458 elizabeth ann pollard
of this conundrum—that is, thalassology as a challenge to, but product of, imperial
ideologies—for a study of connectivity between the Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean across millennia is clear. Not only must the Mediterranean be
construed in all its regional variety (Horden and Purcell, 2000), but also the diver-
sity and changing scale of the Indian Ocean must be incorporated, all the while
negotiating the various constructs (geographical, temporal, social, commercial, and
political) that influence understandings of either body of water as an integrated
whole (Chaudhuri, 1993).
At nearly 25.5 million square miles (c. 68.5 million sq.km), the Indian Ocean is the
third largest ocean on the planet. Travel on its waters and along its littoral is pro-
foundly impacted by the monsoons which blow from the northeast in January and
from the southwest in July, by the currents of the Arabian Sea and equatorial cur-
rents, and by the varied topography and climate of the lands along its shores (Sheriff,
2010: 20–23). Scholars studying the earliest phase of Mediterranean exchange with
the Indian Ocean, because of the relatively small scale of exchange at that point in
time, generally confine themselves to a discussion of trade between the eastern
Mediterranean and the northwestern spur of the Indian Ocean, known as the Arabian
Sea. From the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, this exchange would have travelled
along one of two routes:
(1) a western prong, through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea and across some
portion of Egypt or the Levant/Arabia; or
(2) an eastern prong, via the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, up the Euphrates
or Tigris, and then via trans-Arabian and trans-Mesopotamian land routes.
By the early second millennium ce, technological innovations, including the
Arabian dhow and Chinese junk, began to facilitate more open-sea maneuvering and
the Indian Ocean world that was linked to the Mediterranean via the Arabian Sea
expanded to include much more of the east coast of Africa and Southeast Asia (Sheriff,
2010 and Hourani, 1995 [1951]). From the mid-second millennium ce, interaction
between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean assumed a much grander scale, with
the circum-Africa route linking the Mediterranean via the Atlantic to the Indian
Ocean at its largest.
Mediterranean exchange with the Indian Ocean was part of a much larger
trans-thalassal system that expanded over time (Horden and Purcell, 2006). Just
as the silk roads moved across a southerly route that included the Arabian Sea,
east-west commerce also travelled along more northerly routes, some of which cut
across central Eurasia and over the Black Sea. The routes were quite connected, as
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, originating in the mountains of north-eastern
Anatolia, cut through Mesopotamia, and thus linked the Black Sea region with the
Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and, beyond it, the wider Indian Ocean. Barry Gills
and Andre Gunder Frank have noted the significance of what they have called
“nexus corridors” that were magnets for economic exchange and attempts at
empire-building in pre-modern world systems. Two of their three nexus corridors
(Nile–Red Sea and Syria–Mesopotamia–Persian Gulf) highlight the centrality of
direct Mediterranean—Indian Ocean exchange to the development pre–1500
ce world systems, while the third (Aegean–Black Sea–Central Asia) emphasizes