Trade, Boundaries and Self-Determination

Abstract

Trade and exchange carry enormous political and symbolic weight in Kashmir. Trade networks map out relational affective geographies in frontier spaces that cannot be contained by nationalist cartographies. Correspondingly, imperial, colonial, and national regimes seek to manipulate, trespass upon, and redirect the commercial flows and spatial boundaries as a means of asserting and usurping control. Following the entanglements of trade and sovereignty from the colonial period to their present-day enactments in the marketplace, this contribution explores the vital material and political legacies of trade in the movement for self-determination in Kashmir.