Book Review - The Ocean of Churn

This book covers much more than what the title suggests, all though a lot of research has gone into building the narrative at times the sequence of events and timeliness get a bit confusing for a novice reader on history. Nevertheless a good read to know more about various civilisations that ruled the world, maritime and trade history of the world, the colonial era and the impact of the industrial revolution in trade.

Aspects of formation of continents and land masses , the life of Man in the ice age to the bronze age and finally the iron age are covered well in the first few chapters.

The role of the Indian Ocean in facilitating trade between Europe empires and south East Asian powers including the Greek, roman and later on the turks is something which many of us wouldn't be aware of. The Arab merchants who frequently visited India and how they set up their trading bases in south India and later on Yemen, Oman and Africa are worth knowing. Not many of us would be aware that India also contributed immensely to global trade and would see merchants from mainland India travel as far as Kenya, Oman, East Africa, Iran, Iraq in search of new business opportunities. No wonder that even to this day we can find of people of Indian origin in many of these independent countries.

The south Indian empire of Cholas had a big role to play when it came to exploit trading opportunities in south East Asia and they used their military conquest to spread their empire upto Indonesia which was then followed by business expansion by private merchants.

The post mid 15th century started the new era of European intervention to control trade in the Indian Ocean right from mainland China to south East Asia and upto East Africa. The Arabs who had dominated this route were not very comfortable with this and how all the colonial powers including the British, French, Dutch etc used trading as an opportunity to slowly grow their empire is explained in detail. The major wars, treaties between the colonial powers and the native powers in India, south East Asia and sequence of events that lead to their domination and eventual decline post world war two are aptly examined in depth.

The Indian Ocean trade routes have shaped history and will continue to remain the most important trading route in the world as it touches Asia, Africa and Europe partly and with the growing influence of China and India it will only get bigger .

A good read to know history and the little facts that somewhere are lost in this information age.