Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier / Edition 1

by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Overview

Most histories of nineteenth-century Afghanistan argue that the country remained immune to the colonialism emanating from British India because, militarily, Afghan defenders were successful in keeping out British imperial invaders. However, despite these military victories, colonial influences still made their way into Afghanistan. Looking closely at commerce in and between Kabul, Peshawar, and Qandahar, this book reveals how local Afghan nomads and Indian bankers responded to state policies on trade. British colonial political emphasis on Kabul had significant commercial consequences both for the city itself and for the cities it displaced to become the capital of the emerging Afghan state. Focused on routing between three key markets, Connecting Histories in Afghanistan challenges the overtly political tone and Orientalist bias that characterize classic colonialism and much contemporary discussion of Afghanistan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804774116
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	02/11/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Shah Mahmoud Hanifi is Associate Professor of History at James Madison University.

Read an Excerpt

Connecting Histories in AFGHANISTAN

Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier

---

By Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2008 Columbia University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7411-6

---

Chapter One

Financing the Kabul Produce

* * *

The Primary Commodities and Their Main trajectories

Babur spent the years between 1504 and 1520 living in and campaigning around Kabul before proceeding to India and founding the Mughal empire. Babur's reputation was established during the years he was based in Kabul, and the city's reputation grew as a result of his time there. Babur's love for Kabul was expressed in a number of ways including his burial in a garden complex of his own construction overlooking the city. Furthermore, Babur was a voracious consumer of wine, and his passion for Kabul can be explained by the abundance and quality of grapes grown in the city's vicinity. Babur opines "Kabul wine is intoxicating" then offers readers this couplet:

Only the drinker knows the pleasure of wine. What enjoyment can the sober have? Wine drinking seems to have favorably colored Babur's view of Kabul, and his description of the city is often couched in that context. For example, the Bala Hissar fortress complex is a very prominent feature of Kabul, and Babur invoked the consumption of wine to describe this structure. Having described the northern side of the citadel as being well ventilated, he then quotes an earlier description of the Bala Hissar written by a Mullah Muhammad Talib Muammai:

Drink wine in Kabul citadel, send round the cup again and again, for there is both mountain and water, both city and countryside.

This wording alludes to Kabul as a fertile and productive setting. Babur clearly articulates such a view by deploying imagery of his own to describe the mountain slopes surrounding the Kabul valley as irrigated orchards. He mentions an area at the end of one irrigation canal known as Gulkana, "a secluded, cozy spot ... (where) much debauchery is indulged in" and offers this parody of Hafiz he heard there:

How happy that time when, unbridled and unconstrained, We spend a few days in Gulkana with persons of ill repute. Written nearly five hundred years ago, Babur's description of Kabul and its dependencies is peppered with references to heavy wine-drinking bouts set in lush and bountiful venues. The grapes used to make wine receive a good deal of attention in the Kabul section of Babur's memoirs. About Laghman, an important region to the east and north of Kabul, readers are told:

It also has grapes and the vines all grow over trees. (Here) Dara-i-Nur wine is famous. There are two sorts, arratashi and sawhantashi. The arratashi is yellowish, while the sawhantashi is a beautiful bright red color. The arratashi is more enjoyable, although neither is equal to its reputation. In addition to grapes, Babur mentions an array of fruits grown around Kabul. Among these are pomegranates, apricots, apples, quinces, pears, peaches, plums, and jujube. For example, while referring to the dependencies of Kabul, Babur states:

Most of these villages are located on the slopes of the mountain. There are many grapes in the orchards. There is also an abundance of all sorts of fruit. Among these villages there are none like Istalif and Istarghij.

In his Atlas of the Mughal Empire, Irfan Habib (1986) confirms Babur's portrait of Kabul as a fruit-filled region. Habib plots the production sites of apples, apricots, citron, grapes, melons, oranges, and pomegranates in his mapping of the natural resources of the Kabul suba or provincial administrative division during the Mughal period. In addition to those fruits, Habib mentions the local production of other commodities including barley, iron, lapiz lazuli, madder, rice, salt, silver, sugarcane, and wheat. However, fruit was clearly the most abundant category of agricultural produce in and around Kabul, and Babur definitely carried his taste for it to North India.

The Mughal nobility descended from Babur (ruled c. 1526–30) inherited his love for Central Asian fruit. India was accustomed to receiving dried fruits and nuts from Kabul and Central Asia. Muzaffar Alam argues that Mughal rulers after Babur exhibited a heightened concern for the security of interregional traders and the routes they plied through Kabul and Qandahar. Alam contends this was especially so in the seventeenth century when Mughal state policy of securing a steady trade with their Central Asian homeland resulted in an expanded presence in India of fresh fruits imported from Kabul, Balkh, Samarqand, and beyond. Jahangir (ruled 1605–26) is said to have enjoyed imported fresh apples, grapes, and melons, and boasted that his father Akbar (ruled 1556– 1605) also loved such fruit.

It is important to appreciate that dried and fresh fruits imported from Kabul and greater Central Asia were broadly consumed in Delhi and greater South Asia during the Mughal period. Certain fresh fruits may have been generally restricted to the elites and nobles, but other fresh and most dried fruits and nuts appear as both appealing and accessible to the popular classes of Indian consumers. Bernier, who wrote about his travels in Hindustan during the mid-seventeenth century, supports the claim of widespread consumption of Central Asian fruit in India. He describes the popularity and abundance of imported dried and fresh fruits in Hindustan generally and Delhi specifically. Regarding the former, he indicates:

Hindustan consumes an immense quantity of fresh fruit from Samarkand, Balc, Bocara, and Persia; such as melons, apples, pears and grapes, eaten at Delhi and purchased at very high price nearly the whole winter; and likewise dried fruit such as almonds, pistachio and various other small nuts, plums, apricots, and raisins, which may be procured the whole year round.

And concerning the presence and visibility of Central Asian fruits in Delhi, Bernier wrote:

... a fruit market (in Delhi) makes some show. It contains many shops which are well supplied with dry fruit from Persia, Balk, Bokara, and Samarkande; such as almonds, pistachios, and walnuts, raisins, prunes, and apricots; and in winter with excellent fresh grapes, black and white, brought from the same countries, wrapped in cotton; pears and apples of three or four sorts, and those admirable melons which last the whole winter. These (fresh) fruits are however very dear ... (b)ut nothing is considered so great a treat.

It is also important to consider the local consumption of fruit grown in Kabul and greater Central Asia. Early colonial sources provide abundant information in this regard. The first substantive published account of economic and social life in and around Kabul comes from the British mission of 1808 to the Durrani monarch Shuja. This diplomatic and research collective was led by Mountstuart Elphinstone. James Strachey served in the important post of Secretary for this Anglo-Indian delegation, and he was responsible for relating information about the prices of commodities to Elphinstone. The published text resulting from the Elphinstone-Strachey labor consortium indicates a profuse supply of fruit for local residents. Therein we find the following quote that comes from a discussion of the foods of the "common people" in Kabul:

Provisions are cheap and people derive a great luxury from the prodigious abundance of fruit. At Caubul grapes are dear when they sell for more than a farthing a pound; pomegranates are little more than a halfpenny a pound; apples sell at two hundred pounds for a rupee (two shillings and four pence); two sorts of apricots are equally cheap; and the dearer sorts are less than a halfpenny a pound; peaches are dearer but quinces and plums are as cheap; and melons are cheaper; grapes often bear scarce at any price, and the coarse sort, which is exported with so much care to India, is sometimes given to cattle. Nuts of all kinds are very cheap; and walnuts, with which the hills north of Caubul are covered, sell at two thousand for a rupee. The price of vegetables is also extremely low ...

According to this first British account, the prices of fruit and nuts harvested locally appear quite accessible for everyday consumers in pre-colonial Kabul. Next in the line of colonial officers deputed to Kabul was Alexander Burnes. Whereas Elphinstone's extensive delegation did not proceed beyond Peshawar, and it is unclear precisely how that mission collected and recorded information, Burnes passed through and stayed in Kabul a number of times, with much smaller entourages, and his published accounts reflect his own rendition of firsthand experience. Burnes describes public culture and social life as centered in fruit tree-laden gardens in and around Kabul. Images of flowers, birds, and poetry characterize his accounting of Kabul's garden culture. In marked contrast, Burnes's description of grapes is less lofty, more mundane, and results in the impression of widespread local use, perhaps even dependence, on this single fruit group.

Cabool is particularly celebrated for its fruit, which is exported in great abundance to India. Its vines are so plentiful, that the grapes are given, for three months of the year, to cattle. There are ten different kinds of these: the best grow on frame-works; for those which are allowed to creep on the ground are inferior. They are pruned in the beginning of May. The wine of Cabool has a flavour not unlike Madeira; and it cannot be doubted, that a very superior description might be produced in this country with a little care. The people of Cabool convert grape into more uses than in most other countries. They use its juice in roasting meat; and, during meals, have grape powder as a pickle. This is procured by pounding the grapes before they get ripe, after drying them. It looks like Cayenne pepper, and has a pleasant acid taste. They also dry many of them as raisins, and use much grape syrup. A pound of grapes sells for half a penny.

Burnes's appreciation for the role of grapes in the local diet of Kabul arose from his contacts with and experiences among ordinary Afghans. But Burnes also had a number of important interactions with elites generally and the Durrani ruler in Kabul, Dost Muhammad (ruled 1826–38 and 1842–63) specifically, before the first British occupation of the city. In the following passage, Burnes provides a window into the personal political histories and communal social life surrounding the production and consumption of wine in Kabul:

(T)he present chief of Cabool, with the best intentions, has put a finishing blow to the Armenian colony, by a strict prohibition of wine and spirits.... After a life by no means temperate, this chief has renounced wine, and, under the severest penalties, commands that his subjects should be equally abstemious. The Armenians and Jews of Cabool have, therefore, fled to other lands, as they had no means of support but in distilling spirits and wine. There are but three Jewish families left in Cabool, the wreck of a hundred which it could last year boast. If Dost Mohammad Khan can succeed in suppressing drunkenness by the sacrifice of a few foreign inhabitants, he is not to be blamed; since forty bottles of wine or ten of brandy might be purchased from them for a single rupee ... we shall not criticize his motive, nor comment with severity on the inconsistency of a reformed drunkard. Cabool seems to have been always famed for its revels. Writing about his journey through eastern Afghanistan in 1836, G. T. Vigne also comments on the plentiful supply of grapes in the region. Vigne's narrative addresses the intricate preparation and packaging of certain grapes for export to India, and implicitly advocates their further distribution to Europe:

I have no where seen such an abundance of fruit. Of grapes there are four or five different kinds; but I think that the husseini, a long grape which is sent to India in cotton, in flat, circular boxes is the only one that will bear competition with those of the south of Europe.

The colonial imagination conceived the export of Afghan fruit to be a profitable enterprise, and such a commercial conception of the area involved much more than a single type of grape grown in Kabul. For example, Henry Bellew outlined a wide array of fruits harvested in Qandahar. Bellew noted at least four types of apples, ten types of apricots, two types of figs, ten types of muskmelon, eight types of mulberries, two types of peaches, three types of plums, six types of pomegranates, three types of quinces, six types of watermelons, in addition to nineteen types of grapes produced in that locality alone.

As colonial knowledge about Kabul developed the British began to recognize the large amount of capital linked to fruit production in addition to the service of that commodity group as a medium of exchange in its own right. Compared to Burnes, Charles Masson had a greater amount of firsthand interaction with people in and around Kabul. Masson commented on the revenue generated by fruit trees in the royal gardens and other orchards that, either through outright confiscation or a form of sale, became a given ruler's personal and therefore the Durrani state's property. He also described an incident at Honai, on the road linking Bamian and Kabul, where armed men demanded a monetary duty that was ultimately satisfied by a payment in grapes. In his published account, Masson equates the fruit market of Kabul with the Shikarpuri quarter and claims that brokers controlled all commercial traffic passing through the city.

Durrani state Mints and Hindki Money Handlers

Fernand Braudel invokes a useful turn of phrase to convey the disorientation experienced by a local French community when first exposed to the growing global forces of money and credit during the medieval period. In typically erudite fashion he says:

This uneasiness was the beginning of the awareness of a new language. For money is a language ... it calls for and makes possible dialogues and conversations; it exists as a function of these conversations.

If money is a language, there have been many tongues spoken in Kabul, Peshawar, and Qandahar, and communities between the three cities, arguably throughout recorded history. More intriguing than the historical depth of money use in this region is the multiplicity of currencies circulating in the area at any one time. Most significant for our purposes is Braudel's attention to three different "dialects of money." These are metallic money or what we have termed state currency, paper bank notes including bills of exchange that Braudel argues to be the most important of all instruments of credit, and scriptural money that was strictly a textual or book money used for account-keeping purposes. 25 The thrust of this chapter deals with the interaction between metallic state currencies and a derivative fiscal instrument, namely credit, which is a paper product, during Anglo-Durrani state formation.

State coinage, or metallic money, precedes paper credit in conceptual terms, so it will be considered first. The Mughal period is a reasonable point of departure in this regard. Irfan Habib locates two silver rupee mints in both Kabul and Multan, one in each city built in 1595 by Akbar (ruled 1556–1605), and another set dating to the reign of Aurangzeb/Alamgir (ruled 1658–1707). During the Mughal period, Kabul served as a frontier provincial capital inside the Hindu Kush range. It was an important supply center and staging area for Mughal forays to the north. Multan's location just east of the Indus River, between the Punjab in the north and Sind to the south, gave the city a distinct commercial appeal and vibrancy. For example, Multan was a primary if not the principal wholesale market for horses imported into India through Kabul and Qandahar. Merchants from Multan were active in Iran, Central Asia, and Russia between 1600 and 1900.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Connecting Histories in AFGHANISTAN by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi Copyright © 2008 by Columbia University Press. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Figures ix

List of Tables x

Acknowledgments xi

Preface: Querying the Kabul Hypothesis xv

Part I Colonial Market Knowledge and Commercial Experimentation

Introduction: The Historical Location and Conceptual Framing of Afghanistan 3

1 Financing the Kabul Produce 35

2 Contracting Nomadic Carriage for an Aquatic Agenda 51

3 Fiscal Instability and State Revenue Reformulation during the First British Occupation 77

Part II The New Outdated Colonial Political Economy

4 Capital Concentrations and Coordinations: Peshawar Subsidies and Kabul Workshops 97

5 New State Texts and Old Commercial Flows 121

6 Mutual Evasion between Afghanistan and the Global Marketplace 153

Conclusion: Deflecting Colonial Canons and Cannons-Alternate Routes to Knowing Afghanistan 165

Appendix: Commercial Vocabulary in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan 177

Note on Sources: Abbreviations, Transliterations and Spellings 183

Notes 185

Sources and Notes for Maps and Figures 239

Bibliography 243

Index 257

Editorial Reviews

"Hanifi presents what many have erroneously thought to be a simple and straightforward story in a new light. Covering material that has been largely unexplored up to now, he ties Afghanistan's robust history into the global processes shaping the modern world. This is a highly original, innovative, and engaging work."

Benjamin D. Hopkins

"Hanifi's book provides an important contribution to our historical understanding of nineteenth century Afghanistan. There is no work that has mined the colonial archives to provide such a detailed examination of the role of trade, markets, and finance in the problematic process of Afghan state-building. Given current interest in Afghanistan, the book has topicality—and it raises important questions, particularly with regard to the intersections between the history of markets and the history of colonialism, that will be of wide interest to historians."

North Carolina State University - David Gilmartin

"A brilliant revisionist study that argues that the conventional view of Afghanistan as a model of resistance to colonial power is a myth and that in reality Afghanistan was from the outset a 'colonial construct' whose economic institutions, in particular its commercial and monetary policies, were determined by policies over which it had little or no control. Students of Afghan history will never approach it in quite the same way again."

Robert D. McChesney

"Hanifi's book provides an important contribution to our historical understanding of nineteenth century Afghanistan. There is no work that has mined the colonial archives to provide such a detailed examination of the role of trade, markets, and finance in the problematic process of Afghan state-building. Given current interest in Afghanistan, the book has topicality—and it raises important questions, particularly with regard to the intersections between the history of markets and the history of colonialism, that will be of wide interest to historians."—David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University


"Hanifi presents what many have erroneously thought to be a simple and straightforward story in a new light. Covering material that has been largely unexplored up to now, he ties Afghanistan's robust history into the global processes shaping the modern world. This is a highly original, innovative, and engaging work."—Benjamin D. Hopkins, George Washington University


"A brilliant revisionist study that argues that the conventional view of Afghanistan as a model of resistance to colonial power is a myth and that in reality Afghanistan was from the outset a 'colonial construct' whose economic institutions, in particular its commercial and monetary policies, were determined by policies over which it had little or no control. Students of Afghan history will never approach it in quite the same way again."—Robert D. McChesney, New York University

From the Publisher