Pepper Trade Analysis

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PEPPER TRADE: At the beginning of the seventeenth century the trade in the Indian Ocean of Indian textile got accelerated by the European traders as the Dutch East India company (VOC) arrived. It was only the VOC, among all other European enterprises from the corporate world, who got engaged in the so much large-scale trade in intra-Asian region- this was also nothing but one of the strategic part of the Dutch. Naturally, it was the Indian textile which helped to crystallize this whole scenario. Like every other European companies VOC also was with the main aim to procure pepper along with other spices in Asia. European demand for “pepper” was the principle driver of the economic integration facilitated by Portugal though they had the ability…show more content…
Considering the pepper trade of Portugal historians says that pepper trade had an indelible impression on society for globalization. In the Malabar hills the pepper merchants had two options to transport their pepper; either they could take it to west downstream to the Portuguese Estado da India (state of India) or to east across the Ghats to the Coromandel coast and the trade in these two markets were substitutes as there was an economic integration between these two markets based on the supply-price inter-dependency of these two markets. Since Alexander the Great’s conquest of north-west India in 326 BC it was only the Portuguese Estado da India which was first among all the European territorial possession in India. The Estado da India was built to establish a commercial network in Asia for trading posts (feitorias), “fortalezas” or fortified strongholds and “cidades” or urban settlements. These terrestrial establishments acted as the store-house of pepper and other products which later on were sent to Portugal and wholesalers used to buy these in Lisbon and Antewerp. Structure of the pepper market from Asia to Europe…show more content…
This was a very big support for the Portuguese traders and moreover the piracy facilitated limitations of the traditional way of trading of pepper through middle-eastern overland route checked the competition in pepper trade with the European pepper market. But the matter of fact is that the local merchants learned to avoid the Portuguese ships and this system couldn’t sustain for long and to compensate this loss the Portuguese authority, Estado da India, started the scheme of taxation for the local ships by issuing cartaz or

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