scholarly journals European Monopoly Strategies in the Early Modern Indian Ocean Spice Trade

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Adi K. Berglez
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Spice Trade

A View from Mecca: Notes on Gujarat, the Red Sea, and the Ottomans, 1517–39/923–946 H.

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
MUZAFFAR ALAM ◽  
SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Rich Source ◽  
Main Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indian Ocean World

AbstractThis article examines the history of Gujarat-Red Sea relations in the first quarter of a century after the Ottoman conquest of the Hijaz, in the light of Arabic narrative sources that have hitherto been largely neglected. While earlier historians have made use of both Ottoman and Portuguese archives in this context, we return here to the chronicles of Mecca itself, which prove to be an unexpectedly interesting and rich source on the matter. Our main interest is in the figure of Jarullah ibn Fahd and his extensive annalistic work, Nayl al-munā. A good part of our analysis will focus on the events of the 1530s, and the dealings of Sultan Bahadur Shah Gujarati's delegation to the Ottomans, headed by ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Asaf Khan. But we shall also look at the longer history of contacts, and conclude with brief remarks on the relevance of the career of the celebrated Gujarati-Hijazi intellectual, Qutb al-Din Muhammad Nahrawali. We thus hope to add another important, concrete dimension to our understanding of India's location in the early modern Indian Ocean world, as a tribute to the career and contribution of David Washbrook, our friend and colleague.

scholarly journals Globalisation and Difference: Cosmopolitanism Before the Nation-State

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhil Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Limited Perspective ◽  
The Indian Ocean

In this paper, I have tried to reflect on what cosmopolitanism might mean in a very different era of globalisation than the present. Although cosmopolitanism, as an expansive and sociable vision, is often contrasted with the geographically limited perspective and claustrophobic affinities of nationalism, the term originates in a historical period before the rise of nationalism in Europe. I argue that the residents of the civilisations around the Indian Ocean in the medieval and early modern world were cosmopolitan even by the standards of the high modernist meaning of the term. Not only did a range of people transact and translate across different languages, but they also knew how to conduct themselves in different cultural settings with people of different religious beliefs, while respecting the disparate religious, social, and cultural practices of their neighbours.

Polyglossic Malabar: Arabi-Malayalam and the Muhiyuddinmala in the age of transition (1600s–1750s)

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-539
Author(s):  
P. K. YASSER ARAFATH
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Poetic Discourse ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Malabar Coast ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
Classical Arabic

AbstractThis article examines the relations between trade, faith, and textual traditions in early modern Indian Ocean region and the birth of Arabi-Malayalam, a new system of writing which has facilitated the growth of a vernacular Islamic textual tradition in Malabar since the seventeenth century. As a transliterated scriptorial-literary tradition, Arabi-Malayalam emerged out of the polyglossic lingual sphere of the Malabar Coast, and remains as one of the important legacies of social and religious interactions in precolonial south Asia. The first part of this article examines the social, epistemic and normative reasons that led to the scriptorial birth of Arabi-Malayalam, moving beyond a handful of Malayalam writings that locate its origin in the social and economic necessities of Arab traders in the early centuries of Islam. The second part looks at the complex relationship between Muslim scribes and their vernacular audience in the aftermath of Portuguese violence and destruction of Calicut—one of the largest Indian Ocean ports before the sixteenth century. This part focuses on Qadi Muhammed bin Abdul Aziz and his Muhiyuddinmala, the first identifiable text in Arabi-Malayalam, examining how the Muhiyuddinmala represents a transition from classical Arabic theological episteme to the vernacular-popular poetic discourse which changed the pietistic behaviour of the Mappila Muslims of Malabar.

Maritime Diasporas in Asia before da Gama: An Introductory Commentary

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Clark
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Scholarship

AbstractThis preface introduces the five essays that comprise this special issue of JESHO. The author provides a synoptic overview of western scholarship on the Indian Ocean and on trade diasporas in order to situate the papers. This scholarship has only recently begun to recognize the important role of the Indian Ocean in early modern history, a change that the author traces to the work of K.N. Chaudhuri, Janet Abu-Lughod, and Philip Curtin. He concludes that the five papers in this special issue collectively mark an important step forward in the historiography of the Indian Ocean. Les cinq articles qui font partie du numéro du JESHO sont précedés d'une préface ou l'auteur donne une vue d'ensemble du travail scientifique occidental qui parle de l'océan Indien et des diasporas mercantiles. D'après l'auteur, le role capital de l'océan Indien au début de l'époque moderne commence à être mieux connu grace aux publications de K.N. Chaudhuri, de Janet Abu-Lughod et de Philip Curtin. Les cinq articles ci-compris représentent, donc, un pas en avant pour l'historiographie de l'océan Indien, selon cet auteur.

“Tremendous Damage” or “Mere Pinpricks”: The Costs of Piracy

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 463-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Actual Impact ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Cost

Abstract In the voluminous literature on historical piracy there is no convincing analysis of the actual impact of piracy on sea trade. This article attempts, in a preliminary way, such an analysis. Fragmentary data from the early modern Indian Ocean suggests that the cost of piracy was a minor imposition as compared with many other charges and dangers, some of them predictable, others not.

A Note on Portuguese Reactions to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice Trade and the Rise of Atjeh, 1540–1600

1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. R. Boxer
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
Straits Of Malacca

No reputable historian nowadays maintains that the Portuguese 16th- century thalassocracy in the Indian Ocean was always and everywhere completely effective. In particular, it is widely accepted that there was a marked if erratic revival in the Red Sea spice-trade shortly after the first Turkish occupation of Aden in 1538, though much work remains to be done on the causes and effects of this development. The Portuguese reactions to the rise of Atjeh have been studied chiefly in connection with the frequent fighting in the Straits of Malacca; and the economic side of the struggle has been less considered. The connection of Atjeh with the revival of the Red Sea spice-trade has been insufficiently stressed; though Mrs. Meilink-Roelofsz and Dr. V. Magalhaes Godinho have some relevant observations on this point in their recent and well documented works (Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago, 1500–1630, The Hague, 1962, pp. 142–46; Os Descobrimentos e a Economia Mundial, Vol. II, Lisboa, 1967, pp. 111–171). The purpose of this paper is to amplify the facts and figures which they give there, in the hope that someone with the necessary linguistic qualifications will be incited to make complementary researches in the relevant Indonesian, Arabian, or Turkish sources.

Shāh ‘Abbās, the English East India Company and the Cannoneers of Fārs

Itinerario ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Paul Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Profit Sharing ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Preliminary Step ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
European Technology

To nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship, the early modern expansion of powers like Spain, Portugal, England and Holland, was a necessary preliminary step towards Europe's ultimate domination of the Asian and African continents. Moreover, the relative ease with which colonial powers manhandled regions like North Africa and the Indo-Pak subcontinent suggested that their early modern ‘pioneering’ counterparts must have shared similar experiences. While some historians highlighted superior business concepts (joint-stock companies, profit-sharing) or superior shipbuilding and navigation techniques as the means with which trading powers like the Estado da India and the English East India Company penetrated and overwhelmed Indian Ocean commerce, other scholars boiled it down to the European affinity for using ‘men-of-war, gun, and shot’. The critical underlying assumption of any of these teleological explanations s i that ‘encountered’ cultures were unable to adequately respond to European technology, of course hinting at some deeper and more profound deficiency. Scholarship in recent decades has shorn such confidence and begun to scrutinise this seedling period of interaction between Europe and non-Europe, suggesting that the initial playing ground between ‘encounterer’ and ‘encountered’ was perhaps more level than previously portrayed.

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