ABSTRACT
The dead were preferred, particularly classical Greeks, but live Arabs were their closest competitor. The attraction of Arabia was its emptiness. Maps of the Indian Ocean current in 1800 appear misleadingly accurate. Africa appeared much as today. Certain areas, however, were only slightly surveyed; the east coast of Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea. By 1770, ten years of economic exploitation, followed by famine, had compelled the East India Company, under the increasingly critical gaze of parliament, to take steps to limit the private trade of its employees, and had caused a serious depression in Bengal. The government of Bombay, where the East India Company’s employees were permitted to trade on their own account until 1804, was even more interested than their countrymen at Calcutta in the expansion of trade with the Arabs. The Turks for political reasons and the Levant Company and East India Company for commercial reasons only foresaw keener competition.
