Empires of the Monsoon
‘A triumph: a first class comprehensive narrative of the impact upon the people of the Indian Ocean of those who penetrated it. It is hard to believe that this account of a European epic has any rival.’ J.M. ROBERTS, author of the Penguin History of the WorldUntil Vasco da Gama discovered the sea-route to the East in 1497-9 almost nothing was known in the West of the exotic cultures and wealth of the Indian Ocean and its peoples. It is this civilisation and its destruction at the hands of the West that Richard Hall recreates in this book. Hall’s history of the exploration and exploitation – by Chinese and Arab travellers, and by the Portuguese, Dutch and British alike – is one of brutality, betrayal and colonial ambition. It is history told with the true gift of a storyteller and a keen eye for the exotic. It is a compelling and instructive epic.
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EMPIRES OF
THE MONSOON
A History of the Indian Oceanand its Invaders
RICHARD HALL
William Collins
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996
Copyright © Richard Hall 1996
Part title decoration from âThe Fleet of Vasco da Gamaâ illustrated in The Portuguese in India, Vol. 1, by Frederick Danvers
Richard Hall asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006380832
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2016 ISBN: 9780007547043 Version: 2018â10â09
Dedicated to the memory of Harry A. Logan Jr of Warren, Pennsylvania
CONTENTS
1. Wonders of India, Treasures of China
4. Islam Rules in the Land of Zanj
5. On the Silk Route to Cathay
7. The Wandering Sheikh Goes South
8. Adventures in India and China
9. Armadas of the Three-Jewel Eunuch
10. Ma Huan and the House of God
11. The King of the African Castle
PART TWO: The Cannons of Christendom
12. Prince Henryâs Far Horizons
13. Commanding the Guinea Coast
15. The Lust for Pepper, the Hunt for Prester John
16. The Spy Who Never Came Home
17. Kings and Gods in the City of Victory
18. Da Gama Enters the Tropical Ocean
20. The Fateful Pride of Ibn Majid
23. The Viceroy in East Africa
24. Defeating the Ottoman Turks at Diu
25. The Great Afonso de Albuquerque
26. Ventures into the African Interior
27. From Massawa to the Mountains
28. At War with the Left-handed Invader
29. Taking Bible and Sword to Monomotapa
30. Turkish Adventurers, Hungry Cannibals
32. The Lost Pride of Lusitania
33. Calvinists, Colonists and Pirates
34. Ethiopia and the Hopes of Rome
35. The Great Siege of Fort Jesus
36. Western Aims, Eastern Influences
PART THREE: An Enforced Tutelage
37. Settlers on Indiaâs Southern Approaches
38. The Seas beyond Napoleonâs Reach
39. The French Redoubt and the Isle of Slaves
40. âLiterally a Blank in Geographyâ
41. Two Ways with the Spoils of War
42. The Sultan and the Kingâs Navy
43. Stepping Back from East Africa
44. The Americans Discover Zanzibar
45. Looking Westwards from the Raj
46. Portents of Change in the âEnglish Lakeâ
47. In the Footsteps of a Missionary
48. Warriors, Hunters and Traders
49. A Proclamation at the Custom House
50. Meeting the Lords of the Interior
51. The Failure of a Philanthropic Scotsman
52. Imperialism Abhors a Vacuum
53. Bismarck and the Gesellschaft
54. Africa Hears the Maxims of Faith and War
Turn a map of the world upside down and the Indian Ocean can be seen as a vast, irregularly-shaped bowl, bounded by the shorelines of Africa and Asia, the islands of Indonesia, and the coast of Western Australia.>1 Unlike the Atlantic and Pacific, merging at their extremes into the polar seas, this is an entirely tropical ocean; to mention it calls up a vision of palm-fringed islands and lagoons where rainbow-hued fish dart amid the coral. That is the tourist-brochure image, but behind it lies the Indian Ocean of history â a centre of human progress, a great arena in which many races have mingled, fought and traded for thousands of years.
The earliest civilizations, in Egypt and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, had direct access to the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. At the hub, stretching towards the equator, lay the Indian sub-continent, itself the site of ancient cultures in the Indus valley. Since long before the time of Alexander the Great, travellers had brought back tales of the rich and voluptuous East. The emperor Trajan, arriving triumphantly at the Persian Gulf in A.D. 116, and watching mariners set sail for India, had mourned that he was too old to make the voyage and gaze upon its wonders.
