The role of subsistence commodities such as grains, herbs, and other staples seems mundane, but it has been crucial in shaping the early modern circuits of capital and exchange across the Indus delta and the Arabian Sea. What appears as ordinary trade has, in fact, laid the infrastructural and financial groundwork for the large-scale circulation of high-value goods such as ivory, pearls, textiles, and spices. At our Online Talk #GrainBeforeGold, professor and maritime historian Dr Chhaya Goswami will examine how grain corridors stretching from Shahbandar, Karachi, Lakhpat, Mandvi, and Mumbai operated as arteries of regional wealth formation and enabled communities such as the Lohanas, Bhatias, Bhanushalis, and Sindhi merchants to convert agrarian surpluses into trade capital, thus expanding their reach into transoceanic ventures.

About the speaker:

Dr Chhaya Goswami is a specialist in the maritime history of India’s west coast and the western Indian Ocean. Her research focusses on trans-regional and trans-oceanic commodity exchanges, maritime trading networks, diaspora and community histories, business history, oral history, and the phenomenon of violence at sea. She is the author of two acclaimed books on the maritime trading linkages of Kachchh with Eastern Arabia and East Africa: ‘The Call of the Sea: Kachchhi Traders in Muscat and Zanzibar, c.1800–1880’ (Orient BlackSwan, 2011) and ‘Globalization Before Its Time: Gujarati Merchants from Kachchh’ (Penguin Books, 2016). Currently, she is Head and Associate Professor for the Centre for Indian Ocean and Transoceanic Studies, Somaiya School of Civilisation, Somaiya Vidyavihar University.