The Indian Ocean World Global Economy in the Context of Human-Environment Interaction, C. 300 BCE–1750

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the rise and development, from about 300 BCE to c. 1750 of an Indian Ocean World ‘global economy’ – a long-distance system of exchange that linked East Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, South-east Asia and East Asia. Focusing on human-environment interaction, Campbell challenges spatial and temporal paradigms based on the conventional beliefs that humans alone are the catalyst of historical change, and that Europeans gained economic ascendancy in the region from the time of the ‘Voyages of Discovery’.