JUNE  i,  1893.]  THE  TROPICAL  AGRICULTURIST. 
769 
THE  ORIGINS  OF  INDIAN  TRADE. 
Sir  George  Birdwood,  k.c.i.e.,  has  written  a 
lengthy  and  very  interesting  introduction  to  “ The 
first  letter  book  of  the  East  India  Company,  1,600 
to  1619,”  which  is  published  by  Mr.  Bernard 
Quaritch.  It  deals  very  exhaustively  with  the 
subject,  as  may  be  judged  from  the  following 
extract  : — 
The  highest  value  of  the  book,  he  says,  is  the 
withful  record  it  has  preserved  of  the  character 
and  conditions  of  the  great  secular  trade  between 
Europe  and  Asia  at  the  very  instant  when  Eng- 
land first  entered  on  her  now  fulfilled  possession 
of  it  ; and  its  highest  interest  in  reference  to  the 
consequences  of  the  dexterous  measures  then 
taken  by  the  East  India  Company  to  obtain  a 
footing  in  it,  involving  as  these  did  the  whole 
future  of  the  United  Kingdom.  The  current  of 
this  trade,  at  first,  and  for  four  millenniums, 
through  Mesopotamia  and  Egypt,  and  then  round 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and,  after  nearly  four 
centuries,  once  again  through  Egypt,  has,  from 
its  forgotten  beginnings,  determined  the  destinies 
of  the  historical  nations,  of  the  Old  World  ; and 
now  we  find  it  dominated  by  the  United  Kingdom, 
not  only  along  both  its  competing  courses,  but.  at 
all  its  perennial  head  springs,  in  the  tropical 
fertility  of  India,  Farther  India,  the  Indian  Archi- 
pelago, and  the  East  Indies  generally,  from  Abys- 
sinia or  “ Middle  India,”  to  China,  or  “ Superior 
India.”  The  history  of  the  Old  World  has,  in 
brief,  been  the  history  of  its  commerce  in  the 
dye  stuffs,  cloth,  and  spice,  and  gold  of  India; 
and  it  was  the  fame  of  the  East  Indies  for  their 
fresh  spices,  deep-toned  dyes,  bright  cloths,  aDd 
precious  stones,  and  wrought  gold  and  silver,  and 
sumptuary  arms,  that  led  Columbus  on  to  the 
unexpected  discovery  of  the  New  world  of  the 
American. 
Blameless  Ethiopians. 
The  elaborately  broken  coast  line  stretching 
obliquely  from  the  British  3 s' is  gradually  south- 
ward through  a distance’,  as  the  crow  flies,  of 
from  8,000  to  9,000  miles,  until  it  ends  in  the 
Indian  Archipelago,  naturally  invited  the  popu- 
lation along  its  entire  length  to  mutual  commerce, 
not  simply  by  the  facilities  it  affords  for  inter- 
communication, but  also  by  the  infinite  variety 
in  the  productions  of  the  temperate  and  tropical 
zones  they  have  to  offer  each  other.  Once  settled 
by  the  human  race,  it  was  inevitable  that  a great 
commerce  having  its  inexhaustible  sources  in  the 
world’s  green  end  ” of  Homer’s  “ blameless 
^Ethiopians,”  should  grow  up  everywhere  along 
this  remarkable  coast  line.  The  renown  of  the 
riohes  of  the  trade  with  India  and  the  Indian 
Archipelago  was  propagated  from  the  earliest  date 
all  over  Asia  and  Europe  in  the  Legends  of  the 
Earthly  Paradise,  the  Sea  of  Riches,  the  Land 
of  Gold,  &o.  and  the  geographical,  mercantile, 
technical,  and  other  myths  of  universal  fable 
and  folk  lore  are  the  vague  broken  traditions 
of  the  immemorial  trade,  in  his  prehistoric  origins, 
pursued  for  countless  generations  along  all  these 
shores  of  old  romance.  For  centuries  this  com- 
inerte  was  carried  on,  not  directly  between  one 
country  and  another,  but  through  innumerable 
intermediate  agencies,  so  that  d slant  countries 
knew  each  other  only  by  their  productions  and  the 
strange  “ travellers’  tales,”  that  grew  in  wonder 
as  they  pass*  d from  mouth  to  mouth  between  the 
East  and  West.  The  very  name  of  India  re- 
mained unknown  among  the  nations  of  the  Medi- 
teranean  Sea  for  oenturies  after  its  costly  per- 
fumes had  been  in  daily  use  in  the  service  of 
the  Tabernacle  at  Shiloh,  and  afterward  of  the 
97 
Temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  for  millenniums  afler 
their  earliest  use  for  embalming  the  dead  in  Egypt. 
A Retrospect. 
This  southern  coast  line  of  the  continent  we 
arbitrarily  divide  into  Europe  and  Asia  is  inter- 
rupted between  the  Mediterranean  Sea  and  the 
Indian  Ocean  by  the  Isthmus  of  Suez ; and  as 
the  peninsula  of  Arabia  extends  from  this  point 
about  1,500  miles  southward,  the  Isthmus  of 
Suez  really  presents  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Arabia  as  an  obstruction  to  the  direct  transit 
of  the  trade  between  the  Mediterranean  Sea  and 
the  Indian  Ocean  ; and  as  it  is  twice  as  long 
from  Suez  to  Aden  as  from  the  Mediterranean 
Sea  to  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  the  com- 
mercial advantages  of  the  Red  Sea  route,  even 
after  the  discovery  of  faffing  to  India  by  the 
monsoons,  have  always  been  nearly  equalled 
by  the  comparative  shortness  of  the  route  by 
the  Persian  Gulf  and  Euphrates  Valley.  Thus 
from  “ the  deep  backward  and  abysm  of  time  ” 
these  two  lines  have  competed  on  almost  equal 
terms  for  the  commerce  of  India,  and  the  com- 
petition between  them  is  the  true  key  to  the 
history  of  the  successive  states  and  empires  that 
rose  and  fell  along  their  course  ; rote  as  they 
gained  the  trade  of  India,  and  fell  when  they  lost 
it.  So  important  are  the  positions  in  connection 
wilh  the  Red  Sea  and  Persian  Gulf,  that  not 
only  was  there  always  a rivalry  between  the  nations 
on  the  Persian  Gulf  and  those  on  the  Red  Sea, 
hut  it  was  a vital  question  among  the  latter 
whether  the  trade  should  go  by  the  Gulf  ofAkba, 
or  the  Gulf  of  Suez.  The  rivalry  successively  of 
Assyria  and  Babylonia  wilh  Phoenicia  on  the  one 
hand,  and  Egypt  on  the  other,  and  again  between 
Jerusalem  and  Tyre,  and  Jerusalem  and  Petra, 
that  finds  such  startling  expression  in  the  pro- 
phetic denunciations  and  lamentations  of  Isaiah, 
Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel,  had  largely  for  its  origin 
the  competition  for  the  monopoly,  or  at  least  a 
share  of  the  profits  of  the  commerce  between  the 
Indian  Ocean  and  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 
Early  Trading. 
The  overwhelming  advantage  of  the  Semitic  races, 
and  particularly  of  the  Arabians  aDd  Phoenicians 
(for  the  Hebrews  were  unfortunately  plaoed  between 
the  Idumeeans  and  Phoenicians)  was  that  from 
the  dawn  of  history  they  were  already  in  occu- 
pation of  all  the  lands  separating  the  Mediterranean 
Sea,  from  the  Indian  Ocean.  This  gave  them 
their  start  in  the  civilisation  of  the  world.  The 
Phoemicians  in  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  and  the 
Arabians  in  the  Indian  Ocean,  ac  once  engrossed 
in  their  own  hands  the  whole  of  the  trade  between 
the  counntries  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea  and  the 
countries  of  the  Indian  Ocean;  the  Arabians  keeping 
possession  of  their  share  of  it  without  interruption 
until  Vasco  Da  Gama  (a.d.  1497)  opened  up  the  trade 
to  India  by  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  Ultimately  the 
Phoenicians  and  their  colonies  were  forced  to  suo- 
cumb  to  the  rivalry  of  Assyria  and  Greece  and  Rome. 
Yet  Tyre  was  not  finally  destroyed  until  taken 
by  the  Crusaders,  who  behind  their  religious  pro- 
fessions, were  chiefly  influenced  in  their  operations 
by  the  sordid  interests  of  the  commercial  Italian 
States  ®f  the  twelfth  century. 
A Fateful  Discovery. 
During  the  300  years  subsequent  to  Da  Gama’s 
enterprise  the  Red  Sea  and  Persian  Gulf  routes 
gradually  fell  into  disuse,  but  are  now  regaining 
their  former  importance  ; and  to  safeguard  them 
against  all  danger  as  the  future  channels  of  the 
rapidly  increasing  commerce  of  Europe  and  Am- 
erica svith  Asia  and  Australasia  has  become  one 
