Myths of South Asian Stasis

Abstract

During the eighteenth century, European trade with Asia was characterized by the importation of sophisticated manufactured goods in exchange for silver. The features of Euro-Asian trade testify to the vitality of the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese economies in the period before the Great Divergence. Many European observers, however, mistook them for symptoms of economic stasis, purportedly caused by Oriental despotism. Investigating French descriptions of the South Asian economy articulated in debates concerning both the export of silver and competition with South Asian textiles, this article reads Orientalist stereotypes about economic dysfunction as responses to the challenges posed by the Subcontinent’s dynamism and as part of the rhetorical strategies by which European divergence from Asia could be imagined, anticipated, and pursued.