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By Root 592 0

that connections, an early version of the currently fashionable concept of 'globalisation', were very much in place in the world long before modern transportation and communications revolutions produced the intricately connected world we live in today. Eric Wolf stressed interchange in the world at 1400. John Russell-Wood wrote on mingling and connections created by the far-flung Portuguese empire, while Fernand Braudel took a global compass when he wrote of civilisation and capitalism.23 It is crucial to acknowledge that most connections are rather minor, in the sense that most trade is coastal, most seafarers are actually just fisherfolk who do not go very far out to sea. Braudel stressed that the vast majority of navigation in the Mediterranean was coastal, in small ships of less than 75 tonnes. For these travelling bazaars the land was always in sight. These, 'the proletariat of the sea', went ashore frequently to peddle their wares.24 Romila Thapar, referring to trade from the Indus Valley Civilisation with West Asia from 3000 BCE, followed this explicitly:

The more spectacular maritime trade was occasional, but in its interstices there was a steady small-scale contact, often coastal, which involved transporting essential supplies quite apart from luxury items. These would be ships which, to use the felicitous phrase of Braudel, tramped from port to port and were travelling bazaars, largely covering the more confined circuits. Such a low profile trade continues to the present.25

When Braudel wrote of the Mediterranean he found very far-flung connections indeed: with the Baltic, the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Indian Ocean. So also with the Indian Ocean. Here are some more or less random examples: in 1731 the slave ship Diligent left the port of Vannes, near Nantes, bound for West Africa to buy slaves. Part of the cargo, which was to be used to buy slaves, was 7,000 lbs of cowry shells from the Maldives, and a large number of lengths of Indian cloth.26 Indeed, these particular cowries were only a small part of a vast humble trade. They were used as currency from West Africa to China. Coming from the Maldive Islands, they have been traded for some 1,500 years. At the height of the slave trade in the 1720s perhaps one million pounds were imported to West Africa to pay for slaves each year.27 The Jesuits in China used for mass wine made in Portugal which thus came clear across the Indian Ocean. The coco-de-mer, which comes from the Seychelles, drifts all around the Indian Ocean and is prized everywhere for its medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities.28 Eastern Vikings, originating from what is Sweden today, travelled to trade via the Black and Caspian Seas, to Abbasid Baghdad, and Isfahan, in other words to part of the Indian Ocean world.29 In the mid nineteenth century a town was established in Western Australia to breed horses for the Indian Army. It was given the appropriate name of Australind. This scheme failed, but later so many horses went from New South Wales to India that they were known as Walers. Karri and jarrah trees in southwest Western Australia were exported in bulk to India to be used as railway sleepers. Similarly, there have been massive movements of people over the ocean: people went from Indonesia to Madagascar, slaves came to Mauritius from Madagascar, the East African coast, India and Java; Zheng He sailed all around the littoral; half a million indentured labourers came from India to Mauritius in the nineteenth century; Europeans crossed half the world to get to the ocean. Muslim influences spread far and wide. In Zanzibar one group uses a certificate of authenticity and authority issued in Indonesia. In Mayotte, off Madagascar, South Asian Islamic reformers are active; in Zanzibar Islamic books, including Qurans, come from Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan.30

Not only people travel and form connections. The southern bluefin tuna is a magnificent fish. Their average weight is 25 kgs, and they can live for up to 40 years. They breed in the waters south of Java, and then go down