ABSTRACT
Revisionist historiography on the eighteenth century emphasizes the accelerated pace of social and economic developments in late Mughal India, introducing in the process the notion of the early modern. This category, it is argued, was not framed in chronological terms but rather seen through a conceptual frame that saw the emergence and maturation of ideas and practices that gestured to a shift in sensibility and political orientation, manifested in new ideas about political ethics, governmentality and cultural practices, including history writing. This chapter attempts to consider merchants and merchant practices and investigate the possibility of looking at them through a new set of perspectives offered by a context that saw English power become more embedded in cities. It illustrates this by looking at an individual merchant, Tarwady Arjunji Nathji of Surat, a preeminent banker who also happened to bankroll the British conquest of Hindustan.
