Paper Details

This paper examines the role of monsoon winds as a decisive environmental factor in shaping maritime trade across the ancient Indian Ocean. Moving beyond traditional economic and political explanations, it adopts an environmental history perspective to highlight how natural forces influenced navigation, trade cycles, and regional connectivity. By integrating literary evidence such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, archaeological discoveries, and climatological understanding, the study argues that the predictability of monsoon winds enabled sustained long-distance trade between East Africa, Arabia, South Asia, and the Mediterranean world. It further explores how traders adapted to environmental constraints and how monsoon-driven trade contributed to the emergence of cosmopolitan port cities and cultural exchange networks. The paper concludes that maritime trade in the Indian Ocean was the result of a dynamic interaction between environmental systems and human agency.

Monsoon winds; Indian Ocean trade; environmental history; maritime networks; ancient trade; navigation; port cities; cultural exchange