Only one chapter of Ocean of Trade deals with textiles, but I could not help but think in metaphors of threads, spinning, warp, and weft as I reflected on this rich and thought-provoking book. Like a finely textured fabric, Ocean of Trade is impressive in both the detailed craftsmanship and the sumptuous impact of the work as a whole. The book focuses on the trading diaspora of Vaniya merchants from Kathiawar in western India and particularly their trade in Portuguese-ruled Mozambique, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. While the Portuguese Empire is a central concern of Indian Ocean history, this particular moment has been largely ignored because it arrives well into the long decline of Portuguese power. Machado is consequently able to bring into relief the ways that the Portuguese empire was entangled in the trading networks of Vaniya merchants. Ocean of Trade braids together African consumers, Indian merchants, and European officials to reveal new insights concerning consumption, trade and empire.
Ocean of Trade is that perfect Goldilocks length: neither too long to tax the reader’s attention nor too short that it glosses over the complexity of the material or the wider historiography. This is no mean feat, as Machado’s footnotes indicate an exhaustive study of the available archives in India, Mozambique, and Europe, as well as mastery of the scholarship in both Indian Ocean history and economic history more broadly. Yet Machado displays this knowledge lightly; his prose is clear and accessible, and it is often enlivened with fascinating vignettes from the archives.
The empirical substance of Ocean of Trade is organized into five chapters, each dealing with a particular component of the Vaniya trading network. The first chapter examines the familial structure of the Vaniya Diaspora, and how this commercial organization overcame the challenges of long-distance trade. The second chapter looks at navigational practices, shipping, and affiliated services such as insurance. It is both in this chapter and the final chapter on slavery that the Portuguese imperial framework is most prominent. To this reader, the third chapter was the finest in the book, drawing on Machado’s deep knowledge of the global textile trade to trace the intimate connections that Vaniya merchants were able to sustain between African consumers and Gujurati weavers. The fourth chapter mirrors the third, threading together ivory consumption in Gujarat and its collection in Mozambique. The final chapter outlines how Vaniya merchants were drawn into the Indian Ocean slave trade, demonstrating how Vaniya textile and ivory trading fed into the Atlantic slave trade and how New World silver, European firearms, and Brazilian plantations all shaped how Vaniya merchants engaged in the slave trade. This chapter integrates the particular practices of Vaniyas into global history without ever losing sight of the regional and interregional particularities of Indian Ocean commerce.
The book is an exemplar of empirical rigor and archival depth, and it makes a number of important interventions in the scholarship. Machado complicates the narrative of a decline in the Indian Ocean trade in the eighteenth century, persuasively demonstrating how this apparent decline was in fact a rerouting of the Red Sea trade to the ivory-producing regions of Southeast Africa. Ocean of Trade also challenges the suggestion that Indian trading diasporas became subsumed in and subordinate to European empires. Through deep and careful research, Machado excavates the substantial influence of the Vaniya Diaspora over the Portuguese Empire. This is a vital corrective to the historiographical tendency to assume the overwhelming power of European capital and modern empires.
To this reader, the most compelling aspect of Ocean of Trade is the way that it weaves among geographic scales without losing the nuance and complexity of its subject matter. The reader is taken from mundane negotiations between African consumers and caravan traders, up through Vaniya merchants and Portuguese officials, and out to Brazilian plantations and Lisbon offices. One of the unique aspects of this study is Machado’s ability to follow the threads of his material beyond the shoreline into the everyday lives of consumers and producers inland. The book thus contributes both to historiographical debates concerning textile production in western India and consumption in East Africa by drawing these regions into this broader framework of the Indian Ocean. Few histories incorporate production, trade, and consumption so organically into the same analytic fabric.
Machado’s descriptions of trade and consumption in Mozambique are particularly illuminating, specifically regarding African traders who were able to parlay mixed-race heritage or former slave status into indispensable roles as intermediaries. This meticulous research into the African branches of this trading network is truly impressive, but it also gives rise to my only real critique of the book. While Machado strives, and in numerous ways succeeds, in balancing the role of Africans and Indians in this history, the Vaniya merchants are clearly the central players. Machado has worked tirelessly to remedy this imbalance, but ultimately it is impossible to escape the constraints imposed by colonial archives. Whether this difference in the historical record was a result of racial biases, political imbalances, or inequities of capital accumulation, the book could have more consciously traced the implications of these archival lacunae. The analysis might also have been textured by a more critical examination of the Vaniya merchants themselves and the implications of their commercial power over African and Indian consumers.
Nevertheless, these are small quibbles with an otherwise masterful work of scholarship. Readers will find numerous important arguments and detailed empirical research that sheds light on the nature of the family firm, financial practices, development of both shipping and marine insurance, and histories of Asian capitalism. Ocean of Trade will be essential reading for all scholars of the Indian Ocean, as well as of East Africa and Gujarat. Those working more broadly in Asian and African studies and economic or global history will be richly rewarded for engaging with Machado’s stellar scholarship.
