The Indian Ocean in the Long Eighteenth Century

Abstract

This article considers the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century, a period often seen as a moment of transition for the Ocean as an economic space. It argues that notwithstanding the increasing European presence, the eighteenth-century Indian Ocean world remained quintessentially Asian. The trade of cotton and the flow of American silver expanded an already developed system of trade and exchange. This article concludes by reflecting on the chronological and spatial boundaries of the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century and considers the field of Indian Ocean studies in relation to global and Atlantic histories.

Indian Ocean Studies: How did we get here and where are we going? A Historian's Perspective

“…92 Or does it make better analytical sense to think of a 'long eighteenth century,' as Prasannan Parthasarathi and Giorgio Riello contend, rather than a 'long nineteenth century,' as I have suggested? 93 One of the most persistent tropes for thinking about the IOW is cosmopolitanism, which has many academic adherents. To be sure, there are many cosmopolitan features across the IOW, most notably as they pertain to urban areas.…”

Connective Afrasian Sea memories: Transregional imaginaries, memory politics, and complexities of national “belonging”

“…Ever since sailors mastered the Monsoon winds that enabled deep-sea dhow sailing (Alpers, 2014: 2), the Indian Ocean has connected people, ecologies, political ideas, and philosophical concepts. The longer time frame of Indian Ocean interactions makes the task of Indian Oceanists more complex since unlike the Atlantic or Pacific, the Indian Ocean “has a dense history of connections” (Parthasarathi and Riello, 2014: 2). Migrations of human beings from Africa to the Middle East, Asia, and Europe and vice versa have seen the formation of some of the oldest diasporas that remain unknown to many because they have mostly assimilated into host societies, thus becoming “invisible” (Harris, 2003).…”

“…The Portuguese kept secret their maps of the ocean routes to sources of spices, fabrics, and porcelain, but French, British, Dutch, Spanish, and German ships reached the Indian Ocean all the same. The European presence in this ocean since 1500 has elicited debates about whether it interfered with existent trade dynamics (Parthasarathi and Riello, 2014). Bose (2006) argues that “scholarship on this period of Southeast Asia’s history has disabused us of any simplistic notions of economic and societal decline” (p. 19).…”