Book Review
October 5, 2002
Traders of the 'Medieval Orient'
Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea edited by Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000; pp xiii+375, Rs 575.
G Niranjan Rao
Literature on trade in Indian Ocean and Asia during the early modern period has so far remained 'Euro-centric', highlighting as it does, mostly the role of the chartered European companies, especially those of the 17th century. As a counter point of view, a number of scholars like Michael Pearson, Ashin Das Gupta, Wang Gangwu writing in the 1960s and 1970s sought to focus on the non-European trading networks in the region. However, as Sanjay Subrhmanyam said in an insightful foreword to the volume under review, "the empirical basis for a reconsideration of the non-European trading networks in the sea of Asia in the medieval and early modern centuries remained astonishingly thin" (p v). Philip Curtin's study on cross cultural trade in world history could not throw much light on the Asian scenarios either. It is in this context that the study under review is a welcome addition to the literature on the history of Asian trade.
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