Before the Steam: Structural Changes in Indian Ocean Shipping

Soumyajit Mukherjee*

Embeddedness is a state of affairs in which economic operations are perpetually shaped by non-economic institutions such as religion, clan, kinship, or politics. This connotation accurately encapsulates the essence of pre-colonial Indian Ocean trade and shipping, where economic exchange was deeply entwined with broader societal structures. The present expository writing elucidates the significant ‘structural changes’ of long-distance shipping networks in the Indian Ocean, using a comprehensive and comparative approach. Using historical examples, the article has investigated the factors that contributed to the success and failure of various maritime networks and explored their significant historical repercussions. A detailed study has found that the common traits of Asian states, such as their autocratic nature, anti-maritime attitude, and heavy reliance on agrarian economy, were determined to be utterly incompatible with the sustainability of long-distance shipping networks. However, such constraints failed to stifle the growth of maritime trade due to their counterbalancing factors, such as ‘inclusive’ statehood policies, rulers’ cosmopolitan approaches to commercial matters, the diverse ‘managerial’ and innovative competencies of Asian maritime merchants, shared geographical necessities, and political power wielded by various merchant groups, far outweighed the former. The shipping networks collapsed because of their amalgamation with larger historical forces, including empire-building, feeble naval capabilities, proneness to the age-old maritime technology, and absence of a class of statesmen holding strong maritime attitudes. Finally, this essay shows how the change in maritime technology since the beginning of the eighteenth century led to a substantial reduction in the effectiveness of such positive variables in the Indian Ocean trade. The discussion has corroborated the assertion of an institutional mechanism proposed by a cohort of contemporary economists to elucidate globalization and growth in ocean shipping.

Keywords: Indian Ocean trade, maritime networks, pre-colonial shipping, institutional embeddedness, maritime technology, economic history.

*Research Fellow, Jadavpur University, India; oolapoju@oauife.edu.ng
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