The second major long-distance trade system in the pre-modern world was the network of maritime routes which developed along the basin of the Indian Ocean. Trade had in fact been conducted along the coasts of the Indian Ocean since pre-historical times, and there is evidence to suggest that the Egyptians explored the Indian Ocean as early as about 2300 B.C.E. / Already in full swing by the turn of the first millenium C.E., trade along the basin of the Indian Ocean was boosted by the partial shift south of many trade enterprises from the overland routes of the Silk Road, following the fall of major empires which had previously not only fuel the demand for traded goods, but also offered a degree of ease of travel and security within their territories. The partial commercial shift south was also the result of the increase in the transmission of disease along the overland routes of the Silk Road. / Trade along the Indian Ocean basin then multiplied exponentially roughly around 1000 C.E., both in terms of the amount and variety of goods traded. At the core of this rise in commercial activity seems to have been an explosion in agricultural production around this time, which led to three significant developments in the lands lying on the Indian Ocean. The first was a huge demographic increase in the area, characterized by China's growth by 1200 into the most populous territory in the world, with over 100 million inhabitants, followed in size by another Indian Ocean territory, the Indian sub-continent, which came to have about 80 million inhabitants. The second significant development was increased economic diversification, including particularly the growth of local manufacturing for export, which led naturally to the growth of commerce. Finally, the area experienced as well a significant degree of urbanization and urban growth, as port areas grew into large and sophisticated cities catering to the needs of merchants and investors, both native and foreign. / As was the case with trade along the overland routes of the Silk Road, commerce on the Indian Ocean was shaped to a very great degree by its geography and climate, which presented their own dangers and challenges and therefore dictated trade patterns. The third largest of the world's oceans, the Indian Ocean touches Asia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. It also connects and links the Continents called the Old World, in contrast to the New World, which is touched by the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Seas. The Indian Ocean covers about 26 million square miles, which equals about a 20% of the world's ocean surface. The sheer extent of the ocean presented unique challenges, necessitating not only special ships, but also trade in segments, with ships navigating the ocean in stages, stopping along the route both to trade and to get provisions needed for the next leg of the voyage. / Of course, the Indian Ocean region is larger than the body of water itself, since the region also includes the coastlines where people live to this day, working on and from the sea. It also includes waterways that connect to the Indian Ocean, linking important places where trade originated and distant ports where goods were carried. The larger region important to the story of the Indian Ocean includes three bodies of water in the west which linked Europe, Africa and Asia: the Arabian (Persian) Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. In the east, the region includes thousands of islands east of the Strait of Malacca, the area between Southeast Asia and Australia that leads to the Pacific, as well as the South China Sea, which connects the Indian Ocean with East Asia, the source of many important products, migrating peoples, cultural influences and technologies that affected life along the basin of the Indian Ocean itself. / I would like to conclude this section by discussing the Indian Ocean's defining climate, particularly two important aspects: its tropical temperatures and its characteristic wind patterns. First, the rim of the Indian Ocean which touches the continents of Asia, Africa and Australia lies mostly within the tropics. This means that all of the ports and bays on the ocean are free of ice all year round. There was no Ice Age in the Indian Ocean, so this zone was always habitable - and navigable - by human populations. The Ice Age did affect the ocean in some ways, most significantly changing the shoreline. For example, during the Ice Age, the huge island group in Southeast Asia was connected to mainland Asia, almost all the way to Australia. That was, of course, no longer the case by the period we are investigating here. Still, what is important to remember is that, for the most part, the Indian Ocean has been inhabited and navigated from very early on in the history of human civilization. The Indian Ocean's second defining climatological characteristic is a pattern of seasonal exchange of air masses between land and sea. This pattern is called the monsoon. During summer, when the land masses are warmed by the sun's heat, air masses over the huge continent of Asia rise, pulling in air saturated with moisture from the Indian Ocean south of Asia. The monsoon wind then blows from the southwest. This means that trade during the summer is easiest from west to east, when ships are pushed along by the wind. This pattern is inverted during winter, when the warmer air masses over the ocean pull in dry air from Asia, and the wind blows from the northeast, facilitating trade from east to west. Equally important, the tropical monsoon climate, combined with natural links across land and sea, made the Indian Ocean a place rich in plants and animals unique to this part of the world. Spices, tropical fruits, rare jungle animals, and sea creatures became rare and exotic products and natural resources that became highly sought-after and valued items of trade.
As was the case along the routes of the Silk Road, the segmented nature of commerce along the Indian Ocean basin resulted in the involvement of many different peoples, both as suppliers and consumers of goods. While any number of people participated in this trade, there were four major areas - and their respective populations - upon which commerce in the Indian Ocean most clearly depended. Those areas were China, India, Arabia, and Africa. Of course, in a lecture of this nature I cannot go into great detail into each of these areas, particularly those which I have discussed elsewhere during our course. Therefore, here I want only to make some general comments about China and India, to concentrate instead on the Arabic and African peoples involved in the Indian Ocean network, since we have discussed Africa to a lesser degree than the other three areas. / Here, I want to make only two points about China as a hub for Indian Ocean trade: 1) China was the largest single market in this network, not only thanks to its population size, which meant extensive demand for goods, but also thanks to its political organization which, as I mentioned in relation to the Silk Road, meant greater ease of commerce thanks to an effective bureaucracy and to a streamlined currency. 2) By the 1300s, China had the most highly developed economy on the globe, which meant in part both the creation of sophisticated investment opportunities and the availability of extensive commercial networks through which goods could be moved efficiently. / As for India, here I would like to highlight specifically its place in the middle of the Indian Ocean, literally. Thanks in great part to India's geographical centrality, Indian ports along both its western and eastern coasts became crucial mid-points for ships coming and going in either direction. Naturally, this meant that Indian port cities became basically clearing houses for trade, as in them one could find goods from almost everywhere in the globe. Equally important, the centrality of Indian ports meant that peoples from around the Indian Ocean basin and beyond merged in these cities, making them incredibly cosmopolitan centers of cultural contact and exchange. / Let me now turn my attention to the Arabic Peninsula and its role in long-distance trade, both along the Silk Road and Indian Ocean. The Arabian Peninsula is a large land bridge suspended between Africa and Asia. It is among the largest peninsulas on earth, and is surrounded by water on all four sides. To the north lies the Mediterranean Sea and to the west lies the Red Sea. To the east is the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf, and to the south is the Arabian Sea, which is also part of the Indian Ocean. About three-quarters of the Arabian Peninsula is covered by deserts, making it mostly arid with inhospitable terrain, with fertile regions only around the periphery, along the mountainous Arabian Sea coast to the south. This means that the peoples of the Arabic Peninsula naturally turned to trade in order to supplement the limited foodstuffs and natural resources at their disposal. The fact that the peninsula is linked to both Africa (by the narrow isthmus of Suez, near the Sinai Peninsula) and to Asia (from the Mediterranean coast along the Tigris-Euphrates River system) means that Arabia is at the center of the eastern hemisphere's continents and waterways. It forms a land bridge between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and a crossroads between Africa, Asia, and Europe. Therefore, it is ideally located to participate in long-distance trade along both the Silk Road and Indian Ocean networks. As we shall see in a later slide, Arab merchants traded both local goods and foreign commodities. Still, perhaps their most important export was their religion, Islam.
The last major area involved in Indian Ocean trade is made up by the many kingdoms which populated the African continent during this period. Resulting in an incredibly diverse continent, in the pre-modern world Africa was divided into hundreds of small states and a few major empires, including Egypt in its Hellenistic, Roman and, Caliphatic versions. These states collectively played a key role in the global economy of the pre-modern world, up to around 1500 when, as I've mentioned before, the focus shifted to Atlantic trade. Among the African areas most involved in long-distance trade, I would like to introduce three. / The first is perhaps the most obvious, that is, the coastal areas along Africa's eastern shores, which are known as the Swahili Coast. This region was made up of independent city-stated purposely developed and organized around trade. The area's city-states, among which the most significant were Zanzibar and Mogadishu, had three core commonalities which differentiated them from other African states. The first commonality is their language, Swahili. The second commonality is that, although mainly organized by the native inhabitants, all of these city-states evolved into ethnically and culturally diverse areas, populated by peoples from all around the Indian Ocean basin and the African interior who had concentrated in these coastal areas to work in commerce and its related trades. The third commonality is that, unlike other African areas, the city-states on the eastern coast of Africa were religiously diverse and relatively tolerant. In fact, although most of the rulers of these states had converted to Islam by around 1000 B.C.E., they nevertheless welcomed non-Muslims to trade, live, and worship in their cities. / In counter-clock fashion from the eastern coast of Africa to the western, the second major area involved in Indian Ocean trade was Egypt. Throughout its history, Egypt was involved in trade around both the Mediterranean basin and with the Near East, as well as along the eastern coast of Africa. Egyptian commercial involvement in Indian Ocean trade expanded particularly during the period of the Fatimid Caliphate, from the tenth to twelfth centuries C.E., and the subsequent Mamluk Sultanate which lasted into the sixteenth century. Egypt had always played a key role in regional trade networks in the eastern Mediterranean, the Nile Valley, and North Africa. In the early Islamic period, however, only a trickle remained of the important commerce once carried between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean via the Red Sea and Roman Egypt, it being instead shipped through the Persian Gulf and Iraq. Nevertheless, by the tenth century these patterns of trade had begun to shift once again. In the Fatimid period, which is dated from 969 to 1171 C.E. a newly vibrant "international" trade network developed which was shipping goods to and from Egypt, directly reaching lands as far apart as Southern Europe, the Yemen, East Africa, and India, and then by further links Northern Europe, Southeast Asia, and even China. By the later Fatimid period, Egypt had become the crossroads of an extensive long-distance trade system that would endure for centuries. The credit for this remarkable commercial prosperity has sometimes been given to Fatimid economic policies, and these did provide many of the essential ingredients for a flourishing trade. The security of merchants' lives and property was generally guaranteed, and the Fatimids established a gold coinage of such a consistently high degree of fineness that it was widely accepted as currency. The government did reserve the right to purchase certain goods by preemption, and for reasons of both security and revenue it was heavily involved in the trade of particular commodities (especially grain, war materials, flax, and alum). Moreover, government officials were often personally involved in trade. Yet, there was otherwise little state interference in the market, encouraging private investment and direct involvement in trade. While customs dues provided the Fatimids with considerable income, they were not usually excessive, and rates could be surprisingly flexible when the purpose was to encourage trade with particular states or in certain types of merchandise. Egypt's increased involvement in trade was also due to increased demand, particularly from Europe, for goods such as Egyptian flax and alum for use in the textile industry, as well as other Egyptian products like sugar, and also becase of European interest in the luxury merchandise coming through Egypt from the Indian Ocean world. / Moving along to the northeastern territories of the African continent, we encounter what are known as the internal Saharan states, small but powerful and wealthy kingdoms shaped in great part by their involvement in long-distance trade. Although located across the continent from the Indian Ocean, during the first millennium B.C.E. these states profited from trading networks that extended inward from the ocean and across the Sahara Desert. During much of the classical period, links between sub-Saharan Africa and the civilized cores were limited, but between 800 and 1500 C.E. contacts between Africa and other civilizations intensified. As a result, many of the African states converted to Islam, which more closely linked Africa to a Eurasian system of trade, and exposed the emerging states of Africa to new concepts of religion, commerce, and political organization. / As diverse as all these different areas of Africa were, they were connected by the expansive system of trade networks which crisscrossed the southern hemisphere of the "Old World", through which they came to exchange not only material goods, but also ideas.
As I mentioned in the previous slide, more than just material goods were exchanged along the Indian Ocean basin. However, non-tangible goods such as technologies, religions, political ideologies and the like followed the networks first designed to trade commodities such as cash crops, metals, and manufactured goods. With that in mind, let me here list some of the most significant goods traded along the Indian Ocean, highlighting the fact that the list of goods and their provenance make apparent that each of the regions involved came to specialize in particular goods from which they could make the most profit. / From all the regions of Africa, the most valuable export goods were gold, ivory, and slaves. This might perhaps surprise some of you, who might have thought the slave trade concentrated solely on the Atlantic. This, in fact, couldn't be farther from the truth. Rather, the trade of African slaves in fact pre-dated the discovery of the "New World", as demand for slaves rose, particularly from Muslim territories both within and outside Africa. In turn, peoples in the Arabic Peninsula exported mainly incense and horses, which to this day are considered among the best in the world. The major exports from India were a variety of cotton textiles, both rough and fine, as well as refined sugar, worked iron, and steel. The Chinese, of course, exported their famous silks and porcelains, while the South East Asian islands exported a variety of spices, among them not only pepper, but also nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger, as I discussed earlier in this lecture. A final good exchanged deserves special mention, because of its unusual use. People from the Maldives, an archipelago of islands off the southwestern coast of India, exported cowrie shells. These pearlescent mollusk shells were so valuable that they were used as currency, preferred by African merchants over gold and silver bullion. As you can imagine, their trade was incredibly profitable to the inhabitants of the archipelago.
Throughout this lecture, I have mentioned repeatedly that more than just material goods were exchanged along the routes of both the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean basin. While these material goods significantly changed everyday life in the " Old World" - by introducing new flavors, new smells, and new colors to people's experiences, among other things - nevertheless, the influence of tangible commodities pales in comparison to the influence exerted by a series of intangible goods imported by merchants and immigrants to trading posts along the commercial networks. I am referring here to new ideas, including technologies, political approaches, social hierarchies, and cultural traditions. For example, Sub-Saharan kingdoms in Africa embraced Islamic ideas of rulership, while French artisans embraced Chinese techniques for silk production. Likewise, maritime technologies, including the specially designed dhow, a deeper-bottomed ship with a large sail ideal for maximizing use of monsoon winds, were adopted around the whole Indian Ocean. / Among the ideas exchanged along pre-modern trade routes, the most significant was religion. Imported, so to speak, by peoples traveling along both the Silk Road and Indian Ocean basin, many of the major religions about which we have spoken in this class migrated extremely long distances, becoming, in fact, global. Along the Silk Road, Buddhism and Christianity gained new influence, while along the Indian Ocean basin it was Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism which gained new converts. / In this last section of my lecture, I want to concentrate on the spread of Buddhism, which although originally a religion of India became a truly influential religion not there, but in the eastern stretches of the Silk Road, most importantly China and Tibet. The first Buddhist influences came as the passes over the Karakorum were first explored. The Eastern Han emperor Mingdi is thought to have sent a representative to India to discover more about this strange faith, and further missions returned bearing scriptures and bringing with them Indian priests. The greatest flux of Buddhism into China occurred during the Northern Wei dynasty, in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. This was at a time when China was divided into several different kingdoms. Rulers encouraged the development of Buddhism, and more missions were sent towards India. The new religion spread slowly eastwards, through the oases surrounding the Taklimakan, encouraged by an increasing number of merchants, missionaries and pilgrims. Many of the local peoples adopted Buddhism as their own religion. Faxian, a pilgrim from China, records the religious life in the Kingdoms of Khotan and Kashgar in 399 C.E. in great detail. He describes the large number of monasteries that had been built, and a large Buddhist festival that was held while he was there. Some devotees were sufficiently inspired by the new ideas that they headed off in search of the source, towards Gandhara and India; others started to build monasteries, grottos and stupas. This means that Buddhist influence extended beyond religious faith itself, to art and architecture. For the archaeologist grottos built along the Silk Road are particularly valuable sources of information about the Road and the peoples who traveled along it. Along with the images of Buddhas and Boddhisatvas, there are scenes of the everyday life of the people at the time. Scenes of celebration and dancing give an insight into local customs and costume. These scenes depict both locals and newcomers, the new ethnic diversity of these areas captured in paint. The influences of the Silk Road traffic are therefore quite clear in the mix of cultures that appears on these murals at different dates. / The Buddhist faith gave birth to a number of different sects in Central Asia. Of these, the `Pure Land' and `Chan' (Zen) sects were particularly strong, and were even taken beyond China; they are both still flourishing in Japan. / One last word about the religions of the Silk Road: Christianity also made an early appearance on the Silk scene. The Nestorian sect was outlawed in Europe by the Roman church in 432 C.E., and its followers were driven eastwards. From their foothold in Northern Iran, merchants brought the faith along the Silk Road, and the first Nestorian church was consecrated at Changan in 638 C.E. This sect took root on the Silk Road, and survived many later attempts to wipe them out, lasting into the fourteenth century. Many Nestorian writings have been found with other documents at Dunhuang and Turfan. Manichaeism, a third century Persian religion, also influenced the area, and had become quite well developed by the beginning of the T'ang Dynasty.
