The historiography of navigation and maritime technology in India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Although shipping and shipbuilding were important aspects of medieval Indian history, they have not attracted much attention from historians. This is probably because Indian rulers had little interest in maritime activities at that time, as their main economic concerns lay in agriculture, which was their principal source of revenue. According to Animesh Ray, the landward orientation of Indian rulers prevented them from becoming a sea power. ¹ The Mughals, the dominant power in medieval India, showed little interest in overseas trade, largely because of the continental perspective inherent to their central Asian origin. ² Therefore, shipping and shipbuilding do not feature strongly in the historiography of medieval India, despite the fact that shipping was the basic means of transportation for the country’s long-distance commerce.

Thus, in medieval Indian historiography shipping and shipbuilding is deadened from its arguable importance. Modern scholars working on maritime India sometimes criticize the generations of historians by saying that they presented India in such a way that it was as if no coasts existed. ³ However, these maritime historians themselves faced the question of where does this coast start and where does it end, and where do hinterlands begin? Historians like M. N. Pearson and Ashin Das Gupta, ⁴ K. N. Chaudhuri, ⁵ Om Prakash, ⁶ T. Raychaudhuri, ⁷ S. Subramanyam, ⁸ Y. V. Manguin, ⁹ and Lotika Vradarajan ¹⁰ have defined their own frontiers for these maritime zones and tried to bring out the various aspects of human affairs related to navigation and maritime technology. This paper would present a historiographical analysis of these themes.

The paucity of sources from before the seventeenth century is always a hindrance for maritime historians. It is difficult to get data on the nature of shipping, shipbuilding, seafaring and the goods that were exchanged. The historiography of these aspects has been built around the flimsy and random descriptions that have come down from that period. But with the coming of the Europeans into the Indian Ocean world, much more evidence becomes available. The Portuguese recorded shipping, shipbuilding and seafaring. Travellers of the period like Nicolo Conti, Thomas Bowery, John Frayer and William Methwold left considerable information about maritime affairs of the period by classifying the types of ships and sailing traditions across the Ocean.

Sanjay Subramanyam has said that the entry of the Europeans and their careful documentation provided historians with a large number of sources for the writing of Asian history in general and of Indian history in particular, especially economic history. Trade and commerce, potentialities of capitalistic development, and socio-economic development became the main concerns for historians. ¹¹ Other smaller issues like shipbuilding, life aboard ship, admiralty law and so on remained neglected, however, K. N. Chaudhuri has himself written in the preface of his celebrated book The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 AD that due to lack of space he had to drop the chapter on shipbuilding. ¹²

Yet there are several works dealing with the history of the Indian Ocean such as like Arasratnam’s Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century, ¹³ Nambiar’s Our Seafaring in the Indian Ocean, ¹⁴ McPherson’s A History of the People and the Sea, ¹⁵ and Das Gupta and Pearson’s India and the Indian Ocean 1500-1800. ¹⁶ These works highlight the maritime skills of Indians both in coastal and oceanic trade voyages. Though these painstaking scholarly works are among the pioneering works in their respective areas, they are primarily confined to presenting general information about trade routes, port towns and economic and cross-cultural influences. Specific details like the skills of vessel construction and the resultant growth of trade and its influence on the economy are rarely pursued. More directly concerned with such matters are K. K. N. Kurup’s Indigenous Navigation and Shipbuilding on the Malabar Coast ¹⁷ and India’s Naval Traditions, ¹⁸ especially for shipbuilding traditions on the south west coast of India. These works, however, focus on indigenous construction and do not examine deeply the various styles of building and their relative value with that of the European models that came to the shores of India.

As long ago as 1912, Radhakumud Mookerji wrote a compressive piece on Indian shipping which provides a glimpse of shipping and shipbuilding from antiquity until the Mughal period. ¹⁹ It is a pioneering work in its field. Mookerji structured his work, particularly for the ancient period, on the basis of ancient religious and other literary texts and ancient Indian sculptures, paintings and coins. He did not hesitate to use Persian literary texts especially for the Mughal period. Scholars have criticised Mookerji for being too dependent on religious texts, yet his work certainly provided the much needed impetus for further studies on the topic. Still, many questions remain unanswered. Mookerji largely framed his arguments in a nationalist perspective. He contended, for example, that in the Hindu period India enjoyed great success in overseas trade and had control over the world market. ²⁰

Auguste Toussaint’s History of the Indian Ocean – a specific study of the region – essentially deals with European activities, but he also succeeded in showing us about maritime activities of the Indians too. ²¹ This book is important because of its bibliographical richness; it is virtually a bibliographical essay which has presented a wealth of information about the major problems that needed to be investigated. Yet a number of questions emerge from this also, such as what were the technological changes in construction of Indian ships with the entry of Europeans? What was life like aboard the ships? How did European companies, especially the English East India Company, take over shipbuilding on their own account? Were labourers (artisans) engaged in the industry servile or free? What changes were brought about by English (British) takeover of the shipbuilding industry? These issues remain to be addressed adequately.

Shipbuilding technology

Technology is one aspect which has a history of exchanges between agencies and countries according to their mutual benefits. Countries came into contact with one another used to adopt the best features of each other’s construction techniques and methods, to mutual advantage.

With regard to shipbuilding, Sanjay Subramanyam and P. Y. Manguin have opined that there was some sort of synchronization of technologies in the construction of ships in India. Places like Narsaporpeta and Musalipattam were the centres where Europeans preferred to construct their ships. Recent surveys have showed that there were two major traditions of shipbuilding in the Indian Ocean in about 1500. The dhow tradition was mainly present on the western coast, while on the eastern coast the traditions of Chinese junk and South East Asian jong ships were largely present. Simon Digby has termed the jong ships as the Chinese-South East Asian style. He did not differentiate between junks and jongs. Subrahmanyam, conversely, has argued that there were differences between them. He argued that ‘in contrast to the flat bottomed, square ended Chinese vessels; the Jong had a double-ended V-shaped hull, assembled with little or no nails’. ²² Unlike the south East Asian jong, the Chinese used iron for joining the planks of a vessel. While an average jong could carry about 400–500 metric tons of weight, the Chinese junk was smaller comparatively. ²³

Subrahmanyam has observed that there was small-scale construction of ships on the east coast in the places like Kunjimedu, Nagapatnam and Narsaporepeta. But the ships constructed in these ports were smaller in dimension than the typical jong. He has also argued that most ships were built in the jong tradition, but in Narsapor they widely used nails for joining planks. In pure jong ships one does not find any mention of the use of iron. Subrahmanyam has listed a few characteristics of those ships built on the east coast: the use of multiple masts, heavier armaments, iron nails and multiple decks. This he termed ‘syncretic’ shipbuilding technology.

On the other hand, A. J. Qaisar came to a different conclusion. ²⁴ Though Indians learnt European techniques, they did not adopt them. For a long time after the arrival of Europeans, Indian shipowners did not show much interest in European ships. In The Indian Response to the European Technology and Culture he provides technological details solely from an Indian perspective. ²⁵ He tended to glorify Indian technology, which remained dominant in the face of European alternatives. According to Qaisar it was due to the lower cost of construction of ships in India and also the rebating method followed by Indian artisans that made it possible to repair vessels with ease. Moreover, the teak wood provided durability to Indian ships. He argues, therefore, that the presence of technologically advanced European ships in Indian Ocean could not drive out Indian-built vessels. Though Qaisar accepts that Indian builders also adopted the nailing method, he maintains that this did not altogether eclipse rebating. Edward Simpson supports this view in his study of the seafarers and dockyards of Kachchh region of Gujarat. ²⁶ Simpson also concludes that this technology was passed orally from one generation to another.

The European influence can be seen in the instruments of the ships like iron anchors replacing earlier stone ones. Even the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb ordered 10–15 iron anchors each weighing around 110 pounds. Qaisar argued that the iron anchor was in use in the Indian Ocean even before the coming of the Europeans. Arabs had used iron anchors known as hadid. Initially Indians bought anchors from the English but later they produced for themselves. Hamilton suggested that Indian manufactured anchors were inferior in quality. ²⁷ Thus, Qaisar took a defensive line for Indian technology.

Arunachalam has written an extensive, and important, study on the history of navigation. He has tried to trace the traditions of the coastal areas in the charting of seas, astronomical navigation, sky wisdom, navigational instruments and ocean voyages. ²⁸ G. F. Hourani in his work Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times has given detailed information about the Arab ships in the Indian Ocean, but he could not fail to quote about the technological aspect of the Indian build ships as well. ²⁹ He dealt with various aspects of ships including the technology and life on board and different types of ships in the Indian Ocean. To this we may add contributions to the collection The Indian Ocean: Explorations in History, Commerce and Political. ³⁰ A theme in the volume is the technological quality of Indian Ocean ships and the argument that they were not inferior in size and construction than their European counterparts.

In her ethnographical works ‘The Sewn boats of Lakshadweep’; ‘Indian Boat Building Traditions the Ethnological Evidence’, and ‘Traditional Shipping and Navigation in Gujarat’, Lotika Varadarajan discusses the technological aspects of Indian ships in construction. ³¹ K. S. Mathew’s edited collection Shipbuilding and Navigation in the Indian Ocean Region A.D. 1400-1800 deals with topics including traditions of wooden shipbuilding in India, indigenous navigation and the study of the Portuguese Nau. ³²

Conclusion

Early globalization exposed India to the Europeans thereby establishing direct links between India and Europe. These were not confined to commercial activities, but there were exchanges of knowledge in various fields including shipbuilding. The present survey has tried to present a historiographical sense of the influence of Europeans in general and the English/British in particular in the development of shipbuilding technology as well as in the transformation of the shipbuilding sector into an organized industry. Hence, though the historiography of shipping and shipbuilding has great depth, it remains important to throw new light on these topics on the basis of company records, travel accounts and other available evidence.