No.91 Seminar ： Where Land and Sea Meet: Port Towns in the Early Modern South India
- Ikuko Wada (The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research)
- 2015/01/20 4:00pm
- The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research (iCeMS West Wing 2F, Seminar Room)
- Japanese
Summary
Since olden times, there have been many port towns along the coast of the Indian Subcontinent. Among them we find some towns flourishing as great trading centres where people came from different littoral areas along the Indian Ocean and from various regions within the Subcontinent. Such port towns have been important arenas for human activity where a variety of people have developed mutual contacts and exchanged not only goods, but also, for example, ideas and knowledge. In this seminar, I will first introduce how these port towns have been situated within existing historical frameworks, and present an idea for possible approaches beyond these works. Then, I will focus on the case of the Coromandel Coast in the seventeenth century and examine the features of society of the early modern port towns.