As mentioned earlier, one thing that particularly struck me when researching for this book was the extent to which previous histories of the Indian Ocean or the maritime Spice Route were written almost exclusively from a Western point of view—a view that tends to focus largely on developments after Europeans entered the scene. Even when earlier history is mentioned, it is treated either as background material or in terms of the medieval European yearning for Asian spices, as if the people of the Indian Ocean were sitting around lazily growing spices for export until the Europeans turned up and
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