Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750Before the age of Industrial Revolution, the great Asian civilisations - whether located in the Middle East, India, South-East Asia, or the Far East - constituted areas not only of high culture but also of advanced economic development. They were the First World of human societies. This 1985 book examines one of the driving forces of that historical period: the long chain of oceanic trade which stretched from the South China Sea to the eastern Mediterranean. It also looks at the natural complement of the seaborne commerce, its counterpart in the caravan trade. Its main achievement is to show how socially determined demand derived from cultural habits and interpretations operated through the medium of market forces and relative prices. It points out the unique and limiting features of Asian commercial capitalism, and shows how the contribution of Asian merchants was valued universally, in reality if not legally and formally. Professor Chaudhuri's book, based on more than twenty years' research and reflection on pre-modern trade and civilisations, was a landmark in the analysis and interpretation of Asia's historical position and development. |
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Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the ... K. N. Chaudhuri No preview available - 1985 |
Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the ... K. N. Chaudhuri No preview available - 1985 |
Common terms and phrases
Aden al-Muqaddasi Arab Arabian Sea areas Asian Asian merchants Baghdad Basra Bay of Bengal Bengal Braudel Cairo Calicut Cambay Canton capital caravan trade cargo China Chinese cities civilisations coast coastal commercial commodities cotton Dutch East India Company eastern economic Egypt eighteenth century empire emporia emporia trading English East India Europe European exchange export Fustat geographical Gujarat historians historical Hormuz Ibid Ibn Battuta Ibn Majid imperial important Indian Ocean Indian Ocean trade Indonesian Islamic islands Java Jedda junk land long-distance trade Malabar Malacca maritime trade Mediterranean Middle East Mocha monsoon Mughal Muslim naval navigation North officials organised pepper period Persian Gulf Pires political ports Portuguese pre-modern production Red Sea region remained rice routes rulers sail sailors seaborne trade ships silk silver Siraf sixteenth century social South East Asia spices Surat textiles towns tradition trans-continental trade urban vessels voyages western Indian Ocean
Popular passages
Page 1 - Braudel himself has told us, no doubt sharpened his insight into and awareness of cultural and geographical unity (and by definition differences), the memory of which has gradually been lost over the last two centuries and has had to be recaptured through long and painstaking research in a dozen different archives.1 The title of the present work is an inadequate acknowledgement of a profound intellectual debt owed to Fernand Braudel and a recognition of the trend in social and economic history set...
Page 5 - To criticize the legacy of an historian universally regarded as one of the craft's greatest practitioners is not a task to be undertaken lightly, especially by one who remains in his intellectual debt. Braudel boasted of having achieved "a history whose passage is almost imperceptible, that of man in his relationship to the environment, a history in which all change is slow.
Page 1 - The first is the unity and coherence of the Mediterranean region. I retain the firm conviction", he wrote, "that the Turkish Mediterranean lived and breathed with the same rhythms as the Christian...