The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [126]
To list all the items traded would be a tedious task indeed. We will, rather, concentrate on changes over this period. In all this we need to remember Rene Barendse's advice and take care not to see all change as stemming from the European presence. In very general terms from about 1300 to 1750 long-distance trade was roughly oriented north to south, that is India and China trading manufactured, high value added, goods to the south – East Africa, southeast Asia – from whence came tropical raw materials like slaves, ivory and some gold.
The vast bulk of the trade continued to be in humble products, and usually was left alone by the company level of the European presence: rather it was controlled by local traders, amongst whom were some Europeans. A French account from the 1730s mentions a trade in sugar from Bengal to Surat, taken as ballast and then sent up country, and some also re-exported to Persia and the Red Sea. On the Bengal–Melaka–Surat route opium went out, and sugar and calin came back. Bengal provided rice to both the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, while rice, ginger, coarse piece goods and sugar went direct from Bengal to Mocha in the Red Sea, and sugar and coarse cloth to Basra.8 Most of the port cities not only had a trade in goods which were to be re-exported either overseas or inland, they also imported most of their raw materials and necessities. Hurmuz was an example, albeit an extreme one. It got rice from Chaul and other ports on the Indian west coast, grain from the Punjab via Sind and also from the Persian mainland. Rope, iron and coconuts came from Malabar, wood from East Africa, especially from the Somali coast via the Hadhramaut, and also from Socotra. By this time much of this humble trade was being done in private European ships carrying native cargoes. Below this was an even more humble level, with minor merchants in tiny local vessels chaffering their way up and down the coasts and in the archipelago.
Some of these products came from far inland, or went far inland from the port city nodes. We maritime historians need to remember that the trade by sea was in products which came from the land, and were consumed on the land; the sea trade then is not a thing alone and of itself, it existed to service people who lived on the land, and not necessarily on land located on the coast. As an example, Bandar Abbas in the Gulf was the centre or 'scale' of a vast and variegated number of routes, some maritime linking distant forelands, others by land linking very diverse and often distant hinterlands. From Bandar Abbas caravan routes went off to Kirman and Isfahan, to Mashad, Bukhara and Khiva, and from Yazd to Balkh and to Qandahar, Tabriz, and even on to the Caucuses.9
Other products were legion. We have discussed the spice trade in some detail, but there were trades in other high-value goods too. One example is pearls, which came from both the Gulf around Bahrain, and from the Gulf of Mannar between Sri Lanka and India. These were traded and valued far and wide. According to Sulaiman, our Persian ambassador – though he was hardly a neutral observer – those from Bahrain were far superior to those from Mannar. 'Unfortunately all other pearls when confronted with the pearl of Bahrain lose their bright countenance out of shame and grief. The jeweller of Time and Chance has relegated these Indian jewels of lesser lustre to a low shelf in the bazaar of happiness.'10
Another preciosity was the trade