Professor Om Prakash on the Georgia State campus
Professor Om Prakash, a renowned historian of India, was on the GSU campus on May 6, 2009. He delivered a lecture on ‘South Asia and the Indian Ocean in the Early Modern World Economy.’ In his lecture, Prof. Prakash outlined the major characteristics of trade and commerce in what he called the ‘Indian Ocean-South China Sea complex’ and underlined the changes in the pattern of Asian and Eurasian trade since the eighth and ninth centuries. He traced the rise of the early-modern world economy with the Europe’s simultaneous discovery of an all-water route to Asia and of the New World in the 1490s and argued that the Europeans would have been frustrated in their Asian trading enterprise had American silver and gold not flown into Europe. He explicated the role of commodities like spices, textiles, opium, and Japanese gold and silver and of the European Companies in the Indian Ocean segment of the world economy. He contested the notion that American/European gold and silver went into hoarding and in jewellery and pointed out that bullion and other European coins were converted into Mughal coins for exchange purposes and therefore there was, he emphasized, an immediate and corresponding increase in the supply of money in the economy. This did not lead to any price inflation in Mughal India because the rapid expansion in production and exchange in the economy absorbed the large flow of money in circulation. A question-answer session followed his talk in which Prof. Prakash responded to the questions and comments from the audience. The lecture was well attended by faculty, students, and some people from the South Asian community living in Atlanta.
Earlier that day in the morning, Prof. Prakash visited the History Department where he led a development seminar with the faculty and graduate students. This was an informal meeting during which a brief presentation by the speaker was followed by a lively discussion on many issues related with the European-Asian encounter in the early modern period.
This event was sponsored by the Asian Studies Center (ASC) and the Program in World History of the Department of History, GSU.
