Book Review

Asia

A perhaps inevitable consequence of September 11, 2001, is that most Americans have come to think of high Asia as a place that is now, and always has been, inherently violent. Janet Rizvi's account of the long-distance trade that has flowed out of and through Ladakh over the centuries presents a very different and refreshing picture of life in this part of inner Asia. It may not always have been as it was in the thirteenth century, when "a young maiden, carrying a platter of gold on her head, could have traveled safely from one end of the empire to the other." But even brigands who preyed on wealthy caravans traveling through the Chang-thang of Tibet in more modern times possessed their own code of honor and religion. They preferred not to take life, and in looting a caravan they would leave enough supplies and animals to enable the robbed party to reach safety. The complex trading system, which continued until well into the twentieth century, operated on the basis of mutual trust. Most transactions, even deals made for the following year, were based on verbal agreements.

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Rizvi combines standard historical documentation with the oral method. The latter consists of interviews with eighty informants who had been active traders and who were elderly when Rizvi talked to them (1983–1994). Her original focus, "Life and Society in Ladakh in the First Half of the Twentieth Century," gave way to emphasis on Ladakh's trade, partly because in its modern form the latter had been so little studied, and partly because historically it was well documented, thus making it easier to combine the two methodologies into a coherent narrative.

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