Ocean Trade Research Articles

The Enigmatic Softstone Vessels of Northern Madagascar: Petrological Investigations of a Medieval Quarry

ABSTRACT The production of lathe-turned tripod vessels made from softstone is one of the major features of the so-called Rasikajy population that inhabited northern Madagascar from the ca. 8th to the late 15th century a.d. The raw material for the vessels was quarried in the hinterland, and over 30 quarries have recently been visited, documented and sampled. The quarry of Bobalila is the first to ever be excavated, and a large sample suite was taken for petrological analysis. The results reveal significant mineralogical and chemical variation that is almost as large as the variation between all other quarries in northern Madagascar. The underlying processes could affect other softstones and should be considered in provenance attempts. Nonetheless, the petrographic study has permitted us to understand and characterize the type of material that was sought-after by Rasikajy workers, which can now be easily distinguished from other softstone vessels in the Indian Ocean trade network.

The Gujarati archive in Tanzania

AbstractThe South Asian presence in East Africa has roots in antiquity through oceanic trade routes linking the Subcontinent to Africa. Existing paper archives date to the colonial period, held both by the government and various communities. Only the most recent sliver of more than two millennia of history is therefore recorded on paper. Of that, most of the academic (Hofmeyr) work done on the Asian minority in East Africa has used colonial era archives in European languages, such as German and English. The voices of Asian merchant communities are rarely heard in their own language and context. Their texts are either totally absent from analysis or dismissed as religious and not addressing the “interesting” historical questions of power (economic, political, and social) that dominate academic historical research on the region.

Indian Ocean Trade and Emerging Pathways of Mobility in Neoliberal Zanzibar


 
 
 Indian Ocean trade historically directed ‘routes’ for merchants and traders to frame their ‘roots’ in Zanzibar. It facilitated access to different forms of social capital for imagining new trajectories of hope and constructing more meaningful futures. However, colonial rule and subsequent policies of the socialist revolutionary government severely restricted the mobility of Zanzibaris and their engagement in Indian Ocean trade, initiating a new era of uncertainty. As free-market policies have revived since the mid-1980s under a renewed framework of neoliberalism, this article examines how Zanzibaris, increasingly finding themselves in conditions of involuntary immobility, are trying to participate today in mercantile activities that brought prosperity in the past in hopes of securing a brighter future. The article explores how the efforts of Zanzibari merchants and traders to engage in trans- national Indian Ocean trade provides, for these limited groups of individuals, access to envisioning different pathways of socioeconomic mobility in the neoliberal era. The article contends that engagement in Indian Ocean trade, through support from transnational and diasporic networks, facilitates access to new routes of mobility to situate one’s roots in Zanzibar, while the situation for the majority of Zanzibaris continues to deteriorate under neoliberalism today.
 
 

Imported ornaments of a Late Antiquity community in Christian Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Several thousand glass beads excavated in the Maryam Anza (Tigray, Ethiopia) cemetery over three seasons between 2014 and 2016 tell the story of the direct or indirect long-distance contacts of the people buried there. By combining typological and quantitative studies of drawn glass beads, this paper provides new bead evidence on the subject of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade in Late Antiquity. The assemblage is dominated by tiny monochrome glass beads of mid-fourth/fifth-century AD date that were brought as ships’ cargo from South Asia through Arabian ports, reaching Northeast Africa at a time of intensive Indian Ocean trade. Close proximity to the Red Sea port at Adulis (in modern Eritrea) also allowed the transport of other overseas bead imports produced in Egypt or the East Mediterranean region. Comparative percentage analysis makes Aksum and the Maryam Anza community one of the major accumulators of India/Sri Lankan beads in Northeast Africa.

A Short History of Feather Fans' Spread and Cultural Connotations: From Bronze Age Africa East to China and West to Europe

As archaeological evidence shows, the earliest feather hand fans were not from China, but spread north from Sudan to New Kingdom Egypt. They reached Greece in the 400s b.c. and Italy a century later. By about a. d. 200, feather fans spread eastward from Africa to China along Indian Ocean trade routes. This spread of feather fans across Afro-Eurasia was accompanied by shifting cultural associations. Early African and Southwest Asian ostrich and peacock feather fans seem to have symbolized rebirth. As imported luxury objects in Greece and Rome (as in the Americas), fans signified wealth and sophistication. But at both ends of the Silk Road, in China and Europe, feather fans also stood in for the suspect foreign immigrant. In Renaissance Europe, fans still represented resurrection and sophistication, but after the Reformation, fans lost their connection to rebirth, and instead developed Orientalist, feminizing connotations that supported powerful colonial and commercial interests.

Translations and Literary Exchanges between Kerala and Middle-East

Kerala has historically played an important role in the wide network of Indian ocean trade. Recent archaeological excavations brought forth tangible evidence of kerala’s trade linkage with gulf region from the first century AD. These journey led to the development of diasporic communities of Arabs in various parts of kerala, especially in Malabar. Ibnu Batuta, a 14th century Arab traveller was the first writer to give detailed description of the settlements of Arab from gulf region in various parts of Kerala. The keralopatti chronicles on the history of evolution of kerala narrates a story of two brothers from muscut in Malabar. Cheraman Perumal, the king of kerala, who became first known convert to Islam and he travelled to Mecca and finally settled in Oman. In 1960, gulf states began requiring large-scaled semi skilled and unskilled labour in order to cater their fast growing oil based economies. Which resulted in illegal migrations to gulf region. This first wave migrants had numerous stories about the narrow escapes they experienced during the journey. The reason for migration from kerala were two kind. Some of them migsrated due to socio-economic reason, and others encouraged by personal ambition and aspirations. The continues contact between Kerala and Middle East brought many changes in both languages, culture and Arts. These are very significant in re-conceptualise the history of gulf and Kerala.
 Migrant narratives reveal a great deal of emotional conflict that has been associated with departure from kerala and a sense of alienation in a foreign land. It can be founded on the film and literature. Malayalam film naadodikaatu portrays old way of travelling to gulf, Pathemaary, Arabi kadha, and Gaddama deal with diasporic theme. In literature, Aadujeevitham by Benyamin gained a wide readership. His jasmindays won JCB prize. Marubhoomiyude atmakatha is a travelogue by V Musafar Ahammad won Sahitya Academy Award in 2010. Babu Baradwaj’s pravasiyude kurippukal translated as notes of an expat is the memoir of a man in exile. P Manikandhan’s malayaliyude swanthanweshanangal was winner of NV Krishna Warrier Award for best critical work. Deepak unnikrishnan's temporary people is an another important work. Many more works were translated to Arabic such as Chemeen, Shabdikunna Kalappa, Oru Sangeerthanam pole, Nilavu, Kaalam, Balyakala sakhi are among them.

Blue Trade and Forced Labour: Breaking the Resounding Silence of International Economic Law

Abstract On 5 December 2017, the United Nations declared a ‘Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development’ to be observed from 2021 to 2030. Beyond the rhetoric of sustainability, the absence of a rights-based approach that places human beings at the core of ocean policy and governance is striking. The ocean indeed remains the scene of major human rights violations. From seafarers to ship breaking sites or fisheries, the ocean is not only the place where 90% of trade in goods happens, but also the territory where grave human rights violations, often related to the labour recruited for ocean trade and investments, occur. In this context and based on a series of case studies involving seafarers, ship breaking and fisheries, in various countries, this article interrogates the silence of international economic law instruments and dispute settlement mechanisms and suggests pathways for reform in better integrating the International Labour Organization approach.

Encounters of Indic-Abrahamic Religions with Matriliny in Premodern Southern India


 This article engages with the matrilineal communities of the Indian Ocean littoral with a focus on the southern Indian context. The matrilineal system was one of the most convenient features in the context of the Indian Ocean trade. In their transregional journeys, maritime itinerants stayed in one place for months or even a year, depending on the variations in monsoon. During this period, they married into the local communities. These marriages were enabled through the existing matrilineal practices, in which men could and should come and go while the women stayed at home and owned the property. From Southeast Asia to Southeast Africa, the matrilineal system has been prevalent in several Islamic communities, but in southern India it historically existed among Hindus and Muslims, and to some extent among Jews and Christians, too. Although the adherence to the system varied historically, we can observe certain features shared among the communities. On the basis of fragmentary but significant evidence between ca. 800 and 1800 CE among Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, I explore the nuances of conversion and incommensurability across religions. I investigate how the system benefited the oceanic mercantile culture in the region as well as the dispersal of Abrahamic religions, which are often interpreted as significant domains of patriarchy and patriliny.

Coastal landscape changes at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar: Contextualizing the archaeology of an early Islamic port of trade

Unguja Ukuu, located on the Zanzibar Archipelago, eastern Africa, was an active Indian Ocean trading settlement from the mid-first millennium until the early second millennium AD. As part of recent archaeological excavations aimed at understanding the site’s transregional trade networks, geoarchaeological analyses were undertaken to document the geomorphic context of the ancient settlement. Here, we outline the results of these field and laboratory studies to discuss patterns of anthropogenic sediment deposition. Unguja Ukuu’s deep coastal stratigraphy appears to record progradation of an inhabited back-reef shore from the mid-seventh to the nineth centuries AD, perhaps in the wake of an earlier middle to late Holocene marine transgression. Excavations on the back-beach show that deposits associated with the ancient settlement include interlayered middens, paleofloors, and backshore sands and, in later phases, a peri-urban dump with dark-earth-type anthrosols developed on these deposits. Coastal progradation appears to have been driven in part by the accumulation of anthropogenic detritus and compaction of ancient surfaces. We hypothesize how the inherited, submerged relic Late Pleistocene geomorphology of the intertidal zone and later Holocene sediment supply from the hinterland may have supported the emergence of Unguja Ukuu as a trading locale, and possibly contributed to its decline in the early second millennium AD.

Excavations at the Iron Age Village Site of Fibobe II, Central Zambia

Abstract The period from c. AD 900 to AD 1300 in southern Africa is characterized by transitions from small-scale Iron Age mixed economy communities to the beginnings of more intensive food production and eventually the emergence of complex polities. In Zambia, this coincides with the appearance of larger and more permanent agro-pastoralist villages that began participating in Indian Ocean trade networks. Unlike other parts of southern Africa where stone architecture became common, the predominance of wattle-and-daub type construction methods across Zambia have often impeded preservation of Iron Age activity areas. It has therefore been difficult to reconstruct how economic and land-use changes between the Early and Later Iron Ages impacted family and community relationships reflected in intra-site and intra-household spatial organization. Fibobe II, in the Mulungushi River Basin of Central Zambia, is a rare example of an Early-to-Mid Iron Age village site where these spatial patterns may be discernable due to preservation of activity spaces and vitrified remains of wattle-and-daub structures. This paper reports on new investigations following original testing of the site in 1979, confirming preservation of an Iron Age hut with distinct patterning of features, artifacts, and charcoal. These results reaffirm the unique nature of Fibobe II and indicate the potential for programs of household archaeology aimed at studying this important and understudied period in Zambian prehistory.

The Circulation of Solidi in the Indian Ocean Trade: Select coins from the reign of Constantius II, and the potential implications

The Circulation of Solidi in the Indian Ocean Trade: Select coins from the reign of Constantius II, and the potential implications

Geopolitics of Chabahar Port for Iran, India and Afghanistan

In January 2016, Iran, India and Afghanistan signed a trilateral economic agreement on developing the Chabahar Port in south-eastern Iran. This project holds immense economic and geopolitical value for both Iran and India. Chabahar, as Iran’s first deep water port, connects it to oceanic trade routes. This helps Iran to mitigate US sanctions and sustain trade relations with neighbours and independent states such as India. For India, Chabahar is the key point of the ‘International North–South Transport Corridor’, an ambitious project connecting India to Central Asia and Europe. The article analyses the geostrategic, economic and trade-related importance of Chabahar port from both Iranian and Indian perspectives. This Iranian–Indian trade co-operation is considered a strategic alternative, if not a rival, to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), whose key point is the Gwadar port in Pakistan, next door to Chabahar.

Ceramics in Indian Ocean Trade

Abstract Ceramics have been extensively imported on the East African Coast over many centuries. The principal sources have been Iran and China, the latter trans-shipped through the port of Malacca and the Indian ports of the western Indian Ocean. These ceramics were used to embellish the gates and mihrabs of mosques, and the exteriors of elaborate tombs. They were vessels in homes and decorations on buildings. In the last two centuries, the old ceramics came to be supplanted by imported ware more utilitarian in make and appearance. These came in mainly from Holland, England and Germany. These products of Western Europe were influenced by the Islamic markets they had entered, while in turn these plates became an important part of the East African Coast’s architecture and Swahili traditions and homes.

Asia in the Horn. The Indian Ocean trade in Somaliland

The Indian Ocean trade in the Horn of Africa during the Middle Ages has received much less attention than in other regions of the Islamic world, such as the Gulf and East Africa. The Horn is still too often represented as a void in maps showing routes and distributions of trade goods. In this article we present the results of archaeological surveys conducted between 2016 and 2020 in places of trade around Berbera, one of the main Red Sea ports in Somaliland. We will be focusing on the period comprised between the eleventh century, when the first traces of long distance connections are documented, and the late sixteenth century, when commerce collapsed. We will review the archaeological evidence with particular attention to ceramic imports, which reveal the intense participation of Somaliland (and the Horn at large) in the Indian Ocean system. This participation went through different cycles in which the nature of commercial relations, the volume of imported goods and their provenance varied. However, trade with Asia was always predominant, amounting, in the case of ceramics, to 90% of all imported items. Our surveys also suggest that Somaliland was not so much a destination as a transit market zone that conveyed products to the interior of the Horn of Africa.

The contribution of ocean trade to national economic growth: A non-competitive input-output analysis in China

Measuring the contribution of ocean trade to national economy is crucial for marine economy policy. However, the contents of ocean trade are not well classified. This study first provides a clear classification of ocean trade which accounts for both ocean merchandise trade and service trade, and then quantifies the contribution of ocean trade to China’s GDP using the value-added content in trade instead of the gross value of trade. Employing China’s tripartite non-competitive input-output model which distinguishes China’s processing trade, this study enables us to take full consideration of China’s dual-trade regime. The results show that ocean trade has been an important driving force for China’s economic growth but its contribution is overestimated by the gross value of trade. Our study yields clear policy recommendations for promoting the sustainable development of China’s ocean economy.

‘Indian Money’, Intra-Shīʿī Polemics, and the Bohra and Khoja Pilgrimage Infrastructure in Iraq's Shrine Cities, 1897–1932

AbstractUsing sources in Arabic, Gujarati, Ottoman, Persian and Urdu, this article examines the foundation of Bohra and Khoja pilgrimage institutions straddling western India and Iraq's Shīʿī shrine cities between 1897 and 1932. As manifestations of ‘locative piety’, these institutions were an outgrowth of the commercial capital Bohra and Khoja merchants had acquired in Indian Ocean trade over the previous half century, and the distinct caste and sectarian identities this wealth augmented. The Bohra and Khoja (both Twelver and Ismāʿīlī) mercantile and religious elites supplied their constituents with a well-ordered pilgrimage to Iraq, certainly by the standards of contemporary Hajj. To achieve this, community-run institutional nodes in Karachi, Bombay and the Shīʿī shrine cities were integrated into wider transport, administrative, and financial infrastructures connecting India and Iraq. Yet at a time when Najaf and Karbala's economic and religious fortunes were plagued by sectarianism, political upheavals and divisions among the mujtahids, the growing presence of western Indian Shīʿīs in the shrine cities was fiercely condemned by some Twelver Shīʿī clerics. One of their number, Muḥammad Karīm Khurāsānī, published a substantial polemic against the Bohras and Khojas in 1932, signalling how these pilgrimage infrastructures worked to exacerbate intra-Shīʿī disputes.

Characterization of Glass, Shell, and Fishbone Beads on Ibo Island (Northern Mozambique) in the Context of the Indian Ocean Trade

A set of beads made of glass, gastropod mollusk shell, and fishbone from a Swahili occupation level on Ibo Island (northern Mozambique) is dated to the eleventh and twelfth centuries AD. The chemical composition of the glass beads and their chromophores, and the shell and fishbone materials, are studied to understand the local and trading provenance of these items. Representative samples of each material, including two flat glass shards, were characterized using optical microscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) with energy dispersive X-ray (EDS) microanalysis attached, UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometry, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Glass beads represent 60% of the bead assemblage. The shell and fishbone beads are 38.75% and 1.25%, respectively. Three groups of glasses were identified: (1) mineral-soda alumina glass beads associated with the recently identified m-Na-Al 6 group that come from Western India; (2) vegetal-soda alumina, represented by one flat glass shard probably from the Middle East, and beads of v-Na-Al glass of type A that came from Central Asia; and (3) conventional soda-lime silicate glasses, of modern chronology and probable European origin. Groups 1 and 2 show a variety of chromophores, both ionic and colloidal. A ruby-color bead was also identified as belonging to the Na2O-ZnO-SiO2 system and colored with cadmium sulfoselenide colloids, but this was of modern chronology. Shell beads were made from Lambis lambis gastropod mollusk shells and were locally produced. The fishbone beads may have been from a cartilaginous fish of the Chondrichthyes class, but it is difficult to specify the taxonomical level. The results of the analysis suggest that Ibo Island was integrated very early into the Swahili trade networks of the Indian Ocean.

Reading Rasūlid Maps: An Early 14th-Century Geographical Resource

Abstract While there is a tradition of Islamic world maps and geographic depictions of direction to the Kaʿba in Mecca, relatively few detailed maps of individual Islamic realms have been studied. In an early 14th-century tax ledger compiled for the Rasūlid sultan al-Malik al-Muʾayyad Dāwūd (d. 721/1321), there is a map of the fortresses (ḥuṣūn), major towns, and ports of the areas controlled and taxed, as well as individual maps of Aden, Taʿizz, al-Janad, Dhamār, al-Shiḥr, and several wadis. Given the context of the text, Irtifāʿ al-dawla al-Muʾayyadiyya, as a tax register, some of the maps probably serve a functional purpose. But how should such maps be read against the lists of important locations in other Rasūlid sources and earlier compilations, such as Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-buldān compiled a century earlier or al-Hamdānī’s 10th-century Ṣifat jazīrat al-ʿArab? In this article I analyze the range of locations, how they are iconically represented, the accuracy of their relative locations, and their links to other Rasūlid lists. In what ways do these maps better illustrate how the Rasūlids viewed their own realm, which in the early 14th century was a rival of the Egyptian Mamluks and a major player in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean trade network? Finally, how does this unique set of maps fit other Islamic maps in the tradition that stems back several centuries before?

The Islamic Port of al-Balīd (Oman), between Land and Sea: Place of Trade, Exchange, Diversity, and Coexistence

Abstract The site of al-Balīd (Southern Oman), identified as the ancient Ẓafār, was a major port city in the Islamic period. Its strategic position and its history, strongly interdependent with that of neighbouring regions, gave it an important socio-economic role. The abundant ceramics and the rich and diverse archaeological materials recovered at the site prove that al-Balīd has always maintained relationships with people living inland and, at the same time, that it was intensively involved in the Indian Ocean trade. The pottery also reflects the coexistence of different traditions, various social classes, and several communities at al-Balīd.

Muslim Cultures beyond the Aperture: An East African Photo-Story Illuminated by First-Hand Accounts

Abstract This paper is an exploration of Indian Muslim culture in East Africa through pre- and post-independence eras via the medium of photography. It examines the art and craft of photographic practice, the training of photographers, their social networks and those of their patrons, as well as the personal context of photographs. It also discusses the dispersal of archives and personal collections. It is based upon first-hand accounts from professional photographers, their family members as well as patrons, whose ancestors travelled from India via Indian Ocean trade routes. Fareh te chareh is a Gujarati proverb meaning ‘A person who roams advances.’