the mediterranean and the indian ocean 473
Sidebotham, S.E. (1986) Roman Economic Policy in the Erythra Thalassa 30 B.C. – A.D. 217,
Leiden: Brill.
Sidebotham, S.E. (2011) Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route, Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Swamy, L.N. (2000) Maritime Contacts of Ancient India with Special Reference to West Coast,
New Delhi: Harman.
Talbert, R.J.A. (2010) Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Thapar, R. (2004) Early India through AD 1300, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Warmington, E.H. (1974) [1928] The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, New
York: Octagon Books.
Wigen, K. (2006) AHR forum, Oceans of history: Introduction. American Historical Review,
111 (3): 717–721.
Further ReadingCimono, R.M. (ed.) (1994) Ancient Rome and India: Commercial and Cultural Contacts
between the Roman World and India, New Delhi: South Asia Books.
Provides more than 60 short, accessible essays on a range of issues related to Roman–Indian
exchange, including the spice trade, ships, and archaeological evidence for commerce.
Goitein, S.D. and Friedman, M.A. (2008) India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents
from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’), Leiden: Brill.
Offers a collection of documents (English translations of Judeo–Arabic texts and com-
mentaries on these letters, contracts, and other legal documents) illustrating the con-
cerns of several Jewish merchant families who facilitated trade between the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the eleventh and twelfth centuries ce, as well
as several in-depth essays on the families involved, shipping, and travel.
Parker. G. (2008) The Making of Roman India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Traces Mediterranean discourse on India from sixth-century bce Greece through sixth-
century ce Rome, touching on Greco–Roman depictions of India, commodities-exchange,
and constructions of Empire and wisdom.
Pearson, M.N. (2003) The Indian Ocean, London: Routledge. Self-consciously in the longue
durée tradition of Braudel’s Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
and Horden and Purcell’s Corrupting Sea, undertakes a study of the Indian Ocean across 5000
years, negotiating the relationship between what he calls “deep structures” (for example,
climate, ecology, and so on) and human interactions (dividing them pre- and post-1800 ce).
Ratnagar, S. (2004) Trading Encounters: From the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Documents contact between the third-millennium bce riverine civilizations of Mesopotamia
and the Indus, including detailed enumeration of the trade items exchanged between the
two regions (with extensive tables describing the types of trade goods, their location, and
the archaeological reports that document these finds) and discussion of the mechanisms by
which that exchange took place.
Sheriff, A. (2010) Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam,
New York: Columbia University Press.
Thoughtfully navigates an argument about the unities and disunities of the Indian Ocean
over 1500 years, examining the varied coasts, the craft that sailed on its waters, the
polities ( including Islam) that exerted control over its trade, and the slave networks of
this perhaps ironically named mare liberum (“free sea”, in reference to a c. 1600 ce