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Indian relations with East Africa before the arrival of the Portuguese1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Neville Chittick
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Extract

The Indian Ocean has for at least two thousand years served as a highway for the exchange of goods and ideas, and the cultural links between the lands bordering it are perhaps closer than over any other region of comparable size. The length of voyages undertaken since early times has been very great, as is forcefully demonstrated by the Indonesian colonization of Madagascar in the first centuries A.D. Commerce has been facilitated by the monsoon which in the western part of the ocean blows for roughly half the year from the northeast and for half in the opposite direction. The eastern and western shores of the western part of the basin share much the same climate and are suited to similar ways of life.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 112 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 117 - 127
Copyright
Copyright The Royal Asiatic Society 1980

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References

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