Ravi Palat, Professor at the Department of Sociology, Binghamton University, The State University of New York, has written a sleek, engaging and instructive volume (223 of text; 31 of endnotes, and 305 pages in total), entitled: The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250-1650: Princes, Paddy fields, and Bazaars. This is the third volume in Palgrave’s series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palat is a senior scholar who has undertaken research on diverse topics ranging from historical sociology, political economy, social theory, nationalism and ethnic conflict. He describes in his title that this is a study of ‘an Indian Ocean’ world-economy (emphasis mine) and I agree with characterization and use of the term as being singular in nature and his choice in approach and framework toward his primary unit of analysis, its chronological selection and the historical sociological observations made over the exercise of power, wealth, knowledge, and meaning in the societies that he examined.

The stated objective of this volume ‘to sketch a truly alternate pattern of long-term, large-scale social change … by tracing the patterns of sociohistorical change in societies based on wet-rice agriculture’ (28). It is organized into an Introduction, four chapters, and an Epilogue. In his Introduction, he effectively outlines and offers his stylized model, which recognizes and acknowledges a set of regional variations and the impact of external intrusions upon social change and the development of Monsoon Asia or the Indian Ocean world with the advent of the arrival of Europeans and the advent of their incursions upon these regions. He goes on to engage the reader with the theoretical implications of this work with the existing literature on the topic and finishes his plan for the work. In Chapter 1, Palat develops his argument that the socio-historical changes in societies based on wet-rice agriculture (i.e., those that roughly coincide with monsoon Asia and much of modern-day China and India) provided conditions and parameters for changes in patterns and processes that are an alternative to Eurocentric notions. In Chapter 2, he ‘examines the impact of political changes following the breakout of the peoples of the Central Asian steppe to carve out large territorial empires in much of modern-day China and India’. Expansion, as a process, is logically central to his argument; in Chapter 3, Palat expounds upon and connects a series of improvements in the factors of production (i.e., increased agricultural productivity permitting a greater participation in non-food production, improved skills and specialization of production in preference to the employment of labour-saving options and devices). He links these processes to a growth of trade and the realignment of trading relations in the Indonesian archipelago and the revocation in Late Song China trading restrictions with a conjuncture on the two wings of the Indian Ocean (i.e., the decline in craft production in West Asia and the decline in population in the eastern Mediterranean due to the Black Death) in the fourteenth century. Those circumstances for Palat ‘laid the basis for the emergence world-economy centred around, and integrated by transport across, the Indian Ocean’ (30). He completes this survey of the development of this world-economy in Chapter 4, by dividing it into three chronological stages: a) from the mid-fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century with the arrival of the Portuguese; b) the latter part of the sixteenth century that revealed increasing global exchanges of precious metals; and c) the third and final stage, which was inaugurated by the arrival of the Dutch and English East India Companies on the scene and Palat chooses to end in the mid-seventeenth century on the basis of political and economic conditions on the ground in India, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.

The objectives of this work, as the above summary of its organization suggests, are ambitious and Palat has been generally successful in presenting a coherent and convincing argument (albeit one must agree almost entirely with Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis) about the socio-historical background and construction of this Indian Ocean world-economy. However, I did find that some of the language that he employed detracted from his presentation. For example, two of the prominent “straw-men” targets in this work are ‘eurocentrism’ (27-8, 33, 36, 209, and 215) and the explicit and seemingly urgent language used by Palat to bring ‘South India the Indian Ocean back into a framework to debate World History’ (1-3). The first target is well known, and to a degree so overly mentioned and clichéd, that it is almost too obvious and pedestrian to be an issue to be raised unless an Asia-centric or Indo-centric or Sino-centric analysis is being openly or subliminally advocated as a full-blown academic or intellectual substitute for this practice. Although I understand and share the author’s concern, the second target of bringing South India and the Indian Ocean ‘back’, frankly, does not resonate or coincide with my appreciation of the major recent research work and publications over the past decade or more, which, in general, Palat’s Bibliography acknowledges. Although readers, in general, may accept that South India and the Indian Ocean have been excised from this debate in the past, I think that specialist readers will agree that this position has changed dramatically for the better in the recent past. Palat’s rationale using such language is not clear and, perhaps, unnecessary, since this sleek volume covers nearly 400 years of history and delivers a well-honed argument.

With the regrettable absence of maps, the target readership for this volume, apparently, was more oriented toward the specialist rather general readership. Despite this observation, Palgrave’s series in Indian Ocean World Studies is to be commended for its appearance.

Despite my quibbling over some of the language that the author employed, Palat’s The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250-1650 is a succinct, well-delivered, ambitious and complex history and sociology about a region and approach to its history that should be read and engaged.