In this experimental paper, I will share my hypotheses for the recently commenced study on the economic activities of several Asian business communities in eighteenth-century Melaka. In recent... Show moreIn this experimental paper, I will share my hypotheses for the recently commenced study on the economic activities of several Asian business communities in eighteenth-century Melaka. In recent years Asian merchants and entrepreneurs – e.g. Chinese, Malay, Chettiar, Gujarati, Arab, Bugi, Armenian, and Jewish traders – and their relation to the Indian Ocean World have received increasing attention from scholars. These studies show that such social groups had major stakes in both regional and global trade networks, both thanks to and despite of the presence of the colonial trade companies and imperial governments. Moreover, the persistent presence and activities of such communities showcase their capacity to navigate, utilise, or evade European colonial efforts to control and monopolise commerce – offering us an insight into how such communities dealt with and lived under (or regardless of) European colonial rule. In this paper, and my project at large, I want to take a next step by considering how the activities of such trade communities collectively helped shape and transition institutions, structures, and networks on a global scale that were previously mostly accredited to Western colonialism in an Age of Revolutions – such as capitalism, modern economic, legal and bureaucratic institutions, and forced labour regimes. Through three vignettes centred around the colonial port city of Melaka (1750-1820), I explore to what extent stories extracted from colonial archives can help reconstruct such dynamic historical processes and transitions from a more diversifying perspective – moving beyond binaries like colonial/local, occidental/oriental, and western/non-western. Show less
This paper introduces a variety of concepts and methods to examine living standards improvements in Nepal in a dynamic perspective. Using data from three rounds of Nepal Living Standards Surveys... Show moreThis paper introduces a variety of concepts and methods to examine living standards improvements in Nepal in a dynamic perspective. Using data from three rounds of Nepal Living Standards Surveys conducted in the past two decades, together with data from a nationally representative survey that was implemented in 2014 specifically to collect information on social and economic mobility, the paper presents novel statistics on the extent of inter- and intra-generational mobility in Nepal. The findings suggest that there has been appreciable upward mobility in education; that is, Nepalis today are increasingly more likely to be better educated than their parents. However, inter-generational mobility of occupations has been much more muted, with 47 percent of Nepal today remaining in the same occupation as their parents. Upward mobility is higher for younger cohorts and for individuals who move from their rural areas of birth to an urban area. There are also significant differences in mobility by social groups, with Dalits and Terai caste groups having lower upward mobility odds. Examining mobility within generations using synthetic panel techniques, the paper finds that: (a) for every two people who escape poverty, one slides back, suggesting significant churning around the poverty line; (b) a large fraction of those who have escaped poverty remain vulnerable to falling back, with an overall vulnerable population of 45 percent; and (c) the share of the middle class—defined as those with sufficiently low likelihood of falling back into poverty—has increased steadily over the past two decades, reaching 22 percent in 2010–11. However, triangulating subjective well-being data from Gallup, it appears that a majority of even those who constitute the middle class are fundamentally insecure about their economic futures. The prevalence of a large vulnerable population and a nascent, growing but struggling middle class represents a key challenge to consolidating recent gains in moving people out of poverty. Show less
