This book discusses various socio-economic and political processes that evolved over centuries in the vast coastal fringes of India and out of the circuits of the Indian Ocean, ultimately giving these littoral zones the distinctive consciousness and identity of Maritime India. It dwells upon a wide range of issues, including the nature of maritime trade of the Sassanids with India; the impact of maritime trade on the political processes of Goa; the social processes linked with the settlements of foreign merchant groups in India; the nature
of Portuguese expansion in coastal India; and the nuances of political assertions over maritime centres of exchange and their hinterlands. It also discusses in some detail the repercussions of Ottoman expansion into the Indian Ocean, the impact of Portuguese ommercial expansion on traditional Muslim merchants
of Kerala, the changing methods of information-networking between coastal India and the Mediterranean,the burgeoning of Portuguese power units in Bengal, and the role of private traders in the structure and functioning of Estado da India.
About the Author
Pius Malekandathil is currently Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His major publications include The Germans, the Portuguese and India (1999), Portuguese Cochin and the Maritime Trade of India, 1500-1663 (2001), Jornada of Dom Alexis Menezes: A Portuguese Account of the Sixteenth Century Malabar (2003), Maritime India: Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean (2010).
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