Ravi Palat. The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650: Princes, Paddy Fields, and Bazaars.

Abstract

This study appears to have some provenance in the author’s dissertation of a similar title, which covered 1350 to 1650. The bibliography and notes of the book under review, The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650, indicate attention to relevant literature since the date of the dissertation. Ravi Palat’s central argument is that Asia provides an alternate background to an alternate modernity, embracing an “industrious” revolution, built on large populations, rather than an “industrial” one. A premise the author relies on is that capitalism only triumphs when capitalists penetrate the state, and this process happened only in Europe (7, 26). A key component of the author’s argument, presented in the first of his four chapters, regards wet rice cultivation, notably that in southern India, but also that in parts of East and Southeast Asia. Rice production was labor intensive in societies that had large populations, and therefore work-saving technologies were not an important concern as they were in the more lightly populated areas of Europe at that time. Rice has a much higher seed-to-yield ratio (many grains of rice per plant) than do the staples of rye, barley, and wheat in Europe. Palat argues, too, that wet rice cultivation was more of an artisanal craft than were most agricultural pursuits, because it required expertise and skill—rather than capital formation—in dealing with small plots of land, transplantation of seedlings, water and drainage, as well as selective breeding of rice varieties, including those that could survive several days submerged under flood waters. I would find it helpful to have a clearer explanation in this chapter of what it entails for societies to be “based” on wet-rice cultivation (33, 222).