The work under review collects nine essays by Claude Markovits published between 1981 and 2003 and an epilogue written for the volume, providing an invaluable companion to his three monographs (1985, 2000, 2004). Markovits's body of work is significant not only for its quantity, but also for its spatial and temporal span: he has analyzed South Asian economic-historical processes from the modern (eighteenth century) through the contemporary periods, and has also treated in depth South Asia's social, economic, and political connections with East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia over the last 300 years. This extremely rich oeuvre has unequivocally established Claude Markovits as one of the foremost economic historians of South Asia.
Among Markovits's many contributions to South Asian economic history, the essays in this volume underscore at least three strengths of his approach to the surviving historical evidence (consisting mainly of references to merchants and mercantile activity in...
