The Bay of Bengal

By Bhaswati Bhattacharya

The inaugural lecture was delivered by Prof. Ravinder Kumar, the Director of the ICHR. The focus of the seminar was on the period when European participation in the trade in Asian waters extended the direct links of the Bay to Japan in the east and the European countries in the west. That trade between the countries surrounding the Bay stretched further back in time was shown by Hermann Kulke and Haraprasad Ray. Kulke suggested that the political developments in South and Southeast Asia in the eleventh century have to be seen in the broader context of the rise of powerful new dynasties in various countries around the Indian Ocean. The overseas expedition against Srivijaya mounted by the Colas in that century was perhaps to curb the unchallenged power of Srivijaya which had control over the important sea-routes in Southeast Asia. In a thought-provoking essay Sanjay Subrahmanyam argued that between 1400 and 1700 there was an emergence of mercantilist state policy in the states bordering the Bay. This trend was interrelated with Persian and Persianized culture which was a measure of civilization in the region.
A number of papers dealt with European trade: Luis Filipe F. R. Thomaz suggested that the cartaz system was perhaps not introduced for the first time into the Indian Ocean by the Portuguese as it was in use as early as 1502; the cartaz was meant to control the pepper trade through the Red Sea and it never prevailed in the Bay of Bengal. Om Prakash discussed the trade of European private traders in the context of the attitude of the corporate enterprises towards the private trade of their employees, whereas Femme Gaastra pointed out how Dutch trade in Bengal in the late eighteenth century was financed by remittance of private fortunes to Europe by the British in the region. A. Ray talked about the French establishment in Bengal marked in its early phase by different stages of growth and frequent changes in the policy of the Company which had to face problems like the shortage of funds. The Asian segment was not neglected. The importance of the Muslim merchants of Coromandel in forging the cultural and commercial links in the region was brought out by Denys Lombard who spoke of Acheh's contacts with India resulting in a cultural Indianization of the kingdom and by C. Guillot who described Banten's role in the trade with countries to its east and west. S. Arasaratnam elaborated on the continuities and changes in Coromandel's overseas trade in the late eighteenth century. B. Bhattacharya emphasized the aspect of continuity represented by the Tamil Muslim Marakkayar merchants. Sushil Chaudhuri argued that the impact of European trade has been overemphasized; the share of Asian merchants in the import of bullion into, and export of textiles and raw silk from, Bengal even in the mid-eighteenth century was larger than that of the Europeans. K. S. Mathew highlighted the role of indigenous entrepreneurs in the international trade in the Bay of Bengal. R. Datta's paper on the commercial economy of post-Plassey Bengal focused on the contradictory nature of state intervention in the movement of trade, resulting in a proliferation in market places all over Bengal; there seems to have been a restriction rather than a cessation of bullion as a component of the Company's trade. The disruption in Bengal's money market resulted from the Company's interference in the established monetary system of the province.
The close cultural contact among the countries in the region was reflected in the export of Indian textiles with Indian motifs to Thailand (L. Varadarajan) and the religious and scholarly exchanges between the Lankan sangha and the Rakhine and Burmese Theravadin communities (C. Raymond). C. Salmon presented Bengal as it was viewed by two travellers, Ahmad Rijaluddin of Penang and Li van Phuc of Vietnam, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The presence of eminent scholars like Simon Digby, Satish Chandra, Dharma Kumar and Harbans Mukhia offered an excellent opportunity for lively discussion. The contributions to the seminar will be brought out in a volume. The organizers also announced a follow-up to the seminar some time in 1996.