Tagliacozzo, Eric. "Trade, Production, and Incorporation. The Indian Ocean in Flux, 1600–1900". Itinerario, Vol.26, No.1 (2002): 75-106.

Tagliacozzo, Eric. "Trade, Production, and Incorporation. The Indian Ocean in Flux, 1600–1900". Itinerario, Vol.26, No.1 (2002): 75-106.

• Nowhere in the Indian Ocean was European domination instantaneous nor certain, rather it was a gradual process involving a diverse set of local and foreign actors moving towards a more structured hierarchy, although even this only began to emerge hundreds of years after first contact (77).
• During the period of first European contact, the Southeast Asian population, roughly 20 million, was already trading amongst themselves, mostly in bulk goods such as salted fish, rice, and grain. European goods fit easily into this preexisting trading system, although they also introduced a new source of luxury items (79).
• The new weaponry and massive commercial export markets that began to open during the mid-1600s did have a major effect on local political life, as local elites often centralized and reinforced their power using these new military and economic resources, especially through debt enslavement of their population to European trading companies (79).
• By the 1700s and 1800s, the British presence had come to dominate Southeast Asia, particularly the Straits of Malacca in order to protect trade and secure control over India. It was during the later half of the 19th Century, that British power began to actively intrude on political life in Southeast Asia (81).
• The author argues that the primary motivation for imperial expansion in the 19th Century was economic and a desire for access to previously closed markets in an increasingly competitive environment. He provides the examples of a closed Burma and an open Siam to demonstrate divergent imperial interactions motivated by economic interest, although this is not entirely convincing (82-83).
• The case of the Kim Eng Sung in 1851 reveals the complex realities of piracy in Southeast Asia during the period, as the activity was rampant, largely due to Singapore's new status as a British trade hub. It was extremely difficult to distinguish between traders and pirates, and often ships engaged in both activities depending on opportunity (81).
• Prior to the 1870s, Britain pursued a policy of primarily free trade largely because as the country first to undergo the industrial revolution, Britain had the ability to outcompete all rivals in a free market. As this competitive advantage decreased due to German, American, and Japanese industrialization in the late 1800s, Britain began to pursue more openly imperial policies that allowed it to corner markets (82).
• Monsoons were an important factor in organizing trade on the Indian Ocean, as prices of goods, their availability, and trade routes were all dictated by the seasonal storms (84).
• The system of trade in the Indian Ocean from South Asia was relatively unaffected by the imposition of the Portuguese cartaz system in the 1500s, as fines were light and most ships were able to avoid the Portuguese patrols if they really wanted to do so (84-85).
• Europeans only began to exercise an influence on trade in South Asia during the 1600s with the entrance of England and the Netherlands into the area. Even then, the effect was a net positive as Indian merchants were given access to new markets, navigational technologies, and opportunities for capital investment (85).
• Trade became more restrictive during the 1700s, as European joint stock companies, especially the East Indian Company came to dominate Indian Ocean trade at the expense of private Indian merchants. At the same time, however, the merchant fleets of the Mughals profited enormously from the expanded opportunities and join monopoly with their vassals, the East India Company, as did some Indian export industries (85, 87).
• The East African coastline experienced frequent warfare throughout the 1500s and 1600s, largely due to introduction of the Portuguese into the existing power structures, and subsequent conflicts between them, Arab traders, and African coastal empires (92).
• The British attempts to ban the slave trade, beginning in the 1820s, had profound effects on East African economies, previously geared towards slaving. Instead of exporting slaves in a hostile environment, Zanzibar and its allies now used slave labor in Africa to produce export goods and cash crops, like nutmeg (93).
• Zanzibari politics changed again the in mid-1800s, as Britain introduced prohibitions on Indians owning slaves in foreign countries, causing the large plantation-owning Indian community in East Africa to sell their land and invest more heavily in missions to collect ivory or gum from the interior (94).
• This actually set them up to become economically dominate in Zanzibar by the end of the 19th Century, as Arab and African traders were forced to make the same transition under less favorable circumstances in the 1870s (95).