Indian Ocean Timeline

By hmitche
  • 3000 BCE

    Beginning

    Beginning
    By 3000 B.C., travelers in small canoes and rafts moved between towns and trading ports along coastlines from Arabia to the Indian subcontinent.
  • 2300 BCE

    Explorations

    There is evidence that the Egyptians explored the Indian Ocean as early as about 2300 bce, when they sent maritime expeditions to the “land of Punt,” which was somewhere on the Somali coast.
  • 2000 BCE

    Grain imports

    By 2000 B.C., millet and sorghum — grains imported from the East African coast — were part of the cuisine of the Harappan civilization, which stretched across today’s Pakistan and northern India
  • 1756 BCE

    Early trade

    Early trade in the northwestern Indian Ocean was aided by an irrigation canal (navigable in high water) through the Isthmus of Suez that was built by the Egyptians during the 12th dynasty (1938–c. 1756 bce) and operated almost continuously until it was filled in 775 ce
  • 600 BCE

    Spread of religions

    A major story of the Classical Era is the spread of religions. Between 600 and 300 BCE, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism spread across the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia.
  • 500 BCE

    Entering the Indian Ocean

    Greek and Roman sailors and traders entered the Indian Ocean after 500 BCE, sent there by the Persian ruler Darius I. Alexander the Great sent Nearchus from the Indus to the Arabian Gulf in 326 BCE, and other Greeks sailed to India and around the
    Arabian Peninsula to Oman.
  • 300 BCE

    Sea trade moved

    From at least the third century BCE, long-distance sea trade moved across a web of routes linking all of those areas as well as East Asia
  • 700

    Islam

    Islam would later spread the same way from the 700s CE on.
  • 800

    Trading settlements

    The Indian Ocean Trade began with small trading settlements around 800 A.D.
  • 1200

    Trade routes

    Trade routes
  • 1400

    Growing and prospering

    The Swahili city-states steadily grew and prospered, and were a major world economic power by the 1400’s.
  • 1400

    City states

    Although the city-states were famous throughout Africa and Asia, no European countries knew of them.
  • 1405

    Trading Partners

    In 1405, however, the Yongle Emperor of China's new Ming Dynasty sent out the first of seven expeditions to visit all of the empire's major trading partners around the Indian Ocean.
  • 1498

    Portuguese Captain

    Portuguese captain Vasco da Gama when in 1498 he came upon bustling port cities such as Sofala, Kilwa, Mombasa, and Malindi as he sailed up the eastern coast of Africa.
  • 1498

    Arrival of Europeans

    The Indian Ocean has been a zone of human interaction for several millennia, boasting a 1,500-year history of active high-seas trade before the arrival of Europeans in 1498.
  • 1499

    Goods

    In 1499, da Gama returned to Portugal and told the king and queen, who had sponsored his voyage, everything that he’d seen, including the shiploads of gold, ivory, porcelain, silk, and cotton being bought and sold in the port cities along the eastern coast of Africa.
  • 1500

    Decline in trade

    Trade declined in the 1500’s when Portugal invaded and tried to run the trade for its own profit.

  • Dutch

    In 1602, an even more ruthless European power appeared in the Indian Ocean: the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

  • Challenge for control

    In 1680, the British joined in with their British East India Company, which challenged the VOC for control of the trade routes.

  • Trade was extremely crippled

    Goods moved increasingly to Europe, while the former Asian trading empires grew poorer and collapsed. The two thousand year-old Indian Ocean trade network was crippled, if not completely destroyed.