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Trade, Production, and Incorporation. The Indian Ocean in Flux, 1600–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Extract

Historians have approached the Indian Ocean from a variety of vantages in their attempts to explain the modern history of this huge maritime arena. Some scholars have concentrated on predation as a linking theme, charting how piracy connected a broad range of actors for centuries in these dangerous waters. Others have focused on environmental issues, asking how patterns of winds, currents, and weather allowed trade to flourish on such a vast, oceanic scale. These latter historians have appropriated a page out of Braudel, and have grafted his approaches to the Mediterranean to fit local, Indian Ocean realities, such as the role of cyclones and mangrove swamps in both helping and hindering long-distance commerce. Still other scholars have used different tacks, following trails of commodities such as spices or precious metals, or even focusing on far-flung archaeological remains, in an attempt to piece together trans-regional histories from the detritus civilisations left behind. All of these epistemological vectors have shed light on the region as a whole, though through different tools and lenses, and via a variety of techniques of inquiry.

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Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2002

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References

Notes

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14 Arabia, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf are not considered as a separate shore of the Indian Ocean in this piece, though they do figure in the narrative on India and especially East Africa. Nevertheless, I have particularly benefited from the work of RJ. Barendse; see especially his Reflections on the Arabian Seas in the Eighteenth Century’, Itinerario 25/1 (2000) 2550Google Scholar, and his book, The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (Armonk 2002).

15 Smith, The Wealth of Nations I, 91.

16 Marx, Capital III, 422.

17 Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce: The Lands Beneath the Winds (New Haven 1988Google Scholar and 1993).

18 Reid's emphasis on bulk commodities took issue with Jacob van Leur's characterization of trade as being 'splendid but trifling’, see Van Leur, J.C., Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (Hague 1955)Google Scholar. On the role of ceramics, see Harrison, Barbara, Pusaka: Heirloom Jars of Borneo (Singapore 1986)Google Scholar and Brown, Roxanna, The Ceramics of South-East Asia: Their Dating and Identification (Singapore 1988) 5779Google Scholar.

19 A Dutch ship gutted in Northeast Java in 1597 was pillaged almost immediately by dozens of local prahu; Spanish troops in Mindanao removed all the bolts from one of their own ruined caravels, in the hopes that they would not fall into Muslim hands in 1609. An interesting corollary to this Southeast Asian metal-hunger is that often locals would pay more for certain metals based on cultural indices of value. This happened in the polities of the Javanese Pasisir, where Sulawesi's high-nickel iron was preferred for manufacturing krisses (based on the swirling designs of the nickel etched in the blades) over the cheaper imported iron brought by Europeans and Chinese. See Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1, 107, 110.

20 Mercenaries were hired from Japan, Arabia, Holland, France, and Persia; see da Pombejra, Dhiravat, ‘Ayutthaya at the End of the Seventeenth Century: Was There a Shift to Isolation?’ in: Reid, Anthony ed., Southeast Asia in the Early Modem Era: Trade, Power, and Belief (Ithaca 1993) 250272Google Scholar; see also Reid, Anthony, ‘Europe and Southeast Asia: The Military Balance’, James Cook University of North Queensland, Occasional Paper #16 (Townsville 1982) 1Google Scholar.

21 See Barbara Watson Andaya, ‘Cash-Cropping and Upstream/Downstream Tensions: The Case of Jambi in the 17th and 18th-Centuries’ in: Reid ed., Southeast Asia in the Early Modem Era, 108.

22 See Andaya, Leonard, The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modem Period (Honolulu 1993)Google Scholar; van Frassen, Chris, ‘Ternate, de Molukken en de Indonesische Archipel’, PhD Thesis, Leiden University (2 vols) 1987Google Scholar; and the early historical chapters of Patricia Spyers, The Memory of Trade (Durham 2000).

23 John Bastin, ‘The Changing Balance of the Southeast Asian Pepper Trade’ in: Pearson, Spices in the Indian Ocean World, 283–316.

24 Anthony Reid, ‘Islamization and Christianization in Southeast Asia: The Critical Phase, 1550–1650’ in: Reid ed., Southeast Asia in the Early Modem Era, 151–179.

25 For a snapshot of gender dynamics in the Early Modern period ports, see the essays in: Andaya, Barbara Watson ed., Other Pasts: Women, Gender and History in Early Modern Southeast Asia (Honolulu 2000)Google Scholar.

26 Using a time-series of measurements, Reid juxtaposes the near-equal 5'2”; heights of Europeans and Filipinos in the seventeenth century (based on Robert Fox's excavations at Catalagan), to a Western jump to 5'6”; mean male height two centuries later. The cross-referencing on disease-outbreaks between hikayats, sejarahs, Chinese and Japanese trading accounts and European ship-captains’ logs is also impressive. See Fox, Robert, ‘The Catalangan Excavations’, Philippine Studies 7, 3 (1959) 325390Google Scholar, and Reid, , Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce I, 4748Google Scholar; 61.

27 The Dutch, meanwhile, started to fall behind by the eighteenth century. See Lewis, Dianne, Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca, 1641–1795 (Athens 1995)Google Scholar.

28 de Moor, J.A., ‘“A Very Unpleasant Relationship”;: Trade and Strategy in the Eastern Seas, Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Nineteenth Century From a Colonial Perspective’ in: Raven, G.J.A. and Rodger, N.A.M. eds, Navies and Armies: The Anglo-Dutch Relationship in War and Peace 1688–1988 (Edinburgh 1990) 4669Google Scholar.

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30 For some of the historical context on these processes in Johor, see Andaya, Leonard, The Kingdom of Johor, 1641–1728: A Study of Economic and Political Developments in the Straits of Malacca (Kuala Lumpur 1975)Google Scholar.

31 This mirrors the ambiguity of piracy and trade, to some extent, in these same waters today. A certain percentage of craft that commit piratical acts in the Straits of Melaka do so opportunistically, plying commerce as their primary activity at other moments on their voyages. Tagliacozzo, 1990 fieldwork notes, 239.

32 Tarling, Nicholas, Imperial Britain in Southeast Asia (Kuala Lumpur 1975) 81Google Scholar.

33 Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (New York 1987.Google Scholar)

34 Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, Webster, Anthony, Gentleman Capitalists: British Imperialism in South East Asia 1770–1890 (London 1998)Google Scholar.

35 Turton, Andrew, ‘Ethnography of Embassy: Anthropological Readings of Records of Diplomatic Encounters Between Britain and Tai States in the Early Nineteenth Century’, South East Asia Research 5/2 (1997) 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Many of the ‘true’ initiatives behind the campaign can be seen in small actions committed after the occupation was already accomplished: such as the extension of the new border between the Upper and Lower halves of the country fifty miles north from the line originally agreed upon, to include valuable forests of teak. Pointon, A.G., The Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation (Southampton 1964) 12Google Scholar.

37 See the translated Burmese letter (probably from 1876) reproduced in: British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers From the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Volume E26 (Washington D.C. 1995) 104–105.

38 Chinese junks fell from 400 per annum to under 100 within a decade of the Bowring Treaty (1856), while British shipping carried eighty-seven per cent of Siamese tonnage by the year 1892. One contemporary Englishman boasted that Siamese brought rice to the mills, but there their part in the economic process ceased: the machinery was British, the jute packing-bags were fashioned in Calcutta, the steamers were from London, and the banks and insurers that financed the entire operation were British as well. See Sardesai, D.R., British Trade and Expansion in Southeast Asia, 1830–1914 (Delhi 1977) 9293Google Scholar. Also see Cushman, Jennifer, Fields from the Sea: Chinese Junk Trade with Siam During the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries (Ithaca 1993)Google Scholar, and Brown, Ian, The Elite and the Economy in Siam, 1890–1920 (Oxford 1988)Google Scholar.

39 Phongpaichit, Pasuk and Baker, Chris, Thailand: Economy and Politics (Kuala Lumpur 1995)Google Scholar.

40 Smith, The Wealth of Nations II, 638.

41 Marx, Capital III, 452.

42 Qasim, S.Z., ‘Concepts of Tides, Navigation and Trade in Ancient India’, Journal of Indian Ocean Studies 8, 1/2 (2000) 97102Google Scholar.

43 Arabians, Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Maghrebis, Sumatrans, Peguans, and Chinese are all mentioned as visitors to these cities; evidence of these pre-European communities can still be seen in Cochin, for example, in the synagogue and Jewish community surviving on Jew ‘Town Road’, and the Chinese canti-levered fishing nets (brought by ambassadors of the Great Khan in the thirteenth century) overhanging Cochin harbor. For more on the early maritime relationships of Southwest India, see Ray, Haraprasad, ‘Sino-Indian Historical Relations: Quilon and China’, Journal of Indian Ocean Studies 8 1/2 (2000) 116128Google Scholar.

44 For two revisionist histories, see Matthew, K.S., ‘Trade in the Indian Ocean During the Sixteenth Century and the Portuguese’ in: Matthew, K.S. ed., Studies in Maritime History (Pondicherry 1990) 1328Google Scholar, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Profit at the Apostle's Feet: The Portuguese Settlement of Mylapur in the Sixteenth Century’ in: Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal (Delhi 1990) 4767Google Scholar.

45 Pearson, M.N., ‘India and the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century’ in: Gupta, Ashin Das and Pearson, M.N., India and the Indian Ocean 1500–1800 (Calcutta 1987) 79Google Scholar; see also Askarai, Syed Hasan, ‘Mughal Naval Weakness and Aurangzeb's Attitude Towards the Traders and Pirates on the Western Coast’, Journal of Indian Ocean Studies 2/3 (1995) 236242Google Scholar.

46 For a description of the enduring diversities of this trade to Manila, even a century later, see Thomas, and McHale, Mary eds, The Journal of Nathaniel Bowditch in Manila, 1796 (New Haven 1962)Google Scholar.

47 One can still really feel the effects of this dynamic in Cambay, which is now a quiet ‘fringe city’ compared to the more prosperous Surat. Tagliacozzo, 1990 fieldnotes, 380. The later Mughal need for a dominant transit port also helped Surat vis-a-vis Cambay, while a rise in pilgrims undertaking the Hajj (and the rising price of coffee as a commodity) vaulted Mocha over Muscat in the seventeenth-century Arabian Peninsula. For some of the permutations of trade in Gujarat, see Moosvi, Shireen, ‘The Gujarat Ports and their Hinterland: The Economic Relationship’ in: Banga, Indu ed., Ports and their Hinterlands in India, 1700–1950 (Delhi 1992) 121130Google Scholar; Aniruddha Ray, ‘Cambay and its Hinterland: The Early Eighteenth Century’ in: Banga ed., Ports and their Hinterlands in India, 131–152, and Gupta, Ashin Das, ‘The Merchants of Surat, 1700–1750’ in: Leach, Edmund and Mukherjee, S.N., Elites in South Asia (Cambridge 1970)Google Scholar.

48 Sahai, Baldeo, Indian Shipping: A Historical Survey (Delhi 1996) 208251Google Scholar.

49 Savitri Chandra, ‘sea and Seafaring as Reflected in Hindi Literary Works During the 15th to 18th Centuries’ in: Matthew ed., Studies in Maritime History, 84–91, and R. Tirumalai, ‘A Ship Song of the Late 18th Century in Tamil’ in: Matthew ed., Studies in Maritime History, 159–164.

50 Ashin Das Gupta, ‘India and the Indian Ocean in the Eighteenth Century’ in: Das Gupta and Pearson, India and the Indian Ocean, 136.

51 On this question broadly, see Bose, Sugata, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal Since 1770 (Cambridge 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Banerjee, Kum Kum, ‘Grain Traders and the East India Company: Patna and its Hinterland in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’ in: Subrahmanyam, Sanjay ed., Merchants, Markets, and the State in Early Modern India (Delhi 1990) 163189Google Scholar; and Lakshmi Subramanian, ‘Western India in the Eighteenth Century: Ports, Inland Towns, and States’ in: Banga ed., Ports and their Hinterlands in India, 153–180.

52 Dilbagh Singh and Ashok Rajshirke, ‘The Merchant Communities in Surat: Trade, Trade Practices, and Institutions in the Late Eighteenth Century’ in: Banga ed., Ports and their Hinterlands in India, 181–198.

53 Larger armies and navies, heightened specialisation, professionalisation, higher codes of discipline and greater control of the State being several of these tenets. See Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge 1996)Google Scholar.

54 On the Dutch and French presence in India, see s'Jacob, H.K., ‘De VOC en de Malabarkust in de 17de eeuw’ in: Meilink-Roelofsz, M.A.P. ed., De VOC in Azië (Bussum 1976) 8599Google Scholar; Prakash, Om, The Dutch Factories in India, 1617–1623 (Delhi 1984)Google Scholar; Ray, Indrani ed., The French East India Company and the Trade of the Indian Ocean (Calcutta 1999)Google Scholar.

55 Marshall, P.J., Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of British Dominance in India (Aldershot 1993) 27Google Scholar; on mercenaries see Scammell, G.V., ‘European Exiles, Renegades and Outlaws and the Maritime Economy of Asia’ in: Matthew, K.S., Mariners, Merchants, and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History (Delhi 1995) 121142Google Scholar.

56 See the letter from Sultan Salim to Tipu Sultan of 20 September 1798 reproduced in: Kabir Kausar, compiler, Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan (New Delhi 1980) 253–265.

57 These complicated currents are treated well in the following works: PJ. Marshall, ‘Private Trade in the Indian Ocean Before 1800’ in: Das Gupta and Pearson, India and the Indian Ocean, 276–300; S. Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants, and Company: The Handloom Industry in South-Eastern India 1750–1790’ in: Subrahmanyam ed., Merchants, Markets, and the State, 190–214; Bruce Watson, ‘Indian Merchants and English Private Interests: 1659–1760’ in: Das Gupta and Pearson, India and the Indian Ocean, 301–316; and Gupta, Ashin Das, Merchants of Maritime India, 1500–1800 (Ashgate 1994)Google Scholar Chapter 14.

58 Bengali textiles sold very well in Europe and America, with the demands for cotton spilling over into Oudh - where its price was cheaper - as well. By 1800 it was said that ‘every foreign ship importing bullion into Calcutta brings this bullion especially for Oudh piece goods’. See Marshall, Trade and Conquest, 475–476. See also Joseph Brennig, ‘Textile Producers and Production in Late Seventeenth Century Coromandel’ in: Subrahmanyam ed., Merchants, Markets, and the State, 66–89.

59 ‘Agreement between the Nabob Nudjum-ul-Dowlah and the Company, 12 August 1765’ in: Harlow, Barbara and Carter, Mia eds, Imperialism and Orientalism: A Documentary Sourcebook (Oxford 1999) 6Google Scholar.

60 Arasaratnam, S., Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi 1994)Google Scholar Chapter 7.

61 Arasaratnam, S., Maritime Trade, Society and European Influence in Southern Asia, 1600–1800 (Ashgate 1995) Chapter 3Google Scholar.

62 Risso, Patricia, Merchants and Faith: Muslim Commerce and Culture in the Indian Ocean (Boulder 1995) 7798Google Scholar.

63 By 1777 Calcutta harbour registered a total of 290 private British trading ships in and out of port that year, with only Five per cent of total traffic on ships over eighty tons remaining of (native) Indian registry. See Watson, Bruce, Foundation for Empire: English Trade in India 1659–1760 (New Delhi 1980)Google Scholar.

64 Furber, Holden, Private Fortunes and Company Profits in the India Trade in the 18th Century (Aldershot 1997)Google Scholar.

65 The phrase, of course, is James Scott's; see Scott, James, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven 1985)Google Scholar.

66 In Madras, for example, the Governor of Ft St George (Edward Winter) partnered primarily with the merchant Beri Timmanna, while the Surat President George Oxenden held his closest ties with Bhinji Parak. In 1721 Hastings was dismissed for his private dealings and his Tamil associate, Khrishnama Venkatapati, was interrogated as well. Indian merchants could grow to be quite connected, and extremely powerful. Adiappa Narayan, dubash to Governor Richard Benyon of Madras, transacted for Indian coolies, commodity merchants, other dubashes, artisans, Tamil Chetties, local Indian dignitaries, resident Portuguese, and the high society of British Madras. See Watson, Foundation for Empire, 309–312.

67 For the complexities of these new arrangements, see Prakash, Om, ‘European Corporate Enterprises and the Politics of Trade in India, 1600–1800’ in: Mukherjee, R. and Subramanian, L., Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World (Delhi 1998) 165182Google Scholar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam and C.A. Bayly, ‘Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Economy of Early Modern India’ in: Subrahmanyam ed., Merchants, Markets, and the State, 242–265.

68 For commentary on Oman and Zanzibar during this time, see Barendse, R.J., ‘Reflections on the Arabian Seas in the Eighteenth Century’, Itinerario 25/1 (2001) 2550CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Swahili civilisations of the East African coast that developed as a result of these trading contacts over the centuries, see Horton, Mark and Middleton, John, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society (Oxford 1988) 526Google Scholar.

69 For the former, see ‘The Ancient History of Dar es-Salaam’ in: Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P., The East African Coast: Select Documents From the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century (Oxford 1962) 233237Google Scholar.

70 See, for example, Smith, The Wealth of Nations II, 571, 578, 586–587, 939.

71 See, for example, the account of Manuel de Faria y Sousa in: Marsh, Zoe ed., East Africa Through Contemporary Records (Cambridge 1961) 1922Google Scholar.

72 See Pearson, Michael, Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era (Baltimore 1998)Google Scholar.

73 See Engels, especially in: Marx, Capital III, 1047.

74 The purchasing of slaves in East Africa, and in the Indian Ocean generally, had a long pedigree by this point; see S. Arasaratnam, ‘slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century’ in: Matthew, Mariners, Merchants, and Oceans, 195–208. The American role on the East African coast also became important, as her merchants brought copious quantities of ivory, gum copal, and other commodities back to Salem and other Northeastern ports.

75 Khan, Iftikhar Ahmad, ‘Merchant Shipping in the Arabian Sea - First Half of the 19th Century’, Journal of Indian Ocean Studies 7 2/3 (2000) 163173Google Scholar.

76 Primarily because the Dutch exported only a fraction of the cloves that they could have from the Indies, in order to keep prices artificially high.

77 This is one of the places where a Marxist/nationalist, history such as the one forwarded by Sheriff, Abdul (in his Slaves, Spices, and Ivory in Zanzibar: The Integration of an East African Commercial Enterprise into the World Economy 1770–1873 (London 1987Google Scholar)) seems slightly skewed. The author sees only machinations in these movements, with clear protagonists (Zanzibaris) and antagonists (Englishmen), rather than more realistic shades of gray. There were Englishmen who believed in the anti-slavery campaigns because of their religious convictions, or on pure humanitarian grounds, without being involved in British policies of trade and expansion. Likewise, there were East African elites who saw slaving as an avenue toward their own prosperity as well. In this otherwise excellent study, this chiaroscuro seems somewhat problematic.

78 Compare the narratives of the French slave dealer Monsieur Morice (1776) with that of the Kilwa Kisiwani chronicle, both reproduced in: Freeman-Grenville, The East African Coast, 191 and 223. Slaving is clearly a desired economic arrangement for both parties here, Europeans (such as Monsieur Morice) and for certain Swahili too. See also Shaikh al-Amin bin ‘Ali al Mazru'i, The History of the Mazru'i Dynasty (London 1995).

79 Sheriff, Slaves, Spices, and Ivory, 48.

80 The small average heights on these trees show how recently – and en-masse – they had been planted. By way of comparison, in 1990 I climbed the volcano of Ternate in Northern Maluku to reach Cengkeh Afu, an enormous clove tree described in Portuguese and Dutch accounts of the island in the seventeenth century. The tree still stands, four centuries later, and can produce 600 kg. of cloves in a single year's harvest. Tagliacozzo, 1990 fieldwork notes, 451.

81 For two good long-term analyses of these patterns, see Alpers, Edward, Ivory and Slaves: The Changing Pattern of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century (Boston 1975)Google Scholar, and Nicholls, C.S., The Swahili Coast: Politics, Diplomacy, and Trade on the East African Littoral, 1798–1856 (London 1971)Google Scholar. The landscape (in all senses, geographic and social) of Pemba completely changed in the 1830s. Pemba at one time was a granary for Mombasa and Arabia, but this changed as the local peasantry were marginalised off of their communally-owned lands and plantations were erected by the Zanzibar elite. Although slaves were brought in by the thousands, the original planters were also conscripted, with Said Sultan attempting to expropriate their labour along traditional tribute lines. In 1834 this was converted to a poll tax, as peasants now produced cloves for cash to pay taxes instituted from the Zanzibar Istana, instead of doing subsistence farming. See Sheriff, Slaves, Spices, and Ivory, 55–59.

82 On relations between the coasts and the interior, see Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders, 63–100, and Hall, Richard, Empires of the Monsoon: A History of the Indian Ocean and its Invaders (London 1996)Google Scholar Chapters 26 and 50.

83 For the evolution of these processes north of Zanzibar on the Kenya coasts, see Ylvisaker, Marguerite, Lamu in the Nineteenth Century: Land, Trade, and Politics (Boston 1979)Google Scholar, and SirGray, John, The British in Mombasa, 1824–1826 (Nairobi 1957)Google Scholar.

84 One merchant spent thousands of dollars on his house, which had the characteristic carved doors and rafters of a Zanzibari home. Burton commented that some traders in were receiving harems of two to three hundred women as inducement to bring trade that way. See Burton, R.F., The Lake Regions of Central Africa I (London 1860) 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 376, and Burton, R.F., Zanzibar: City, Island and Coast II (London 1872) 297CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Horton, Mark and Middleton, John, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society (Oxford 2000) 103109Google Scholar.

85 Sheriff, Slaves, Spices, and Ivory, 182. What had once been a seasonal activity developed into local subsistence: in the 1890s 80–100,000 Nyamwezi were making the carrying trek to the coasts. All of these changes, based on production, gender-organisation, leadership, et cetera, fit in very well with Eric Wolf's thesis on capitalism's effect on kin-ordered societies. See Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, 77–100.

86 M.N. Person, ‘Indians in East Africa: The Early Modern Period’ in: Mukherjee and Subramanian, Politics and Trade, 227–249.

87 See, for example, Luis Frederico Dias Antunes, ‘The Trade Activities of the Banyans in Mozambique: Private Indian Dynamics in the Portuguese State Economy, 1686–1777’ in: Matthew, Mariners, Merchants, and Oceans, 301–332. Compared to India and Southeast Asia, the Portuguese had relative success in these endeavors in the Early Modern East African coast, though here too their influence was ultimately short-lived (except in Mozambique).

88 ‘Ancient History of Dar es-Salaam’, 234.

89 Bhacker, M. Reda, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: Roots of British Domination (London 1992) 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Sheth, V.S., ‘Dynamics of Indian Diaspora in East and South Africa’, Journal of Indian Ocean Studies 8/3 (2000) 217227Google Scholar.

91 Hall, Empires of the Monsoon, Chapter 52.

92 Ward, W.E.F. and White, L.W., East Africa: A Century of Change 1870–1970 (New York 1972)Google Scholar.

93 Bhacker, Trade and Empire, 178.

94 For the balance between Oman and Zanzibar over the centuries, see Patricia Risso, Oman and Muscat: An Early Modern History (New York 1986).

95 Bhacker, Trade and Empire, 133.

96 Nineteenth-century British travellers commented that most Swahili males dressed like Arabs in donning kofiyya, though today these caps are being replaced by cheaper, mass-produced ones from mainland China. In 1990 I was able to take photographs of traditional kofiyya shops in Zanzibar, Mombasa, and Lamu, where local store owners told me that higher-quality Middle Eastern caps were still being sold to Swahili willing to pay the price. Tagliacozzo, 1990 fieldwork notes, 623.

97 Two of the best studies on the denouement of these processes are Cooper, Frederick, From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (New Haven 1980)Google Scholar, and Glassman, Jonathan, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (London 1995)Google Scholar.

98 See Chengwimbe's account in: Marsh ed., East Africa Through Contemporary Records, 35–41. Missionary accounts, of course, need to be read carefully however, because of the purposes of their visits to these coasts.

99 Martin, Esmond Bradley, Cargoes of the East: The Ports, Trade, and Culture of the Arabian Seas and Western Indian Ocean (London 1978) 29Google Scholar.

100 For a discussion of East Africa and the Early Modern world economy, see Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders, 101–128.

101 Smith, The Wealth of Nations II, 631.

102 Marx, Capital II, 314.

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