Sebastian R. Prange

The Contested Sea: Regimes of Maritime Violence in the Pre-Modern Indian Ocean

Abstract Rulers on the Indian Ocean littoral are generally portrayed as having been uninterested in the pursuit of sea power until the coming of the Europeans. This article examines a series of case studies from this earlier period to argue that maritime violence had long been a part of expansionist political projects centered on the control of trade routes and coastal waters. In their sum, they show the Indian Ocean to have been an arena of active political competition and legal contestation, which were waged through private and semi-private agents commonly denoted as pirates.

'Trust in God - but tie your camel first.' The economic organization of the trans-Saharan slave trade between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries

This paper examines the economic organization of the trans-Saharan slave trade between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries on those routes that moved slaves from Sudanic Africa via entrepots in the Sahel and Sahara to the Maghrib. The commercial framework of this trade was integrated into ethnic, cultural, and religious systems, yet for its efficient operation could not rely solely on these social institutions. The paper considers temporary cooperation of itinerant slave traders and then projects them onto the broader patterns of commercial organization. It is shown that similar pressures resulted in comparable outcomes: partnerships were formed to take advantage of economies of scale in commercial services and to limit cooperation problems. This demonstrates that the organization of the trans-Saharan slave trade was economically rational and can be analysed in terms of cooperative and non-cooperative strategies. Moreover, it is argued that the trade was not restrained by social institutions but versatile in adapting its economic institutions to specific market imperfections. It is concluded that institutional economics and game theory are more useful in explaining the economic behaviour of those involved in the slave trade than standard neoclassical economics.

The Pagan King Replies: An Indian Perspective on the Portuguese Arrival in India

This article recommends a virtually unknown manuscript on the early Portuguese presence in India to wider scholarly attention. Dubbed here the Wye manuscript, this text purports to be an English translation of a sixteenth-century Malayalam history that was produced at the court of the ruler of Calicut. The South Indian kingdom of Calicut was central to Portugal’s project of monopolizing the region’s all-important pepper trade; the Wye manuscript therefore holds the promise of adding an Indian perspective to a history that has been written largely on the basis of European sources. This article examines the external and internal evidence for the author’s claim of having translated the text from an original palm-leaf manuscript held by members of Calicut’s royal family. An analysis of its content shows significant overlap with an Arabic history of the sixteenth century; a comparison of their similarities and differences suggests a number of insights into the processes of composition and revision of both the Malayalam and Arabic texts. Last, and most important, the Wye manuscript is transcribed in full in the hope of stimulating further discussion and study.

Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast

Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, a distinct form of Islamic thought and practice developed among Muslim trading communities of the Indian Ocean. Sebastian Prange argues that this “Monsoon Islam” was shaped by merchants not sultans, forged by commercial imperatives rather than in battle, and dei ned by the reality of Muslims living within non-Muslim societies. Focusing on India’s Malabar Coast, the muchfabled “land of pepper”, Prange provides a case study of how Monsoon Islam developed in response to concrete economic, socio-religious, and political challenges. Because communities of Muslim merchants across the Indian Ocean were part of shared commercial, scholarly, and political networks, developments on the Malabar Coast illustrate a broader, trans-oceanic history of the evolution of Islam across monsoon Asia. This history is told through four spaces that are examined in their physical manifestations as well as symbolic meanings: the Port, the Mosque, the Palace, and the Sea.

Piracy in Asian WatersPart 2: Piracy, Sovereignty, and the Early Modern Asian State—An Introduction

Abstract This is the second of a two-part special issue on piracy in Asian waters. Part 1 (vol. 16, no. 6) explored the social and economic dynamics of pan-Asian piracy, and here in Part 2, contributors delve into the political dimensions of piracy by focusing on its interrelationship with notions of sovereignty, the changing nature of states in early modern Asia, and the rise of global seaborne empires. The four articles here challenge the conventional wisdom that Asian waters were great voids in indigenous political imagination and that Asian polities never regulated maritime space before the arrival of the West. Piracy played a significant role in the intense economic rivalries and competing political claims over sovereignty, not just between Western imperial powers but also among indigenous polities. Maritime space, therefore, was actively contested by both European powers and by various Asian states. In this contestation the early modern Asian pirate served as both instrument and contender of nascent projects of empire-building and sovereignty.

Piracy in Asian Waters

Abstract Seafaring, and especially the use of seaborne violence, in the early modern period is strongly associated with European naval activity. In this issue and the next, this perspective is challenged through a sustained interrogation of indigenous piracy in Asian waters. A series of studies highlight the persistence, sophistication, and breathtaking scale of Asian piracy. They show how piracy was deeply ingrained in the social worlds, commercial exchanges, and political contestations across the Asian littoral. Based on these insights, it is argued that the study of piracy reveals the significance of an often-overlooked dimension of Asian maritime enterprise in the early modern period.