component parts, and the political interests of the producers, protectors, and presenters of the data. These issues become more pronounced when dealing with markets that operate outside the legal and regulatory frameworks of states, such as those involving trafficking and smuggling. In this essay, I will examine the case of the Arabian Sea region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where British imperialism encountered and disrupted existing networks of trade and trafficking that spanned across India, Arabia, Africa, and beyond. Drawing on the book Margins of the Market by Johan Mathew, I will demonstrate that common economic metrics, though touted as an exact science, are only as exact as the accuracy of foundational data and the universality of market definitions.
Bounded by the comprehensiveness and integrity of trade records, retroactive market analysis fails to encompass significant swaths of global trade. As Johan Mathew argues in Margins of the Market, much of the trade throughout history has taken place outside the purview of formal markets, making it difficult to capture accurately in economic metrics. Mathew writes, "the trafficking of slaves across the Arabian Sea did not depend on markets but was largely facilitated by dispersed social networks" (56). This highlights the fact that a significant portion of trade occurred in informal spaces, invisible to historians and statisticians. Furthermore, Mathew notes that the organization of these trades was vastly different from the free trade envisioned by classical political economists, as they were primarily driven by personal networks and verbal communication rather than by price signals and market competition. He writes, "the diasporic organization of traffics around verbal communications, personal networks, and bargaining bore little resemblance to the free trade imagined by classical political economists" (157). As a result, retroactive market analysis based on incomplete trade records fails to capture the true scope and nature of global trade.
Illicit trade has always been present in global markets, but it has not always been recorded, which has implications for our understanding of the size and scope of the global economy. As Mathew notes, "even businessmen engaged in perfectly legitimate activities did not generate or preserve detailed records because these would only proliferate the possibilities for lawsuits" (15). However, Mathew also found that even though there was a lack of formal documentation, trafficking generated some of the most detailed records on economic life, though they often exist in unconventional places. He writes, "it is merely necessary to read silence not as absence but as an indication of particular kinds of commercial and documentary practice" (15). The lack of evidence is proof of the existence of such types of trade, for “even when nothing untoward was occurring, traders had little desire to record, much less preserve, documentation of their activities” (17). However, this lack of documentation and historical record means that we must be cautious in our analysis of economic metrics, particularly those that purport to provide a comprehensive view of the global economy.
The definition of what constitutes "legitimate" economic activity is not always clear. Mathew suggests that there is often ambiguity in how economic transactions are documented and categorized, as the same transaction can be interpreted in vastly different ways depending on the perspective and definitions of the observer. He writes, "the same transaction could be documented as selfless charity and as self-interested enslavement" (52). Additionally, colonial officials and European businessmen often obscured relationships of social dependence to portray transactions as the operation of a free labor market. People were still entrenched in networks that constrained participation in social and economic life, despite the fact that human bodies were officially de-commodified (53). In this way, the lines between what is considered legitimate economic activity and what is not can become blurred, further complicating efforts to accurately measure the global economy.
In conclusion, economic figures are not objective and reliable indicators of the global economy. Retroactive market analysis fails to encompass significant swaths of global trade, particularly those that occur in informal spaces and are invisible to historians and statisticians. Furthermore, the lack of documentation and historical record means that we must be cautious in our analysis of economic metrics. Ambiguity in what constitutes "legitimate" economic activity further complicates efforts to accurately measure the global economy. The unreliability of retroactively studying economic metrics from time periods so severely lacking in comprehensive economic data renders such measures moot. Many of those figures were the innovations of economists who came decades or centuries after these markets had dissolved. Therefore, the tracking of these metrics must be accompanied by an abundance of caution and contextual understanding of the limitations and integrity of the data used.
good book
8/10.
Economic figures are often presented as objective and reliable indicators to study the world, but they are not immune to errors, biases, and manipulation. Many factors can affect the quality and accuracy of economic data, such as the methods of collection, the sources of information, the definitions of trade and its component parts, and the political interests of the producers, protectors, and presenters of the data. These issues become more pronounced when dealing with markets that operate outside the legal and regulatory frameworks of states, such as those involving trafficking and smuggling. In this essay, I will examine the case of the Arabian Sea region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where British imperialism encountered and disrupted existing networks of trade and trafficking that spanned across India, Arabia, Africa, and beyond. Drawing on the book Margins of the Market by Johan Mathew, I will demonstrate that common economic metrics, though touted as an exact science, are only as exact as the accuracy of foundational data and the universality of market definitions.
Bounded by the comprehensiveness and integrity of trade records, retroactive market analysis fails to encompass significant swaths of global trade. As Johan Mathew argues in Margins of the Market, much of the trade throughout history has taken place outside the purview of formal markets, making it difficult to capture accurately in economic metrics. Mathew writes, "the trafficking of slaves across the Arabian Sea did not depend on markets but was largely facilitated by dispersed social networks" (56). This highlights the fact that a significant portion of trade occurred in informal spaces, invisible to historians and statisticians. Furthermore, Mathew notes that the organization of these trades was vastly different from the free trade envisioned by classical political economists, as they were primarily driven by personal networks and verbal communication rather than by price signals and market competition. He writes, "the diasporic organization of traffics around verbal communications, personal networks, and bargaining bore little resemblance to the free trade imagined by classical political economists" (157). As a result, retroactive market analysis based on incomplete trade records fails to capture the true scope and nature of global trade.
Illicit trade has always been present in global markets, but it has not always been recorded, which has implications for our understanding of the size and scope of the global economy. As Mathew notes, "even businessmen engaged in perfectly legitimate activities did not generate or preserve detailed records because these would only proliferate the possibilities for lawsuits" (15). However, Mathew also found that even though there was a lack of formal documentation, trafficking generated some of the most detailed records on economic life, though they often exist in unconventional places. He writes, "it is merely necessary to read silence not as absence but as an indication of particular kinds of commercial and documentary practice" (15). The lack of evidence is proof of the existence of such types of trade, for “even when nothing untoward was occurring, traders had little desire to record, much less preserve, documentation of their activities” (17). However, this lack of documentation and historical record means that we must be cautious in our analysis of economic metrics, particularly those that purport to provide a comprehensive view of the global economy.
The definition of what constitutes "legitimate" economic activity is not always clear. Mathew suggests that there is often ambiguity in how economic transactions are documented and categorized, as the same transaction can be interpreted in vastly different ways depending on the perspective and definitions of the observer. He writes, "the same transaction could be documented as selfless charity and as self-interested enslavement" (52). Additionally, colonial officials and European businessmen often obscured relationships of social dependence to portray transactions as the operation of a free labor market. People were still entrenched in networks that constrained participation in social and economic life, despite the fact that human bodies were officially de-commodified (53). In this way, the lines between what is considered legitimate economic activity and what is not can become blurred, further complicating efforts to accurately measure the global economy.
In conclusion, economic figures are not objective and reliable indicators of the global economy. Retroactive market analysis fails to encompass significant swaths of global trade, particularly those that occur in informal spaces and are invisible to historians and statisticians. Furthermore, the lack of documentation and historical record means that we must be cautious in our analysis of economic metrics. Ambiguity in what constitutes "legitimate" economic activity further complicates efforts to accurately measure the global economy. The unreliability of retroactively studying economic metrics from time periods so severely lacking in comprehensive economic data renders such measures moot. Many of those figures were the innovations of economists who came decades or centuries after these markets had dissolved. Therefore, the tracking of these metrics must be accompanied by an abundance of caution and contextual understanding of the limitations and integrity of the data used.
good book
8/10.
May 8, 2024
This book was pretty boring but was required for History 239D.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews