The vast watery expanse of the Indian Ocean has often been called the cradle of globalization. Long before the Age of Steam, intrepid mariners had taken advantage of the seasonal monsoon winds. The routes they charted energized, over time, the transoceanic circulation of people, goods, religions and ideas. By the early modern period, the episodic sea voyages of antiquity had given rise to a dense web of connections that integrated the far-flung littorals of Eastern Africa, the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia in a shared, ocean-oriented trading world.