The general features of Asian trade: geographical areas and commercial characteristics

The European discovery of the commercial world of Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries not only revealed the potentials of the direct trade with Europe but also brought to light the existence of a widespread seaborne traffic in merchandise and men between its various ports and geographical regions. No account of the early European traveller in Asia was complete without a description of the commodities, merchants, and trade routes of the most important commercial centres to be found around the Indian Ocean. One of the earliest examples of such writings is the Suma Oriental by Tom'e Pires, the Portuguese apothecary, who went out to India in 1511 and later visited Malacca and China. In the preface to his book, which was dedicated to the king of Portugal, Pires announced that in the Suma he would speak not only of the Asian kingdom and regions but also of the dealings and trade they have with one another, without which they could not exist. For it was trade in general which ennobled kingdoms and cities and made their people great and also brought war and peace. So great was the desire for perfection among these early writers that many of them were led into eloquent description of places they had never visited and seen, because to leave them out would have been to make their accounts of Asia incomplete. Pires himself probably never travelled to the west of the coast of Malabar.