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The article presents an examination of premodern piracy in the Indian Ocean. It explores the role that maritime violence played in the politics and trade occurring across the ocean and utilizes a case study that examines the history of piracy along India's Malabar Coast. It explores indigenous piracy of Muslims operating in the western Indian Ocean along with that Portuguese pirates who arrived in the 16th century.

Of all the oriental spices, black pepper was the most important until the eighteenth century. The historiography of the pepper trade is characterized by a strong focus on Europe in terms of both its economic significance in the ancient and medieval periods and the struggle for its control in the early modern period. This article, by contrast, seeks to situate the pepper trade firmly in its Asian contexts. It examines the Indian Ocean pepper trade from three perspectives. First, it places the trade in its supply-side context by focusing on the Malabar coast as the primary source of pepper. Second, it examines the relative importance of the different branches of Malabar's pepper trade and highlights the central role played by Muslim mercantile networks. Third, it considers the reconfiguration of these pepper networks in the sixteenth century in the face of aggressive competition from the Portuguese. In their sum, these arguments advocate the need for rethought balances of trade and a reweighted scholarly focus on the pepper trade in its global dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]