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Synopsis In The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500-1650 Sanjay Subrahmanyam explores the relationship between long-distance trade and the economic and political structure of southern Indian in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He questions the more traditional views that external demand was the force behind pre-colonial Indian economic growth or that external trade was insignificant in quantitative and qualitative terms compared with the vastness of the internal economy. Instead, Dr Subrahmanyam authoritatively demonstrates the interaction between south Indian developments and larger international processes within certain economic institutions-most notably the network of marketing villages, great coastal emporia and operations of revenue farmers and portfolio capitalists.This book is based on extensive and previously unused Portuguese and Dutch archival sources. Its secondary theme is to explore the relationship between the documentation used and the context within which it was generated, thus illuminating how Europeans and Asians reacted to one another.The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500-1650 makes an important contribution to pre-colonial economic history of India as well as to the understanding of the social and political processes of the period. It will be widely read by students and specialists of economic history and South Asian studies.