Kirti N. Chaudhuri
Encyclopedia
Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri (born September 8, 1934) is a renowned historian
, author
, creative writer, and a graphic artist. In his early life, he was also a pianist and a general musician. He is the second son of the Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri
.
Kirti Chaudhuri has spent most of his adult life travelling and working in the Middle East, North Africa, South America, and Europe. A noted rock climber, Prof. Chaudhuri has scaled most Alpine peaks above 3,000 meters. Although he earned his living as a professional historian and as a university teacher in England and in Italy, he has always considered his creative work, both literary and artistic, to be the first priority. In the manner of his early life, he still considers himself to be a man of the road, a professional wanderer and a vagabond, a latter day Flying Dutchman. Chaudhuri's academic achievements however have several unusual features. He was the first undergraduate in the University of London
to obtain First Class Honours in Final BA Examinations in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies
in 1959 since Bernard Lewis
gained that distinction in 1936. He is the only historian from South Asia to have been elected to the British Academy and Academia Europaea.
Since the year 2000, Kirti Chaudhuri has divided his time between London
, Avignon
in France, Florence
, the Sahara, Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico. His main recreations are travel, wine tasting in different parts of the world, photography, large format printing of his graphic images, designing and printing Artists’ Books, bookbinding, and mountain walking.
Kirti Chaudhuri is married to Surang Na Songkhla whose family in the past sired the traditional governors of the Songkhla Province
in Thailand and her great grandfather was the Prime Minister to the Thai monarch. His son Vik Chaudhuri, educated at Westminster School London, lives and works in London, and vigorously follows the pastime of semi professional cycling. In the year 2004 to 2005, Vik Chaudhuri cycled all alone from Anchorage in Alaska to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, a trip of 25,000 kilometers. He was attacked and robbed at gun point at a lonely stretch of the Pan American Highway in Peru and fought successfully with the bandits to recover his bike.
and Delhi
. He sat for the entrance examination
for the University of London
and studied history at the School of Oriental and African Studies
, University College London
, Birkbeck College
, and the London School of Economics
. His teachers included Arthur Llewellyn Basham
, Cyril Philips
, William G. Beasley
, C. R. Boxer
, Bernard Lewis
, Eric Hobsbawm
, G.J. Renier, Michael Oakeshott
, and Karl Popper
. Chaudhuri graduated with first-class honours
in 1959 and was awarded the Derby Fellowship for Doctoral Research Studies.
Chaudhuri completed his PhD
in 1961, in just over two years. His dissertation
was on the early history of the English East India Company. He was immediately offered a position at the University of London and became a lecturer
, reader
, and professor
of economic history
. In 1991, Chaudhuri was invited to become the first Vasco da Gama Professor of the History of European Expansion at the European University Institute
in Florence
, Italy
, with the support of the Portuguese National Commission for Maritime Discoveries. Chaudhuri completed his contract in 1999 and has returned to his earlier activities as a creative writer and an artist.
Chaudhuri was elected to the British Academy
(1990), the Royal Historical Society
(1993), and Academia Europea (1994). The Portuguese government
and National Commission for Discoveries awarded him the Don John de Castro Prize in International History (1994).
In 1980, the Cambridge University Press commissioned Kirti Chaudhuri to write a two-volume work on the history of the Indian Ocean similar in scope and narrative to the work of the French historian Fernand Braudel
. Chaudhuri was profoundly influenced by Braudel’s approach and remained in close touch with the French historian until the latter’s death in 1985. The Cambridge University Press contract led to the publication in 1985 of The Trade and Civilisation in Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 and Asia before Europe in 1990.
Whereas Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean mainly follows the traditional descriptive method of a historian, Asia before Europe is a study, using mathematical set theory, of the dynamic interaction between economic life, society, and civilisation in the regions around and beyond the Indian Ocean during the period from the rise of Islam to 1750. It raises and answers the question how the identity of different Asian civilisations is established in the first place and then goes on to examine the structural features of food habits, clothing, architectural styles, and housing. The analysis of the different modes of economic production is followed by a description of the role of crop raising, pastoral nomadism, industrial activities, and the history of urbanisation for the main regions of the Indian Ocean. The book also presents a distinctive theory of comparative history. An extension of Fernand Braudel's theory of time and space, the methodology sets out precisely the logical foundation of the historical perceptions of unities and disunities, continuities, ruptures, and thresholds. The analysis of the historical evidence leads to a striking conclusion. Indian Ocean societies were united or separated from one another by a conscious cultural and linguistic identity but below this surface level of awareness, there was a deeper structure of unities created by a common ecology, technology of economic production, traditions of government, theory of political obligations rights, and a shared historical experience. The theory makes it possible to show that the name or the linguistic sign "Indian Ocean" is an arbitrary construction with a narrow range of meaning: the real Indian Ocean was an area which extended historically from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to the sea which lies beyond Japan. The "axiom of choice" in mathematical set theory is used to show that even the great deserts of Asia can be included in the "set" Indian Ocean through the logic of dialectical opposition.
“Can systems theory be useful to economic history? Certainly. It requires a much lower level of abstraction than conventional microeconomics and can be particularly useful when a researcher needs to make a detailed plan of a complex organization. This is precisely the sense in which computing professionals in the business world use the theory. The emphasis on information flows and functional relations across different subsystems can help organize data-gathering efforts. And this is precisely how the theory was useful to Chaudhuri. Chaudhuri writes, "The historical material was collected and analysed with very strict adherence to the concept of the model. The exposition was then 'translated' into the idiom of historians." The gargantuan task of synthesizing the thousands of volumes of records pertaining to the Company over the period indeed required a coherent approach embedded in a structural model of the Company's various operations.
“The drawback to systems theory is that it is a static model of the organization and it therefore offers no guidance on how to ask the deeper questions about efficiency or organizational change. Writes Chaudhuri, "For a model cannot without destroying itself take account of the passage of time which affects its structural boundaries and parameters". Theories of institutional change are of fundamental concern and those that are not amenable to changes over time appear to have little explanatory power. Thus while useful as an organizing heuristic, systems analysis seems rather unlikely to yield insights regarding organizational change.”
However, Santhi Hejeebu also goes on to say; “The most long-lasting contribution of the book is the stunning amount of quantitative data on commodities and specie flows between Britain and Asia. Appendix 5 provides the annual time series for nearly a dozen commodities originating from six locations -- representing a fraction of the 400 tables originally produced. Chaudhuri's research involved tracking more than 91 different textiles, 7 types of tea, and 30 other commodities imported into London. On the export side, he followed the course of 12 products plus treasure. By following the order lists and invoices of literally every Company ship between 1660 and 1760, he and his assistants made available data that had been scattered across hundreds of volumes of financial records and thousands of volumes of correspondence. Clive Dewey wrote that Trading World of Asia "represented the work of a lifetime, not only -- or even mainly -- in the sense that it took a significant proportion of [the author's] working life to write, but in the sense that such a book is only likely to be written once in a lifetime” Ten productive years of archival work (involving English, French, Dutch, Belgian sources) went in to the production of Trading World of Asia and that staggering effort alone will ensure its longevity.
“The book influenced numerous literatures within economics and history. Chaudhuri's emphasis on the efficiency of the East India Company resonates in the literature on the origins of the multinational organization and on the character of the English chartered companies. While Chaudhuri used systems theory, others (Anderson et al. 1983 and Carlos and Nicholas, 1988) have employed transactions cost analysis, agency theory, and Chandlerian analysis of firm structure to argue that the East India Company was an organizational innovation on par with a modern multinational firm such as General Motors. They emphasize the efficacy of the firm's internal operations as its main commercial legacy. They de-emphasize the firm's imperial legacy. Other studies by contrast have highlighted the significance of "merchant empires" to European expansion. These works have also drawn on Chaudhuri's insights.
“The contribution of The Trading World of Asia to the study of the foreign impact on the Indian economy has also been fruitful. Most notably, Chaudhuri's argument that India's, and in particular Bengal's, textile production increased through an expansion of employment has resulted in several important monographs. Om Prakash (1985) builds directly on the claim by asking how much did Bengal's employment rise as a result of European demand for textiles. His qualified answer: about 10%. Numerous studies have focused on the economic dislocation experienced by weavers and other groups connected with the Company's trade. From the perspective of the Mughal ruling classes it was certainly difficult, if not impossible, to separate the Company's commercial purposes from its political ones. For example, in dealing with Asian powers, the Company, Chaudhuri explains, had every incentive to present itself as having the delegated power of the British Crown. In the Indian economy, the East India Company employees insisted on special treatment and trading privileges. By bringing to the foreground the Asian commercial milieu Chaudhuri helped initiate new literatures in Asian history. For the range and importance of its findings, its unique method, and its empirical bounty, Trading World of Asia deserved the unanimous praise it received upon publication in 1978. For those same reasons and for its lasting impact on economic history, Trading World of Asia certainly deserves its present distinction -- one of the most significant works of the twentieth century.”
On Asia before Europe, Sugata Bose
, Gardiner Professor of History, Harvard University, wrote: “Yet it remains an open question whether the recourse to mathematical precision fares much better than a historian’s intuitive e presumptions in resolving the problem of the spatial limits of an interregional arena of human interaction.”
Schifanoia Firenze has tried to maintain the standards of bookwork set by the great masters of the past such as Gütenberg, Nicholas Jensen, Aldus, Claude Garamond, Bodoni, and modern designers such as Jan Tschischold, Hans Mardersteig, Bruce Rogers, and Frederick Warde. The search for fine printing paper led Chaudhuri to the high narrow valley of Pescia in Tuscany where fifteenth-century methods are still being followed in the paper mill of Cartiere Enrico Magnani, methods that are also followed in the Auvergne where Moulin Richard de Bas turns out superb examples of handmade paper in Val de Laga, Ambert. The exquisite Japanese Kozo bark paper and the Gampi vellum are used for special reserve copies, which are bound by famous designer binders in full Morocco leather. Some of these examples can be seen at the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum in London as well as in the British Library. Chaudhuri’s graphic work, large prints and photographic images, have been exhibited in Florence, London, and Paris.
His latest work is an audio play, Four Nights in Tunis. He wrote and directed the production of the compact disk in June 2007 and it is part of an audio book. The audio play was recorded at the professional sound studio A1 Vox and mastered at Iguana Music Studio, London. The parts were played by the actress Beverley Beer and the actor Andy Rowe. Kirti Chaudhuri was the narrator.
Reviewed in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
2. The Economic Development of India under the East India Company 1814-58; a Selection of Contemporary Writings. Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press, 1971.
Reviewed in The Journal of Asian Studies
3. The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760. Cambridge [Eng.] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Reviewed in The Economic Journal
4. with Dewey, Clive (eds), Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History. Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Reviewed in The Journal of Asian Studies
5. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
List of Reviews:
Geoffrey Scammell, Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 June 1985.
Geoffrey Scammell, English Historical Review, October 1987.
Chris Wickham Caravans and Caravels, Times Literary Supplement, 12 September 1986, No. 4354.
P.A. Memon, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 12, No. 1, January 1986.
Burton Stein, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 513–514.
Demund Bosworth, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Bulletin, vol. 14, No. 2, 1988.
Tapan Raychaudhuri, Economic History Review, vol. 39, No. , 19””, p. 325.
Richard T. Lindholm, The Journal of Economic History, vol. XLVII, 1987, No. 2, 544.
Niels Steensgaard, in Danish, Historisk Tidsskrift
, 1985, No. 2.
Brian Harrison, American Historical Review, April 1986, pp.448/9.
M.N.Pearson, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. XIV, No. 2, January 1986.
Charles Boxer, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 21 November 1985.
Maurice Zinkin, Journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, October 1985.
P.J. Marshall, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1986.
Robert Olson, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1986), pp. 519-521
6. Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Reviewed in The English Historical Review
7. with Bethencourt, Francisco, Historia Da Expansao Portuguesa. 5 vols. Lisbon: Temas e Debates, 1998.
Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of commerce, Civilization and Capitalism 15th to the 18th Century, vol. II, p. 385, London, 1982.
“K.N.Chaudhuri finds it very difficult to explain the poverty of weavers…”
“Chaudhuri understandably finds it a little puzzling that highly skilled workers … should have been paid such miserable wages …”
“This being so, it may have been not so much pressure of English demand as competitive Indian prices, K.N.Chaudhuri suggests, which stimulated technical inventions …”
Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World, Civilization and Capitalism 15th to the 18th Century, vol. III, pages 508, 5520, 567, London, 1984.
2 Peter Marshall, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, Kings College London,
“Chapter 9 of K.N.Chaudhuri’s massively authoritative The Trading World of Asia and English East India Company 1660 1760, Cambridge, 1978, surveys English involvement in Asian country trade over the same time span.” P.J. Marshall, “Private British Trade in the Indian Ocean before 1800,” in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N.Pearson, ed., India and the Indian Ocean 1500 1800, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, 299.
3 Bruce Watson, “Kirti Chaudhuri’s extremely detailed but immensely difficult study, The Trading World of Asia and English East India Company 1660 1760 is probably the only other book which really recommends itself to the interested student,” in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N.Pearson, ed., India and the Indian Ocean 1500 1800, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, 316.
4 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol I, New York, 1974, pp. 337, 342.
Vol. II, pp. 97, 107/8, New York, 1980, vol. III, pp. 136, 139, 149, 153, 179 to 180, New York, 1989.
5 Janet L Abu Lughod, “As Chaudhuri stated so well, before the arrival of the Portuguese … 1498 there had been no organised attempt by any political power to control the sea lanes and the long distance trade of Asia …” Janet L Abu Lughod, Before European Hegemony, The World System A.D. 1250 1350, New York, Oxford, 1989, p. 275.
6 C.P. Kindleberger
Spenders and Hoarders: The World Distribution of Spanish American Silver, 1550–1750, New Yori, 1990
This short book is a critique of K.N. Chaudhuri’s theory and description of world bullion flows and an attempt to refute his conclusions.
7 Louise Tilly
Presidential address delivered at the American Historical Association meeting in
San Francisco on January 7, 1994. American Historical Review, Vol. 99, No. 1.
(February 1994): 1-17. Extended discussion of K.N.Chaudhuri’s work on the history of Indian textile industry before the Industrial Revolution.
8 David Kopf, “Asia before Europe, though written by eminent Orientalist and medievalist K. N. Chaudhuri, is what may euphemistically be called a philosophy of history. The book establishes Chaudhuri as a star in the games deconstructionists play. Part 1 constitutes a brilliant analysis of theoretical models from mathematics and the sciences, natural and social, which support a world where reality is perceived only through a chosen set of mental constructs, truth is contradictory, and history is a "complexity of movements" brought about by "the interaction between the physical and mental domains at the level of action" Review Article, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean, The Historian, 1 January 1993, Author: Kopf, David.
9 The Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University, the first of its kind in Canada, is on the cutting edge of a new and expanding field of research. The Centre aims to build a solid academic basis which will place IOW studies alongside the already established fields of Atlantic and Pacific Ocean studies. http://indianoceanworldcentre.com/events.html
The foundations for Indian Ocean World history were laid by K.N. Chaudhuri (1985), Anthony Reid (1998, 1993) and other scholars who applied Braudelian (1966) concepts of a ‘maritime’ economy to the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Both were uniquely characterised by a monsoon system that served to regulate agricultural production in the hinterland and facilitate the early development of a long-distance maritime trading network.
10 Markus P. M. Vink Journal of Global History (2007) 2, pp. 41–62 ª London School of Economics and Political Science 2007 ‘new thalassology’* Three historians in particular – Kirti Chaudhuri, Michael Pearson, and Kenneth McPherson – stand out among the early representatives of ‘the new thalassology’ emerging in the 1980s, profoundly influencing the subsequent course of maritime-based studies. In his two seminal works on the Indian Ocean world, K. N. Chaudhuri vigorously asserted that ‘capitalist’, long-distance trade in luxury goods and bulk commodities provided an underlying ‘historical unity’ to the regionon the other hand, provided the contrasts.’
11 Spodek, Howard
The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (review)
Journal of World History
- Volume 15, Number 1, March 2004, pp. 92-96 “Rene … sees this maritime region as constituting an "Indian Ocean World," quite in keeping with the nowadays dominant views of scholars like K.N. Chaudhuri, Frank, and Pearson.”
12 Edward A. Alpers Opening Address to the International Conference on Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World
UCLA April 5–6, 2002 “The past two decades witnessed several important efforts to establish the parameters of the Indian Ocean world by very different historians. The best known of these is Kirti Chaudhuri’s major study of the economic history of the region from the rise of Islam to 1750.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, creative writer, and a graphic artist. In his early life, he was also a pianist and a general musician. He is the second son of the Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Italic textNirad C. Chaudhuri was a Bengali−English writer and cultural commentator...
.
Kirti Chaudhuri has spent most of his adult life travelling and working in the Middle East, North Africa, South America, and Europe. A noted rock climber, Prof. Chaudhuri has scaled most Alpine peaks above 3,000 meters. Although he earned his living as a professional historian and as a university teacher in England and in Italy, he has always considered his creative work, both literary and artistic, to be the first priority. In the manner of his early life, he still considers himself to be a man of the road, a professional wanderer and a vagabond, a latter day Flying Dutchman. Chaudhuri's academic achievements however have several unusual features. He was the first undergraduate in the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
to obtain First Class Honours in Final BA Examinations in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies
School of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...
in 1959 since Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
gained that distinction in 1936. He is the only historian from South Asia to have been elected to the British Academy and Academia Europaea.
Since the year 2000, Kirti Chaudhuri has divided his time between London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
in France, Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, the Sahara, Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico. His main recreations are travel, wine tasting in different parts of the world, photography, large format printing of his graphic images, designing and printing Artists’ Books, bookbinding, and mountain walking.
Kirti Chaudhuri is married to Surang Na Songkhla whose family in the past sired the traditional governors of the Songkhla Province
Songkhla Province
Songkhla is one of the southern provinces of Thailand. Neighboring provinces are Satun, Phatthalung, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Pattani and Yala. To the south it borders Kedah and Perlis of Malaysia....
in Thailand and her great grandfather was the Prime Minister to the Thai monarch. His son Vik Chaudhuri, educated at Westminster School London, lives and works in London, and vigorously follows the pastime of semi professional cycling. In the year 2004 to 2005, Vik Chaudhuri cycled all alone from Anchorage in Alaska to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, a trip of 25,000 kilometers. He was attacked and robbed at gun point at a lonely stretch of the Pan American Highway in Peru and fought successfully with the bandits to recover his bike.
Early life and education
Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta and spent his childhood in KolkataKolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
and Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
. He sat for the entrance examination
Entrance examination
An entrance examination is an examination that many educational institutions use to select students for admission. These exams may be administered at any level of education, from primary to higher education, although they are more common at higher levels....
for the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
and studied history at the School of Oriental and African Studies
School of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...
, University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is...
, and the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
. His teachers included Arthur Llewellyn Basham
Arthur Llewellyn Basham
Professor Arthur Llewellyn Basham was a noted historian and indologist and author of a number of books. It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that two of the most renowned living historians of early India, Professors R.S...
, Cyril Philips
Cyril Philips
Sir Cyril Henry Philips, December 27 1912 – December 29 2005, born in Worcester and knighted in 1974 was a noted historian and academic director.-Early life:...
, William G. Beasley
William G. Beasley
William Gerard Beasley CBE FBA was a British academic, author, editor, translator and Japanologist. He was Emeritus Professor of the History of the Far East at the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University.-Career:...
, C. R. Boxer
C. R. Boxer
Charles Ralph Boxer FBA was a distinguished historian of Dutch and Portuguese maritime and colonial history.-Education and Military Career:...
, Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
, Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
, G.J. Renier, Michael Oakeshott
Michael Oakeshott
Michael Joseph Oakeshott was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and philosophy of law...
, and Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
. Chaudhuri graduated with first-class honours
British undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
in 1959 and was awarded the Derby Fellowship for Doctoral Research Studies.
Chaudhuri completed his PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in 1961, in just over two years. His dissertation
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
was on the early history of the English East India Company. He was immediately offered a position at the University of London and became a lecturer
Lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...
, reader
Reader (academic rank)
The title of Reader in the United Kingdom and some universities in the Commonwealth nations like Australia and New Zealand denotes an appointment for a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation in research or scholarship...
, and professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of economic history
Economic history
Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena in the past. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations and institutions...
. In 1991, Chaudhuri was invited to become the first Vasco da Gama Professor of the History of European Expansion at the European University Institute
European University Institute
The European University Institute ' in Florence is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral teaching and research institute established by European Union member states to contribute to cultural and scientific development in the social sciences, in a European perspective...
in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, with the support of the Portuguese National Commission for Maritime Discoveries. Chaudhuri completed his contract in 1999 and has returned to his earlier activities as a creative writer and an artist.
Chaudhuri was elected to the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
(1990), the Royal Historical Society
Royal Historical Society
The Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868. The premier society in the United Kingdom which promotes and defends the scholarly study of the past, it is based at University College London...
(1993), and Academia Europea (1994). The Portuguese government
Government of Portugal
The Government is one of the four sovereignty organs of the Portuguese Republic. It is also the organ that conducts politics in general in the country and is also the superior body in public administration...
and National Commission for Discoveries awarded him the Don John de Castro Prize in International History (1994).
Academic Works
Chaudhuri’s first monograph The English East India Company: the Study of an Early Joint Stock Company 1600-1640, was published in 1965, and it is still regarded as one of the seminal works on the history of the East India Company since W.R. Scott published his classic three volume work in 1912. After the publication of the monograph, Chaudhuri began in 1966 a major research project on the later history of the East India Company. It was supported by a substantial research grant from UK. Social Science Research Council, and Sir John Habakkuk, the chairman of the S.S.R.C. and the distinguished British economic historian personally expressed his appreciation and support for Chaudhuri’s still unproven research and methodology. The research grant enabled Chaudhuri to computerise the vast array of quantitative data on the Company’s transcontinental trade and shipping. The research was published by the Cambridge University Press in 1978 under the title The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760. The Cambridge University Press has reprinted the work in 2006. The methodology of the book was based not only computerised data processing but also on the use of rigorous statistical methods and systems analysis. For the first time, historians are provided with a wide range of reliable statistical data on early modern trade and shipping and Chaudhuri’s conclusions point to the way early modern capitalism and business methods developed in Europe and the Indian Ocean. Economic History Net described the book as one of the most significant works in twentieth century economic history.In 1980, the Cambridge University Press commissioned Kirti Chaudhuri to write a two-volume work on the history of the Indian Ocean similar in scope and narrative to the work of the French historian Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
. Chaudhuri was profoundly influenced by Braudel’s approach and remained in close touch with the French historian until the latter’s death in 1985. The Cambridge University Press contract led to the publication in 1985 of The Trade and Civilisation in Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 and Asia before Europe in 1990.
Whereas Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean mainly follows the traditional descriptive method of a historian, Asia before Europe is a study, using mathematical set theory, of the dynamic interaction between economic life, society, and civilisation in the regions around and beyond the Indian Ocean during the period from the rise of Islam to 1750. It raises and answers the question how the identity of different Asian civilisations is established in the first place and then goes on to examine the structural features of food habits, clothing, architectural styles, and housing. The analysis of the different modes of economic production is followed by a description of the role of crop raising, pastoral nomadism, industrial activities, and the history of urbanisation for the main regions of the Indian Ocean. The book also presents a distinctive theory of comparative history. An extension of Fernand Braudel's theory of time and space, the methodology sets out precisely the logical foundation of the historical perceptions of unities and disunities, continuities, ruptures, and thresholds. The analysis of the historical evidence leads to a striking conclusion. Indian Ocean societies were united or separated from one another by a conscious cultural and linguistic identity but below this surface level of awareness, there was a deeper structure of unities created by a common ecology, technology of economic production, traditions of government, theory of political obligations rights, and a shared historical experience. The theory makes it possible to show that the name or the linguistic sign "Indian Ocean" is an arbitrary construction with a narrow range of meaning: the real Indian Ocean was an area which extended historically from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to the sea which lies beyond Japan. The "axiom of choice" in mathematical set theory is used to show that even the great deserts of Asia can be included in the "set" Indian Ocean through the logic of dialectical opposition.
Criticism and impact of Chaudhuri’s academic work
Santhi Hejeebu, Department of Economics, University of Iowa in her general critique of the Trading World of Asia and English East India Company wrote: “Systems analysis receives prominent attention. He writes of the Company as a trading system, one in which the decision-rules employed by management can be mapped to a sequence of physical inputs and outputs, suggesting the Company operated like an engine. Systems analysis enables him to test statistically a series of hypotheses, such as "average costs are a decreasing function of the volume of trade, the cost price of goods, and of time, with an associated level of fixed costs." The approach looks rather alien to those who learned industrial organization from Tirole (1989) or Stigler (1968) a generation earlier. It is not typically taught in economics or in history departments though it is widely used in information systems management and environmental engineering. System analysis requires the investigator to redefine structural and functional relationships on a firm-by-firm basis. What surprises (and annoys) the economist is the absence of a theory of the firm. The cost functions in Appendix 3 are hypotheses relating costs to accounting and physical variables. They do not imbibe the idea that costs functions arise from production functions and must include opportunity costs.“Can systems theory be useful to economic history? Certainly. It requires a much lower level of abstraction than conventional microeconomics and can be particularly useful when a researcher needs to make a detailed plan of a complex organization. This is precisely the sense in which computing professionals in the business world use the theory. The emphasis on information flows and functional relations across different subsystems can help organize data-gathering efforts. And this is precisely how the theory was useful to Chaudhuri. Chaudhuri writes, "The historical material was collected and analysed with very strict adherence to the concept of the model. The exposition was then 'translated' into the idiom of historians." The gargantuan task of synthesizing the thousands of volumes of records pertaining to the Company over the period indeed required a coherent approach embedded in a structural model of the Company's various operations.
“The drawback to systems theory is that it is a static model of the organization and it therefore offers no guidance on how to ask the deeper questions about efficiency or organizational change. Writes Chaudhuri, "For a model cannot without destroying itself take account of the passage of time which affects its structural boundaries and parameters". Theories of institutional change are of fundamental concern and those that are not amenable to changes over time appear to have little explanatory power. Thus while useful as an organizing heuristic, systems analysis seems rather unlikely to yield insights regarding organizational change.”
However, Santhi Hejeebu also goes on to say; “The most long-lasting contribution of the book is the stunning amount of quantitative data on commodities and specie flows between Britain and Asia. Appendix 5 provides the annual time series for nearly a dozen commodities originating from six locations -- representing a fraction of the 400 tables originally produced. Chaudhuri's research involved tracking more than 91 different textiles, 7 types of tea, and 30 other commodities imported into London. On the export side, he followed the course of 12 products plus treasure. By following the order lists and invoices of literally every Company ship between 1660 and 1760, he and his assistants made available data that had been scattered across hundreds of volumes of financial records and thousands of volumes of correspondence. Clive Dewey wrote that Trading World of Asia "represented the work of a lifetime, not only -- or even mainly -- in the sense that it took a significant proportion of [the author's] working life to write, but in the sense that such a book is only likely to be written once in a lifetime” Ten productive years of archival work (involving English, French, Dutch, Belgian sources) went in to the production of Trading World of Asia and that staggering effort alone will ensure its longevity.
“The book influenced numerous literatures within economics and history. Chaudhuri's emphasis on the efficiency of the East India Company resonates in the literature on the origins of the multinational organization and on the character of the English chartered companies. While Chaudhuri used systems theory, others (Anderson et al. 1983 and Carlos and Nicholas, 1988) have employed transactions cost analysis, agency theory, and Chandlerian analysis of firm structure to argue that the East India Company was an organizational innovation on par with a modern multinational firm such as General Motors. They emphasize the efficacy of the firm's internal operations as its main commercial legacy. They de-emphasize the firm's imperial legacy. Other studies by contrast have highlighted the significance of "merchant empires" to European expansion. These works have also drawn on Chaudhuri's insights.
“The contribution of The Trading World of Asia to the study of the foreign impact on the Indian economy has also been fruitful. Most notably, Chaudhuri's argument that India's, and in particular Bengal's, textile production increased through an expansion of employment has resulted in several important monographs. Om Prakash (1985) builds directly on the claim by asking how much did Bengal's employment rise as a result of European demand for textiles. His qualified answer: about 10%. Numerous studies have focused on the economic dislocation experienced by weavers and other groups connected with the Company's trade. From the perspective of the Mughal ruling classes it was certainly difficult, if not impossible, to separate the Company's commercial purposes from its political ones. For example, in dealing with Asian powers, the Company, Chaudhuri explains, had every incentive to present itself as having the delegated power of the British Crown. In the Indian economy, the East India Company employees insisted on special treatment and trading privileges. By bringing to the foreground the Asian commercial milieu Chaudhuri helped initiate new literatures in Asian history. For the range and importance of its findings, its unique method, and its empirical bounty, Trading World of Asia deserved the unanimous praise it received upon publication in 1978. For those same reasons and for its lasting impact on economic history, Trading World of Asia certainly deserves its present distinction -- one of the most significant works of the twentieth century.”
On Asia before Europe, Sugata Bose
Sugata Bose
Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University.-Early life:Sugata Bose was born in Calcutta, India. He studied at the Presidency College, Kolkata. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge under Eric Stokes...
, Gardiner Professor of History, Harvard University, wrote: “Yet it remains an open question whether the recourse to mathematical precision fares much better than a historian’s intuitive e presumptions in resolving the problem of the spatial limits of an interregional arena of human interaction.”
Later Literary and Artistic works
In 1994, Kirti Chaudhuri created and founded Gallery Schifanoia and its associated imprint house Schifanoia Firenze to exhibit, print, and publish his artistic and literary works along with the works of other artists and writers. The press has published thirty titles so far and further projects are being planned for future publication. The activities of Schifanoia Firenze as a private Press and a publishing house belong to the same genre and the tradition created by Ambroise Vollard at the beginning of the twentieth century, a tradition that was actively taken up by other art dealers and art publishers such as Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Albert Skira, Tériade, and Fabiani. The foundation of Schifanoia Firenze however was accidental. The chance purchase of two rare books, the facsimile edition of the Calligraphic Models of Ludovico Degli Arrighi surnamed Vicento (1525) and Crito A Socratic Dialogue by Plato, hand printed by Hans Mardersteig in Montagnola in 1926, led Chaudhuri to the idea of founding a printing and publishing enterprise similar to Mardersteig’s Officina Bodoni, which was later transferred to Verona and joined to the letter-press printing house Stamperia Valdonega.Schifanoia Firenze has tried to maintain the standards of bookwork set by the great masters of the past such as Gütenberg, Nicholas Jensen, Aldus, Claude Garamond, Bodoni, and modern designers such as Jan Tschischold, Hans Mardersteig, Bruce Rogers, and Frederick Warde. The search for fine printing paper led Chaudhuri to the high narrow valley of Pescia in Tuscany where fifteenth-century methods are still being followed in the paper mill of Cartiere Enrico Magnani, methods that are also followed in the Auvergne where Moulin Richard de Bas turns out superb examples of handmade paper in Val de Laga, Ambert. The exquisite Japanese Kozo bark paper and the Gampi vellum are used for special reserve copies, which are bound by famous designer binders in full Morocco leather. Some of these examples can be seen at the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum in London as well as in the British Library. Chaudhuri’s graphic work, large prints and photographic images, have been exhibited in Florence, London, and Paris.
His latest work is an audio play, Four Nights in Tunis. He wrote and directed the production of the compact disk in June 2007 and it is part of an audio book. The audio play was recorded at the professional sound studio A1 Vox and mastered at Iguana Music Studio, London. The parts were played by the actress Beverley Beer and the actor Andy Rowe. Kirti Chaudhuri was the narrator.
Publications
1. The English East India Company; the Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600-1640. London: F. Cass, 1965.Reviewed in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
2. The Economic Development of India under the East India Company 1814-58; a Selection of Contemporary Writings. Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press, 1971.
Reviewed in The Journal of Asian Studies
3. The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760. Cambridge [Eng.] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Reviewed in The Economic Journal
4. with Dewey, Clive (eds), Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History. Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Reviewed in The Journal of Asian Studies
5. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
List of Reviews:
Geoffrey Scammell, Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 June 1985.
Geoffrey Scammell, English Historical Review, October 1987.
Chris Wickham Caravans and Caravels, Times Literary Supplement, 12 September 1986, No. 4354.
P.A. Memon, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 12, No. 1, January 1986.
Burton Stein, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 513–514.
Demund Bosworth, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Bulletin, vol. 14, No. 2, 1988.
Tapan Raychaudhuri, Economic History Review, vol. 39, No. , 19””, p. 325.
Richard T. Lindholm, The Journal of Economic History, vol. XLVII, 1987, No. 2, 544.
Niels Steensgaard, in Danish, Historisk Tidsskrift
Historisk Tidsskrift
Historisk Tidsskrift is a Danish history journal established in 1840. It is the oldest extant national journal for history. It is currently published in two fascicles each year. The first editor was Christian Molbech...
, 1985, No. 2.
Brian Harrison, American Historical Review, April 1986, pp.448/9.
M.N.Pearson, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. XIV, No. 2, January 1986.
Charles Boxer, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 21 November 1985.
Maurice Zinkin, Journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, October 1985.
P.J. Marshall, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1986.
Robert Olson, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1986), pp. 519-521
6. Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Reviewed in The English Historical Review
7. with Bethencourt, Francisco, Historia Da Expansao Portuguesa. 5 vols. Lisbon: Temas e Debates, 1998.
Some past and recent citations to the work of K.N.Chaudhuri
1 Fernand Braudel, “In a book from which I have greatly benefited, K.N.Chaudhuri asks why the prestigious Indies Companies stopped short at the point of distribution,”Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of commerce, Civilization and Capitalism 15th to the 18th Century, vol. II, p. 385, London, 1982.
“K.N.Chaudhuri finds it very difficult to explain the poverty of weavers…”
“Chaudhuri understandably finds it a little puzzling that highly skilled workers … should have been paid such miserable wages …”
“This being so, it may have been not so much pressure of English demand as competitive Indian prices, K.N.Chaudhuri suggests, which stimulated technical inventions …”
Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World, Civilization and Capitalism 15th to the 18th Century, vol. III, pages 508, 5520, 567, London, 1984.
2 Peter Marshall, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, Kings College London,
“Chapter 9 of K.N.Chaudhuri’s massively authoritative The Trading World of Asia and English East India Company 1660 1760, Cambridge, 1978, surveys English involvement in Asian country trade over the same time span.” P.J. Marshall, “Private British Trade in the Indian Ocean before 1800,” in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N.Pearson, ed., India and the Indian Ocean 1500 1800, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, 299.
3 Bruce Watson, “Kirti Chaudhuri’s extremely detailed but immensely difficult study, The Trading World of Asia and English East India Company 1660 1760 is probably the only other book which really recommends itself to the interested student,” in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N.Pearson, ed., India and the Indian Ocean 1500 1800, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, 316.
4 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol I, New York, 1974, pp. 337, 342.
Vol. II, pp. 97, 107/8, New York, 1980, vol. III, pp. 136, 139, 149, 153, 179 to 180, New York, 1989.
5 Janet L Abu Lughod, “As Chaudhuri stated so well, before the arrival of the Portuguese … 1498 there had been no organised attempt by any political power to control the sea lanes and the long distance trade of Asia …” Janet L Abu Lughod, Before European Hegemony, The World System A.D. 1250 1350, New York, Oxford, 1989, p. 275.
6 C.P. Kindleberger
Spenders and Hoarders: The World Distribution of Spanish American Silver, 1550–1750, New Yori, 1990
This short book is a critique of K.N. Chaudhuri’s theory and description of world bullion flows and an attempt to refute his conclusions.
7 Louise Tilly
Presidential address delivered at the American Historical Association meeting in
San Francisco on January 7, 1994. American Historical Review, Vol. 99, No. 1.
(February 1994): 1-17. Extended discussion of K.N.Chaudhuri’s work on the history of Indian textile industry before the Industrial Revolution.
8 David Kopf, “Asia before Europe, though written by eminent Orientalist and medievalist K. N. Chaudhuri, is what may euphemistically be called a philosophy of history. The book establishes Chaudhuri as a star in the games deconstructionists play. Part 1 constitutes a brilliant analysis of theoretical models from mathematics and the sciences, natural and social, which support a world where reality is perceived only through a chosen set of mental constructs, truth is contradictory, and history is a "complexity of movements" brought about by "the interaction between the physical and mental domains at the level of action" Review Article, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean, The Historian, 1 January 1993, Author: Kopf, David.
9 The Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University, the first of its kind in Canada, is on the cutting edge of a new and expanding field of research. The Centre aims to build a solid academic basis which will place IOW studies alongside the already established fields of Atlantic and Pacific Ocean studies. http://indianoceanworldcentre.com/events.html
The foundations for Indian Ocean World history were laid by K.N. Chaudhuri (1985), Anthony Reid (1998, 1993) and other scholars who applied Braudelian (1966) concepts of a ‘maritime’ economy to the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Both were uniquely characterised by a monsoon system that served to regulate agricultural production in the hinterland and facilitate the early development of a long-distance maritime trading network.
10 Markus P. M. Vink Journal of Global History (2007) 2, pp. 41–62 ª London School of Economics and Political Science 2007 ‘new thalassology’* Three historians in particular – Kirti Chaudhuri, Michael Pearson, and Kenneth McPherson – stand out among the early representatives of ‘the new thalassology’ emerging in the 1980s, profoundly influencing the subsequent course of maritime-based studies. In his two seminal works on the Indian Ocean world, K. N. Chaudhuri vigorously asserted that ‘capitalist’, long-distance trade in luxury goods and bulk commodities provided an underlying ‘historical unity’ to the regionon the other hand, provided the contrasts.’
11 Spodek, Howard
Howard Spodek
Howard Spodek is an American-born world historian, a professor of history and geography and urban studies at Temple University. He received a B.A. from Columbia University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1972; while a graduate student, he visited India as a Fulbright Fellow....
The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (review)
Journal of World History
Journal of World History
The Journal of World History is a refereed scholarly journal that presents historical analysis from a global point-of-view, focusing especially on forces that cross the boundaries of cultures and civilizations, including large-scale population movements, economic fluctuations, transfers of...
- Volume 15, Number 1, March 2004, pp. 92-96 “Rene … sees this maritime region as constituting an "Indian Ocean World," quite in keeping with the nowadays dominant views of scholars like K.N. Chaudhuri, Frank, and Pearson.”
12 Edward A. Alpers Opening Address to the International Conference on Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World
UCLA April 5–6, 2002 “The past two decades witnessed several important efforts to establish the parameters of the Indian Ocean world by very different historians. The best known of these is Kirti Chaudhuri’s major study of the economic history of the region from the rise of Islam to 1750.