Questions for shaffer's article on southernization answers

Southernization

LYNDA SHAFFER

Tufts University

TxE term southernization is a new one. It is used here to referto a multifaceted process that began in Southern Asia and spread from there to various other places around the globe. The process included so many interrelated strands of development that it is impossible to do more here than sketch out the general outlines of a few of them. Among ehe most important that will be omitted from this discussion are the metallurgical, the medical, and the literary. Those included are the development of mathe- matics; the production and marketing of subtropical or tropical spices; the pioneering of new trade routes; the cultivation, pro- cessing, and marketing of southern crops such as sugar and cot- ton; and the development of various related technologies.

The term southernization is meant to be analogous to westerni- zation. Weseernization refers to certain developments that first occurred in western Europe. Those developments changed Eu- rope and eventually spread to other places and changed them as well. In the same way, southernization changed Southern Asia and later spread eo other areas, which then underwent a process of change.

Southernization was well under way in Southern Asia by the fifth century e.E., during the reign of India's Gupta kings (320-535 c.E.). It was by that time already spreading to China. In the eighth century various elements characteristic of southernization began spreading through the lands of the Muslim caliphates. Both in China and in the lands of the caliphate, the process led to dra- matic changes, and by the year iaoo it was beginning to have an impact on the Christian Mediterranean. One could argue that

Jrnernal of World History, Vol. 9, No. r O iggq by University of Hawaii Press

JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1994.

within the Norehern Hemisphere, by this time the process of southernization had created an eastern hemisphere characterized by a rich south and a north that was poor in comparison. And one might even go so far as to suggest that in Europe and its colonies, the process of southernization laid the foundation for westerniza- tion.

THE INDIAN BEGINNING

Southernization was the result of developments that took place in many parts of southern Asia, both on the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia. By the time of the Gupta kings, several of its constituent parts already had a long history in India. Perhaps the oldest strand in the process was the cultivation of cotton and the production of cotton textiles for export. Cotton was first domesti- cated in the Indus River valley some time between a3oo and z76o s.c.E.,l and by the second millennium B.c.E., the Indians had begun to develop sophisticated dyeing techniques.z During these early millennia Indus River valley merchants are known eo have lived in Mesopotamia, where they sold cotton textiles.3

In the first century e.E. Egypt became an important overseas market for Indian cottons. By the next century there was a strong demand for these textiles both in the Mediterranean and in East Africa,4 and by the fifth century they were being traded in South- east Asia.S The Indian textile trade continued to grow throughout the next millennium. Even after the arrival of European ships in Asian ports at the turn of the sixteenth century, it contin- ued unscathed. According to one textile expert, "India virtually clothed the world" by the mid-eigheeenth century.6 The subconti-

~ Andrew Watson, Agricultural bmovatioxi in the Early Islamic World: The Dif- fusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, yoo—i roo (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press,i983)~ P• 32•

2 Mattiebelle Gittinger, Master Dyers to the World: Technique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles (Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum, i98z), p. sq. For a discussion of the significance of cotton textiles in Indonesia, see Gittinger, Splendid Symbols: Textiles aiud Tradition iti htdonesia (Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum, ig~q). ' Moti Chandra, Trade and Ti•ade Routes of Ancient India (Ne~v Delhi: Abhinav

Publications, i977)~ P• 35• ~ Ibid., p, za6. 5 Gittinger, Splendid Symbols, pp. i3> 19. 6 Ibid., p. z5.

Shaffer: Southernization

vent's position was not undermined until Britain's Industrial Rev- olution, when steam engines began to power ehe production of cotton textiles.

Another strand in the process of southernization, the search for new sources of bullion, can be traced back in India to the end of the Mauryan Empire (32i—z85 B.c.E.). During Mauryan rule Sibe- ria had been India's main source of gold, but nomadic distur- bances in Central Asia disrupted the traffic between Siberia and India at about the time that the Mauryans fell. Indian sailors then began to travel to the Malay peninsula and the islands of Indone- sia in search of an alternative source,? which they most likely "discovered" with the help of local peoples who knew the sites. (This is generally the case with bullion discoveries, including those made by Arabs and Europeans.) What the Indians (and oth- ers later on) did do was introduce this gold to international trade routes.

The Indians' search for gold may also have led them to the shores of Africa. Although its interpretation is controversial, some archaeological evidence suggests the existence of Indian influence on parts of East Africa as early as 30o c.E. There is also one report that gold was being sought in East Africa by Ethiopian merchants, who were among India's most important trading part- ners. The sixeh-century Byzantine geographer Cosmas Indico- pleustes described Ethiopian merchants who went to some loca- tion inland from the East African coast to obtain gold. "Every other year they would sail far to the south, then march inland, and in return for various made-up articles they would come back laden with ingots of gold."$The fact that the expeditions left every other year suggests that it took two years to get to their destina-

7 Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula Before A.D. r$oo (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973)> p. z88.

8 D. W. Phillipson, "The Beginnittgs of the Iron Age in Southern Africa," in UNESCO General History of Africa, vol, z: Ancient Civilizations of Africa, ed. G. Mokhtar (Berkeley: University of California Press, i98i), pp. 6~g-8o, 688—go. In the same volume, see also M. Posnansky, "The Societies of Africa South of the Sahara in the Early Iron Age," p. ~z6. Phillipson indicates that there is evidence of exchange between Zimbabwe and the coast in this early period, and Posnansky refers to the work of R. F. H. Summers who believes that early prospecting and mining techniques in East Africa reveal Indian influence. The description of Ethio- pian merchants seeking gold in East Africa is from Steven Runciman, Byzantine Style and Civilization (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, i975)> P• 132• Informa- tion about the monsoon is from A. M. H. Sheriff, "The East Africa Coast and Its Role in Maritime Trade," in Ancient Civilizations of Africa, ed. Mokhtar, pp. 556-57•

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Lion and return. If so, their destination, even at this early date, may have been Zimbabwe. The wind patterns are such that sailors who ride the monsoon south as far as Kilwa can catch the return monsoon to the Red Sea area within the same year. But if they go beyond Kilwa to the Zambezi River, from which they might go inland to Zimbabwe, they cannot return until the following year.

Indian voyages on the Indian Ocean were part of a more gen- eral development, more or less contemporary with the Mauryan empire, in which sailors of various nationalities began to knit together the shores of the "Southern Ocean," a Chinese term referring to all the waters from the South China Sea to the eastern coast of Africa. During this period there is no doubt that the most intrepid sailors were the Malays, peoples who lived in what is now Malaysia, Indonesia, the southeastern coast of Vietnam, and the Philippines.9

Sometime before 30o s.c.E. Malay sailors began to ride the monsoons, the seasonal winds that blow off the continent of Asia in the colder months and onto its shores in the warmer months. Chinese records indicate that by the third century s.c.E. "Kunlun" sailors, the Chinese term for the Malay seamen, were sailing north to the southern coasts of China. They may also have been sailing east to India, through the straits now called Malacca and Sunda. If so they may have been the first to establish contact between India and Southeast Asia.

Malay sailors had reached the eastern coast of Africa at least by the first century s.c.E., if not earlier. Their presence in East African waters is teseified to by the peoples of Madagascar, who still speak a Malayo-Polynesian language. Some evidence also sug- gests that Malay sailors had settled in the Red Sea area. Indeed, it appears that they were the first to develop along-distance trade in a southern spice. In the last centuries s.c.E., if not earlier, Malay sailors were delivering cinnamon from South China Sea ports to East Africa and the Red Sea,lo

By about 40o c.E. Malay sailors could be found two-thirds of

9 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, r45o—r68o, a vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, x988-93)~ I~4~

'o Keith Taylor, "Madagascar in the Ancient Malayo-Polynesian Myths," in Explorations in Early Soti~theast Asian. History: The Origins of Southeast Asian Statecraft, ed. Kenneth Hall and John Whitmore (Ann Arbor: University of Michi- gan, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1976), p. 39. An excellent source on the early spice trade is James Innes Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, zg s.C. to A.D. 649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, x969).