If you don't know much about Kasimbazar, I would not hold this against you; after all it has a population associated with only 10, 000 and lies in one of probably the most neglected corners of the state of West Bengal.
However an authoritative world atlas, A Description of the Globe, published in London in 1688 chose to feature Kasimbazar whilst ignoring Calcutta (now Kolkata and Bangalore).
It was called after its founder Kasim Khan, a Mughal official, and might have remained obscure as a small mart town if world events hadn't drawn it into various social networks.
First, it became the main trade to Agra, the Mughal centre and, thus, got from the caravan trade networks that extended into Central Asia.
Following, it found itself in the path of the transport network that carried saltpetre from Bihar towards the Bengal coast and from there to Europe; the demand for saltpetre had increased in Europe as an essential ingredient in ammunition within the wars being fought there.
French physician Francois Bernier, author of Travels within the Mughal Empire (an account of life in Aurangzeb's court), noted he was once given a bill of exchange to end up being cashed in Kasimbazar, testifying to its role as the financial centre where merchants from Gujarat, Lahore, Multan, Delhi, Agra and also the Deccan settled.
When the Maratha invasion of Bengal in the 1740s disrupted a few of these networks, the Kasimbazar merchants got involved in another social networking: of the Dutch, English, French, Danish and Belgian merchants who had by then appeared coming.
This new network was global and spanned Europe, The african continent and Asia. Kasimbazar became the hub through which saltpetre, sugars, rice, poppy and cotton cloth flowed.
Thus, the "small world" from the Kasimbazar merchants was embedded within various social networks: a good Information Network, which carried news about the expected arrival of ships and convoys and details about the reputation and creditworthiness of merchants; a Prestige Products Network, which dealt with luxury or prestige goods which could be transported over long distances for their high value-to-weight ratio; a more local Bulk Goods System, which dealt with low-value necessities like food; and the Political Military Network, which dealt with the business of creating and breaking alliances.
The story of Kasimbazar's networks is one of several networks described in a remarkable book, Networks in the very first Global Age 1400- 1800, edited by Rila Mukherjee and published through the Indian Council of Historical Research.
It contains contributions through Indian, French, Iberian and American scholars. It studies networks like the one in the Portuguese city of Porto which connected the Asian and Atlantic networks, the one in Ladakh that linked South and Central Asian markets, the social systems of Milanese merchants in Castile, and many others.
Its central assumption is that to understand the flow of historical events you have to study the networks in operation and the nature associated with connectivity among these networks.
This is a dramatic departure from earlier historical methods which may have viewed, for example, events in the "small world" Kasimbazar as deriving from its role like a small town in a larger empire, the Mughal, in order to view it as a participant in the events inside a particular period, that is, the 17th and 18th hundreds of years.
This use of the network perspective is part of the larger movement that started in France with the work of individuals such as Bruno Latour and Michael Callon and has become sweeping across many disciplines.
The actor-network theory, as it's called, holds that human beings are not to be given a privileged status on the planet being analysed but are to be seen among the actors along with other objects.
In the Kasimbazar situation, the commodities being traded there, its location on the actual Ganges, the artefacts in use such as bills associated with exchange, the transportation systems such as oxen and river boats pushed and pulled against one another in shaping the Small World of Kasimbazar and its role within the larger networks in which it was embedded.
Thus, an agenda to improve a mathematics textbook, for example, seen in the perspective of the actor-network theory would be different through conventional efforts.
A mathematics textbook can be viewed being an object embedded in a Curriculum Development Network, made upward of policy makers, teachers and subject experts; a Publishing Network comprised of writers, editors, printing machines and ink; and a Distribution Network comprised of schools, textbook committees and so on.
Attempting to produce better mathematics textbooks would necessarily involve tracing the way in which such a textbook is put together by the incentives and priorities of all these networks.
However an authoritative world atlas, A Description of the Globe, published in London in 1688 chose to feature Kasimbazar whilst ignoring Calcutta (now Kolkata and Bangalore).
It was called after its founder Kasim Khan, a Mughal official, and might have remained obscure as a small mart town if world events hadn't drawn it into various social networks.
First, it became the main trade to Agra, the Mughal centre and, thus, got from the caravan trade networks that extended into Central Asia.
Following, it found itself in the path of the transport network that carried saltpetre from Bihar towards the Bengal coast and from there to Europe; the demand for saltpetre had increased in Europe as an essential ingredient in ammunition within the wars being fought there.
French physician Francois Bernier, author of Travels within the Mughal Empire (an account of life in Aurangzeb's court), noted he was once given a bill of exchange to end up being cashed in Kasimbazar, testifying to its role as the financial centre where merchants from Gujarat, Lahore, Multan, Delhi, Agra and also the Deccan settled.
When the Maratha invasion of Bengal in the 1740s disrupted a few of these networks, the Kasimbazar merchants got involved in another social networking: of the Dutch, English, French, Danish and Belgian merchants who had by then appeared coming.
This new network was global and spanned Europe, The african continent and Asia. Kasimbazar became the hub through which saltpetre, sugars, rice, poppy and cotton cloth flowed.
Thus, the "small world" from the Kasimbazar merchants was embedded within various social networks: a good Information Network, which carried news about the expected arrival of ships and convoys and details about the reputation and creditworthiness of merchants; a Prestige Products Network, which dealt with luxury or prestige goods which could be transported over long distances for their high value-to-weight ratio; a more local Bulk Goods System, which dealt with low-value necessities like food; and the Political Military Network, which dealt with the business of creating and breaking alliances.
The story of Kasimbazar's networks is one of several networks described in a remarkable book, Networks in the very first Global Age 1400- 1800, edited by Rila Mukherjee and published through the Indian Council of Historical Research.
It contains contributions through Indian, French, Iberian and American scholars. It studies networks like the one in the Portuguese city of Porto which connected the Asian and Atlantic networks, the one in Ladakh that linked South and Central Asian markets, the social systems of Milanese merchants in Castile, and many others.
Its central assumption is that to understand the flow of historical events you have to study the networks in operation and the nature associated with connectivity among these networks.
This is a dramatic departure from earlier historical methods which may have viewed, for example, events in the "small world" Kasimbazar as deriving from its role like a small town in a larger empire, the Mughal, in order to view it as a participant in the events inside a particular period, that is, the 17th and 18th hundreds of years.
This use of the network perspective is part of the larger movement that started in France with the work of individuals such as Bruno Latour and Michael Callon and has become sweeping across many disciplines.
The actor-network theory, as it's called, holds that human beings are not to be given a privileged status on the planet being analysed but are to be seen among the actors along with other objects.
In the Kasimbazar situation, the commodities being traded there, its location on the actual Ganges, the artefacts in use such as bills associated with exchange, the transportation systems such as oxen and river boats pushed and pulled against one another in shaping the Small World of Kasimbazar and its role within the larger networks in which it was embedded.
Thus, an agenda to improve a mathematics textbook, for example, seen in the perspective of the actor-network theory would be different through conventional efforts.
A mathematics textbook can be viewed being an object embedded in a Curriculum Development Network, made upward of policy makers, teachers and subject experts; a Publishing Network comprised of writers, editors, printing machines and ink; and a Distribution Network comprised of schools, textbook committees and so on.
Attempting to produce better mathematics textbooks would necessarily involve tracing the way in which such a textbook is put together by the incentives and priorities of all these networks.
Source : Rediff