The Indian Ocean World

OVERVIEW

The Atlantic and Mediterranean were important, but the Indian Ocean was the heart of the world economy in the age of expansion. By 1400 there was a vast network of trade routes that ran from Egypt to the Philippines. The sea routes across the Indian Ocean were linked to land routes around the waist of Eurasia, the famous Silk Roads. The states that controlled these routes were well-endowed with soils, minerals, and skilled artisans. These states were changing in the sixteenth century, with the Mughals and Safavids being the main expansionist powers. This is the world that Portuguese sailors entered when they rounded the horn of Africa in the 1480s. The Portuguese carved out a niche for themselves in the following century, using their skills in sailing, firearms, and long-distance networking. They sent silk, spices, and other goods back to Europe, as well as stories about their travels. But they were marginal players in a vast Asian world.

This seminar is unique. You will be assigned a ‘character’, one of the numerous historical actors active in and around the early modern Indian Ocean. You will encounter other agents and reflect on where, how and why you might have responded to and engaged with one another. To prepare, familiarise yourself with the modern map of Indian Ocean trading centres below. Try to work out what the main ports and routes were. The two other essential readings will help here.

ESSENTIAL READING

Modern Map of Trading Centres in the Indian Ocean World

Gerritsen, Anne, and Anthony McFarlane. 'Beyond Europe c. 1500.' In Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World, 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History, 4th edn. (Taylor and Francis, 2022).

Jos Gommans, ‘Continuity and Change in the Indian Ocean Basin’, in: Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (eds.), The Cambridge World History, Volume 6: The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 CE, Part 1: Foundations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 182-209.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

did early modern Europeans encounter a 'New World' in the Indian Ocean? Why/why not?
how did the Portuguese gain a foothold in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century?
'early modern Asian-European encounters had a greater impact on Europe than on Asia.' Discuss.

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RECOMMENDED READING

Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 3, pp. 81-116.

Charles H. Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 68-98.

FURTHER READING

Alberts, Tara, Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Andrade, Tonio, ‘Beyond Guns, Germs, and Steel: European Expansion and Maritime Asia, 1400-1750’, Journal of Early Modern History 14.1 (2010), 165-186.

Aslanian, Sebouh David, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).

Barendse, R.J., The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (New Delhi: Vision Books, 2002).

Blussé, Leonard, ‘Northern European Empire in Asia: The VOC’, in: Hamish Scott (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750, Volume II: Cultures and Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 227-253.

Chaudhuri, K.N., Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean World: An Economic History from the Rise of Islan to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Clulow, Adam, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

Furber, Holden, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976).

Jackson, Anna, and Amin Jaffer, Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800 (London: V&A Publications, 2004).

Lach, Donald F., and Edwin J. van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe (3 vols. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965-1993).

Laven, Mary, Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East (London: Faber and Faber, 2011).

North, Michael (ed.), Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).

Pearson, Michael (ed.), Trade, Circulation, and Flow in the Indian Ocean World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Pearson, Michael, The Indian Ocean (London and New York: Routledge, 2003).

Prakash, Om, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Schwartz, Stuart B. (ed.), Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Taking Stock of the Franks: South Asian Views of Europeans and Europe, 1500-1800’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 42.1 (2005), pp. 69-100.

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History (2^nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

Wills, John E. Jr (ed.), China and Maritime Europe, 1500-1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

On the East Indies Trade and Consumption:

A Maneschi, 'The Tercentenary of Henry Martyn’s Considerations upon the East-India Trade', Journal of the History of Economic Thought 24:2 (2002), 233-249

Berg, Maxine, ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global Trade and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 182 (2004), pp.85-142.

de Vries, Jan ‘Long-distance Trade’, in Joel Mokyr (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (Oxford and New York, 2003), vol. 3, pp. 361-5. E-book.

Brook, Timothy, Vermeer’s Hat: the Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (London, 2008), chap. 5, pp. 117-152.

Global Trade and Economy:

Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe 1300-1600 (2010)

de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (2008), chap. 1, pp. 1-39. (ebook)

de Vries, ‘Understanding Eurasian Trade in the Era of the Trading Companies’ in Maxine Berg, et.al, Goods from the East, 1600-1800. Trading Eurasia (2015), chap. 2, pp. 7-44.(ebook)

Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not. Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850 (2011), chap. 2, pp. 21-50 (ebook)

Prak (ed.), Early Modern Capitalism: Economic and Social Change in Europe 1400-1800 (2000) (ebook)

McCusker and K. Morgan (eds), The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (2000) (ebook)

Romaniello, 'Trade and the Global Economy' in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750 (2015, ebook)

J.L. van Zanden, The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution. The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000-1800 (Leiden, 2009) (ebook)

ELECTRONIC RESOURCES:

Records of the East India Company

Atlas of Mutual Heritage (on the Dutch East India Company)

Tokugawa leyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate: