The Indian Ocean in antiquity is a subject which enjoys recurring popularity, often serving as a proxy for other trans-regional negotiations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, with the terms of global engagement in such flux, it is currently a hot topic, to which G.'s new book makes a welcome contribution.
The opening chapter presents a theoretical framework centred on the concepts of political economy and social theory, followed by quite a lengthy chapter on historiography and sources. While the summary of sources is a necessary rehearsal of available material, the historiographical analysis gives valuable space to the Indian national context for ‘Indo-Roman’ studies, as well as earlier colonial periods.
Chapter 3 discusses changes to Mediterranean contact with the Indian Ocean brought about by exploitation of the monsoon winds and Augustus’ conquest of Egypt, focusing on evidence for documentary and monetised trade and shipping technology as evidence for the ‘political economy’ of the Roman Empire as a participant in exchange. Chapter 4, ‘Ports, Marts and Ship Technology in Early South India’, critiques the terminology of ports and markets and highlights the temporary nature of ‘port’ sites in India which were determined not by natural features but ‘because the merchant-mariners camped there for a few months’ (p. 181), though how this might have come about is not discussed. Above all, this chapter rejects the identification of ports in south India as multicultural urban sites and the sophistication of ancient Indian ship technology (pp. 194–9).
Chapter 5 is where G. gets to the heart of his argument – that an understanding of political economies can determine the possibilities for exchange in a given society and therefore provide a structure within which to situate surviving evidence. He applies this to the Roman Empire, northern India, the Deccan and the Tamil region, bringing together a range of literary, archaeological and numismatic material. In G.'s view these regions formed a hierarchy of capacity for market exchange and urbanism, with Rome and the Tamilakam at opposite ends. Finally, ‘Polity, Statecraft and Overseas Exchange’ makes the argument that state structures are a necessary prerequisite for complex, long-distance market exchange and that post-Mauryan India mostly lacked them. Consequently, G. claims, here and in the afterword, that ‘Indo-Roman trade’ is a misnomer both for generalising ‘trade’ as the primary form of exchange and for placing Rome and a homogenised idea of ‘India’ on an equal footing. Instead, G. argues, most regions of India were not capable of comprehending exchange in terms of trade, but were rather embedded in gift-exchange systems, and this placed the Roman Empire in a dominant position.
There is much that is highly stimulating in this book. G.'s theory of statehood and its application in the Tamilakam, for example, is a useful counterpoint to E. Seland's Ports and Power in the Periplus (2010) and makes the case well, mainly from Tamil literary evidence, that systems of complex resource management are not evident for this period and region. Above all, it showcases the benefits of thinking with explicit theoretical models for challenging ideas derived from a more literal reading of historical sources.
Inevitably, this is also the most obvious occasional weakness of the book, when theory seems to constrain rather than structure evidence. G.'s assertion that Indians did not have the shipping technology to deal in significant long-distance maritime travel, despite archaeological and visual evidence, begins to look like special pleading (p. 296). This is a subject area in which evidence is routinely thin and any position is often a judgement call, but elsewhere G. chooses to believe in possibilities, rather than impossibilities, because they fit the theory better, for example on pp. 64–5, when boats carrying ‘companies of archers’ referred to in the Periplous are interpreted by G. as ‘soldiers from the imperial army contingent … deployed in Graeco-Roman vessels to guarantee safety’.
It is also unfortunate that G. stops in the third century a.d., a traditional but not a particularly helpful cut-off point for many studies of so-called ‘Indo-Roman trade’. A longer chronological perspective may have presented more challenges to G.'s theoretical model. In particular, G.'s rejection of the possibility of Indian sailors playing a major role in Indian Ocean trade entails a reinterpretation of the Tamil literary evidence and the archaeological evidence in India, both very ambiguous. However, the western literary accounts of the so-called Theban Scholasticus (recorded in the fourth century), the anonymous sixth-century Christian Topography and Procopius’ sixth-century History of the Wars all make explicit reference to Indian traders and travellers (including high-status individuals) and Indian ships moving west. This does not invalidate all G.'s re-interpretation, such as his incisive re-translation and examination of a passage in the Tamil poem Puranānūru, often mistakenly interpreted as referring to a king directing maritime trade, but it does make it harder to reject any Indian agency in long-distance routes (pp. 285–6).
In addition to problems arising from the combination of theory and data, some of G.'s conclusions are weakened by his comparative unfamiliarity with western sources. This is a question of degrees. G.'s handling of the Indian textual material is deft and sensitive to complexities of context and transmission, and working outside one's own areas of training and experience is the risk of all comparative and trans-regional study. Nevertheless, it is notable that G. only uses translations of Greek and Latin sources, and most often those available online, causing him in places to rely on outdated versions (as in the case of the Periplous of the Erythreian Sea, for which G. relies on Schoff's 1912 translation). Unfamiliarity also leaves G. vulnerable to reiterating rather than critiquing Roman rhetorical tropes, contrasting with his exploration of the role of recurring devices in the Tamil literary material (e.g. pp. 83–4). Thus G. finds himself repackaging the first- and second-century lament that Roman women were particularly susceptible to the charms of Indian goods (and so to blame for the poverty of the empire) without registering the structured opposition in imperial Roman representation between austerity, self-reliance and masculinity on one side and frivolity, acquisitiveness and femininity on the other (e.g. pp. 67, 130, 171).
Finally, G. has not always relied on the soundest or most up-to-date secondary studies of the Roman Empire. Most notably R. McLaughlin's 2010 study Rome and the Distant East seems to be the basis of the statement that ‘ancient Rome had a brisk exchange with China’ (p. 232). This is simply untrue. Rome's trade with China was at best minimal, mediated, an attenuated extension of its trade with India, reflected in the distorted, repetitive and brief references to China in classical sources, and is argued by McLaughlin only on the basis of untenable assumption and extrapolation. G. also quotes the argument that Roman coins entering the Kushan Empire were melted to make local coins, although this is no longer considered true (pp. 133–4). Although less nuanced, G.'s analysis of the Roman Empire is none the less a useful counterpoint to his examination of India.
Physically, this book is well presented, with clear maps and illustrations usefully incorporated into the text (though more would have been welcome, along with consistent translation of Tamil quotations, e.g. pp. 85–7). G. might have expected better editorial standards and proofreading from a press of OUP's standing. Repetition of quotations and sentences ought not to have made it to print, while numerous typographical errors and irregular grammar and word use give the text a less polished appearance than it deserves. Nevertheless, this is a book which would make a valuable, and affordable, addition to any university library offering courses in classics, archaeology and, indeed, economic theory.
