Acceleration and Assurance: Why the Indian Ocean Shiptracks are the Opposite of the Eurasian Wheeltracks
Pamela Kyle Crossley Dartmouth Critiques of the notion of a “maritime silk road” are well-developed and have established that not only was there no Silk Road on water, but there was no Silk Road anywhere as it had been imagined by nineteenth century Europeans. Yet point by point comparisons of the Indian Ocean to a […]
The Western Ocean before the West: The Indian Ocean in the Chinese Geographical Imagination
Timothy Brook University of British Columbia. Through the 12th to 14th centuries, Chinese mariners traded into the Western Ocean, as they called the Indian Ocean. distributing Chinese manufactures from Pegu to Hormuz. That history is not easy to reconstruct, given the lack of documentation. Much easier to chronicle is the eruption of state intervention for […]