I have been working on the 12th –14th century spice trade out of India and have become increasingly dissatisfied with the scales of analysis in our region, especially treating the spice trade as part of the history of India” By now, we’re all perfectly aware of the importance of history in imaging and building the nation/state. For better or worse, the process is not that complicated. The nationalist historian looks for a kingdom in the past whose boundaries most closely fits the boundaries of the current nation/state and this kingdom becomes the cornerstone of a national history. In India, it was the Guptas. Subsequent history is reduced to a few iconic events that “explain” the present situation of the nation/state. As we all know, this process requires some spectacular elisions. Non-Aryan ancient history disappears. Untouchables, women and tribals disappear, so does the history of the South, 95% of the population that lived in villages, the 1000 years between 500 and 1500. Pick up any current teaching text on Indian history and there will be precious little on the period between 500 and 1500 and even less on the connections – intellectual, religious, military, or trade – that sprawled thousands of miles beyond India’s borders.

Typical “History of India” with its focus on kingdoms and a few iconic political and military events, provides no suitable scale of analysis for the spice trade, with its connections to Cairo, Baghdad, the Khazar kingdom, and China. The spices were grown in India but the structure and dynamics of the trade were simply not controlled or even dominated by any of the iconic kingdoms central to the history of India. This spice trade is, thus, one of the “history of India’s” smaller elisions.

It is only with the questioning of the national narrative of Indian history in the last two decades that we have some of the most exciting work both on other sorts of people wthin India’s current borders and activities beyond the current borders. Just a few examples include Carla Sinopoli’s current work on Neolitihic sites in Kranatika that have nothing to do with Aryans, Sumathi Ramaswami’s and Tom Trautmann’s respective work on languages and national imaginings, Scott Levi’s work on Multanis in Russia, Dick Eaton ‘s work on the trans-Indian Ocean slave trade, Xinru Liu’s work on the movement of culture up and down the Silk Road, Tansen Sen’s laying out of the early Buddhist trade between China and India.

I am exploring social network analysis as a theory with which to understand the Indian spice trade. At its most general social network analysis looks at how relationships, especially social pressures, around a person, group, or organization affect beliefs or behaviors. It is interested in properties of relations between, people, rather than the characteristics of individuals. Rogers, one of the founders of social network analysis characterizes a communication network as “interconnected individuals who are linked by patterned communication flows… created by the sharing of information” (1986). Social network research generally maps these relationships. The earliest research, for example, asked people in a small town who they knew and mapped the connections. In this research, hypotheses are tested on this second order data, that is, patterns extracted from maps of connections.

Social network analysis has been used to examine a variety of questions, many to do with organizations, such as how do informal information flows contrast with formal organizational structures of information. How does an attitude toward an organization emerge from informal communications by employees. There has been considerable work on pivotal people through whom much communication passes (a measure known as “betweenness”.

Let me show you a straightforward example so you recognize the process here.

This is a network analysis of the users of a shared electronic intranet. Each ball represents a user and the lines represent his or her emails to other members over a period of a week or so.

Now, here is a simple analysis of this data, known as a “between-ness” scale. It measures how much one person or a small group dominates the network. This pattern indicates that information is broadly generated and passes through a variety of people without clique control or domination. (Interestingly, this paper found the pattern of interactions quite comparable to the observed patterns of interactions of dolphins. You can see that this second-order analysis of pattern lends itself to some unexpected and unlikely comparisons. )

The social network is in use in a wide variety of fields, such a mapping the connections between characters in plays and novels. Arguably, the largest social network research is the United States government’s ongoing clandestine effort to track social networks of targeted individuals.

Even though current research in social network theory is generally presentist, based on surveys, and heavily mathematical in its analysis, there have been a few provocative historical  studies, for example  Gunnar Dahl’s book on trade in late medieval Italy.  

Let me suggest some of the attractive features of this sort of analysis for the spice trade. The unit of analysis is the actual extent of the network. It can be scaled up or down, dependent on the scale of the network under consideration. It, thus, avoids “natural” regions, instead analyzing where and when networks crossed regions and apparent boundaries. With its focus on networks rather than regions, it sidesteps the discussion whether change was “external” or “internal”. It focuses attention away from “cores” and “peripheries”. It accepts many different things – commodities, information, marriage partners, slaves, personal gifts – could move along the same network. It avoids European “exceptionalism” by accepting that some networks included Europe and others did not. In contrast to analysis of “circulation”, it accepts that actual networks may overlap, change, and decay. It does not demand that all areas move or change in a unitary manner as does world system analysis. Perhaps most importantly, it puts real people back into an Asian history, rather than only rises and falls, trends, movements, and developments.

Here’s the threadbare beginnings of a social network map of the Indian spice traders based on some printed Geniza trade correspondence. I have several hundred letters yet to mine for connections.

These details of the business/social network suggest limitations of Jews and the spice trade. I have found, so far, that all the communications go from Malabar to Aden and Cairo. This highlights what business this group was not in. Note that there are no communications to or from the African coast, nothing from Ethiopia, Kilwa, Mombassa – in spite of well-known trade coming to and from all these places. There are a few communications into Yemen but nothing involving the caravan trade to North India or into Persia. What this suggests is that there was, in fact, neither a comprehensive “Indian spice trade” nor a comprehensive “Indian Ocean trade”. Both were highly fragmented and groups used their contacts and networks to successfully compete for small niches. When bin Yiju expanded his business, he did not go into the caravan traded, even though he was an experienced spice trader.

He also did not go for vertical integration. Absolutely no movement to buy up a spice warehouse or purchase land that produced spices or advance money to growers. (in contrast to flax in Egypt where there is every evidence that traders did venture up the supply chain, buying the fiber in various states of production, from unharvested flax in the field to finished, bundled yarn).

   The partnership did not, as far as I now know, attempt to bypass Cairo to deal directly with other centers of demand for spices, such as Damascus, Constantinople, or Morocco.  

             Rather, Abraham bin Yiju developed the network that he knew. He   imported iron to sell to the metal workers in his area of Malabar and – even more interestingly – used those metal workers in recasting of broken brass utensils shipped all the way from the Mediterranean. His network for receiving these metal projects went all the way to Spain. So, he basically added another commodity to the existing network, rather than developing the commodity he was most familiar with along a separate network. 

  If there is a preliminary point here, it is that the network was the operational unit of analysis for understanding the Indian Spice Trade – not a geographic scale. And it, then allows for a structured way of comparing the patterns found to other networks. I believe that these sorts of comparison will be found no other way.

Comment greatly appreciated.