Commercial Networks Connecting Southeast Asia with the Indian Ocean

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hoogervorst
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Southeast Asian history has seen remarkable levels of mobility and durable connections with the rest of the Indian Ocean. The archaeological record points to prehistoric circulations of material culture within the region. Through the power of monsoon sailing, these small-scale circuits coalesced into larger networks by the 5th century bce. Commercial relations with Chinese, Indian, and West Asian traders brought great prosperity to a number of Southeast Asian ports, which were described as places of immense wealth. Professional shipping, facilitated by local watercraft and crews, reveals the indigenous agency behind such long-distance maritime contacts. By the second half of the first millennium ce, ships from the Indo-Malayan world could be found as far west as coastal East Africa. Arabic and Persian merchants started to play a larger role in the Indian Ocean trade by the 8th century, importing spices and aromatic tree resins from sea-oriented polities such as Srivijaya and later Majapahit. From the 15th century, many coastal settlements in Southeast Asia embraced Islam, partly motivated by commercial interests. The arrival of Portuguese, Dutch, and British ships increased the scale of Indian Ocean commerce, including in the domains of capitalist production systems, conquest, slavery, indentured labor, and eventually free trade. During the colonial period, the Indian Ocean was incorporated into a truly global economy. While cultural and intellectual links between Southeast Asia and the wider Indian Ocean have persisted in the 21st century, commercial networks have declined in importance.

scholarly journals Coral Stone Architecture, Chinese Porcelain, and Indian Ocean Artifacts along the Swahili Coast: Cross-Cultural Dynamics in Medieval East Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera-Simone Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean

While the use of Chinese porcelain dishes in the stone towns along the Swahili coast has recently found much attention in art historical scholarship regarding the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, the pre-history of these dynamics in the medieval period has up to now only been fully considered in other fields such as archaeology and anthropology. This paper sheds new light on the interrelations between the built environment and material culture in coastal East Africa from an art historical perspective, focusing on premodern Indian Ocean trajectories, the role of Chinese porcelain bowls that were immured into Swahili coral stone buildings, and on architecture across boundaries in a medieval world characterized by far-reaching transcultural entanglements and connectivity. It will show how Chinese porcelain bowls in premodern Swahili architecture linked the stone towns along the coast with other sites both inland and across the Indian Ocean and beyond, and how these dynamics were shaped by complex intersections between short-distance and long-distance-relationships and negotiations between the local and the global along the Swahili coast and beyond.

Horn of Africa and South Asia

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Object Of Study

The Horn of Africa and South Asia have shared a vibrant, multidimensional relationship since ancient times. A number of factors enabled this relationship, including: the Indian Ocean monsoons; the location of coastal northeast Africa on trade routes between India, Egypt, and the Mediterranean; and a complementarity of resources and economic needs and wants. The Indian Ocean World (IOW) has been described as the first global economy. Trade also played roles in the spread of plants, animals, and religious and other cultural beliefs and practices across the IOW. For these and other reasons, it is surprising that the IOW has only been a frame for research and an object of study in its own right for a few decades. The dual status of the Horn of Africa as a component of both the African and IOW makes it a contact zone par excellence. It also provides fertile opportunities to advance understanding of the historiography of oceans, islands, port towns, and hinterlands. Many important lessons learned from scholarly study of relations between the Horn of Africa and South Asia have wider applicability, such as the need for new ways of thinking to tackle biases apparent in area studies, and ubiquitous Eurocentrism. Recent investigations have begun to address the neglected history and agency of indigenous communities and endogenous historical processes, such as the importance of short trading journeys by multitudes of local entrepreneurs, and the diverse histories of Sidis—Indians of African descent. Sidi studies continues to shed new and valuable insights into many other matters, including slavery, diaspora, and identity. The Portuguese intensified ties between Ethiopia and India. Portuguese colonies in Goa, Daman, and Diu became bases for Portuguese relations with Ethiopia. Although the Portuguese interlude in Ethiopia was relatively short, its legacy included Indian influences on material culture, including religious painting and architecture. Small numbers of Europeans visited the interior of the Horn of Africa over the next two and a half centuries, but Indian traders mostly conducted their business from Red Sea and Indian Ocean ports. Following the opening of Anglo-Ethiopian relations in 1897, Indian merchants ventured into the interior. Indian craftsmen were also to leave their mark. Most Indians left Ethiopia during the Italian Occupation between 1935 to 1941. Postwar, Emperor Haile Selassie focused on reconstruction and reform, which included recruiting large numbers of Indian school teachers. A new generation of Indian entrepreneurs also arrived. Following partition, India–Africa relations initially focused on political solidarities. With the beginning of economic liberalization in India in 1991, economic relations were foregrounded, with India becoming a significant trade and investment partner.

The Indian Ocean World Global Economy in the Context of Human-Environment Interaction, C. 300 BCE–1750

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-66
Author(s):  
Gwyn Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World

This article explores the rise and development, from about 300 bce to c. 1750 of an Indian Ocean World 'global economy' – a long-distance system of exchange that linked East Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, South-east Asia and East Asia. Focusing on human-environment interaction, Campbell challenges spatial and temporal paradigms based on the conventional beliefs that humans alone are the catalyst of historical change, and that Europeans gained economic ascendancy in the region from the time of the 'Voyages of Discovery'.

Eastern Africa and the Early Indian Ocean: Understanding Mobility in a Globalising World

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 380-408
Author(s):  
Mark Horton ◽  
Nicole Boivin ◽  
Alison Crowther
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Specialist Groups ◽  
Globalising World

Abstract This paper situates Eastern Africa in the early maritime trade of the Indian Ocean, reviewing evidence for connections from Egypt and Red Sea, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia from prehistory to the Islamic Period. The region played a pivotal role in developing global networks, but we argue that it has become the “forgotten south” in an era of emerging empires. One reason for this is a lack of understanding of maritime mobility around the rim of the Indian Ocean, often undertaken by small scale or specialist groups, including sea nomads. These groups are characterised as marginalised and victimised during globalisation, yet dualising into categories—such as “exploiter” and “exploiting”—oversimplifies what was almost certainly in reality a complex array of roles and activities, both in the context of East Africa and elsewhere around the Indian Ocean. Through modern scientific-based excavation and analysis, we can now begin to more fully understand these interactions.

From Quanzhou to the Sulu Zone and Beyond: Questions Related to the Early Fourteenth Century

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderich Ptak
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
China Coast

Ships sailing from Fujian to Southeast Asia could choose between two different sea routes. The first route followed the China coast to central Guangdong; it then led to Hainan, the Champa coast and Pulau Condore, an island near the southern tip of Vietnam. From there it continued in three directions: to Siam, to northwestern Borneo and to the Malayan east coast. Going south to the Malayan east coast was the most direct way to Trengganu, Pahang, Pulau Tioman, Johore and modern Singapore whence it was possible to sail into the Indian Ocean or to cross over to Sumatra, Bangka Island and Java.

Kinship as Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danna Agmon
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Family Networks ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Kinship Ties ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the role of family networks, both French and Tamil, in the development of French empire in India. It charts how two Tamil dynasties drew on their kinship ties to create commercial networks that spanned the Indian Ocean, and highlights the involvement of of one local woman in the relationship between French colonists and local familial institutions.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Nurfadzilah Yahaya
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
The Indian Ocean

This introductory chapter flips the more common historical perspective that European imperialism led to new patterns of legal pluralism across empires that spawned possibilities for interpolity contact and trade, acting as catalysts for the emergence of global legal regimes. It demonstrates how British and Dutch territorial jurisdictions expressed very specific relationships between territory, authority, and forms of law, and it simultaneously puts into stark relief the preponderance of diasporic Arab merchants generating their own jurisdictions across the Indian Ocean in tandem with those of the European colonist. Not only were these Arabs attuned to legal pluralism being the operative condition of law, they were also acutely aware of jurisdictional ordering and the concentration of power across time and space. The chapter proposes a spatial repositioning of the Indian Ocean from the perspective of Southeast Asia outward toward Hadramawt, a region located in present-day Yemen from which most Arabs in Southeast Asia originated. Ultimately, it presents the result of the legislation after members of the Hadhrami diaspora attempted to bring their own regulation with them, inscribing territorial lines across the Indian Ocean through law.

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