ABSTRACT
The dadani or dadni system – a South Asian mode of organizing economic production prevalent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – derives from the Persian verb dadan (to give). The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanisms and specificities of the dadani system through comparing it with practices common in the Ottoman Empire, Iran (Persia) and most notably Europe. The North-Western European putting-out system in particular will serve as a foil to examine the peculiarities of the Indian dadani system. In the existing literature, the majority of historians deny that the dadani system was analogous to the European putting-out system. While it seems to be true that these systems are not identical, it will be argued that despite a few significant differences, the dadani system was more dynamic and sometimes closer to the putting-out system than has often been suggested.
