Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World

Gwyn Campbell

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9783319338217
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319338224
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

This volume comprises a selection of essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines that discuss the exchange relationship between Africa and the wider Indian Ocean world (IOW), a macro-region running from East Africa to China, from early times to about 1300 CE. The rationale for regarding this macro-region as a "world" is the central significance of the monsoon system which facilitated the early emergence of long-distance trans-IOW maritime exchange of commodities, peoples, plants, animals, technologies and ideas.

© The Author(s) 2016

G. Campbell (ed.)Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33822-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Africa and the Early Indian Ocean World Exchange System in the Context ofHuman–Environment Interaction

Gwyn Campbell¹

(1)

McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

End Abstract

This volume comprises a selection of chapters by leading scholars on aspects of early exchange between Africa and the wider Indian Ocean world (IOW)—a macro-region running from Africa to the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and the Far East. The rationale for regarding this region as a “world” is the central significance of the monsoon system. Unlike the Atlantic and Pacific, the IOW seas (the Indian Ocean and the Indonesian and China Seas) are capped by a huge continent—Asia. During northern hemisphere summers, as the Asian continent warms up, hot air rises from the land, causing a vacuum that, through the process of convection, sucks in moist air from the oceans to the south. This creates the southwest monsoon. In winter, the opposite process occurs, and air is expelled from the continent over the oceans, creating the northeast monsoon.

This regular biannual alternation of winds and currents governs the IOW littorals and oceans to about 12°S of the equator and has fundamentally shaped primary patterns of production and trade, and thus of human history, across most of the IOW. First, the rains that accompany the southwest monsoon between June and September created a zone of wet crop (predominantly rice) cultivation across southern Asia, north of which lies a drier belt of predominantly grain (wheat and barley) cultivation. Second, monsoon winds facilitated the emergence of early trans-IOW oceanic exchange. This developed in the early centuries BCE, laying the basis for an IOW global economy that preceded that of the Atlantic world by over 1500 years. As the monsoons regulated much of both agriculture and trade, there was, from the outset, remarkable synchronism between land-based production and commercial systems and trans-oceanic trade. Moreover, as other wind systems, such as the southern hemisphere trades and equatorial currents, could be used to link into the monsoons, the impact of the monsoon network of exchange extended to regions that lay beyond the actual reach of the monsoons, such as the inner Persian Gulf and southeast Africa.

This introductory chapter explores the environmental context for the development of an IOW global system of exchange and the significance within it of human–environment interaction from early times to about 1300 CE. Most histories of the IOW have underestimated the role of the environment, and the dynamic rather than static nature of human–environment interaction that, more than political events or the evolutionary march of capitalism, has moulded the major temporal phases in human history (see e.g., Chaudhuri 1985, 1992; Abu-Lughod 1989; Frank 1998; McPherson 1995; Pearson 2011; Sheriff 2010; Alpers 2014; Beaujard 2012). The primacy of human–environment interaction further devalues historical analyses based on conventional “country” or “area studies.” In this introduction, exchange relations between Africa and the wider IOW go beyond the usual focus on East Africa to incorporate all regions of Indian Ocean Africa (IOA)—here defined as all areas of the continent littoral to the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, and hinterland regions with intimate early connections to the Indian Ocean.

Rise of the IOW Global Economy

The first major phase in modern human history followed the end of the last Ice Age, some 11,500 years ago, when significant melting of the Arctic pack-ice established the conditions for enhanced food and craft production. This in turn encouraged humans to disperse from equatorial and other regions with favourable micro-climates into previously inhospitable areas throughout the northern hemisphere. From around 6000 BCE, a period of prolonged aridity provoked a search for methods of conserving and managing water and food supplies that precipitated the Neolithic Revolution in which regular surpluses and improved storage facilities enabled the emergence of specialist non-agriculturalists, including artisans and soldiers. Enhanced agricultural and craft production, and growth in elite demand for luxuries, laid the basis for the rise of early trans-IOW trade. Scholarly attention has focused chiefly on exchange between the centralised polities of the Middle East, South Asia, and China along the so-called trans-Asia “Silk Road,” parts of which operated from 3000 BCE and which appears to have been fully functional by the fifth-century BCE. By about 500 BCE, interlocking local maritime networks also connected the entire northern rim of the IOW, from the Red Sea to China. Maritime connections were assisted by the onset from about 300 BCE of a strong and relatively stable monsoon system, which provided the conditions, along with advances in astral navigation and boat-building, for IOW sailors to make direct trans-oceanic voyages (Gupta et al. 2003; Hourani 1995; Ray 1990). From that time, geographically extensive, sophisticated, and durable systems of exchange arose that reflected the birth of an IOW “global economy.”

Two major trans-IOW maritime networks developed. The foremost ran along the northern rim of the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. Secondary routes connected South China via the Philippines and eastern Indonesia to Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula; and the Sunda Straits via the Maldive Islands and Sri Lanka to the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and East Africa. However, few vessels sailed the entire maritime length of the IOW as the alternating regime of monsoon winds enabled return voyages to be completed within a year only in geographically restricted zones. Therefore, a pattern developed whereby most vessels remained within one of the three main IOW maritime zones: the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and the China and Indonesian Seas. Direct two-way trade developed as early as 200 BCE between East India and the Malay Peninsula, and from about 120 BCE between Egypt and Malabar. By the BCE/CE changeover, as Ephraim Lytle notes, some 120 ships of between 200 and 300 tons each left Egypt annually (Lytle in this volume; see also Hourani 1995; Warmington 1995; Wheatley 1964a).

Direct trans-oceanic voyages greatly stimulated trade between Africa and the wider IOW. Elite demand, notably in China, India, and the Middle East, ensured a vibrant commerce in exotic tropical commodities, including ivory, pearls, tortoise-shell, ambergris, rhinoceros horn and hide, gums, musk, and incense—chiefly for ornamental, craft, culinary and medicinal purposes. India, for example, was a noted consumer of gold and exporter of fine pepper, luxury cloth, dyes, craftwork, jewellery, pearls, and precious stones (including emeralds, crystals, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, and lapis lazuli). African commodities reaching India did so both directly and via entrepôts in Arabia, such as Muza (for East Africa) and Adulis (for Ethiopia). In return, as Sunil Gupta notes, India exported to Red Sea Africa a wide variety of commodities, including cloth and ceramics (Casson 1989; Warmington 1995; Miller 1969; also Gupta, Lytle, and Hughes and Post, in this volume).

There is considerable debate about northeast Africa as a source of spices. The Periplus (c.13–140 CE), an invaluable early first-century CE Greek manuscript on western IOW trade, and Ptolemy’s Geography (c.150 CE)—works discussed in this volume by Ephraim Lytle, Carl Hughes and Ruben Post—emphasise the Horn of Africa, termed the “Cape of Spices,” as the world’s chief source of cassia and/or cinnamon (Casson 1989), while Cosmas (mid-sixth century) specified that cinnamon was obtained in the Somali hinterland (McCrindle 1897). However, as Lytle indicates, there is much confusion in the literature over the terms “cinnamon,” which is not mentioned in the Periplus, and “cassia.” Both belong to the genus Cinnamomum, generically described as of the same origin, and used in the same way. The Greek texts might have been referring to plants indigenous to the countries bordering the eastern end of the Red Sea. Certainly Somalia produced myrrh and frankincense. However, cinnamon proper (Cinnamomum verum or C. zeylanicum) originated from Sri Lanka and, as Waruno Mahdi and Lytle (in this volume) point out, the famous passage in Pliny (quoted in the chapter by Lytle) concerning rafts transporting cinnamon on the high seas probably referred to a maritime trade in spices with, or transited through, South Asia (Mahdi 1999a; Warmington 1995; Hourani 1995; Lytle and Mahdi in this volume).

Azania—the term used by the Periplus and Ptolemy for the modern-day Swahili coast of East Africa—also developed regular direct linkages with the wider IOW. Claims to a very early maritime connection with East Africa have a long but disputed heritage. Felix Chami asserts that by 3000 BCE, Sub-Saharan Africans had settled the present-day Swahili coast and offshore islands of Zanzibar and Kilwa; and that by 600 BCE, or probably earlier, they had established trade relations with India from where they adopted the chicken, rice, cotton, and possibly the coconut (Chami 2009; Chami et al. 2003; Sinclair et al. 2006). Early staple East African exports included ivory, rhinoceros horn, possibly slaves and, according to Gupta, Mozambique copal (for the Iraqi market) (Mollat 1971; Harris 1971; Gupta in this volume).

Certainly by the BCE/CE changeover, Egyptian, Arab, Mediterranean, and possibly Indian and Axumite vessels sailed to Azania. By the first-century CE, the major Azanian trading centre was Rhapta. It boasted many resident foreign ship captains and traders, mostly Arabs, who had taken local wives and spoke the local language. By the second century, Rhapta had developed into what the Periplus calls a “metropolis,” a term applied elsewhere only to Meroe and Aksum in IOA, Saphar and Saubatha in Yemen, and Minnagar in India (Casson 1989; Huntingford 1980). As noted by Hughes and Post in this volume, Rhapta’s location is the subject of considerable conjecture. The Periplus indicates that it was s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Africa and the Early Indian Ocean World Exchange System in the Context ofHuman–Environment Interaction
• 2. Origins of Southeast Asian Shipping and Maritime Communication Across the Indian Ocean
• 3. Austronesian Shipping in the Indian Ocean: From Outrigger Boats to Trading Ships
• 4. Austronesians in Madagascar: A Critical Assessment of the Works of Paul Ottino and Philippe Beaujard
• 5. Early Greek and Latin Sources on the Indian Ocean and Eastern Africa
• 6. A GIS Approach to Finding the Metropolis of Rhapta
• 7. Contact between East Africa and India in the First Millennium CE
• 8. Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean World in the First Millennium CE: The Glass Bead Evidence
• 9. Migration and Interaction between Madagascar and Eastern Africa, 500 BCE–1000 CE: An Archaeological Perspective
• 10. A Genomic Investigation of the Malagasy Confirms the Highland–Coastal Divide, and the Lack of Middle Eastern Gene Flow
• 11. Intercontinental Networks Between Africa and Asia Across the Indian Ocean: What Do Village Chickens Reveal?
• 12. East Africa in the Early Indian Ocean World Slave Trade: The Zanj Revolt Reconsidered
• Back Matter