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Course: World History Project AP® > Unit 4
Lesson 1: 4.0—Technological Innovations and Exploration- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Unit 4 Overview - Transoceanic Interconnections
- WATCH: Unit 4 Overview
- READ: Unit 4 Introduction: Transoceanic Interconnections 1450 to 1750
- READ: Origins of Oceanic Connections
- READ: The Cosmopolitan Indian Ocean
- READ: Data Exploration - War and Peace
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READ: The Cosmopolitan Indian Ocean
When Europeans arrived in the Indian Ocean, they encountered a complex and cosmopolitan world. It would be a long time before Europeans could exert control over this system.
The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.
First read: preview and skimming for gist
Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.
Second read: key ideas and understanding content
Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- According to the author, what was the immediate impact of Europeans arriving in the Indian Ocean?
- How did the rulers of Indian Ocean states view the arrival of the Portuguese?
- Why does the article refer to it as the “cosmopolitan” Indian Ocean?
- Why were diaspora communities important to the Indian Ocean world?
- What role did the Armenian diaspora have in extending the influence of European empires in the Indian Ocean?
Third read: evaluating and corroborating
Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:
- To what extent does this article describe the role of states in the expansion of maritime exploration from 1450 to 1750? Support your answer with evidence from the article.
- This article focuses on how the Indian Ocean system gradually changed after new connections were made with Europe. How do you think Europe changed because of these new connections? What evidence does this article provide, and what further evidence would you need to answer this question?
Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to read! Remember to return to these questions once you’ve finished reading.
The Cosmopolitan Indian Ocean, c. 1450–1700
By Bennett Sherry
When Europeans arrived in the Indian Ocean, they encountered a complex and cosmopolitan world. It would be a long time before Europeans could exert control over this system.
A world on the move
European voyages of exploration changed the world. The explorers found whole continents and peoples they did not know existed. The global connections forged by empires and explorers created a new world connected across oceans, rather than separated by them. For millennia, most of the world’s trade had moved across the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade routes. China had been the world’s largest manufacturer of consumer goods. But once Europeans crossed the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, things changed immediately.
Checks notes.
... And by “immediately” we mean like 300 years later. The truth is, after Europeans first arrived in the Indian Ocean, the bulk of trade goods continued to move along the same old routes in Asia and the Indian Ocean. Likewise, China and India remained the most productive manufacturers.
The sudden arrival of Europeans in the Indian Ocean did change the way business was conducted, but gradually. In the early sixteenth century, the appearance of a few dozen Portuguese gunboats was treated more as a nuisance than a real threat. Eventually, however, European navies and trading companies expanded, signing trade agreements and solidifying control over sea trade routes. Still, this was no easy task. The Indian Ocean was a world of complexities, a cosmopolitan trade arena with huge empires and cultures and languages unfamiliar to Europeans.
Western Europeans had been in contact with Indian Ocean communities and networks for centuries, but before the fifteenth century, they had been forced to do so through Italian, Ottoman, or Arab intermediaries. Beginning with the 1497–1502 voyages of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, however, Western Europeans came into direct contact with communities in East Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and China.
Empires old and new
When da Gama and his Portuguese fleet arrived in the Indian Ocean, they were woefully underprepared for what they would find. They misunderstood the wealth, power, and culture of the rulers and states they encountered. When he arrived in the Indian port city of Calicut in 1498, da Gama mistook Hindu temples for Christian churches. When he attempted to meet the ruler of Calicut—one of the richest and most connected trading cities in the world—he brought a gift of minor trade goods, including some wool, sugar, oil, and honey. The ruler’s representatives laughed at the gift and turned the Portuguese away, telling them the gift was not fit for a king.
After da Gama’s voyage, other Europeans arrived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But they remained far from dominant. Even after the Dutch, English, French, and others followed the Portuguese and Spanish, Europeans could only control small outposts in the Philippines, eastern India, and islands in Southeast Asia.
To the huge land-based empires of Asia—the Ming, Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires—the Europeans only gradually registered as a threat. The overland Silk Road trade remained totally outside European control. Some rulers eventually came to see the Europeans as a problem. The Ottoman Empire, in particular, fought a series of naval battles with the Portuguese during the sixteenth century, trying to drive them from the ocean. Other rulers saw an advantage to working with the Europeans, signing trade agreements and alliances. For many merchants, especially in India, the arrival of Europeans on their shores was quite beneficial, at first anyway. Trade boomed, and many merchants became very rich selling India’s famous cotton cloth.
European merchants, sailors, and officials of trading companies often married locally and started families. Cultures, languages, and religions began to blend. This sort of diversity was not new for Indian Ocean societies. One important result of the cosmopolitan and generally tolerant atmosphere of the Indian Ocean port cities was the emergence of prominent diaspora communities—groups of people living away from their homelands. These communities played important roles as intermediaries, financiers, and merchants.
Between sea and land: Diaspora networks
We call the Indian Ocean “cosmopolitan” because this word describes places populated by a “cosmos”, or wide variety, of different people all interacting with each other and often living together. Groups of specialized foreigners, often part of ethnic or religious diasporas, became the connective tissue of world trade in this period. These groups linked European imperialists with the major land-based empires of Asia through the great port cities of the Indian Ocean. Diasporic communities were ideal communicators between different states. They had experience crossing borders, often speaking several different languages. Diaspora networks could share information quickly and maintain a system of trust through shared language and identity that made their businesses especially efficient.
Gujaratis from Western India carried spices from Southeast Asia to the Persian Gulf. Javanese merchants traded the rice that proliferated on their island for spices from many of the surrounding islands. Chinese travelers had been emigrating to Southeast Asia for centuries. They established large communities of merchants connected by culture and language to mainland China. These communities allowed Chinese merchants to dominate the spice trade from the Strait of Malacca to the South China Sea.
Malay, Omani, Swahili, Armenian, Chinese, and Jewish merchants all established diaspora communities in ports far from their homes. In many parts of the world, locals distrusted diaspora communities because of their foreign culture and language, but in the cosmopolitan cities of the Indian Ocean, they often found tolerance. To understand some of the roles carved out by these communities, let’s examine the case study of the Armenian diaspora.
At home abroad: Armenian merchant networks
During the seventeenth century, Armenian communities spread out across Afro-Eurasia from the Ottoman and Persian empires, establishing businesses and settlements from Manila to London. A network of Armenian merchants communicated through an efficient system of letters carried by couriers, relaying information about trade, contracts, and who could be trusted.
The historian, Sebouh Aslanian, who himself identifies as a member of the Armenian diaspora, writes about the centrality of the Armenian diaspora to world trade. Because they lived in and traveled through so many different regions, Armenian merchants could often speak Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Armenian, and several European languages. European merchants and trading companies soon realized the utility of working with merchant networks like the Armenians.
When the British East India Company (EIC) first arrived in the Indian Ocean in the early seventeenth century, they hired Armenian merchants to negotiate on their behalf with Indian rulers. According to Aslanian, because Armenians had long experience crossing boundaries—operating across political, cultural, and linguistic borders—they were able to fit in among different cultures. They were able to seem at home both among Indians and among Europeans. With their language abilities and their ties to many communities across Afro-Eurasia, Armenians were ideal interlocutors between the Europeans and Asian empires.
Armenian merchant ships were so common in the Indian Ocean, and so welcome at ports, that both the French and the EIC hired Armenian captains and flew flags to make their ships look like Armenian ships. This allowed them to get access to the Spanish silver trade in the Philippines, where they were often banned. The EIC even signed a trade agreement with the “Armenian Nation” in 1688. No official Armenian state existed; this was a treaty between a state and a network. The treaty was intended to convince Armenian merchants to transport their goods to Europe on board EIC ships traveling around Africa, rather than through the overland trade routes of the Silk Roads. This is among the many ways Armenian merchants played a major role in expanding European influence in the Indian Ocean.
Cosmopolitan ocean transformed?
Eventually, as we know, Europeans did become powerful in the Indian Ocean world. We can see this happening through an example that focuses on taxes. Most societies in the Indian Ocean contracted out some of the fundamental aspects of governance—they particularly outsourced tax collection. The foreign tax collectors they hired were often Persian and Chinese, who had gained a very particular set of skills at tax collection from their home communities. This practice of hiring foreign experts to collect taxes illustrates just how cosmopolitan the Indian Ocean was. Imagine a French, Chinese, or American politician today suggesting that their government should entrust its tax revenue to a foreign citizen! Yet foreign tax farmers became incredibly important to life and government in these societies, and they were often promoted to new heights in the governments they served. Indeed, these tax collectors were often the most powerful people in a state or territory.
So, when the East India Company conquered Bengal in 1757, they did not replace the ruler, instead, they forced the ruler to name the East India Company as the official tax collector. Though the ruler remained the ruler in name, in practice, the EIC were now the true power in the land. Europeans had reached a point where they were able to control larger and larger regions of the Indian Ocean—transformation indeed.
Author bio
Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world history, human rights, and the Middle East at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maine at Augusta. Additionally, he is a research associate at Pitt’s World History Center. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the twentieth century.