Exchange Networks in Indian Ocean_Final Paper

Anna Katalin AklanMediterranean and MediterraneanismsProfessor: Tijana KrsticFall 2011/2012January 6, 2012Final Paper

Commercial exchange networks in the Northwestern Indian Ocean from the 4th millennium

BC to the 13th century AD

(A case study in thalassology)

Theoretical background

“Historians of the Indian Ocean, despite their divergent opinions and debates, are largely

inspired by the seminal researches of Fernand Braudel, who, in the context of the

Mediterranean region, emphasized the unity between the land and the sea.”1

Indian Ocean studies have been experiencing a revival in the past two decades. An exhaustive

list of relatively recent publications can be found in Markus Vink’s article “Indian Ocean and

new thalassology.”2 As the title of the article suggests, Vink elaborates on the concept of

thalassology, first propounded by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell3 in the June 2006

American Historical Review Forum on ‘Oceans of History’, which issue covered the

Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pacific regions, but regrettably omitted the Indian Ocean

Basin. Vink, in his detailed study, fills in this lacuna, and admits that Indian Ocean studies are

less known in the scholarly world than the other three areas, despite the fact that there are

centers and institutions devoted to Indian Ocean studies in India, in Mauritius, in Australia, in

Germany, and in Canada, which regularly hold conferences.

Indian Ocean studies gained an impetus in the 1980s from a blend of Braudelian

“Mediterraneism” with its emphasis on geo-historical concepts, and the French ‘Annales’

school, together with Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems approach. Three historians of the

Indian Ocean area provided influential works that determined subsequent historiography:

1 Chakravarti, 1998, 1002 Vink3 Horden and Purcell, 2006

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Kirti N. Chaudhuri, Michael Pearson and Kenneth McPherson4. All three scholars approach

the Indian Ocean in truly and consciously Braudelian terms, regarding the area an analytical

unit. The unity of the region is analyzed variously, but natural geography of the littoral,

climate, long-distance trade and travel (both means of travel and travelling people)

represented cohesion, which facilitated an exchange of goods, people, religions and ideas.

Despite these factors, all three historians agree that the vast area of the Indian Ocean can be

divided into several sub-categories (“sub-Mediterraneans”, as the mediterraneanist term has

been used to denote sub-regions of the Indian Ocean), which all have their distinctive

characteristics – in this respect, the Indian Ocean is just as fragmented as its Mediterranean

sister.

One of the main criticisms of the ‘new thalassology’ paradigm applied to the Indian Ocean

was put forward by Niels Steensgaard5, who pointed at the lack of interdependence between

regional economies, which characterizes the Mediterranean, even according to Horden and

Purcell. In the case of the Indian Ocean, the driving force of long-distance trade was luxury

items instead of bulk trade of necessities – thus the traditional historiographical

conceptualization of long-distance trade in the Indian Ocean Basin.

In my opinion, the question of long-distance trade has to be re-considered as it offers such a

riddle that has not been efficiently addressed in historiography. Why would people risk so

much at so long distances for dispensable items for such a long period of time, persistent

through centuries?

Three answers present themselves. First, it was not only luxury trade on the Indian Ocean, but

the amount of bulk trade of necessities is underplayed. Himanshu Prabha Ray6 emphasizes

this: “This argument [of luxury trade], however, does not take into account the uncertainties

of agricultural production in the ancient period and the fact that while agricultural output

varies annually, the demand for food does not. Thus the hazardous nature of early farming

and variations in output would presuppose a sizeable flow of trade in staple products” .

Especially the coasts of the Arab peninsula and the Red Sea are inhospitable to farming, so

grain might have been imported. Oil, garum and wine were exported to India from the

Mediterranean. These food items, along with trade in raw metal or cloth, can be considered as

trade in necessities.

The second answer addresses the question of luxury items. Wallerstein, the founder of world

systems analysis himself regarded the Indian Ocean external to the European system before

4 Vink, 445 Vink 466 Ray 41.

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the coming of the Portuguese to India, based on a simplistic and inconsistent interpretation of

‘necessities’ and ‘luxuries’. “Although Wallerstein qualifies pepper as a luxury, it was clearly

a necessity for many in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from the fifteenth century

onwards.”7 I would argue that pepper became a necessity even in Roman times. The case of

pepper, one of the top products of import trade from India, exemplifies the changing

categories of ‘luxury’ and ‘necessity’, as these categories shift according to the times, places

and societies. Indian pearls were known in ancient Greece from the 5th century BC, and

pepper from the 4th century BC8. Another example is precious metal: “precious metals

imported from beyond the Indian Ocean were a vital commodity of fundamental importance

for the Indian Ocean Basin by the ninth century, where they underpinned the synchronous

operation of complex indigenous states, economies, societies and cultures.”9 Incense and

spices can be regarded ‘luxury’ items if we conceive a society as primarily self-sufficient

based on local agriculture. Even from the earliest known historical times, from the emergence

of the early civilizations of Harappa, Mesopotamia and Egypt in the 4 th millennium BC, we

have evidence of much more complex societies with well-established long-distance overland

and maritime connections. The application of incenses could be prominent mainly in rituals,

which places them into the category of ‘necessity’. The same can be said about spices, which

can become indispensable, even more so if we consider them as the main source for medicine.

One should bear in mind that chemistry and the industries connected with it were not as

advanced as we have it today, so pharmacology10, perfume industry, hygienic products were

dependent on incenses and spices. While stating this, I do not intend to question the existence

of a luxury trade of jewelry or silk, or products of fine craftsmanship as sculpture, glass

vessels or intaglios, etc., but simply attempt to indicate the permeability and vagueness of the

alleged binary opposition of ‘necessity’ and ‘luxury’. Another ramification of this argument

about the value of the trade items concerns societies involved in the trade: there is a strong

solvent demand in the importing society for these goods, which indicates the complexity and

wealth of the receiving society. On this basis, we can conclude that since the beginnings of

maritime networks, littoral and farther terminal societies in the hinterland did produce and

possess a surplus which they could offer as exchange for the products imported. This

conclusion also undermines the concept of the simple, self-sufficient, ‘primitive’ societies of

the early millennia of human history.

7 Vink 508 Ray 549 Vink 5010 Parker 150

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Furthermore, “one should not only consider the volume, but also the profits involved and the

prestige ‘invested’ in those products, as well as their effects on employment”11. To fully

unfold the implications of this statement, we need to observe the parallel of contemporary

economics: contrary to common sense expectations, some items have much higher price due

to their prestige value, such as special brand items, fashion and perfume industry products.

Contemporary economics terminology could help better understand this long-lasting and

persistent long-distance trade as it yielded such a profit that made it lucrative for the most

practical-minded businessmen from antiquity on.

Consequently, I would question the arduousness of the route. A parallel of modern-day air

travel jumps to mind: flying an aircraft can seem frightening and dangerous, but looking at the

boosting numbers of air traffic, it seems to be a reliable way of long-distance travelling. It

seems to me that a merchant crossing the Red Sea or the Arabian Desert might have felt the

same way: it is uncomfortable, even dangerous, but it was a natural way of travel and

transport12.

The scientific way to support the above arguments about long-distance trade in Antiquity

would be using statistics. Unfortunately, there are very little and random data preserved from

these times concerning economic activities between the Mediterranean and India, e.g. the bulk

of the cargo in general from antiquity, together with the numbers of ships sailing annually.

The alleged 50 million sesterces which India draws out from the Roman economy annually, as

stated by Pliny13, has been questioned on many grounds14. Neither are there sufficient data to

make statistical analysis concerning the volume of trade. “The extreme paucity of data on

commercial activities and the virtual absence of any statistical information are major

obstacles for the economic historian of early India to present the case.”15 Historians are still

limited to making assumptions based on the variously reliable sources.

Turning back to the historiographical path, Wallerstein’ world-systems analysis, which treated

the “Indian Ocean world economy”16 a single, distinct unit, external to the European system,

triggered various responses from historians of the Indian Ocean, especially regarding the late

Middle Ages and the early modern period. Some17 argued that the Afro-Eurasian economic

system had already been created due to the flow of goods and merchant networks before the

11 Vink 1012 This is even more true in a Mediterranean context in the Roman times, where ordinary citizens travelled between Egypt, Athens, Rome, Palestine naturally, for private and public matters alike. 13 Pliny. Historia Naturalis 6.101.14 Parker, 18615 Chakravarti, 1998,9816 Vink, 4817 Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills, Samuel Adshead, Janet Abu-Lughod, quoted by Vink, 49

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beginnings of the European colonization. The global historians of the ‘California School’

argued that before the 19th century, a polycentric world-system prevailed, without a single

prominent centre. Braudel and others held the view that between the 16 th and 19th centuries,

the Indian Ocean trade became incorporated into the European system as a lower component,

on the basis of a fourfold classification: economics, politics, culture, and social hierarchy18.

Muslim Indian scholars, and especially the Muslim-Nationalist ‘Aligarh school’ argues that

“an autonomous ‘Indian Ocean world-system’ or ‘Islamic world-economy’” was centered on

India, due to its “halfway-house” position between Europe and Southeast Asia. Late pre-

colonial and early colonial historians19 maintain that the Wallersteinian analysis “overlooks

the internal dynamism” of the area, while washing away the distinctive and unique features of

the region.

As is clear from the above synopsis, the most recent historiographical debates are focusing on

the Medieval and Early Modern periods, the time after 1500 AD. Regarding the period of

Hellenism and Late Antiquity, historians seem to stay out of the discourse. Roberta Tomber,

Steven E. Sidebotham, Himanshu Prabha Ray and other specialists in Late Antique maritime

history and archaeology of the Indian Ocean Basin seem to avoid direct engagement in the

ongoing theoretical discourse. Their works concentrate rather on data and palpable results

than on abstract constructions of systems. Mediterraneism and new thalassology terminology

and conceptualization seem to be missing even from their most recent works. These historians

work in the field: they provide the basic data on which theoretization can be built.

The reason why I included the above synthesis of the discourse concerning Medieval history

of the area is that the categories of the debate could well be applied to Late Antique history, as

well. I would agree with the scholars who maintain the connection of the Afro-Eurasian

ecumene. Although separate and distinct networks did exist, such as the Mediterranean, the

Indian Ocean Basin, the Silk Route area, the Amber Route area, etc., which all had their sub-

networks, all these networks were connected to form a single unit, and had overlapping areas

(such as the Arab Peninsula, which belonged both to the Mediterranean network and to the

Indian Ocean one). From the beginnings of the three ancient civilizations up to the 19 th

century, new and new areas became involved in the networks, and the intensity of connections

between the separate areas were changing. The development and the gradual formation of the

bigger unit, i.e. how the smaller networks became connected and started to be organized in

larger systems, deserves research, historical analysis and conceptualization. Although this

18 Vink, 5019 Vink, 51

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seems to be an even more ambitious project than Horden and Purcell’s Mediterranean, results

from the studies of trade connections point to this direction.

The geography and toponymy of the Indian Ocean Basin

The body of water which is today called Indian Ocean, stretches from the coasts of the

Arabian Peninsula and East Africa in the West to Indochina, the Sunda Islands and Australia

in the East, and from the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent in the North to the

Southern Ocean in the South. The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic

divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface.20

It includes the Andaman Sea, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Flores Sea, Great Australian Bight,

Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Java Sea, Mozambique Channel, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Savu

Sea, Strait of Malacca, Timor Sea, and other tributary water bodies.21

Taking all this into consideration, historians again are talking about an immensely vast

territory on Earth. The processing and understanding of its history requires the work of many

specialists of African, Southeast Asian, South Asian, and Australian history, together with

scholars of the Arabian Peninsula both before and after the rise of Islam. Although the

research seems rewarding, an extraordinarily large material and feel for analysis and synthesis

is needed to interpret the history of this large area, which, just as the Mediterranean, has its

fragmented and separate units.

The scope of my study is less ambitious: the focus is on the trade between the Mediterranean

and India in the beginning centuries of Christianity, from the 1st to 6th centuries AD, with an

outlook to preceding and the following periods, but not later than the 13 th century AD. This

trade involved three major bodies of water: the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Arabian

Sea.

The main Greek literary source for the study of the trade between the Mediterranean and India

for the first centuries AD is the Periplus Maris Erythraei by an anonymous author. He calls

the area of the present-day Red Sea and present-day Arabian Sea together Red Sea, while

calls the Persian Gulf the same name as it is called today22. Pliny, the Roman authority on the

trade with India, calls the sea mare Indicum, although the territory coincided with the Red Sea

of the Periplus author.

20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean21 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xo.html22 Casson, Periplus, 150

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Maritime Exchange Networks – A Thalassological Case Study

In the second part of the paper I attempt to re-consider the maritime trade between India and

the Mediterranean from a broader chronological perspective, arguing against the mainstream

historiographical position which claims that Roman trade with India was a novelty that started

in the 1st century AD. I intend to point out23 that it was an expansion of earlier trade routes, a

continuation of much earlier trading activities, with more or less the same items involved.

Whether the items of exchange can be labeled ‘luxury’ or ‘necessity’ lies out of the scope of

the study in this case.

As mentioned above, there is evidence for long-distance maritime trade from the time of the

three known earliest civilizations. The island called Dilmun by Sumerian sources was

identified as Bahrein in the excavations undertaken from the 1950s on. Corroborating the

written Sumerian evidence, the finds suggest that Dilmun dominated trade activity in the

Persian Gulf, which was intensive around 3300-2200BC24. The island participated in the trade

between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley civilizations. “Akkadian texts refer to a number of

commodities imported from Meluhha, generally identified with a part of the Indian

subcontinent. These included timber, copper, carnelian, gold dust, lapis lazuli and birds…”25

Furthermore, “there may have been raw materials involved in the long distance trade between

the Indus valley, the Persian Gulf, Iran and Mesopotamia.”26

With the decline of the Harappan civilization in 1750 BC these trade contacts also lost their

intensity, but archaeological data especially from the northern coast of the Arabian Peninsula

from the island of Failaka in Kuwait down to Oman and the mouth of the Gulf shows that the

densely populated coastline retained some maritime connections with the western shore of

India. It is also suggested that the navigation was coastal, which probably extended along all

coasts of the Arabian Peninsula. Thus we can speak of the first exchange network in the

Persian Gulf as early as the 4th millennium BC, which lost its vigour during the first half of

the second millennium, but retained its continuity.

23 following Ray 199424 Parker, 18125 Ray, 1226 Lahiri, 441

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In the beginning centuries of the first millennium, trade in the Gulf was reinvigorated. The

Achaemenid and Seleucid periods were also witnesses to strong and busy maritime exchange

activity. Although the legend about Scylax cannot be verified, it is an indicator of the

Achaemenids’ geographical knowledge. In the 5th century BC, Scylax of Caryanda was sent

by emperor Darius to discover the realm of the sea. Scylax travelled down the Indus river to

the Arabian sea, and from there to the Red Sea, up to its northernmost point27.

After Alexander’s Indian campaign, Greek population spread over the area, who joined in the

existing overland and maritime trading activities. “The Greeks did not develop the trade

routes, they merely tried to expand the commercial axis inherited by the Achaemenids.”28

The most authoritative work on maritime trade of the 1st century AD, the Periplus mentions

the city of Eudaimon Arabia29, or else Arabia Felix (present-day Aden) as an old port which

used to be an intermediary between Egyptian and Indian vessels, before the time of the

writing of the Periplus. This also supports the assumption that just as the Greeks before them,

neither did the Romans discover the trade with India, but only step into an existing trading

system, albeit altering and expanding it. There was a shift in the geographical location of the

trade, as the Red Sea became intensively involved in maritime commerce, even at the expense

of the importance of the Persian Gulf. One reason for this is the blocking of the Northern

overland routes by the Parthian Empire, another is the so-called ‘discovery of the monsoon

winds’. A third reason (although I have found no mention of it) can be the cost-effectiveness

of the southern, maritime route via the Red Sea, compared to the overland route crossing the

Arab Peninsula / Anatolia. The shift affected the Indian ports as well, as now Southern India

gained more prominence with sites as Muziris and Nelkynda, or Arikamedu.

27 Herodotos. Histories 4.44., Suda s.v. Scylax28 Ray, 5529 Periplus 26

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By Roman times, the main commodities of exchange were frankincense30 and spices, along

with cotton, gold, and luxury items. The main Roman export goods were wine, olive oil, and

fish sauce, garum, and coins – intended either to melt down and reuse, or use as bullion, but

definitely not at their face value of the Mediterranean economy31.

From the 3rd to 7th centuries, a southern Red Sea state, the Axumite kingdom gained

prominence, overshadowing the Graeco-Roman trade with India. After a relatively calm

period (of sources?), Cosmas Indicopleustes in the 6th century reports trade between India and

Byzantine ports32.

Concerning the acting agents in Indo-Roman trade, the picture in historiography seems to be

clear. It is Roman merchants, maybe through Egyptian middleman, who own and send ships

to India. It is admitted than Indian merchants also participated, and on inscriptional and

epigraphical basis it is known that there were Indian merchant colonies living on the southern

coast of the Red Sea33. The actual trading, navigation and travel seems more complex to me.

First of all, when we talk about “trade between India and the Mediterranean”, three seas are

involved without having a common name to address the area. Second, we are not dealing with

cargoes straight from one port in the Mediterranean to another port in the Indian coast

(certainly including an overland transportation somewhere, as the two seas were not

connected), or vice versa. As is clear from the Periplus, ships often stopped during their

course, and changed part of the cargo. Many peoples lived on the shores – it is probable that

they also took part in the interaction. Arab people are almost never mentioned as possible

participants in maritime commerce during Late Antiquity in the secondary literature. Jewish

30 Frankincense was among the top three commodities of exchange at least from the first millennium BC to about the 4th-5th centuries AD, then later revived and exported to Western Europe by the Cruseders – hence the common name: frank-incense. It is an aromatic resin obtained from trees of the genus Boswellia, whose separate species are native to the Arab Peninsula, India, Southeast Asian islands and East Africa. (I suspect that the tree originated in one place and was transplanted and spread in the others, as the distribution corresponds so well with the northern Indian Ocean exchange network area, though I have not found any speculations about that in the literature). The main producer was the Arab Peninsula in antiquity. Frankincense was widely used in religious rites in temples and at funerals as an incense. It was also used in medicine as an anti-inflammation, anti-infection, and antiseptic plant, as attested for example in Pliny and in Avicenna. Present-day researches have found that its fume has drug-like effects as antidepressant and removes anxiety. Internal consumption proved to be effective in Crohn’s disease, osteoarthritis and in vitro experiments proved effective for various forms of cancer. In ancient Egypt, frankincense was a basic ingredient to create the powder called kohl, which was the characteristic Egyptian black ‘eye-liner’. In present-day Oman, “it is used for everything from deodorant and toothpaste to food and drink flavoring.” In the light of this, I wonder whether this item was considered a ‘luxury’ or a ‘necessity’.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankincense#Traditional_medicinehttp://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/f/franki31.htmlhttp://www.planetbotanic.ca/fact_sheets/frankincense_fs2.htmhttp://www.mei.edu/SQCC/EducationalResources/TheHistoryofFrankincense.aspx31 Hall32 Chakravarti 1986, 20833 Salomon

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merchants became very significant during the period from 10-13 th century34, but when did

their involvement start? Axumite participants were active from the 3 rd century on. Greeks

heavily populated the area, to the extent that the most significant legal document concerning

Indian trade, the so-called Muziris papyrus35 was written in Greek. As Tamil-Brahmi

inscriptions attest, there were instances of Indian merchants living in Egypt, but there is no

evidence for a Roman emporium in India. Furthermore, state involvement in commerce was

limited to taxation only. On this basis, I would contest the term “Roman” trade, suggesting

“Indo-Mediterranean” trade instead.

Conventionally, the long-distance trade between the Mediterranean and India is said to

decline gradually from the 4th century, and going through a revival in the 10th century. Andre

Wink assumes that “in the centuries preceding Islam, Zoroastrian Persians or Christian

Persians had dominated commerce in the western Indian Ocean”36. He also asserts that a

Persianized Arab trading groups controlled a trade diaspora and were influential in the

expansion of Islam, and became hegemonic in the Persian Gulf commerce, competing with

Parsis and Persians living on both sides of the Arab Sea. It was in the 9 th century Abbasid

Caliphate that “the India trade became the backbone of the international economy”37. Jewish

diaspora in the caliphate became involved in this trade and grew to great prominence in and

due to this commerce. After 1055, when the Persian Gulf became blocked by the Seljuq-

Turkish interference, trade again shifted to the Red Sea. The participation of the Jewish

diaspora became dominant in the India trade until the 13th century, but when their position in

‘hinterland’ caliphate declined, their significance in India also decreased38.

Conclusion

In the paper I delineated the recent historiographical debates concerning Indian Ocean trade in

the Medieval times, and attempted to apply the concepts of thalassology and world systems

analysis to the Northwestern Indian Ocean trade prior to the 13th century, demonstrating the

continuous existence of commercial exchange networks from the 4th millennia BC to the 13th

century. These networks were in connection with the Mediterranean from at least the 15 th

century BC, when Egypt had direct trade connections with Anatolia, and acquired lapis lazuli

from the area of the present-day Afghanistan. The argument presented here, in the purported

style of ‘thalassology’, that smaller networks of trade existed from the beginnings of literacy, 34 Wink35 Casson, 199036 Wink, 35037 Wink, 35338 Wink, 366

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which very early became connected with each other, thus creating ever larger units. To

distinct but interrelated maritime networks were outlined: one in the Persian Gulf, and the

other in the Red Sea. An additional third network in our study area was coastal shipping along

the Western Indian coasts. For these three systems, the long duree constituent, the wider

geographical unit of the Northwestern Indian Ocean provided cohesion. The intensity of these

connections was changing over time, but the continuity remained. An outlook on the nature of

the commodities transported was also present, outlining an argument about the permeable

bounderies between the categories “luxury” and “necessity” item.

In this paper the focus was limited on the existence and interactions of trading networks.

Secondary material has also been selected to demonstrate this issue. Other topics of

investigation would be also exciting and challenging, such as the closer examination of the

commodities exchanged, merchants involved, an ecological approach focusing on timber as

an important resource especially for shipment, ports, navigational techniques, language, or the

intellectual “commodities” exchanged, religion being one possible topic among them. These

could supply material for further studies.

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http://www.nationmaster.com/country/xo-indian-ocean

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