The history of Maritime India includes the sea-oriented history of India during the early medieval and medieval periods based on the frequent trade movement of commodities, people, and ideas from abroad. As a corollary, Maritime India was exposed to changes, novelties and foreign elements of different nature and categories, which make it remarkably distinctive in its social, economic and political processes. Pius Malekandathil in this volume, a compendium of essays, explores the historical trajectories of Maritime India that was shaped by the circuits in the Indian Ocean, highlighting various socioeconomic and political processes that evolved, over the centuries, giving it a distinctive consciousness and identity. Through the various chapters, Malekandathil precisely emphasizes that the consciousness of Maritime India was not only shaped by ecology and the geography of the coast alone, but also by the type of circuits and the value-condensed activities that the residents of a given geographical space restored.

Malekandathil begins the volume by asserting the connection with Sassanids proved beneficial for evolving commerce, which was confined to politically active societies and continues to highlight in the second chapter Goa's participation in Indian Ocean trade and the appropriation of power and political authority over the region by translating the mercantile wealth into political assets. The empowerment of the Christian mercantile migrant leaders of Quilon and their church by local rulers gave them a firm grounding to establish themselves and to abate the commerce and religious stronghold of the Buddhists and the Jains of Kerala. Malekandathil examines the information networking between Chinese and Maritime India as well as the Mediterranean world and how such contacts proved beneficial in trade and polity. In Maritime India, with the arrival of Europeans and the formation of state, the existing power structures in Kerala underwent change. With the increase of sea-borne trade, Kerala rulers shifted their seat of control to maritime centers of exchange and kept together a cluster of satellite inland power centers as a supportive mechanism and feeding economic units. As a result, the formation of the state depended on mercantile lines because of the wealth and empowerment they acquired from trade. Though the Ottomans and the Portuguese moved to the maritime space of Indian Ocean, the author argues, the Portuguese managed to acquire a major portion of Malabar from around the sixteenth century by obstructing the Ottoman Empire that cherished connection with Kerala, especially with the Marakkars from around the fifteenth century. However, the paradesi, or foreign Muslims, considered the Portuguese as rivals. Despite such contention between the commercially powerful paradesi Muslims and the Portuguese, the local Muslims, Marakkars and Mapillas established relationships and collaborated with them. As a consequence, the paradesi Muslims moved outside of Calicut and Kunjali Marakkar controlled trade of Malabar and diversified it (p. 136). However, Kunjali's control did not last long because of the division between Zamorin and Kunjali, resulting in many Muslims turning to be economically poor, incapable of undertaking commercial activity. But this commercial expansion and influence was not confined to the western coast of India, it spread to the eastern coast in the Bay of Bengal with private Portuguese traders supplying spices to Bengal and taking textiles to parts of South-East Asia. He concludes the volume asserting the presence of various strands of trading activity originating from Portuguese settlements highlighting the dependence of the Estado on the capital of Portuguese private traders.

Though most of the essays in the volume emphasize early modern trade and commerce in south India, there are some essays that shed light on issues of socioreligious and cultural history. For example, cultural exchanges that took place between caste and religious groups and the acculturation and synthesis that took place. As in the case of St. Thomas Christians, who acquired the caste position of the Vaisya or merchants and borrowed various caste rules including, untouchability, wearing of sacred thread and tuft, observing pollution rites related to birth, death, etc., and praying for the departed soul (pp. 47–48). Such references make the book a highly rewarding study, one that takes significant steps toward integrating careful readings of trade connections and socioreligious historical evidence. Malekandathil's detailed historical analysis of Maritime India reinforces the importance of trade, religion, and polity in the Indian Ocean for a better comprehension of Maritime India.