UNIT 24 OCEANIC TRADE

Structure
24.1 Introduction
24.2 Rise of Islam and the Oceanic Trade
24.3 Trade in Medieval Europe
24.4 India’s Maritime Trade
24.5 Portuguese Trade in the Indian Ocean
24.5.1 Portuguese Consolidation in Indian Ocean
24.5.2 Cartaz and Qafila
24.5.3 Indian Maritime Trade in the Fifteenth Century
24.5.4 Affect of Portuguese Trade on Indian Overseas Trade
24.6 European Companies and Indian Ocean Trade
24.6.1 Commodities Exported from India
24.6.2 Imports into India
24.7 Overseas Trade of Indian Merchants
24.8 Summary
24.9 Exercises

24.1 INTRODUCTION
In this Unit an attempt has been made to give you a brief account of the Oceanic
Trade in the medieval world. Our discussion includes the period from around
the seventh century to the mid-eighteenth century, coinciding with the advent
of Islam in Arabia to the British conquest of Bengal. To begin with, the most
important development in the trading world was the rise of Islam towards the
beginning of the seventh century. The discussion ends around 1757 when a
momentous development occurred – the British conquest of Bengal which
completely changed the main trends of the oceanic trade which prevailed earlier.
First we will make an analysis of the impact of the rise of Islam and its impact
on oceanic trade not only in the Indian Ocean but also in the Mediterranean.
During this period the Muslims dominated the oceanic trade which continued
for more than three centuries. We will trace the trade of medieval Europe in
the next section, with an emphasis on the role of the Mediterranean in this
trade. Here we will also focus on the commodities involved in the export and
import trade of medieval Europe. India’s maritime trade in the early medieval
period, when the emphasis was more on the trade in the eastern archipelago
rather than towards the west, has also been analysed.
Advent of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean has been examined in a separate
section. It shows that the Portuguese, though able to make minor changes in
the Indian Ocean trade, ultimately failed to bring about any radical alteration
in the structure, direction and organisation of trade in this region. It appears
that the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean, though spectacular and
significant, had no dominating influence in the region. The coming of the
European Companies, especially the Dutch and the English in the trading world
of the Indian Ocean was an important event. The role played by them in
5
Trade and Commerce in The India’s overseas trade is also touched upon. It would be evident that these
Medieval World
Companies were involved in the export trade of three commodities mainly –
textiles, raw silk and saltpetre – for which there was great demand in Europe.
Since Bengal was the main producer of these commodities, naturally it became
the main centre of Asiatic trade of these two major Companies. One important
point to be kept in view is that the Europeans had to bring in bullion/silver and
cash to pay for their exports as the balance of trade was heavily in favour of
India/Bengal. The last section deals with the overseas trade of the Indian
merchants, which passed through some directional changes in the course of
period discussed here. To begin with, the Indian merchants dominated the
trade in the eastern archipelago but later were forced to abandon it and
concentrate on the westerly trade. But here they had to face the challenge from
the English Company and its servants from around the early eighteenth century.
This along with the decline of the Mughal, Persian and Ottoman empires,
followed by the decline of the great Mughal port of Surat in the early eighteenth
century, sounded the death-knell of the overseas trade of the Indian merchants.
In particular this affected the maritime traders of Gujarat, who were the most
dominant and active participants in oceanic trade from the sixteenth to the mid
eighteenth centuries.

24.2 RISE OF ISLAM AND THE OCEANIC TRADE

In the medieval world, the rise of Islam was one of the most important
developments that had a great impact on oceanic trade. For many centuries,
Arab and Muslim merchants played an important role in the development of
the vast commercial network. In fact, well before the arrival of the Europeans,
the coastal regions of the Indian Ocean between east Africa and the China Sea
constituted a zone of intense commercial exchanges, mainly controlled by
Muslim seamen and merchants. From the middle of the 7th century to the end
of the 15th, the general direction and structure of the Indian Ocean trade are
remarkably clear. There was a long line of transcontinental traffic, going all
the way from south China to the eastern Mediterranean. The second typology
of Indian Ocean trade incorporated shorter voyages and distances.
It seems that up to the beginning of the 10th century or even later, Arab ships
and merchants had sailed all the way to China and back, calling at the
intermediate ports. As a matter of fact, the commercial expansion of Muslim
merchants and traders across the Indian Ocean to south Asia and China is
historically recorded from as early as the 8th century. Again, Arab achievements
made it possible to unite the two arteries of long-distance trade known in
antiquity between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The twin channels
of the transcontinental trade of Asia constituted of the seaborne traffic through
the Red Sea and the combined sea, river, and overland journey across the
Persian Gulf, Iraq and the Syrian Desert. Both these were brought under the
political control of single authorities, at first that of the Umayyad Caliphs and
later that of the Abbasids. Even the Mediterranean, divided as it was between
a Christian north and a Muslim south, eventually recovered much of its
economic unity through the activity of merchants and traders.
The medieval trade of Asia was founded on four great products of eastern
civilization – silk, porcelain, sandalwood and black pepper which were
6
exchanged for incense, thoroughbred horses, ivory, cotton textiles, and metal
goods. So far as the trade with China is concerned, the Persian Gulf ships were
already sailing to Canton in the late 7th and early 8th centuries to buy, among Oceanic Trade
other things, the silk textiles of China. The lands of the Arabs were regarded in
China as the greatest store of precious and varied goods. Java and Sumatra
came next. The two areas formed the ancient crossroads of intercontinental
trade. As a source of gem stones, pearls, incense, perfume, sandalwood and
spices, the three regions – southern Arabia, the Persian Gulf and southeast
Asia – remained for more than a millenium the cornerstones of pre-modern
long-distance exchange in luxury objects.
After the Mongol conquest of China in 1280, the empire’s maritime connections
seem to have been strengthened rather than weakened. As we know from Marco
Polo(1298) and Ibn Battuta(d.1377), the two city ports of Hangchow and Zaiton
flourished during the period. Zaiton was crowded with ocean-going ships. For
every ship laden with pepper which might be sent for transshipment to
Alexandria and the Christian lands, one hundred came to Zaiton. When Ibn
Battuta visited the city in A.D. 1343-4, it seemed to him to be the greatest port
in the world, its commercial traffic exceeding that of Alexandria, and Quilon
and Calicut on the Malabar coast.
However, there occurred important changes in the direction of Indian Ocean
trade from the end of the 10th century to the middle of the 15th. The decline of
the Abbasid Caliphate and the rise of the Fatimids in Egypt shifted the routing
of long-distance trade away from Baghdad and Damascus to Aden and Fustat.
In India, the Turkish Sultans of Delhi conquered Gujarat in A.D. 1303-4, and
its maritime towns were now within the reach of Islamic social and political
influence. At about the same time, the trading ports and coastal kingdoms of
the Indonesian archipelago began to accept the Islamic faith and the process of
conversion continued for the next three centuries. These new developments in
the Indian Ocean ran parallel to the developments taking place in the Christian
half of the Mediterranean. The expulsion of the Moorish rulers from Spain
and the rise of Venice and Genoa to commercial supremacy signified the
symbolic beginnings of a re-alignment in the structure of world economy. At
the same time, the shifting of the seat of power by the Fatimids to old Cairo,
the economic importance of Alexandria as the terminus of transcontinental
trade became even greater. Under the Ayyubid rulers of Egypt (1170-1260),
followed by the Mamluks (1260-1517), the strong economic position of Cairo
was maintained with intensive development of the Red Sea ports.
However, in China, the economic policies of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644)
produced contradictory effects on maritime trade. The third Ming emperor,
Yung –lo (1402-24), tried a new experiment in China’s economic relations
with the trading nations of the Indian Ocean. It took the form of a hugely
ambitious series of seaborne expeditions between 1404 and 1433 but these
were finally abandoned in 1433 and the future Ming emperors were determined
to close China’s sea-coasts to foreign visitors. They placed an embargo on the
trade of Chinese merchants to overseas destinations. Ming overseas commerce,
however, continued in several forms, especially through smuggling voyages
to the Philippines, Tongking and Malacca.

24.3 TRADE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

The spread of Islam into the basin of the Mediterranean in the 7th century
closed that sea to the Christians of the West but not to all the Christians. The 7
Trade and Commerce in The south Italian towns such as Naples and Bari in the east continued to recognise
Medieval World
the Emperor at Constantinople, and so also did Venice, which at the head of
the Adriatic, never had anything seriously to fear from the Saracen expansion.
Venice, already a great maritime power, by 1100, established her hegemony
on the whole of the east coast of that sea, which she considered her domain
and which remained hers for centuries. In fact, continental Europe witnessed
two great commercial movements which appeared on its borders in the early
medieval period, the one in the western Mediterranean and the Adriatic, the
other in the Baltic and the North Sea. The latter was dominated by the
Scandinavians whose maritime exploits were not directed only to the west.
While the Danes and the Norwegians threw themselves on the Carolingian
Empire, England, Scotland and Ireland, and their neighbours, the Swedes, turned
to Russia. Another important development was the end of Mediterranean
domination by Muslims after the Crusades. Now the whole of the
Mediterranean was reopened to western navigation. The most lasting and
essential result of the Crusades was to give the Italian towns, and in a lesser
degree, those of Provence and Catalonia, the mastery of the Mediterranean.
The trade of northern Europe was not greatly concerned with oriental and
Mediterranean commodities. At various times, between the 6th and the 10th
centuries, traders and warriors brought goods from the extreme north of Europe
to Byzantium and reimported Byzantine goods into northern Europe. In later
centuries, Italian merchants frequently sailed into the harbours of England and
Flanders, bringing with them all the infinite variety of Levantine and oriental
products. Still more regularly Italian merchants and the men of the North,
Germans, Flemings, English and French, mingled in the great international
marts of Central and Northern Europe. Different centres rose to prominence
through out the medieval period. Champagne during the 12th and 13th centuries,
in Bruges in the 14th and the early 15th centuries, Genoa, Antwerp in the 15th,
century. These merchants from all over Europe exchanged the Italian and
Italian-borne products for other goods.
The main currents of trade across northern Europe and between northern Europe
and other countries flowed with products of northern hemisphere, cruder, bulkier
and altogether more indispensable than the luxuries and the fineries. Even in
the South, food-stuffs or raw materials also entered into the trade of the
Mediterranean region. What gave the southern trade its peculiar character was
not the trade in the bulky essentials, but those luxury trades which were
associated with it. By contrast, the trade of northern Europe was almost
exclusively devoted to the necessities of life.
Medieval commerce developed in Europe because of the impetus generated
by long-distance trade. Spices were the first objects of this trade. They created
the wealth of not only Venice but of all the great ports of the western
Mediterranean. Syria, to which quantities were brought by caravans coming
from Arabia, India and Southeast Asia, was the principal destination of
European ships. However, from the beginning of the 13th century, imports
into Europe consisted of rice, oranges, apricots, figs, raisins, perfumes,
medicaments and dyestuffs. To these was added cotton also. Raw silk was
also imported from the end of the 12th century. In return for all these imports,
the Italians supplied the ports of the Levant with timber and arms, Venice, for
at least a certain time, with slaves. But woollen goods soon became the chief
8
export, at first fustians woven in Italy, then, from the second half of the 12th Oceanic Trade
century, cloths from Flanders and northern France. English shipping, however,
did not advance with her wool exports. These were carried chiefly by continental
ships and by the 13th century had become almost the monopoly of the Teutonic
Hans. Thus, if we consider the articles which fed the international or oceanic
trade in the middle ages, it will be apparent that industrial products were fewer
by far than agricultural and food commodities – spices, wine, corn, salt, fish
and wools. Only cloth, first of the Low countries and later that of Florence,
gave rise to a large export trade.

24.4 INDIA’S MARITIME TRADE

So far as India’s maritime trade in the medieval period is concerned, it was
characterised by both continuity and change. As in earlier times, drugs, spices,
the teak-wood of Malabar, precious stones, and a great variety of exotic luxuries
passed westwards. What the Indian markets could absorb in exchange for its
exports was largely limited to strategic war-animals, spices and medicaments,
rarities, toys and exotic textiles. Significant developments occurred in the
pattern of trade in early medieval period in the expansion of maritime activity
in the eastern waters of the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. The presence of
Indian traders following the emergence of great civilized states in Southeast
Asia under strong Indian and Buddhist influence in the earlier centuries led to
an expansion of the textile trade towards these growing markets. So far as the
trade between India and Indonesia is concerned, spices and raw materials of
Indonesia were an important part of Indian Ocean trade. The trade of these
settlements in Indonesia and Malay Peninsula was largely in the hands of
Muslim merchants of the Indian Ocean. It was mainly from Gujarat that
Muslims came to settle on the Indonesian littoral. There was a considerable
export of cloth from Bengal to the Indonesian markets. There is also evidence
to Indian trade with the Horn of Africa and that the communities of the Arab
peninsula who were heavily dependent on Indian imports. However, a large
portion of the westerly trade was to more distant markets, particularly to Cairo,
and to Old and New Hormuz for redistribution to more distant overland markets
in Iran, the West, Russia and Central Asia.

24.5 PORTUGUESE TRADE IN THE INDIAN

OCEAN
Apart from the trade in spices, luxuries and novelties, a number of staple
commodities were also traded for the very survival of the communities on the
Indian Ocean littoral. Of the staple commodities produced in India, teak-wood
with its superior virtues for ship-building was exported for ships plying in the
Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The exports from coastal areas of India of
surplus grains – mainly rice – provided a staple food for communities in the
Persian Gulf, in south Arabia, and in the Maldive islands as also those in several
other parts of the Malay Peninsula. Gujarat, Coromandel and Bengal exported
cotton cloth and staple food grains. As regards the main imports to India from
the westerly direction, it appears that on the south side of the Persian Gulf and
along the coast of the Hadramawt, almost every port of consequence seems to
have been engaged in exporting horses to India.
The discovery of direct maritime route to Asia round the Cape of Good Hope 9
Trade and Commerce in The
Medieval World

10
by the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama in 1498 marked the beginning of a Oceanic Trade
new era in the history of Euro-Asian trade. The general purpose of the
Portuguese was two-fold: i) to try and monopolise the supply of spices to
Europe, and ii) to control and tax Asian trade by force. Two essential conditions
were necessary for the success of the Portuguese plan: first, a clear and absolute
naval superiority over Asian shipping and secondly, the establishment of a
few key outposts which would act as strategic bases for the naval fleets with
men left in charge of trading operations.

24.5.1 Portuguese Consolidation in Indian Ocean

However, it was not until the capture of Goa from the Bijapur Sultan by
Albuquerque in 1510 that the foundation of the future Portuguese maritime
empire in the Indian Ocean region was truly laid. This was followed by the
foundation of Goa as the chief administrative seat of the Portuguese in the
East and soon followed by the occupation of Malacca (1511) which was
extremely important as an entreport in Southeast Asia and which controlled
the sea-routes in the area. In 1515 the important port of Hormuz at the mouth
of the Persian Gulf was conquered and this virtually completed the Portuguese
plan of establishing forts in key areas for controlling trade in the Indian Ocean.
The Portuguese did not stop at that. They erected a number of other forts across
the Indian Ocean littoral, several in east Africa, in the Moluccas, and on the
Konkan and Malabar coasts in India. And ultimately they finished up with a
string of some fifty forts and fortified areas across the Indian Ocean, and a
total fleet of hundred ships of various sizes in the area. The principal item
sought by the Portuguese Crown in Asia was no doubt spices but
overwhelmingly pepper. Indeed, pepper was the raison d’être of the Portuguese-
Asian trade in the beginning, accounting for in the first two decades of the
16th century as much as 95 per cent of the total Asian cargo in physical and 85
per cent in value terms. Pepper for the most part came from Malabar in India
and spices – cloves and nutmeg – came mainly from the Moluccas and cinnamon
form Sri Lanka.

24.5.2 Cartaz and Qafila

Throughout the 16th century, an important aspect of the Portuguese involvement
was the attempt to control and tax the trade carried on by Asian merchants in
the Indian Ocean. It was here in their cartaz-armada-qafila system that the
Portuguese produced their greatest impact on Asian trade. The main instrument
used for this was the cartaz or passport backed by armadas. The near-absence
or the inferiority of the naval power of the Asian states greatly helped the
policies of the Estado da India (lit. State of India; functional on behalf of
Portuguese crown). Under the cartaz system, every Asian ship was required to
take a cartaz from the Portuguese. It authorised the vessel to embark on a
specified trip. The ports of call were also specified and generally included a
visit to a Portuguese-controlled port to pay duties before proceeding to its
destination. If a ship was found without a cartaz, it was automatically
confiscated and its crew immediately killed or sent to the galleys. Again, if a
ship, even with a cartaz, violated the conditions laid down in it, it was liable to
confiscation. The fee charged for a cartaz was, however, very small.
In the second half of the 16th century, the Portuguese introduced the so-called
qafila or caravan system in the western coast of India. The main purpose of 11
Trade and Commerce in The this was to ensure that the ships carrying cartazes were not able to evade calling
Medieval World
at the Portuguese-controlled ports and pay customs duties on their goods as
also to obviate the risk of attacks by Malabari pirates on these ships. Under
this system, the ships operating between the specified points were required to
sail in a group escorted by a Portuguese fleet. But many Indian traders were
reluctant to join the qafilas and call at Goa to pay customs duties there and
engage in virtually forced trade. Hence the Portuguese escort fleet had to
perform two functions: to guard the merchant ships against pirates and to ensure
that none of them slipped to trade outside the Portuguese system.
The principal item exported by the Portuguese to Europe was spices –
overwhelmingly pepper, though some other varieties were also exported in
the early 16th century. The Portuguese occupation of Malacca (1511)
notwithstanding, they procured the bulk of the pepper from the Malabar region
(later on from Kanara as well) on the southwest coast of India. Thus India
became the main theatre of their trading activities in Asia. It was only in the
context of the intra-Asian trade that other parts of Asia, including China and
Japan, became quantitatively significant. The Portuguese also attempted at
the monopoly of horse trade. Before their arrival, there was an important trade
in horses largely in the hands of Arab merchants. These horses were imported
from the Persian Gulf region as Arabia and Persia produced best horses.

24.5.3 Indian Maritime Trade in the Fifteenth Century

At this point it is pertinent to consider how did the Portuguese presence affect
Indian overseas trade in the 16th century? For such an analysis, it is well to
have a glimpse of the Indian maritime trade in the 15th century. Genevieve
Bouchon and Denys Lombard have shown that there was a “prodigious”
movement in the Indian Ocean during the 15th century before the arrival of
the Portuguese. The early years of the 15th century saw, what can be called,
the “last flowering” of the Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean. In fact, Simon
Digby has pointed out the importance of the Chinese factor in the Indian Ocean
in the three hundred years before the arrival of the Portuguese, though they
withdrew from the western routes in the 1430s. But Malacca continued to be
the meeting place of the Chinese, Indian and Malay traders. Again, during the
century, the Arabs were probably losing in the west while the withdrawal of
the Chinese left an important vacuum in the east. It was mainly the Gujaratis
who filled in the vacuum thus created. Indeed, the 15th century witnessed a
significant expansion of Gujarati overseas trade. It has been argued quite
convincingly by Ashin Das Gupta that the real alteration in the Indian Ocean
in the 16th century was brought about not so much by Portuguese presence as
by the rise of three continental empires in the western Indian Ocean: the Mughal,
the Safavid and the Ottoman. After the first violent overture, the Portuguese
settled within this structure and were in a way “swallowed by it”.
Thus the picture of Indian overseas trade that emerges at the dawn of the 16th
century can be portrayed as follows. Indian shipping, largely in the hands of
the Gujarati Muslims, was engaged in trade mainly in the middle Indian Ocean,
dominating the sea-routes between Cambay and Malacca. To the west, Indian
ships made regular trips to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf ports but Arab ship
owners dominated the carrying trade in the Arabian Sea. Chinese ships excluded
all others from the waters between southern China and Malaya while Malay
12 and Javanese vessels were dominant in the Indonesian waters. This loosely
knit structure of Indian overseas trade remained almost intact in the next three Oceanic Trade
hundred years.
Trade Routes and Commodities of Trade
When we look at the major trade routes in the Indian Ocean and the important
commodities traded at the turn of the 16th century, we find that the longest
and glamourous route was from Aden to Malacca via either Gujarat or Malabar
where the goods entering the Red Sea included cottons, indigo, spices and
drugs. The imports consisted of European woollens, silk and bullion. Most of
the cloths and indigo came from Gujarat which took much of the bullion.
Some of the pepper came from Malabar through Cochin and cinnamon from
Sri Lanka. Malacca received cloths from India and bullion from the Red Sea
in return for pepper, mace, nutmeg and cloves from eastern Indonesia, and silk
and porcelain from China. Another major sea-route, dominated by the Gujaratis,
brought slaves, ebony, ivory and gold from east Africa while cloths, beads and
foodstuff were provided in return. Through another route from the Hadramawt
and the Persian Gulf via Hormuz came horses, pearls, Persian silks and carpets.
In the Bay of Bengal, Bengal provided cloths and provisions. Coromandel
exported cloths and yarns. In the south, Sri Lanka produced precious stones
and cinnamon, and to the east, Pegu supplied precious stones and metals in
return for cloths. At the end of the 15th century, Indian traders with their large
concentration in Malacca, their regular voyages to Sumatra and the strong
connection they had with the Javanese port of Grise, maintained a strong
presence in southeast Asia.
Of India’s exports to the Indian Ocean markets, a few points are worth noting.
First, of the textiles which was the major export of India throughout the period,
the overwhelming majority was cheap and coarse piece-goods used for everyday
wear and exported all over seaborne Asia. Secondly, staple food items like
rice, wheat, pulses, oil, and ghee (clarified butter) were important components
of India’s exports and were in great demand in the Indian Ocean region. Bengal,
Orissa and the Kanara coast were the major grain-surplus areas. They not only
supplied the deficit pockets along the Indian coasts, like Malabar or on occasions
Surat, but their supplies helped feed even cities like Malacca, Hormuz and
Aden. It is interesting to note that these evidence actually refute a part of J. C.
van Leur’s thesis regarding the characterisation of the Indian Ocean trade in
the early modern era.
Van Leur emphasised that Asian trade was characterised by exchange of luxury
goods, small in bulk but high in value. This has been ably repudiated by Meilink-
Roelofz, Ashin Das Gupta, M. N. Pearson, Sushil Chaudhury and Michel
Morineau, among others. Luxuries were of course exchanged and there is little
doubt that India’s prime import was bullion, In fact, the crucial importance of
west Asian market for Indian import of bullion can hardly be overstated. As
for the exports are concerned one should remember that along with the luxury
goods, many more mundane goods were also exchanged and actually the latter
formed the bulk of the exports from India.

24.5.4 Affect of Portuguese Trade on Indian Overseas Trade

There is little doubt that the Portuguese control of the Indian overseas trade in
Gujarat had some effects, resulting in as it did in the reorientation of Gujarat’s
13
maritime trade in the 16th century. As we have seen earlier, at the turn of the
Trade and Commerce in The century Gujarati overseas trade stretched in two main directions: the Red Sea
Medieval World
and Malacca. But in the next hundred years, the Red Sea became much more
important than Southeast Asia. Thus one of the major changes in the Indian
Ocean in the 16th century was the increasing dominance of the Gujaratis in
the Red Sea area while their trade in southeast Asia was marked by a slide
over the period. And the Portuguese contribution in these shifts can hardly be
ignored.
In fact, the Portuguese were not able to bring about radical changes in routes,
products or productive techniques at any level. They could do nothing except
divert trade in some goods and force the Indian traders to pay extra customs
duties. The Portuguese system, at most, manipulated but could not transform.
The Portuguese control in most parts of India was much less evident than in
Gujarat so that the powerful Chettiyar merchants of Coromandel were hardly
affected at all. Even in Malabar where the Portuguese control was both tight
and irksome, their control could often be circumvented.
Finally, one has to consider the general impact of the Portuguese presence in
the Indian Ocean. To W. H. Moreland, the advent of the Portuguese ushered in
a new era in the region. The first challenge to the above came from van Leur
who emphasised that even in the 16th century, Asian maritime trade continued
to be of vital importance. He argued that the Portuguese failed to control even
the vital pepper and spice trade. Reiterating van Leur, Niels Steensgaard has
shown that there was no dramatic increase in the volume of pepper and spice
export by Oceanic route to Europe before the export of these commodities by
the Dutch and English East India Companies in the early 17th century. Even
C. R. Boxer admits that almost certainly more pepper was being carried by
Gujarati ships from Acheh to the Red Sea at the end of the 16th century than
was being taken by the Portuguese round the Cape to Lisbon. An estimate by
L. F. Thomaz puts the Portuguese export of cloves to Europe over the whole
of the 16th century at only one-tenth of the total production in Moluccas. What
is of greater significance was that in terms of the total Asian spice trade – not
just the small amount which went to the Red Sea and Europe – the role of the
Portuguese was even limited. They were “irrelevant”, as M. N. Pearson points
out, for most of the time for most part of Asia over the huge amount of spice
consumed in Asia. Hence, in the final analysis, the verdict of Ashin Das Gupta
that “the European was not a particularly important person in Indian maritime
trade till he began to effectively beat the natives. Spectacular, yes. Significant
in his own way, certainly. The dominating presence, no.” and that “there was
no Vasco da Gama epoch in Indian maritime history that was inaugurated in
1500” is perhaps most appropriate.

24.6 EUROPEAN COMPANIES AND INDIAN

OCEAN TRADE
Indian overseas trade in the 17th and first half of the 18th century underwent a
considerable expansion compared to the position in the 16th century. It is to
be noted that the importance of the Red Sea trade for the Indian maritime trade
remained a significant feature of the Indian Ocean during this period, to be
modified thereafter in favour of a renewed emphasis on China trade. India’s
foreign trade as a whole witnessed a tremendous growth in this period as a
14 result of the tripartite participation of the Dutch, English and the French, besides
the role played by the Indian maritime merchants. It was the vast market for Oceanic Trade
spices in Europe and the high profit derived from it by the Portuguese that
prompted the establishment of the English East India Company in 1600 and
Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) in 1602.
The French East India Company came into being later, only in 1664. But it
was of importance only between 1725 and 1770. Among other European
companies, the Ostend, Swedish and Danish companies began their trade only
in the early 18th century and that too on a very modest scale. However, it was
really the two giants, the Dutch and the English East India companies who,
between themselves, accounted for an overwhelming proportion of this trade
through the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries.

24.6.1 Commodities Exported from India

To begin with, both the Dutch and the English concentrated on the procurement
of pepper and other spices which, as in the 16th century, continued to account
for an overwhelming proportion of the exports from Asia. But unlike and mainly
because of the Portuguese, they procured pepper from the Indonesian
archipelago rather than from Malabar and Kanara. The result was a marked
shift of the European trade from India to Indonesian archipelago and it was
only after about three quarters of a century that India again became the main
focus of the European trade. As the Companies were mainly interested in
procuring pepper and spices from the so-called spice islands in the Indonesian
archipelago, they went there to buy these commodities with silver obtained
from the “new world”. But to their utter surprise, they found that it was not
silver but cheap, coarse Indian piece-goods which were in great demand in
those islands. Hence they turned their attention to India for procuring these
textiles so that they could buy spices in the Indonesian archipelago in exchange
for Indian cloth. So the Companies turned mainly to the coast of Coromandel
for procurement of cheap and coarse calicoes for exchange in the Indonesian
archipelago. When the Coromandel trade became uncertain and expensive
because of wars, famines and political instability in the region, the Companies
turned their attention to Bengal.
They realised that trade in Bengal had certain advantages because it was not
only the largest producer of cheap cotton piece-goods, but also of high quality,
inexpensive raw silk and saltpetre for which there was great demand in Europe.
So it was on these considerations that both the Dutch and the English established
their factories or trading posts in Bengal in the early 1650s, incidentally both
in Hughli, the premier port of Bengal in the 17th century. But it was not until
the mid-70s that the Bengal trade assumed any significant importance in the
Asiatic trade of either Company. It was from about the 1670s that there was a
sudden expansion in the European export of Bengal raw silk, which received a
further boost in the eighties because of the great demand for the commodity in
Europe. However, it was the big boom in the export of Bengal textiles from
around the early 1680s that revolutionised the pattern of the Asiatic trade of
the European companies. From then onward, Bengal became the most dominant
partner of the European trade from Asia which was mostly carried on by the
Dutch and the English companies. But after the British victory at the battle of
Plassey in 1757, it was a different story altogether. The English company,
along with its servants, by virtue of its total control over Bengal polity and
economy, became intent on wiping out all other European and Asian rivals 15
from any worthwhile trade in the region.
Trade and Commerce in The By the beginning of the 18th century, Bengal supplied about 40 per cent of the
Medieval World
average annual value of Asian commodities the Dutch company sent to Holland.
And more than 50 per cent of the total value in textiles the Dutch exported
from Asia was in the form of Bengal textiles. Thus in the early 18th century,
Bengal became the most important theatre of the Dutch company not only in
India but in the whole of Asia. Similar was the case with the English East India
Company. The Bengal trade was often described by the English factors as ‘the
best flower of the Company’s garden’ or ‘the choicest jewel’. However, the
Companies were also active in their trade with other regions such as the
Coromandel coast, Gujarat and Malabar. In the course of time, a gradual and
distinct pattern of trade emerged. The Dutch largely replaced and took over
the intra-Asian trade previously carried on by the Portuguese. But the promotion
and development of direct Euro-Asian trade were undertaken both by the Dutch
and the English companies with a vigour that was conspicuously lacking in
the days when the Portuguese were the sole European traders in Asia.
Indeed, the 17th century was marked by a fundamental change in the character
of the Euro-Asian trade. While the English were not involved in the intra-
Asian trade, for the Dutch this was a very important component of their Asiatic
trade for the greater part of the century. Cheap Indian calicoes from the Gujarat
and Coromandel in the beginning, and then from Bengal, were essential for
procuring pepper and spices from the Indonesian archipelago. Bengal raw silk
was the principal item exported to Japan while opium, again from Bengal,
figured prominently in the exports to the eastern archipelago.
As Bengal was the main supplier of textiles and silk, the two most important
commodities exported to Europe, its share in the export of goods from Asia by
the Dutch and the English rose to as much as 40 per cent at the beginning of
the 18th century. It seems that in the second half of the 17th and the first two
decades of the 18th century, the Dutch were ahead of the English in the export
trade to Europe but the latter nearly caught up with the former at the close of
the century. It was around the mid-1720s that the English went ahead of the
Dutch and this trend continued till the mid-1740s when the Dutch trade picked
up again to almost equal the English trade. The French emerged as a formidable
rival of the English and the Dutch only from around the1730s, though for
about three or four decades only.
So far as the commodity structure of the Indo-European trade is concerned,
textiles, raw silk and saltpetre were the principal items exported by the
Companies, besides a few minor items. Opium figured prominently in the
Dutch export to Batavia. Of the other commodities exported from India, indigo
was at first highly priced as a profitable article but was later supplanted by
Bengal raw silk and saltpetre. However, textile was the most important item in
the export list of all the European companies. The phenomenal increase in the
textile export can only be explained satisfactorily by the revolutionary change
in the consumer taste in the European society during the 1680s. The ‘Indian
craze’ or ‘Indienness’ was well reflected in contemporary European, especially
English, literature. That fashion rather than cheapness of Indian fabrics worked
as the most active factor in the sudden and huge demand for Indian textiles in
Europe is revealed in several pamphlets of the time.
24.6.2 Imports into India
16 As to the imports of the Companies into India, the main characteristic was that
precious metals, mainly silver, were being exchanged for manufactures and Oceanic Trade
primary goods exported from India. This “bullion for goods” character was
the principal feature of the Indo-European trade in the 17th and first half of the
18th century. Though the Companies imported some other commodities like
broad cloth and woollens, and a few minor items like non-precious metals,
their volume and value was extremely limited. The amount of treasure imported
by the Companies can be gauged from the fact that the proportion of precious
metals to the total value of the goods imported into Bengal, works out to be
87.5 per cent. The pattern was not different in the case of the English company.
While the average proportion of treasure in the total English imports into the
East Indies as a whole came to about 75 per cent, this proportion in Bengal
varied between 90 and 94 per cent in the first two decades of the eighteenth
century. It does not seem that the position changed to any significant extent
till the mid-18th century.
However, the influx of bullion stopped almost completely after the British
conquest of Bengal in 1757 when the English company’s investments were
financed by the resources of Bengal. Most of the other European companies’
investments shrank gradually and whatever was left was mostly financed by
Company servants’ as well as private British individuals’ money for which
they received bills of exchange in Europe. It should be noted here that the
Europeans were not the only importers of bullion and, for that matter, not the
largest at that. The Asian merchants whose exports from Bengal were much
higher than those of the Europeans too had to bring in silver/cash to pay for
their purchases.

24.7 OVERSEAS TRADE OF INDIAN

MERCHANTS
So far as the overseas trade of the Indian merchants is concerned, the decline
of the Portuguese sea power in the western Indian Ocean at the turn of the 17th
century gave an initial fillip to Indian maritime trade. This resulted in an increase
in the volume of trade to the Persian Gulf and southern Arabia. The Indian
ships could avoid Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and sail direct to Gulf ports
such as Basra or Bandar Abbas (Gombroon). Then with the loss of Hormuz by
the Portuguese in 1622, the traffic to the Persian Gulf became completely free
and the Gujaratis took full advantage of this freedom. The fall of Hormuz also
facilitated the entry of the Dutch and the English companies into this trade.
Their active involvement in the trade of the region contributed to the growth
of commercial enterprise in the western Indian Ocean in the 17th century.
The Indian maritime trade was further rearranged in the 17th century by the
emergence of the Dutch and the English companies in the Indian Ocean. The
main feature of this rearrangement was the great emphasis on the west Asian
trade at the expense of the trade in Southeast Asia which was the main
characteristic of the Indian overseas trade in the previous century. Though the
withdrawal of the Portuguese liberated trade in the western Indian Ocean, in
case of the east, the picture was completely different. The Dutch followed in
the footsteps of the Portuguese in imposing monopoly of spice trade but with
greater efficiency and ruthlessness The Dutch monopoly was very real and
almost effective by the middle of the 17th century. The result was that the
Indian merchants felt the pressure keenly and thus the Gujaratis almost deserted 17
Trade and Commerce in The the trade with Southeast Asia as was exemplified by the fact that not too many
Medieval World
ships were making voyages to Sumatra after 1618. Again, the Dutch conquest
of Malacca in 1641 and Macasser in the Celebes in 1669 led to a major
dislocation of the Indian maritime trade with the Malay peninsula. But the
Indian merchants, especially from the Coromandel, Gujarat and Bengal, tried
to circumvent the Dutch attempts to control their trade by shifting their
operations to Acheh which became a large market for Indian textiles as also an
important procurement centre of pepper and tin because of the extensive trade
carried on by the Acheh merchants with the ports of Sumatra and Malay
archipelago.
However, from around 1660, the Indian merchants were issued passes liberally
for Acheh and Malacca, and they made most of the opportunities at Acheh.
But they never gave in to the Dutch demand of staying away from the Malayan
ports. Kedah, which was a major provider of tin, though not a producer of the
commodity, was frequented by merchants from the Coromandel. In the further
north, Indian ships regularly visited Bangeri and Phuket in addition to
Tenasserim and Pegu. But the Dutch conquest of Bantam in 1682 and the
consequent exclusion of Indian shipping from the port resulted in the loss of
the Java trade for the Indian, especially Coromandel, textiles. And in the process,
the procurement of Chinese and Japanese goods, particularly copper, at Bantam
suffered too. However, a part of this loss was made up by the increase in
Indian shipping to such ports as Johor, Lama and Pankor. It appears that from
around the close of the 17th century onward, there was a distinct decline in the
trade of the Indian merchants with Malay archipelago.
Though the Dutch succeeded in keeping the Indian merchants out of a number
of Malayan ports, for the rest of the region, the Indian merchants adjusted to
the pressures generated by the Company by shifting their operations to other
ports in the area rather than by reducing their trade. The near-abandonment of
the trade to the Indonesian archipelago led to the emphasis paid by the Gujaratis
on the Red Sea and Persian Gulf trade. Thus it is reasonable to hold that the
later 17th century was the ‘golden period’ of Indian maritime trade as well as
the trade in Indian textiles. Though the domination of the Red Sea and Persian
Gulf trade by the Gujaratis was unaffected by the activities of the Companies,
what was beginning to affect this was, however, the entry of the private English
enterprise into this trade in the late 17th and early 18th century.
The English private traders consisted of two groups: the servants of the English
East India Company and the so-called free merchants settled in India. Their
trade was both to westward and eastward sectors of India’s maritime trade.
The trade in the westerly direction extended to the Red Sea and the Persian
Gulf regions, besides the ports in the western coast of India. It is clear from the
Dutch shipping lists that the expansion of the English private shipping was
most probably at the expense of the Gujarati trade. While the number of ships
visiting Bengal from Surat in the early 18th century was about fifty, it dwindled
to a trickle by the 1730s. It has been estimated that the total number of Gujarati
fleet in the late 17th century was well over a hundred, of which normally two
belonged to the Mughals while the great Surat merchant, Mulla Abdul Goffur,
alone owned seventeen. It was from around the 1760s that there was a
substantive growth in the eastward trade at the expense of the trade to western
Indian Ocean which was described as a ‘commercial revolution’ by Holden
18
Furber.
In fact, even at the turn of the 18th century, a large amount of money and Oceanic Trade
bullion was still being imported into Surat, especially from the Red Sea area.
A rough estimate puts the figure at round six million rupees from the Red Sea
alone. So it is no wonder that the Mughals regarded Mocha as their “treasure
chest”. European trade at the time formed at most about one eighth of the total
trade of Surat. But the Gujarati trade to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf began to
dwindle from around the middle of the second decade of the 18th century. The
decline of the Mughal port of Surat and the near-disappearance of the great
merchant marine of the Gujaratis based at that port, coming down from 112
ships in 1701 to a mere 20 in 1710, were undoubtedly the most important
developments in the trade of the Indian Ocean during the period. The total
turnover of Surat came down from Rs. 16 million in the late 17th century to a
mere Rs. 5 million around the mid-18th century. To a large extent, the debacle
of the Indian shipping may be ascribed to the simultaneous political collapse
in India and Persia, which was accompanied by the crippling civil war in Yemen
as from the second decade of the 18th century.
Finally, while discussing Indian overseas trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, a
pertinent question may be asked: what was the state of the Indian overland
trade vis-à-vis the overseas trade, especially the European export trade from
India? The qualitative as well as quantitative evidence we have now in our
possession will negate the thesis that the Europeans were the major exporters
from Bengal and as such they were the major importers of bullion into Bengal.
It can be shown that the share of the Asian merchants even in the two most
important European export commodities, namely textiles and raw silk, was
much higher than that of the Europeans. If that was so, the claim that the
Europeans were the major importers of bullion into Bengal hardly stands. As
a matter of fact, it was not only the Europeans but even the Asian merchants
had to bring in silver/cash for their purchases in Bengal. So if the Asians were
the major exporters of Bengal commodities, naturally it was they, and not the
Europeans, who were the major importers of bullion into Bengal. Though the
above is mainly concerned with Bengal, it does not seem that the picture would
have been different if the whole of India is taken into account.

24.8 SUMMARY
Oceanic Trade in medieval world gave rise to large scale interaction between
the Europe and Asia. The trading activities greatly influenced the society,
economy and polity in the two regions. After the rise of Islam in Arabian
peninsula for almost three hundred years the maritime trade was dominated by
Arab seamen and merchants. This trade was mainly responsible in uniting the
two arteries of long distance trade between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean.
From around 11th century onwards the Europeans started to gradually replace
Arabs as the dominant maritime traders. The early lead was taken by Italian
merchants. Shortly, thereafter the Portuguese managed to emerge as the leaders
in the overseas Trade. During this period India emerged as one of the important
centres of maritime trade. Here again Portuguese were the first Europeans to
establish their hold in the whole of Indian Ocean and India as the main centre
for their trading activities in Asia. Indian merchants also played a crucial role
and held substantial share in maritime trade from 15th century onwards.
From the beginning of the 17th century there was intense rivalry between the 19
Trade and Commerce in The Dutch and British to control the oceanic trade in Asia and Europe. The main
Medieval World
commodities which were imported in Europe were spices and in particular
pepper in the early phase. From 13th century food items including rice and
sundry fruits and raw silk became main items. In 16th and 17th centuries indigo,
saltpeter, cotton and silk textiles and sugar dominated the exports to Europe.
The Europeans brought mainly woollens, a few luxury items and mainly bullion.
As far as India is concerned the balance of trade was in its favour. One
significant point to be noted here is that the share of Asian merchants in Indian
exports was much higher than the European trading companies.

24.9 EXERCISES
1) How did the rise of Islam affect the oceanic trade till the 10th century?
2) What was the pattern of European trade between 11th and 15th centuries?
3) What was Cartaz and Qafila system started by the Portuguese?
4) Give a brief account of the India maritime trade in the 15th century.
5) What was the impact of Portuguese on Indian overseas trade?
6) How did the British and Dutch companies influence trading activities in
Indian Ocean?
7) Were Indian merchants able to compete with European companies in the
17th century?

20