Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750

by Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri

This book explores the dynamic interaction between economic life, society and civilisation in the regions around and beyond the Indian Ocean during the period from the rise of Islam to 1750. Within a distinctive theory of comparative history, Professor Chaudhuri analyses how the identity of different Asian civilisations was established. He examines the structural features of food habits, clothing, architectural styles and housing; the different modes of economic production; and the role of crop raising, pastoral nomadism, and industrial activities for the main regions of the Indian Ocean. In an original and perceptive conclusion, the author demonstrates how Indian Ocean societies were united or separated from one another by a conscious cultural and linguistic identity. However, there was a deeper structure of unities created by a common ecology, technology, technology of economic production, traditions of government, theory of political obligations and rights, and a shared historical experience. His theory enables the author to show that the real Indian Ocean was an area that extended historically from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to the sea which lies beyond Japan.

Genres: History, India, Asia

495 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 1991

About the author

Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri is Emeritus Professor of the History of the European Expansion, European University Institute, Florence, and Director, Centre for Comparative Studies in Provence

Reviews

[Anh Le · Rating 3 out of 5]

A caveat for readers before proceeding to read this book. If you are not quite familiar with Fernand Braudel's theorization of the mediterranean continents, French theory of structuralism (Levis-Strauss for example), and also the classic Foucault's works that stress a post-modernist discourse of meaning ascribed to our physical imagination of time, geography and space, I don't recommend you to read this book. This is a heavily theoretical work by an Indian historian seeking to search for the unity of civilizations, their inner and outer limits, as well as principal rules of integration that made it a stable structure. He argued that four major Indian civilizations (their centers and peripheries) organized themselves in an abstract mechanism of cultures, trades, urbanization, etc that each represented a subset constituting a larger, superstructural set on its own, without essentially imposing any european-centered impacts on its form. I dislike this book not because of how theoretical it was, rather of how unclear the arguments were carried out in certain chapters. Question (as we possibly will concern) as who called the Indian Ocean "Indian Ocean" as it is known today? was not discussed at all. Also, the use of maps was not entirely instructive and consequently ambiguous. What is the difference between satellite maps and historical maps? How were they used differently? A footnote/endnote to clarify these concerns will help a great deal.

[Naeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed me. It builds a coral reef one shell at a time. It would be an excellent long term companion to John Hobson's The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization.

Start with part II of the book.

[Pedro Enguita · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like it.

The main reason are the useless lectures that full the book. If I want to read about a subject (p.e. the agriculture techniques) I expect the author to do so. Instead, Chaudhuri expends long pages with apparently clever sentences that, in fact, are completely useless (p.e. the agriculture techniques in Asia are organized according to the climate, the orography, the social structure...). OK, we all know that, was it necessary to do a so long discursus about it?

And, after this dry introduction, what do you find? Does he show the "economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750"? Not quite at all. To me, it seemed to cherry-pick data in a non systematic way.

I wonder how Cambridge published it at all.