Expanding Portuguese Empire and
the Tamil Economy: (Sixteenth-Eighteenth
Centuries)
By- S. Jeyaseela Stephen
This book examines the politics
of trade in horses, elephants and the phenomenal growth of bulk goods in Asia
besides export of saltpetre, pearls and diamonds to Portugal. Bullions were
imported and it resulted in the monetization of economy and accumulation of
capital on the Tamil coast. The Tamil coastal region is taken as a micro-
historical unit which constituted the fulcrum of the entire maritime commercial
system between South India and south-East Asia.
The aims and policies of the
Portuguese and the economic effects, their success and failure and how their
significant role changed the then existing commercial topography and the
traditional pattern of trade are brought out clearly in this volume. The author
convincingly argues on the basis of the Portuguese sources that the years of
Portuguese presence in the Tamil coast was a period of great economic revival
and prosperity, a period of extensive contacts which signalled the growth of a
vibrant regional economy that was integrated with the then emerging global
economic system.
Jayaseela Stephen is
Professor of Maritime History at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West
Bengal.
ISBN 978-81-7304-802-9 2009 360p. Rs.895/ Pounds 55
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