The Indian Ocean in World History

The Mediterranean in History
Edited by David Abulafia
Thames & Hudson  320pp  £29.95 
ISBN 0 500 251207

To appreciate the extraordinary role of the Indian Ocean in world history you have to compare it with other seas. This is where long-range, high-seas navigation was probably born. Myth credited Buddha with feats of pilotage. The legendary Persian royal ship-builder, Jamshid, was said to have crossed ‘the waters and passed from region to region with celerity’. In the fifth century AD, Prince Manohara was said to have mapped his voyage from India to the legendary mountain of Srikunja, 800 years before surviving sea-charts appeared in the West. These legends reflect reality: the precocity of long voyages and cultural exchanges over vast distances. Thanks to the regularity and accessibilty of the monsoon winds, the Indian Ocean was traversed with relative ease for hundreds of years before exploitable routes across the Atlantic or Pacific, with their fixed-wind systems, came into use.