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Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

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Dholavira and Khetri show that empires die but networks survive. Wealth flows from geography

It is time to look at India’s economic history through the routes along which people, goods and ideas moved, and to ask how geography shaped the flow of wealth.

Even before the written records there is evidence of trade, said William Bernstein in ‘A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World’. Trade, often left out of conversations about our history, is not the linear process it is sometimes assumed to be.

Trade is broadly understood as exchange of goods, resources or services between individuals and groups, often arising from demand, and difference in availability. It is a process that includes the transformation of raw material into finished products that are then sold at the marketplace But it is not linear — it involves a network of people and communities across geographical and social boundaries.

While demand is the driving force for any business, the most neglected aspect in understanding the history of trade is geography and landscape. It is the landscape that creates possibilities. As people adapt to their ecology, possibilities transform into ways of life, cultural traits, and practices that generate patterns of movement and exchange.

This dynamic relationship between space and cultures was defined by Carl Sauer   “cultural geography” in the 1920s. For Sauer, culture was the agent, nature was the medium, and the cultural landscape was the result.

Carl Sauer described this dynamic relationship between space and cultures as  “cultural geography” in the 1920s. For Sauer, culture was the agent, nature was the medium, and the cultural landscape was the result.

Landscape shapes cultures, culture produces trade, and trade gives rise to wealth. It is this wealth that has given rise to the cities,........

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