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'ARMENIANS HAD POWERFUL TRADE CONNECTIONS'
Businessworld
March 18 2015
Jonathan Gil Harris, Author, The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories
of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans And Other Foreigners Who
Became Indian (Aleph)
by Sanjitha Rao Chaini
How did the idea of writing The First Firangis come to you?
The book is a work of history, but it is also an oblique autobiography
- told through the lives of others - about my own experience as
an immigrant to India. In the years I have been living here, my
identity has transformed a great deal: my body has been colonised and
transformed by Indian matter, be it desi food, clothes, weather,
landscapes, or germs. I had been deeply impressed by William
Dalrymple's White Mughals. But Dalrymple's White Mughals were largely
powerful men who assumed high offices within the machinery of British
colonialism. By contrast, I was interested in the lives of poor
foreign migrants from several centuries earlier who came to India
with much humbler ambitions -- to escape poverty and persecution,
and to find a better life here. I was interested in tales of foreign
migrants who were not conquerors or colonialists.
Who do you think were the most fierce businessmen among the firangis?
Few rivalled the Portuguese for fierceness and cruelty at this time:
they were looking to take possession of the lucrative spice trade
by any means necessary, and Vasco da Gama and his successors came
to India armed to the hilt. But the most successful firangi business
community in the 16th and 17th centuries were probably the Armenians,
who were invited to Mughal Hindustan by Akbar in large part because
of their powerful trade connections from Central Asia to the Levant.
You have lived in the US, and in England and now settled in India.
What are your views on the Indian society?
It's hard to generalise about Indian society. This is a land of rigid
tradition but also of constant transformation. If there's one way
in which I have experienced change in New Delhi differently from
elsewhere in the world, it is that the pace of modernisation here
is both bewilderingly fast yet also agonisingly slow. Entire new
city skylines can materialise in Noida, Gurgaon or Sonepat seemingly
overnight. Yet vital old infrastructure takes forever to be repaired
or improved. Kyaa karein? Hum toh aise hain!
http://www.businessworld.in/news/books/authors-corner/%E2%80%98armenians-had-powerful-trade-connections%E2%80%99/1776432/page-1.html
From: Baghdasarian
Businessworld
March 18 2015
Jonathan Gil Harris, Author, The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories
of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans And Other Foreigners Who
Became Indian (Aleph)
by Sanjitha Rao Chaini
How did the idea of writing The First Firangis come to you?
The book is a work of history, but it is also an oblique autobiography
- told through the lives of others - about my own experience as
an immigrant to India. In the years I have been living here, my
identity has transformed a great deal: my body has been colonised and
transformed by Indian matter, be it desi food, clothes, weather,
landscapes, or germs. I had been deeply impressed by William
Dalrymple's White Mughals. But Dalrymple's White Mughals were largely
powerful men who assumed high offices within the machinery of British
colonialism. By contrast, I was interested in the lives of poor
foreign migrants from several centuries earlier who came to India
with much humbler ambitions -- to escape poverty and persecution,
and to find a better life here. I was interested in tales of foreign
migrants who were not conquerors or colonialists.
Who do you think were the most fierce businessmen among the firangis?
Few rivalled the Portuguese for fierceness and cruelty at this time:
they were looking to take possession of the lucrative spice trade
by any means necessary, and Vasco da Gama and his successors came
to India armed to the hilt. But the most successful firangi business
community in the 16th and 17th centuries were probably the Armenians,
who were invited to Mughal Hindustan by Akbar in large part because
of their powerful trade connections from Central Asia to the Levant.
You have lived in the US, and in England and now settled in India.
What are your views on the Indian society?
It's hard to generalise about Indian society. This is a land of rigid
tradition but also of constant transformation. If there's one way
in which I have experienced change in New Delhi differently from
elsewhere in the world, it is that the pace of modernisation here
is both bewilderingly fast yet also agonisingly slow. Entire new
city skylines can materialise in Noida, Gurgaon or Sonepat seemingly
overnight. Yet vital old infrastructure takes forever to be repaired
or improved. Kyaa karein? Hum toh aise hain!
http://www.businessworld.in/news/books/authors-corner/%E2%80%98armenians-had-powerful-trade-connections%E2%80%99/1776432/page-1.html
From: Baghdasarian