Intersections: Peoples, ports and trade in seventeenth-century Surat and Madras

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Radhika Seshan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
North India ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World

The article discusses the ways in which, in the seventeenth century, as India drew the attention of more Europeans, both as private traders and as part of larger east India companies, networks of contacts were established. Two ports in particular, Surat and Madras (now Chennai), became points of intersection of Europeans and Asians, through the multi-pronged trade networks that linked these two ports to other ports in the Indian Ocean world, through traders from across regions. Focus is on the English in particular, as their main port of trade for Mughal North India was Surat, and Madras, their first fortified establishment on the coast of India.

Sufi Cosmopolitanism in the Seventeenth-century Indian Ocean: Sharīʿa, Lineage and Royal Power in Southeast Asia and the Maldives

2018 ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
A. C. S. Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
State Building ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Right ◽  
Indian Ocean World

Peacock’s chapter examines the circulation of Seventeenth-century Sufi scholars to the ‘contested peripheries’ of the Indian Ocean. He argues that notable Muslim Sufi shaykhs did not travel to maritime kingdoms such as Banten, Aceh, and the Maldives to learn from locals, but rather to propagate ‘shariʿa-minded piety’ focused on ‘commanding the right and forbidding the wrong’. Peacock describes how the ambitions of religious scholars like the Syrian Qādirī preacher Muḥammad Shams al-Dīn intersected with early modern state-building in the Indian Ocean world. This chapter chronicles how Shams al-Dīn not only gained great political influence in Aceh, but was even made the actual ruler of the Maldives after his followers overthrew the sultan there. Peacock concludes that the cosmopolitanism of Sufi itinerants relied less on the fusion of pre-Islamic and Islamic practices than on universalist agendas of social transformation founded upon prophetic Sunna and enacted through the mechanisms of political coercion.

English Private Trade on the West Coast of India, c. 1680–c. 1740

Itinerario ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Davies
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
East India Company ◽  
The West ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
West Coast Of India ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Indian Ocean World

This article explores the private trade networks of English East India Company merchants on the west coast of India during the first half of the eighteenth century. Existing studies of English private trade in the Indian Ocean have almost exclusively focused on India's eastern seaboard, the Coromandel Coast and the Bay of Bengal regions. This article argues that looking at private trade from the perspective of the western Indian Ocean provides a different picture of this important branch of European trade. It uses EIC records and merchants' private papers to argue against recent metropolitan-centred approaches to English private trade, instead emphasising the importance of more localised political and economic contexts, within the Indian Ocean world, for shaping the conduct and success of this commerce.

Islam and the Indian Ocean: Legal Culture and Economic Life to c. 1900

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fahad Ahmad Bishara
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
World History ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Economic Constitution ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
A Site

For historians of the Indian Ocean, the stakes in thinking about law and economic life are very high. As a key arena of world history, the Indian Ocean world has emerged as a site for reflecting on issues of connectivity and circulation, and for writing histories that cover broad spans of space and time. Many of these histories—and indeed, the pioneering works in the field—have focused on matters of trade and empire, the twin pillars of world history more broadly. Since around 2000, research has taken on different forms of migration as well as matters of ideology, culture, epidemiology, and more, but many of these discussions are still built on foundations of trade and empire: people, books, ideas, and diseases primarily circulate through networks forged via trade or through imperial channels. All of it, however, requires a rigorous engagement with questions of law, which undergirded production and trade in the region. The history of law and economic life in the Indian Ocean might be mapped onto three arenas. First, law played an important role in the politico-economic constitution of empires (Muslim or otherwise) in the Indian Ocean. Beyond that, though, one must consider the legal dynamics of trade networks within this world of empires, examining the intersecting private-order and public mechanisms that merchants drew on to regulate their commercial affairs. And finally, the histories of law, empire, and economic life all intersected in courtrooms around the Indian Ocean world, as economic actors took their disputes to different tribunals, shaping the contours of the legal history of the region.

Cosmopolitanism and Imagination in Nayaka South India

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jos Gommans
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
South India ◽  
Cotton Textile ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Johan Huizinga ◽  
Indian Ocean World

Abstract Questions arising from the so-called Brooklyn kalamkari, a seven-panel, hand-painted cotton textile, have confronted art historians for decades: what do we see, who produced it for whom, what does it mean? With royal court scenes from all over the Indian Ocean world, the Brooklyn kalamkari represents a uniquely cosmopolitan worldview from early-seventeenth-century South India. In this essay I discuss the makings of this particular worldview in the context of early modern processes of globalization and state-formation. By engaging with the work of Indologists Johan Huizinga, Jan Heesterman, and David Shulman on Indian kingship and theater, I then attempt to decode the local and the global, as well as the seen and unseen, meaning of this textile.

Toward a Global Network Revolution: Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages and Tribute-Trade Relations between China and the Indian Ocean World

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-49
Author(s):  
Zhongping Chen
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The West ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World

Using newly developed concepts of network theory, this paper tries to advance the theoretical analysis of Zheng He’s seven epic voyages across the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433, and to resolve some long-debated key issues on the subject. It also attempts to reveal how Zheng He helped change Sino-foreign relations in the early fifteenth century by developing tribute-trade networks overseas, and thereby influenced the history of China, the Indian Ocean region, and globalization in general. An examination of the primary sources from the network perspective indicates that the development of tribute-trade relations overseas made up the primary purpose, major activities and enduring historical legacies of Zheng He’s voyages. Zheng He initiated the construction of overseas bases for navigation and trade, and thus greatly promoted the institutionalization and expansion of tribute-trade relations between China and the Indian Ocean world. Both the tribute and trade networks contracted after Zheng He’s voyages ended because of their failure to diversify beyond state-monopolized diplomacy and trade. But their development in the early fifteenth century and their continuity thereafter brought China and Indian Ocean countries into unprecedented interactions. The dual networks also provided a foundation for the European “geographic discoveries” in the Indian Ocean later on, for the early contact between China and the West and ultimately for the globalization of the modern world. Therefore, a network analysis of Zheng He’s voyages and the subsequent tribute-trade relations between China and the Indian Ocean world can refine the current theoretical paradigms and narrative frameworks of world history, which are still centered on the rise and expansion of modern Europe and the West. It also reveals how such non-Western historical movements and premodern tribute-trade relations exerted influence on a global network revolution, which linked the old and new worlds through an unprecedented level of relational institutionalization, expansion, diversification and interactions between varied network members in global history.

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