Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh [Hardcover]

Janet Rizvi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2000

Drawing largely on oral sources, this study describes and analyzes the extraordinarily complex pattern of trade in Ladakh.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`admirable introduction ... a magisterial account ... Her in book is a brilliant synthesis of the oral histories, which she painstakingly obtained with the traditional historians concern for objectivity and real analysis. She narrates wonderful life stories about the people themselves. ... Janet Rizvi ... weaves these fascinating stories within the bedrock of historical facts to reveal the ancient trading routes of High Asia.' Hamida Khuhro, Dawn

`Dr Rizvi has written a scholar's book about the legendary silk routes and Ladakh itself that she knows so well. It is also a wonderfully evocative book about the trade routes across impossibly difficult terrains, traditional trading communities of the region; trade in silk, pashm, tea and other exotic goods that summon up visions of the courts of Timur and Haroun al Rashid. This is a satisfying book that is pleasure to read and which fills a real gap in our knowledge and makes us wonder how many gaps there still are which need to be filled.' Hamida Khuhro, Dawn

`skilfully combining scholarship with anecdote to bring alive the past social and economic life of an important crossroads of Asian trade ... Janet Rizvi has done a great service by providing this account of a lost way of life before it was too late to interview some of the participants.' Philip Andrews-Speed, Asian Affairs, Vol. XXXII, Part I, Feb 2001

`Rizvi has directed her attentions to the economic significance of the region, skilfully combining scholarship with anecdote to bring alive the past social and economic life of an important crossroads of Asian trade.' Philip Andrews-Speed, Asian Affairs, Feb 2001

`Janet Rizvi has done a great service by providing this account of a lost way of life before it was too late to interview some of the participants.' Philip Andrews-Speed, Asian Affairs, Feb 2001

`admirable introduction ... a magisterial account ... Her in book is a brilliant synthesis of the oral histories, which she painstakingly obtained with the traditional historians concern for objectivity and real analysis. She narrates wonderful life stories about the people themselves. ... Janet Rizvi ... weaves these fascinating stories within the bedrock of historical facts to reveal the ancient trading routes of High Asia.' Hamida Khuhro, Dawn

About the Author

Mason Durie is at School of Maori Studies, Massey University, New Zealand. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195648552
• ISBN-13: 978-0195648553
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,064,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intriguing account of Ladakhi trade, January 20, 2004

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VASTA (italie) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh (Hardcover)

This intriguing account of Ladakhi trade is spiced with enough personal details of the traders at all levels, to demonstrate that trade is something more than a matter of routes and commodities, prices and rates of profit; it is an activity carried out by real human beings, profoundly colouring their entire way of life.

This book documents the extraordinarily complex pattern of trade upon which the pre-Independence economy of Ladakh largely depended. At the subsistence level, food-grains grown in the valleys were exchanged with wool and salt from the high-altitude plateaux of Tibet. Ladakh was also the conduit by which the luxury fibre pashm (or cashmere) passed from Tibet's high-altitude plateaux down to Srinagar, to be worked into Kashmir's famous shawls. In addition, its capital, Leh, was the halfway stage on the route for the long-distance trade in textiles, carpets, dyestuffs and narcotics between the Punjab and eastern central Asia (Sinkiang), and also the entrepot for trade between central Asia and Lhasa.

Although the trans-Himalayan traffic in subsistence commodities in other parts of the Himalayan has been researched, that in Ladakh has until now remained almost entirely undocumented. The book is based mainly on oral evidence; this is related to documentary sources ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.