Bhutias of Sikkim

Bhutias of Sikkim, animal husbandry alone was not sufficient to sustain the population, so they indulged in marginal trading activities with the Tibetan across the borders. The barter of timber wood, dye stuffs and dairy products of that region for Tibetan salt and wool formed the basis of this trade. Bhutias of Sikkim (Lachung and Lachen) pursued it as an occupation intimately interwoven with pastoral activities. Thus, the trade was as long as unhampered by political restrictions, it enabled them to remain economically independent. However with the closing of the bordering 1962, social life changed of these people. Political events beyond their have led to the transformation of their traditional economic system, forcing them to reorient it. They lost large herds of yaks and sheep, when they were on the seasonal migration under the ancient trans-border pasture usage agreements. They could no longer use pasture land in Tibet, causing heavy losses of their herds due to lack of alternative pasture area. Bhutias started to shift from a pastoral and trading economy to a more settled agricultural and small scale horticulture and wage earning economy. The seasonal migration emerges as an activity organized by family and community structure. The Bhutias of Sikkim have adopted culturally to diverse natural landscapes and have established settlement patterns and production activities tailored to the limitation imposed by the region.

Ancient tax tokens, trade licenses and metrological records?: Making sense of Indus inscribed objects through script-internal, contextual, linguistic, and ethnohistorical lenses.

This article argues that most of the inscribed objects (seals, miniature-tablets etc.) of ancient Indus valley civilization were essentially administrative-commercial tools (tax-tokens, trade-licences, metrological records, etc.) used for controlling the complex trading economy spread across the Indus settlements. It also argues that the inscriptions logographically encoded a commercial sublanguage to convey information about kinds of taxes/tithes, tax-receiving entities; tax-rates and modes; and activities (such as cultivation, manufacture, and trading of specific commodities) that these taxes covered and authorized. Building on the functional classification of Indus logograms performed in the author's previous structural analysis of Indus inscriptions and analysing various script-internal, archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence, this article seeks to interpret the semantic functionalities of different sign-classes. It proposes that: i) The numerical and metrological signs were used to represent certain tax-collection rates fixed for certain commodities, whereas the lexeme-signs following them ( ) represented those taxed commodities. ii) The Crop-signs ( ) represented different harvested grain-based taxes. iii) The phrase-final/terminal logograms ( ) encoded certain metrological modes (volumetric, weight-based, reed-measure-based etc.) of tax-collection, and thus metonymically encoded certain broad tax-categories. iv) The lexeme-signs appearing in the initial parts of the grammatically complex inscriptions ( ) represented the tax-collector entities and purpose of tax-payment. v) The signs mostly occurring in pre-phrase-final positions ( ) represented the mode of tax-payments through predefined equivalencies. vi) The bird-like logograms ( ) represented different precious stones including lapis lazuli, cornelian, agate etc.; while the fish-like logograms ( ) signified different apotropaic "fish-eye-beads", which were one of the most precious exported Indus commodities, coveted in ancient Near East. Analysing the related lexical roots of such commodities— e.g. ivory ("piru"); lapis lazuli whose colour was compared to the iridescent pigeon-neck ("kāsaka hya kapautaka"); and "eye-beads" (maṇi), in Mesopotamian lexicons, Amarna letters, ancient texts in Old-Persian language, BMAC languages, Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil etc. — this study claims that such words had originated in the Indus valley, and had spread to the languages of other civilizations through trade networks. Tracing out more such ancient metrological and revenue related terminologies (droṇa, bhāra, kṛṣṇala, raktikā, śara etc.) this study finally offers decipherment of a few Indus inscriptions.

Somali Ventures in China: Trade and Mobility in a Transnational Economy

Research on Somali mobility and migration has predominantly focused on forced migration from Somalia and diaspora communities in Western Europe and North America, neglecting other experiences and destinations. This article traces the journeys of Somali traders from East Africa to China, mapping the growth of a transnational trading economy that has offered a stable career path to a few but a chance to scrape by for many others. Understandings of migration and mobility must encompass these precarious terrains, allowing for a richer examination of how individuals have navigated war, displacement, and political and economic change by investing in transnational livelihoods, not just via ties to the West, but through the myriad connections linking African economies to the Gulf and Asia.

Ireland: Celtic Tiger

Reviews Ireland's economic development over the past hundred years and how the government turned this small island's economy around. Ireland's population had dropped from eight million in the late 19th century to three million by 1990. It was considered the poorest European Union country, known for its extreme poverty, high unemployment, and bleak economic future. Through increased linkage to Europe, Ireland became a global trading economy. Its overall success stemmed from a low tax rate, a well-educated population, and a skilled and flexible workforce. Explores all of these aspects of Ireland's “economic miracle.”

A Material Culture: Introduction

Africa’s eastern littoral borders the Indian Ocean, providing the setting for the settlements, people, and language known collectively as Swahili, which have been a key part of that ocean’s trading networks for at least two millennia. Graeco-Roman sailors visited the now-forgotten metropolis of Rhapta, and their voyages were recorded in the narratives that later became the first-century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Casson 1989). Traces of that early contact survive in the form of beads and coins, yet are limited in number and diffuse in nature (Chami and Msemwa 1997a; Horton 1990). From the seventh century onwards, a series of more permanent settlements began to monopolize this trade; by the eleventh century some of these had grown into towns that were able to control and provide a focus for the mercantile opportunities of the Indian Ocean. The trading economy of Swahili towns was based on the wealth of the African continent—gold and ivory were particularly valuable exports—and underlain by a mixed economy and diverse population of fishers and farmers, traders and craft-workers (Horton and Middleton 2000; Kusimba 2008). By the ‘golden age’ of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Swahili were an African society of considerable cosmopolitanism and fame, with towns like Kilwa Kisiwani known throughout the medieval world (Sutton 1993, 1997). Swahili archaeology is focused, conceptually and methodologically, on the series of stone towns that grew up along Africa’s eastern coast from the end of the first millennium AD. These towns developed as key nodes in both local and international networks of interaction, and became the conduits through which the African continent traded and communicated with the wider Indian Ocean world. The material settings of the towns, and particularly the distinctive tradition of coral architecture they contain, embody their cosmopolitanism, with this locally derived building tradition creating unique urban spaces that nevertheless reference the Islamic architecture of the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf (Garlake 1966). Archaeology on this coast is still relatively new, dating back only to the 1950s and 1960s, and to the pioneering work of researchers convinced they had discovered evidence for Arab trading stations on the coast of eastern Africa (Kirkman 1964).

Race, Gender, and the Making of New Netherland

On the mid-Atlantic coast between 1624 and 1664, the Dutch developed a successful and expansive colony, one that depended on particular interactions among women and men from American, European, and African backgrounds. Unlike some other colonial efforts, such as Jamestown, New Netherland had white women colonists from its inception. In contrast to Plymouth and other English settler colonies, a population of African men and women did the crucial work of establishing the colony’s initial infrastructure in its first years. What is more, a thriving cross-cultural trade between Netherlanders and Munsee, Mahican, and Mohawk residents of the region nurtured the development of the infant colony. Looking at the colony’s establishment and growth reveals that complex interactions among ethnically distinct families gave New Netherland its particular form and character. As European and African populations took root, many households engaged in the frontier trading economy, creating a web of connections reaching into multiple indigenous villages. Women and men cooperated to sustain this trade over long distances by relying on marriage and the economic unit of the household to organize production and exchange. In addition, the colonial government used these households to stake claims to the ground and to define Dutch jurisdiction, just as they recognized that residence by Indian or English households determined where Dutch power ended. Thus ethnic and gender relations shaped not only the colony’s internal hierarchies, but also its economy and its very boundaries.