The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. This book and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World, explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world.
The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France.
Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction: Connections in the Indian Ocean World
Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada
PART I
Connections by Sea
1 Markets and Competition: Opium Trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago
from the Late Seventeenth to the Early Eighteenth Century
Shohei Okubo
2 Safavid Mission to Siam and the Indian Ocean World in the Late Seventeenth
Century
Tomoko Morikawa
3 West Africa and France in the Rebuilding of Pondicherry after 1816: The
Case of Textile Industry
Kazuo Kobayashi
4 Circulation of the Kachchhi Bhatiya in the 19th Century: Towards the Indian
Ocean World History
Hideaki Suzuki
PART II
Hinterland Connections
5 Ports, Markets, Commercial Networks, and Politics: Case of Tal (South)
Konkan in the 17th Century
Neelambari Jagtap
6 Hinterland Connections in 18th-Century North Konkan: Secondary Ports,
Coastal Connections, and Internal Markets
Sumitra Kulkarni
7 Inland Trade Networks under the Marathas in the 18th19th Century: With
Special Reference to Indpr Parga in Pue Subh
Michihiro Ogawa
Index
Radhika Seshan is former head and retired professor of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and is now visiting faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 15001900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022).
Ryuto Shimada is associate professor, Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and in English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age.
