IMEE-EC - THE OLD ECONOMIC TRADE ROUTE REVISITED

India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor announced at the G20 Summit will include shipping and railway links connecting India to Europe via Middle Eastern countries. The first-of-its-kind economic corridor will be a historic initiative on cooperation on connectivity and infrastructure involving India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, EU, France, Italy, Germany, and the US. The plan to build a rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe is an ambitious project aimed at fostering economic growth and political cooperation.

 

This trade route however is not a new idea. There was an extensive maritime trade network operating between the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilizations as early as the middle Harappan Phase (2600-1900 BCE), with much commerce being handled by "middlemen merchants from Dilmun" (modern Bahrain and Failaka located in the Persian Gulf).

 

The Papyrus gives precise details of one particular cargo sent to the Egyptian port of Berenike from Muziris aboard the ship Hermapollon. The total value of the goods, calculated as worth 131 talents, “enough to purchase 2,400 acres of the best farmland in Egypt” or “a premium estate in central Italy” — is jaw-dropping. And a single trading ship such as the Hermapollon could apparently carry several such consignments, each worth a small fortune.

 

This ancient trade route later on served the same commercial purpose between the Indian subcontinent and the Roman Empire. Sir Mortimer Wheeler was digging south of modern Pondicherry at Arikamedu in the 1930s and 40s, and established the existence of Indo-Roman trade in the 1st century Common Era (CE). The existence of this trade, which peaked in the early centuries of the Common Era, has been known for long; however, evidence of its scale, eclipsing the more romanticized overland Silk Road, has only emerged strongly in this recently concluded G20 Summit. It was a raging back and forth trade with Roman merchants trading in gold and Indian merchants selling spices, ivory, cotton textile, and even exotic animals like tigers and elephants.

 

There was a great demand across the Roman Empire for luxuries from India: from the cinnamon-like plant called malabathrum, whose leaves were pressed to create perfume, to ivory, pearls, and precious gemstones. A famous ivory figure of a voluptuously pouting yakshi fertility spirit, found in the ruins of Pompeii, can be dated to this period. In fact, the city once had a shop which apparently sold nothing but ivory products.

 

India’s biggest export by far was pepper, large quantities of which have been found during excavations at Berenike, often in torpedo-shaped pottery jars, each weighing more than 10 kg. In fact, by the end of the first century, Indian pepper became almost as readily available as it is today. Around 80 per cent of the 478 recipes included in the Roman cookbook of Apicius included pepper. Nonetheless, it remained an expensive treat.

 

The flow of goods in the other direction was more limited. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) says it was mainly gold that went to India, which was a problem for the Roman economy because the balance of trade was firmly in India’s favour. Some Roman wines, olive oil and Garum, an ancient Roman fermented fish paste, like the Tabasco or garam masala also find a mention in history of imports from the Roman Empire.

 

Before the European Colonialism regions like India and the Middle East were economic powerhouses in the ancient and medieval era and a huge volume of trade passed through these regions. India’s strategic location at the crossroads of both these trade routes, the Indian Ocean maritime route and the Silk Road, it is not difficult to understand why India was a major trading power in those days. Indian ports like Kozhikode were essential for the trade and its maritime links to the Middle East and South-East Asia go way back in history.

 

With Qutub al-din Aibak, establishing the Delhi Sultanate in 1206, there was a significant increase in trade relations with the Middle East, given the Turkish origins of the dynasty. With five dynasties ruling under the Delhi Sultanate, and eventually the Mughals taking the reign, economic ties with the Middle East increased manifold. The Mughals started importing horses, velvet, gunpowder, dry fruits from the Middle East.

 

The emergence of European traders also helped to increase trade, not just between India and the Arab Peninsula but Asia as a whole. But, as European Imperialism grew and colonial powers like the British, Dutch and Portuguese tried to gain control of the markets, these traditional economic strongholds like the Middle East and India suffered in their hands. From dominating world trade and producing world-class products, these regions were reduced to mere suppliers of raw materials to feed the British Industries. As Shashi Tharoor says in his book 'An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India', in the 17th century, India met almost 25% of the world’s textile demand, which was reduced to almost 1% by the end of British rule.

 

Although economic ties and trade between India and the Middle East were hindered during the British period, the British viceroys established geopolitical ties with this region very strategically. Middle East was always a conglomerate of many princely kingdoms but Middle East as a regional construct was literally conceptualized and framed by British India. Lord Curzon conceptualized the security of British India by creation of a string of buffer states all around.  Thus, Tibet in the north, Afghanistan in northwest, entries to Arabian Sea through ports in the Persian Gulf and entries to Bay of Bengal from Malacca and Sunda Straits were all envisaged to protect British India.

 

In an interesting book named 'Inventing the Middle East' author Guillemet Crouzet claims that the term 'Middle East was coined in 1900 'to describe a critical geopolitical space on the world map, a kind of nexus of different grids of power, and a crucible through which there ran a series of routes connecting London and British India. So deep were the connections with British India with this region that several countries of this region used the Indian Rupee as legal tender even as late as 1960s.

 

Scottish Historian William Dalrymple rightly said that the announcement of an Indian-Middle Eastern Economic Corridor at the G20 Summit will give a global focus to the ancient Red Sea from India to Egypt, which he also mentioned in his new book called “The Golden Road".