Money and Flows of Coinage in the Red Sea Trade (original) (raw)
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The Role of Monetary Networks in the Trade between India and the Roman Empire
2016
In 1786, a chance discovery of Roman coins in an agricultural field in south India provided the first tangible hints to connections between India and the Mediterranean region in antiquity (Turner 1989: 1, 71). In an interesting coincidence, as these ancient ties with the West were being recorded, new associations were being simultaneously forged with contemporary European trading companies in then undivided India. This situation depicts the long history of trade and communication between India and Europe.
East & West, 2023
The Muziris papyrus loan agreement shows that the Arabarchs, contractors for the collection of duties on goods from the Indian Ocean, provided financial support to merchants engaged in trade with southern India through their paralemptes, the chief of their operating staff. The identification of the praevalens manceps Demetrius mentioned by Pliny the Elder with the homonymous arabarch mentioned by Flavius Josephus shows that the Arabarchs also granted maritime loans to merchants who exported to Italy goods subject to the duties they had to collect in Alexandria. As per their tax services and financial support, the Arabarchs collected the proceeds from virtually all sales of goods imported from the Indian Ocean to Alexandria and then re-exported to Puteoli, and eventually liquidated both the imperial Treasury and the merchants. Indian findings show that the coins exported to India were carefully selected. Therefore, the Arabarchs played a pivotal role in determining the selection of coins destined for export.
Indian kingdoms 1200–1500 and the maritime trade in monetary commodities
Currencies of the Indian Ocean World, 2019
The economies of the Indian subcontinent have historically exerted a dominant influence on the trade in monetary commodities across the Indian Ocean basin. This study examines that role in the period between 1200 and 1500 CE, ending almost a century before the first appearance in India of New World silver. The Indian demand for monetary commodities was shaped by the internal logic and dynamics of each of the sub-continent’s multiple monetary systems, all oriented towards domestic concerns, with considerable variation. Silver was by far the dominant precious metal in the north of India and the Deccan. Gold was mined in southern India, although the level of demand could not be met locally and gold was frequently imported. Copper was in great demand, being the basis of low-value coinage in the Delhi, Gujarat and Bahmanid Sultanates. In contrast, in Bengal there was no demand at all for copper for monetary purposes prior to 1538 because cowries served that function. The dual demand for silver and copper especially, set the pattern for the succeeding “early modern” period, when Indian coinage systems developed a voracious appetite for both metals.
2013
This thesis examines the Early Roman ‘India trade’ in the Indian Ocean during the Late Pre-Islamic period through a holistic overview of excavated trading sites with an emphasis on ceramic studies. It attempts to look at the economic relations between the southeast Arabian seaboard and India, and enquires into the development and nature of the trade. This has been executed through the documentation of forms and detailed fabric analysis and quantification of Indian pottery assemblages from three sites in the UAE (Mleiha, Ed-Dur and Kush) and three sites from South Arabia and Oman (Khor Rori, Qana and Suhar). This research seeks to develop a more reliable definition of the types of wares based on an evaluation of morphology and fabric. The results are compared with select parallels of Indian pottery from a number of trading settlements particularly in western and southern India, combining both coastal and hinterland sites. The thesis also includes a technical sourcing investigation into the origin of the Indian wares occurring in the Arabian and Indian contexts using XRF analysis. Finally this thesis attempts a desk-based assessment of published data concerning ceramics from excavated sites from the Red Sea region, African ports and Arabia, particularly the sites with archaeological and historical evidence indicating trade with Peninsular India. The thesis thus constitutes a wider regional case study of Indian ceramic data as a reliable indicator of Indian Ocean trade in the Late Pre-Islamic period.
The Indian Ocean in Antiquity: Political, Cultural and Economic Impacts (Routledge, 2018) Cobb, McLaughlin, et alia.
Extracted from contribution to: The Indian Ocean in Antiquity: Political, Cultural and Economic Impacts (Routledge, 2018) Cobb, McLaughlin, et alia. Contributed chapter: The Eastern Commercial Revenue Model. This chapter outlines the source evidence for the construction of a commercial trade model for the Roman economy. The Eastern Commercial Revenue Model evidences that trade conducted through the Indian Ocean generated approximately a third of Roman Revenues during the early imperial period. Every year Rome required up to a billion sesterces to finance its Empire and the ancient evidence suggests that a third of this amount came from taxing the eastern commerce conducted by way of the Indian Ocean and Iran. Ancient sources and archaeological finds support the statement that international commerce supplied the Roman government with up to 33% of the revenues that ultimately sustained their empire. The model was presented in Rome and the Distant East (2010), expanded and augmented in The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean (2014) and The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes (2016). Indian imports into Egypt were worth over a billion sesterces per annum and by the first century CE Rome was receiving more than 250 million sesterces from the quarter-rate custom tax it imposed on its Red Sea frontiers. It is also suggested that the Empire received high-level income from taxing eastern goods entering Roman Syria by way of the Persian Gulf and the Parthian caravan routes that crossed Iran. An inscription from the frontier city of Palmyra confirmed that Rome received revenues of at least 90 million sesterces from caravan traffic passing through the territory. To place the figure in context, it is accepted that Caesar imposed tribute worth 40 million sesterces on his Gallic conquests, so the taxes that Rome collected from international trade would surpass the revenues of entire subject countries. Therefore, taking all of this into consideration, a detailed evidence-based and quantitative reconstruction of the Roman economy and its historical development is achievable. Future research on the Roman economy should therefore include the consequences of the quarter-rate taxation of imports through Egypt by way of the Indian Ocean trade as outlined above in the Eastern Commercial Revenue Model.
Priestman, 2021: Ceramic Exchange and the Indian Ocean Economy (AD 400-1275). Volume I: Analysis
Free open-access download available at: https://doi.org/10.48582/ceramicexchange\_vol1
By around AD 750–800 the Indian Ocean emerged as a global commercial centre. A sophisticated trade network had been established involving the movement of goods from Japan and China in the east, to southern Africa and Spain in the west. However, the Indian Ocean’s commercial system has been relatively understudied, with many of the key assumptions regarding its development based on narrative textual sources and selective archaeological evidence. This study sets out the case for the unique significance of quantified ceramic finds as an indicator of long-term changes in the scale and volume of maritime exchange in a period for which few other sources of systematic economic history survive. The publication presents archaeological data from thirteen sites distributed across the western Indian Ocean, including Siraf (Iran), Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka) and Manda (Kenya). The ceramic assemblages are considered in terms of their general compositional characteristics and the distinctions between local, regional and long-distance exchange. The volume concludes with a discussion of how this data can be used to address the broader issues of long-term economic change and the relationship between state power in the Middle East and the commercial networks of the Indian Ocean operating via the Persian Gulf.
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Wilson, A. I. (2015). 'Red Sea trade and the State', in F. De Romanis and M. Maiuri (eds), Across the Ocean: Nine Essays on Indo-Mediterranean Trade (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition). Leiden, 13–32., 2015