Ancient and Medieval Indosphere

The "Silk Roads" 

    You've probably heard of the Silk Road: the Ancient and Medieval trade network that linked Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia to China through the exchange of precious goods. There was never a single "road" over which Chinese silk found its way to Ancient Rome, and it must have been exceedingly rare for any person to walk the whole way. Rather, the Silk Road consisted of thousands of intermediaries and middlemen engaged in regional overland trade with their neighbors. The overland routes across Asia were difficult and expensive to traverse, so the Silk Road trade was limited to luxury goods whose value and portability made it profitable.

    Maritime trade across the Indian Ocean was far greater in both volume and value than the land-based trade across the Silk Road. William Dalrymple has documented the importance of this commerce to world history and culture in a wonderful book called The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World.

    The Northern Indian Ocean and especially the region known as the Arabian Sea features a uniquely predictable pattern of reversing seasonal winds due to the Asian Monsoon. During summer, the wind flows strongly out of the southwest as air rushes into the hot elevated terrain of Central Asia. During winter, the flow reverses as cold air sinks from that high terrain and flows outward toward the southwest.

    For thousands of years, the seasonal "sloshing" of air across the Arabian Sea has allowed mariners to reliably sail from East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula toward India every summer and return the following winter. The predictability and reliability of these wind patterns allowed merchants in this region to develop a Monsoon Marketplace of international trade at a time when sailors in most other regions could barely leave the sight of land.

Ancient Indian Ocean Trade Networks

    The Monsoon Marketplace arose from a planetary-scale physical phenomenon and was an early experiment on globalization, linking cultures from East Africa to the Middle East to Central and South Asia. Grain and fold flowed eastward from Egypt. Wood, ivory, and gold flowed north and east from Africa. Precious scented materials like frankincense and myrrh flowed outward from the Arabian Peninsula. Spices and textiles flowed west from India and Southeast Asia. Perhaps most importantly, the Monsoon Marketplace led to rich exchanges of cultural ideas about religion, money, art, technology, and history across much of the Old World. 

    Around 330 BCE the Macedonian armies of Alexander the Great swept across Egypt, Persia, Central Asia, and into India, linking the politics and economies of this vast region. Successor states persisted for centuries from the Eastern Mediterranean and what is now Libya, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. These "Hellenistic" (ie "Greek-ish") kingdoms mixed cultural ideas from Ancient Greece with those of Persia, Arabia, and India.

    In 32 BCE, Navies of the early Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus conquered the Hellenistic Kingdom of Egypt under the Ptolemaic ruler Cleopatra, thereby inheriting a vast area of northeast Africa and the coast of the Red Sea. The Romans moved quickly to integrate Egypt into their already-thriving Mediterranean economy and the irrigated farmlands of Egypt became the bread-basket of an empire of more than 50 million people. 

    In the mid-1st Century CE, a Roman-Greek pamphlet called Periplous of the Erythrean Sea served as a guidebook for mariners and traders across the region. It catalogued trading ports, goods, prices, lodging, and places of worship from Africa to Persia to India and beyond. 

    The Romans built and expanded ports along the northern Red Sea as well as roads and caravan routes that connected them to the Nile valley. They built enormous numbers of ships. They took over the Monsoon Marketplace and built a greatly-expanded trade network that linked Europe with Africa, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and even China. From the 1st to the 3rd Century CE, Roman shipping grew throughout the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. 

    Enormous hoards of Roman coins have been found by archaeologists in ruins across the coastline of the Indian Ocean. So great was the flow of money outward from Rome across the Indian Ocean that late Roman authors grew deeply concerned about the impoverishment of the Empire. By the late 3rd Century CE, it's estimated that taxes collected on trade goods from the Indian Ocean supplied up to 35% of the revenue of the Roman Empire.

    Chinese archives record a visit from Roman trade ambassadors in the 2nd Century CE.  These merchants sailed beyond India over a period of years through Southeast Asia, eventually reaching Viet Nam. There they met Chinese officials who took them to the Han Imperial capital Xi'an. 

    When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th Century CE, the eastward flow of gold slowed to a trickle. Merchants and kingdoms in India who had grown rich on trade with the west sought new customers to the east. A thriving international trade grew between India and emerging mercantile societies in Southeast Asia including the Khmer, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, and Srivijaya. 

Southeast Asia ~ 900 CE

    This Golden Road commerce picked up where the Romans had left off, leading to the growth of wealthy cities and empires across the region. It also played a huge role in the spread of Indian culture, religions, and architecture across the countries that let became Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

    Funan and Chenla were Indianized kingdoms in the Mekong Delta from the 1st to 9th Centuries CE. Their culture was Hindu, their written language was Sanskrit, and their architecture was heavily influenced by India. The Khmer Empire arose in the 9th Century in the land of Kambuja (modern Cambodia). By the 13th Century, the Khmer had built the wealthiest and most advanced Hindu society in teh world. Their achievements in urban planning, irrigation, hydrology, and administration were key to the spread of Indianized culture throughout Southeast Asia. Sukhothai became independent of the Khmer Empire in the 13th Century in what is now Thailand. They were a precursor for the Ayutthaya Kingdom and the Kingdom of Siam, and practiced Buddhism. 

    Indian and Persian cultures have intermingled for thousands of years.  The Delhi Sultanate in northwest India from the 13th through 16th Centuries introduced heavy Persian influences in language, Islam, food, fashion, and art. The invasion of India by Babur in 1526 solidified Turko-Persian culture throughout the region in a Mughal Dynasty that persisted until European conquest. Islam spread from India through the Maritime kingdoms of Southeast Asia such that when European traders arrived seeking spices in the 16th Century they found Sultanates and a robust trading network already well established.

Taj Mahal, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in 1648