Indian Ocean Trade

10 Key excerpts on "Indian Ocean Trade"

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  eBook - ePub

  Africa in Global History

  A Handbook

  • Toyin Falola, Mohammed Bashir Salau(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Oldenbourg

    (Publisher)

  Africa has always been integral to the worlds of the Indian Ocean. Although the intensity of its connections to this broader oceanic space have varied across time and chartered different social and cultural geographies as delineated by the movements of people, things, ideas, texts and even legal idioms that have travelled between coasts and interiors, Africa and Africans have been indispensable in shaping its many histories. Caravan and trade routes linked interior exchange with coastal mercantile interests and, in turn, to the broader transoceanic shipping routes that together shaped the contours of the Indian Ocean as a space of multilayered interactivity over many centuries. The African continent’s connections to and intercourse with the Indian Ocean, therefore, spanned vast distances of braided terrestrial and maritime linkages that assumed varying degrees of importance for commercial activity over short, medium, and long distances.

  Yet African connectivity to the Indian Ocean was not defined only by the economic realm or mercantile interests, as important as these were to the establishment and maintenance of relationships between different parts of the continent and the further reaches of the ocean. Rather, the ties that bound Africa to the Indian Ocean world were various and involved a variety of actors, from the botanical and food exchanges that brought bananas, yams, and other comestible items to the continent; and the Arab and Muslim travelers in the ninth and tenth centuries who sailed from southern Arabia to Mogadishu, Kilwa, and elsewhere; to the musical influences that have spread from the continent to offshore islands such as the Comoros and Reunion and are maintained by particular diasporic formations; as well as African sailors who laboured on coastal and transoceanic vessels as they chartered maritime itineraries of varying length and complexity. These wide-ranging experiences and movements reflect the myriad ways in which Africans both engaged with and shaped the historical currents of the Indian Ocean, creating vital sinews of connection that were constitutive of the ocean’s mutable social geographies.

  This chapter describes key aspects of the historical relationship between Africa and the broader Indian Ocean world over two millennia of complex and multilayered commercial, social, religious and cultural intercourse. While it will identify the processes that structured the far-flung interactions between Africans and the furthest reaches of the ocean, its focus of necessity will be on the western Indian Ocean where these interactions were most pronounced and enduring, and where Africans established dynamic and sophisticated connections with the Red Sea, the Gulf, and South Asia, forging wide-ranging connections with the worlds around them and helping to shape them in fundamental ways.

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  The Indian Ocean Trade in Antiquity

  Political, Cultural and Economic Impacts

  • Matthew Adam Cobb(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 Introduction

  The Indian Ocean in Antiquity and global history

  Matthew Adam Cobb

  Introduction

  Through a series of contributions from ten scholars, this book examines the impact of the Indian Ocean Trade on various societies in the age of Antiquity – delimited in this volume from 300 BCE to 700 CE . This includes an analysis of the development of networks of exchange, nodal points and cross-cultural interactions, as well as an investigation of the wider political, cultural and economic effects of the consequent movement of goods, peoples and ideas. Emerging from a research panel held at Dublin 22–25 June 2016, this book aims to facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges among scholars working in a range of fields (Classics, South Asian Studies, Near Eastern Studies) and who utilise various methodological approaches (textual and historical analysis, archaeology, art history, among others). The desired outcome of this collaboration is for these essays to provide fresh perspectives for scholars interested in the Indian Ocean, but who are used to working in the traditional silos of their discipline.1 In order to more fully appreciate the various interconnections of the Indian Ocean in Antiquity, and its wider cultural impacts, researchers must be willing to work collaboratively. Even the most industrious polymath could not hope to master every conceivable field of study or every item of evidence that might be applicable.

  We feel that this book is timely in light of the increasing volume of new archaeological and written evidence that is being unearthed at various international sites. In south-western India, ongoing excavations at Pattanam (probably ancient Muziris) have revealed a whole range of material showing trade links with regions such as the Mediterranean, western Asia and China.2 In East Africa, the site of ancient Adulis has been subject to recent Eritro-British and Eritro-Italian excavations, while a range relevant of material has also be discovered in recent decades at the southern Arabian sites of Qana’ or Qāni (near modern Bir ‘Alī, Yemen) and Sumhuram (modern Khor Rori, Oman).3

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  Indian Ocean Histories

  The Many Worlds of Michael Naylor Pearson

  • Rila Mukherjee, Radhika Seshan(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge India

    (Publisher)

  The era of the Medieval Warm Period (as it was labelled in northwest Europe) is known to have brought a warm and humid climate to most regions of the world from 900 to 1250 CE. It therefore brought ample harvests and growing population to the Indian Ocean region. From 1250, temperatures stabilised and then declined from 1350 for some four hundred years before beginning to rise. During the period to 1500, the Indian Ocean region experienced relative peace and prosperity.

  Within the confines of the Indian Ocean, the ancient commercial system continued to mature. Ships from three traditions crossed the seas, trans-shipped goods in harbours and underwent repair in home ports and distant workshops. The dhows of the Western and Eastern Indian Ocean, the proas of the Malay mariners and the junks from China, each type built at varying scales, maintained their original designs yet adopted innovations from each other. The principal ports changed, over the centuries, though the regions served by shifting ports changed little. An overlapping set of languages was employed in commerce, varying across the regions and over time.

  Regions, ethnicities and religions served as markers of culture and identity: the ancient settlement of the region meant that there was deep cultural diversity in the Indian Ocean region, but it also meant that devices had been developed for exchange and communication across the persistent cultural divides (Pearson 1994).2 In the era from 1200 to 1500, migrations were relatively small scale and took the form of trade diasporas or missionary diasporas. Trade diasporas included those of Armenian and Gujarati merchants; religious diasporas included those of Islamic missionaries to East Africa and the Malay lands and Buddhist missionaries from Ceylon to Thailand and Burma.

  Commerce of the Indian Ocean extended in various directions beyond the limits of the tropical semicircle. From the Western Indian Ocean, exchange had long taken place along the East African coast; with the Mediterranean, through the Red Sea; with West Asia, through the Persian Gulf and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley; and with Central Asia, through the Khyber Pass. From the Eastern Indian Ocean, the valleys of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Irrawaddy led to southwest China, while the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Sunda led to the Spice Islands and the South China Sea (Pearson 2010b).3

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  On the Economic Encounter Between Asia and Europe, 1500-1800

  • Om Prakash(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  II India in the Indian Ocean Trading Network on the Eve of the Europeans' Arrival in the Asian Seas DOI: 10.4324/9781003420750-2

  Among the historic consequences of the discovery by the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century of the all-water route to the East Indies via the Cape of Good Hope was the overcoming of the transport technology barrier to the growth of trade between Asia and Europe. The volume of this trade was no longer subject to the capacity constraint imposed by the availability of pack animals and river boats in the Middle East. Also, it was only after the discovery of the Cape route that the procurement of Asian goods as well as their transportation to Europe was organised by the Europeans themselves, who had travelled to the East in any number for the first time. What kind of trading network did the Portuguese find in operation on their arrival in the Indian Ocean? This paper analyses the central elements of this network from the vantage point of India, which was at the centre of the Portuguese - and later of the other Europeans’ trading activities in Asia,

  An analysis of the structure and the mechanics of the early modem Indian Ocean Trade, alternatively referred to as Asian trade, ought perhaps to start with a recognition of the simple fact that this trade transgressed the boundaries of both the Indian Ocean as well as those of Asia. While in the east, it intruded prominently into the South China Sea, in the west, it embraced maritime trade with East Africa. Traditionally, the great arc of Asian trade included the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea in the northwest. The principal natural divisions of this huge area were the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. Within each of these zones, there were important blocks of ports across which a large amount of trade had traditionally been carried on. The western or the Arabian Sea zone included ports in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, those on the East African coast and on the west coast of India. The Bay of Bengal network included ports in Sri Lanka, the Coromandel coast, Bengal, Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Acheh in Sumatra. Ports such as Canton and Zaiton in the South China Sea had extensive contacts both with the Indonesian ports as well as with ports in the straits of Malacca. Within each of these zones, there were also clearly identifiable sub-zones. To take an example, in the west, the ports of Aden, Hormuz, Cambay and Calicut formed one such sub-zone, while those of Kilwa, Mogadishu, Aden and Jiddah constituted another. Needless to emphasise, in terms of the ability of different constituents of a given zone to put important tradeable goods on the market, for which there was adequate demand elsewhere in the zone, there was a very definitive basis for trade within each of the zones. Such a basis also existed to an important degree across zones leading to the creation of significant long-distance trade flows in the Indian Ocean and beyond. By far the longest distance was covered by the route that connected Aden to Canton traversing a very large part of the total area covered by the great arc of Asian trade. There is evidence to suggest that this route was in regular use at least from the 7th century on. The principal group which had initiated trade on the route was the Persian merchants who had, however, been supplanted by and large by Arab merchants since about the 9th century on. The principal stops on the way were either Cambay or Calicut on the Indian west coast and a port such as Palembang in Sumatra. It would seem that sometime during the 12th century, Chinese junks also began operating on this route. There is evidence that the Chinese merchants established commercial contacts with places such as Sri Lanka, Quilon on the Malabar coast and with Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. The Chinese participation in trade on this route would appear to have reached important levels by the early years of the 15th

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  Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World

  • Serena Autiero, Matthew Adam Cobb(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Ancient West and East 7: 67–79.
• Shahar , Yuval. 2004: Josephus Geographicus: The Classical Context of Geography in Josephus . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
• Sidebotham , Steven. E. 1986: Roman Economic Policy in the Erythra Thalassa: 30 BC–AD 217 . Brill.
• Sidebotham , Steven. E. 2011: Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route . Oakland: University of California Press.
• Sidebotham, Steven. E. and Iwona Zych. 2012: ‘Results of fieldwork at Berenike: a Ptolemaic Roman port on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, 2008–2010’, Topoi Supplement 11: 133–157.
• Singer , Caroline. 2007: ‘The Incense Kingdoms of Yemen: An Outline History of the South Arabian Incense Trade’, in Peacock and Williams 2007: 25–57.
• Sommer , Michael. 2015: ‘OIKOYMENH. Longue durée perspectives on ancient Mediterranean “globality”’, in Pitts and Versluys 2015b: 175–197.
• Tomber , Roberta. 2013: ‘Hadrian and Egypt: Exchange and Embassies in 2nd – Century AD Trade with the East,’ in Opper 2013: 112–119.
• Versluys , Miguel. J. 2014: ‘Understanding objects in motion. An archaeological dialogue on Romanization’, Archaeological Dialogues 21(1): 1–20.
• Warmington , Herbert. E. 1928: The Commerce Between the Roman Empire and India . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wheeler , Mortimer. 1955: Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers . London: Penguin Books.
• Wilson, Andrew and Bowman, Alan. 2017: ‘Introduction’, in Wilson and Bowman 2017: 1–26.
• Wilson , Andrew and Alan Bowman (eds.), 2017: Trade, Commerce and the State in the Roman World . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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8 Mediterranean goods in an Indian context

The use of transcultural theory for the study of the ancient Indian Ocean world *

Matthew A. Cobb

DOI: 10.4324/9781003096269-12

Introduction

The recent growth of interest in trade and interconnectivity across the ancient Afro-Eurasian world (c . 300 BCE – 700 CE) has been spurred on by a number of factors. One of these is evidential: new archaeological discoveries have been made at a range of sites across the globe, while more epigraphic, papyrological and numismatic studies have also been undertaken.1 A second major factor is the development of scholarly interest in global history and the history of globalization, which are both concerned with how things, people and ideas circulated, as well as how individuals and groups within different societies responded to these movements and exchanges (including socio-economic, political and cultural responses).2