Indian Ocean trade has been a key component in East–West
exchanges throughout history. Long-distance exchange in dhows and proas made it
a dynamic zone of interplay among peoples, cultures, and civilizations
stretching from Southeast Asia to East and Southeast Africa and East
Mediterranean inside the West in prehistoric and early ancient periods. Cities
and states on the Indian Ocean rim targeted on each the sea and the land.
There changed into an in depth maritime alternate community
running between the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilizations as early as the
center Harappan Phase (2600-1900 BCE), with a lot commerce being treated by
"middlemen traders from Dilmun" (current Bahrain and Failaka placed
in the Persian Gulf). Such lengthy-distance sea trade have become viable with
the development of plank-constructed watercraft, prepared with a unmarried
significant mast supporting a sail of woven rushes or material.[citation
needed]
Several coastal settlements like Sotkagen-dor (astride Dasht
River, north of Jiwani), Sokhta Koh (astride Shadi River, north of Pasni), and
Balakot (near Sonmiani) in Pakistan along with Lothal in western India, testify
to their position as Harappan trading outposts. Shallow harbours positioned at
the estuaries of rivers commencing into the ocean allowed brisk maritime alternate
with Mesopotamian towns.
Recent archaeological study has highlighted the growing
corpus of evidence supporting direct maritime contacts among bronze age Egypt
and India thru The Red Sea. Scholars including Gregory Possehl have
additionally proposed maritime sports among Indus Valley Civilization and East
Africa. The maritime interest in the japanese Indian ocean trade community had
prolonged to consist of Japan as early as early Yayoi length (third century
BCE) as evidenced with the aid of the invention of Indo-Pacific beads.
The maritime trade network inside the Indian Ocean become
run via the Austronesian peoples of Maritime Southeast Asia. They installed
exchange routes with South India and Sri Lanka, ushering an trade of fabric way
of life (like catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed-lug and sewn-plank boats, and
paan) and cultigens (like coconuts, sandalwood, bananas, and sugarcane); as
well as connecting the fabric cultures of India and China. Indonesians,
specially were trading in spices (specifically cinnamon and cassia) with East
Africa using catamaran and outrigger boats and crusing with the help of the
Westerlies inside the Indian Ocean. This exchange community accelerated to
reach as some distance as Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, resulting in the
Austronesian colonization of Madagascar with the aid of the first half of of
the primary millennium AD. It endured as much as ancient instances, later
turning into the Maritime Silk Road.
Trade among India and the Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom was began
by way of Eudoxus of Cyzicus in 130 BCE. From Egypt, goods can be sent directly
to ports during the Mediterranean. The Kingdom's establishing of Red Sea ports
and progressed expertise of the seasonal monsoons led to a significant growth
in change.
The consolidation of the management of the Mediterranean
basin beneath the Roman empire caused the strengthening of direct maritime
trade with India and the elimination of the taxes extracted previously with the
aid of the middlemen of various land-based trading routes. Trade between the
Roman Empire and India peaked for the duration of the first centuries of the Common Era, facilitated by
using the peace and prosperity that arose starting with the reign of Roman
Emperor Augustus (27 BCE – 14 CE) and finishing with the Antonine plague.
At any price, whilst Gallus became prefect of Egypt, I
followed him and ascended the Nile as a ways as Syene and the frontiers of
Kingdom of Aksum (Ethiopia), and I learned that as many as a hundred and twenty
vessels have been sailing from Myos Hormos to the subcontinent, whereas
previously, below the Ptolemies, simplest a totally few ventured to undertake
the voyage and to carry on site visitors in Indian products.
Strabo's point out of the big increase in alternate
following the Roman annexation of Egypt shows that the monsoon turned into
acknowledged and utilized for alternate in his time. So a good deal gold was
used for this exchange, and reputedly recycled with the aid of the Kushan
Empire (Kushans) for his or her own coinage, that Pliny the Elder (NH VI.One
zero one) complained about the drain of specie to India:
The 3 major Roman ports worried with eastern trade have been
Arsinoe, Berenice and Myos Hormos. Arsinoe turned into one of the early buying
and selling centers however become quickly overshadowed by means of the greater
easily handy Myos Hormos and Berenice.
The Ptolemaic dynasty exploited the strategic position of
Alexandria to secure trade with the subcontinent. The direction of change with
the east then seems to have been first thru the harbor of Arsinoe, the
contemporary Suez. The goods from the East African trade have been landed at
one of the 3 predominant Roman ports, Arsinoe, Berenice or Myos Hormos. The
Romans repaired and cleared out the silted up canal from the Nile to harbor
center of Arsinoe on the Red Sea. This turned into one of the many efforts the
Roman management had to adopt to divert as an awful lot of the exchange to the
maritime routes as feasible.
Arsinoe turned into in the end overshadowed through the
growing prominence of Myos Hormos. The navigation to the northern ports,
together with Arsinoe-Clysma, became hard in assessment to Myos Hormos because
of the northern winds within the Gulf of Suez. Venturing to those northern
ports supplied additional difficulties which include shoals, reefs and
treacherous currents.
Myos Hormos and Berenice seem to have been critical ancient
trading ports, possibly used by the Pharaonic investors of historical Egypt and
the Ptolemaic dynasty earlier than falling into Roman manage.
The web site of Berenice, for the reason that its discovery
by using Belzoni (1818), has been equated with the ruins near Ras Banas in
Southern Egypt. However, the proper location of Myos Hormos is disputed with
the latig Abu Sha'ar and the bills given in classical literature and satellite
tv for pc pictures indicating a likely identification with Quseir el-Quadim on
the quit of a fortified road from Koptos at the Nile. The Quseir el-Quadim site
has in addition been associated with Myos Hormos following the excavations at
el-Zerqa, halfway along the course, which have found out ostraca main to the
conclusion that the port on the quit of this avenue may additionally were Myos
Hormos.
The nearby ports of Barbaricum (modern-day Karachi),
Sounagoura (principal Bangladesh) Barygaza, Muziris in Kerala, Korkai,
Kaveripattinam and Arikamedu at the southern tip of present-day India had been
the primary facilities of this alternate, at the side of Kodumanal, an inland
town. The Periplus Maris Erythraei describes Greco-Roman traders promoting in
Barbaricum "skinny garb, figured linens, topaz, coral, storax,
frankincense, vessels of glass, silver and gold plate, and a touch wine"
in exchange for "costus, bdellium, lycium, nard, turquoise, lapis lazuli,
Seric skins, cotton material, silk yarn, and indigo". In Barygaza, they
could buy wheat, rice, sesame oil, cotton and fabric.
Trade with Barigaza, below the control of the Indo-Scythian
Western Satrap Nahapana ("Nambanus"), was particularly flourishing:
There are imported into this market-town (Barigaza), wine,
Italian favored, additionally Laodicean and Arabian; copper, tin, and lead;
coral and topaz; skinny garb and inferior styles of a wide variety;
bright-colored girdles a cubit huge; storax, sweet clover, flint glass,
realgar, antimony, gold and silver coin, on which there's a earnings while
exchanged for the cash of the us of a; and ointment, however no longer very
pricey and now not a whole lot. And for the King there are delivered into those
locations very high-priced vessels of silver, making a song boys, stunning
maidens for the harem, first-class wines, skinny apparel of the greatest
weaves, and the most suitable ointments. There are exported from those places
spikenard, costus, bdellium, ivory, agate and carnelian, lycium, cotton
material of all kinds, silk cloth, mallow fabric, yarn, long pepper and such
different matters as are delivered here from the diverse marketplace-towns.
Those bound for this market-city from Egypt make the voyage favorably
approximately the month of July, this is Epiphi.
Muziris is a lost port metropolis on the southwestern coast
of India which become a primary center of trade in the historic Tamil land
among the Chera kingdom and the Roman Empire. Its location is typically
recognized with current-day Cranganore (important Kerala). Large hoards of
coins and innumerable shards of amphorae determined on the city of Pattanam
(near Cranganore) have elicited recent archeological hobby in locating a likely
area of this port metropolis.
According to the Periplus, severa Greek seamen controlled an
excessive trade with Muziris:
Then come Naura and Tyndis, the primary markets of Damirica
(Limyrike), after which Muziris and Nelcynda, which might be now of main
significance. Tyndis is of the Kingdom of Cerobothra; it is a village in
undeniable sight by means of the sea. Muziris, of the equal Kingdom, abounds in
ships despatched there with cargoes from Arabia, and via the Greeks; it's far
placed on a river, distant from Tyndis by way of river and sea five hundred
stadia, and up the river from the shore twenty stadia"
The Periplus Maris Erythraei mentions a market named Poduke
(ch. 60), which G.W.B. Huntingford recognized as probably being Arikamedu in
Tamil Nadu, a centre of early Chola alternate (now a part of Ariyankuppam),
approximately 3 kilometres (1.Nine mi) from the modern Pondicherry. Huntingford
similarly notes that Roman pottery was determined at Arikamedu in 1937, and
archeological excavations among 1944 and 1949 showed that it become "a
trading station to which items of Roman manufacture were imported at some stage
in the primary 1/2 of the 1st century AD".
Following the Roman-Persian Wars, the areas underneath the
Roman Byzantine Empire were captured with the aid of Khosrow II of the Persian
Sassanian Dynasty, however the Byzantine emperor Heraclius reconquered them
(628). The Arabs, led by way of 'Amr ibn al-'As, crossed into Egypt in overdue
639 or early 640 CE. This boost marked the start of the Islamic conquest of
Egypt and the autumn of ports inclusive of Alexandria, which used to secure
trade with the Indian subcontinent with the aid of the Roman world for the
reason that Ptolemaic dynasty.
The decline in change noticed the ancient Tamil country turn
to Southeast Asia for international change, where it motivated the native
culture to a extra degree than the impressions made on Rome.
