3 - The Afro-Indian Pivot (I)

Summary

Chapter 3 is the first of four chapters that bring Indian (South Asian) agents and Indian structural power into the rise of the first global economy. This serves ultimately as a counterweight to the Sinocentrism of parts of the California School as well as Eurocentrism's and Eurofetishism's exclusive focus on Western hyper-agency. Critical here is the focus on Indian cotton textile (ICT) exports that wove together the FGE. They armed Indian merchant capitalists with a nascent global structural power that was vital in organising the global trading and production systems. It also discusses the Afro-Indian pivot of the FGE. The first section provincialises the Atlantic ‘triangular trading system’ by revealing the ‘global-Atlantic system’ in the context of the global silver trading system. The second section focuses on how the ICT-trading system wove together the FGE while being embedded within the global silver system. And the role of ICTs was pivotal to the African slave trade, comprising the major currency to purchase slaves. ICTs also constituted a global super-commodity chain that nurtured other global production/commodity chains. Finally, the chapter reveals the heptagonal African slave trade system that spanned the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, comprising the European, Islamic and Indian slave trades.