Evidence of Roman Colonies in India?

[guy]

I recently heard a respected expert on Rome mention the existence of Roman colonies in India. I was shocked. I know Roman coins have been found in India and China. I can even accept the idea of temporary settlements and trading outposts in those areas. I know about the rich trade of spices, ivory, silk, etc. for Roman coinage. But I find it difficult to accept the existence of a permanent colony.

 

A possible analogy would be Venice about the time of Marco Polo (AD 1300). I can accept the fact that Marco Polo [possibly] traveled to China. But I would not say that there were permanent Venetian colonies in China at that time.

 

I can find no evidence of a serious Roman attempt to establish a permanent colony in India.

 

Even Pliny commented on the trade (and negative trade balance) between the Far East and Rome:

 

"India, China and the Arabian peninsula take one hundred million sesterces from our empire per annum at a conservative estimate: that is what our luxuries and women cost us. For what percentage of these imports is intended for sacrifices to the gods or the spirits of the dead?" - Pliny, Historia Naturae 12.41.84.

 

From my understanding, however, a Roman colony suggests a permanent settlement of Roman citizens with a potential of a much larger expansion. I cannot find any evidence of Roman colonization in India.

 

There have been many Roman coins found in India. There have been amphora shards found, too. (Although initially these fragments were thought to be of Roman origin, many shards have turned out to be of Mesopotamian origin, instead.)

 

This is taken from a timesonline.uk article I can't link to by Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent from December 17, 2007

 

"More than 60 years ago Sir Mortimer Wheeler proved that Roman pottery had made it all the way from Italy to India: the characteristic bright red of Samian ware, bearing the stamp of the Vibieni of Arezzo, showed up in his trenches at the ancient port of Arikamedu, on the southeastern coast near Pondicherry. Numerous other finds across India have since strengthened the connection, including many wine jars or amphorae.

 

A new study now suggests that many of these came from Mesopotamia, not the Mediterranean, and that the triangular trade between India, the Persian Gulf and the ports of Roman Egypt on the Red Sea was much more complex than hitherto thought.

 

Roman amphorae, together with Roman coinage, are the most important artefacts for documenting exchange between the Roman Empire and India,

Edited July 4, 2010 by guy

[Melvadius]

I have a copy of Roberta Tomber's Indo-Roman Trade: from pots to pepper; unfortunately it another book in my must read sometime category. Hwer book looks at a wide range of material from recent excavations as well as written sources so I would liek to know the basis of this claim.

 

That said I did a quick skim through it and on page 152/3 she discusses some aspects of the trade between the Empire and India which may be relevant stating the view that in

shorthand 'Roman' oversimplifies the contribution of different ethnic groups to transoceanic exchange

 

She goes on to note that

...embassies between India and the West were known from Hellenistic/ Mauryan times, and Ptolemy II received one....

 

Her view on the presence of colonies is possibly indicated by the following in which she describes the presence of foreiners in some of the Egyptian entrepots:

 

...evidence from documents, sites and finds all point to the Roman component of trade being undertaken by private individuals...

 

She accepts that there were foreign residents at the various entrepots

...Their presence can be detected textually, and archaeologically by graffiti of diverse linguistic groups and imported items that may represent personal possessions, whose use was identified with a particular ethnic group. Foreign residents probably comprised both merchants and sailors...

 

The book includes a number of maps showing the distribution of 'Roman' finds in India including coins and pottery and the picture drawn, as far as I have read, seems to be one of shifting trading centres on the Indian sub-continent depending on the period. To my mind that would seem to fit best with the idea that the Roman side of the trade also made use of private individuals (independent merchants) rather than with the establishment of permanent colonies on the Indian sub-continent.

[guy]

Melvadius:

 

Thank you (once again) for your thoughtful reply to a rather obscure question.

 

 

From what you've written and from what I've read, it seems unlikely that the Romans had anything more than temporary trading posts in India. Anything more permanent would have cost great resources to sustain as well as have unnecessarily provoked regional enemies (along with the more distant Parthians and later Sassanians).

 

A few coins and pottery shards are not proof of a permanent colony.

 

Thank you, again,

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited July 7, 2010 by guy

[Melvadius]

Melvadius:

 

Thank you (once again) for your thoughtful reply to a rather obscure question.

 

 

From what you've written and from what I've read, it seems unlikely that the Romans had anything more than temporary trading posts in India. Anything more permanent would have cost great resources to sustain as well as have unnecessarily provoked regional enemies (along with the more distant Parthians and later Sassanians).

 

A few coins and pottery shards are not proof of a permanent colony.

 

Thank you, again,

 

guy also known as gaius

 

No problem, glad to discuss.

 

BTW One thing I didn't but should have mentioned is that it is highly likely that due to the need to make use of shifting wind patterns to aid travel in each direction, like the Indian traders at Bernike and other Roman entrepots, the Greco-Roman traders operating in the opposite direction would also have had to wait for favourable wind patterns.

 

Such enforced extended presence probably explains at least some of the apparent 'domestic' Roman rubbish found in the Indian sub-continental trading areas, while they made their sales and purchased goods for their return trip.

[caldrail]

The Romans certainly got about in small numbers...

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5635

 

But our experience with Ireland is an example of seeing more than there actually was. The apparent Roman sites found there might be no more than places where refugees ended up, or merchants called, thus evidence of Roman goods exist without any actual Romans.

 

India is however part of the world that Strabo describes. We know that explorers reaching India from western Europe from the Rennaisance onward found christian colonies there which were quickly demonised by the Roman Catholics (the colonies still exist today in a muted form)

 

That said, I wouldn't expect more than a handful of Romans to have ever been there, let alone settled, given that trade goods were usually passed from trader to trader like a relay race rather than individual shiops bravely going the entire marathon. The goods found in India are almost certainly the result of trade. But hey, prove me wrong, I'm all ears.

[9544bhana]

I disagree we know the emperor Augustus received an ambassador from India while he was in Gaul. He also received another ambassador later who came with a Hindu monk who burned himself as part of his religion.

 

The monsoon river allowed the Greek and Romans to travel India. They are references from Indian sources about Roman coming with Gold and leaving with spices. While roman sources tell of senator complaining how much gold was going to India. The trading wasn

[Northern Neil]

The ancient weren

[caldrail]

India was an area with some very aggressive states in this period. They closed the Silk Road sometime in the 2nd century because the Chinese weren't able to keep such a long trade route secure.

 

I think trading colonies are something that are often exaggerated. Any Roman goods and immediately people talk about a Roman presence in the area, which isn't necessarily true. Romans after all were not great explorers. They weren't great sailors either. They had an inwardly focused culture that regarded the outside world as inherently barbarian.

 

Okay, I agree Romans had a rapacious mercantile sphere, but again, that was inwardly focused, and the extension of trade into little known lands was primarily driven by the need to obtain luxuries for the wealthy - and before I get ripped to shreds, that doesn't mean rich imperial titbits. Let's remember that the trade in animals for the arena demanded ever more exotic beasts from regions ever further away to their reduction in numbers. Silk was always going to be an import in demand. Spices were highly desirable if you could afford them.

 

What the Romans knew of the outside world was largely the result of information brought in via traders. Visitors telling tales of places far far away. Don't discount this, because whilst the Romans and Chinese never actually met politically or militarily, they certainly knew about each other, and perhaps more illuminating is the realisation that we have records of chinese explorers reaching the eastern limits of Roman influence, but not the reverse. We also know that it was greek ships that travelled further afield rather than Roman.

 

To say that a Roman colony existed because objects from their culture have come to light in one place is something of an assumption. Without Roman burials or evidence of Roman life, the existence of goods merely suggests trade and that does not require the Romans to be involved.

[Melvadius]

I believe that everyone is getting too involved in the semantics of both what 'Roman' and 'colony' actually mean. As has already been pointed out there is a large body of evidence that there was at least irregular contact between members of what became the Roman Empire and both China and the Indian sub-continent over several centuries (millenia if you include the Byzantine period of the Eastern Empire) from the Ptolemaic period in Egypt onwards.

 

The precise 'legal' and 'political' nature of that contact is open to some debate, due to a paucity of written material. However the fact that there are sailing instructions to the Indian sub-continent surviving does tend to indicate that amongst the Greco-Roman community at least the contact was sufficiently sustained for a need to exist for generally available instructions.

 

The seasonal nature of the winds in the area as several of us have previously agreed meant that anyone trading in the area needed to plan for an extended visit until the winds were favourable for their return trip. This DOES NOT mean that there was anything so formal as a 'colony' and probably only meant that at the height of the trade there were a number of semi-permanent merchants quarters established on th eIndian sub-continent during the trading seasons which may, at most, have held a much smaller number of agents during the off-season periods.

 

[Edit - This does negate the fact that one or two individuals from time to time may have decided to stay on a more permanent basis but to my mind this does not equate to a colony only a few 'settlers' who hoped to be left alone to live out their lives in an area and/or with people they liked.

 

As far as a formal colony is concerned; contact was seasonal and it would have been several hundred if not thousand miles from the main Empire across potentially hostile areas. This means that if ever there was a problem between the locals and the colony it would have taken several months for the Empire to find out there MAY have been a problem let alone to organise and send a punative mission.

 

In the moden world a Chinese or Italian run restauraunt down your local high street is not a surefire indicator of a colony, unless actually in China or Italy, probably only means that someone from there has settled in the area. :;

 

Colony within the Empire had a strict legal sense and nothing that MAY have been established on the Indian sub-continent could to my mind have met the main criteria. Just think of it, could the land it was established on be 'gifted' to the colonists by the Empire with any degree of certainty.]

 

Touching on Caldrail's point; the Chinese did on at least one occasion attempt to send an embassy to Rome but according to one source I have (MILLER The spice trade of the. Roman Empire, 29 B.C. to A.D. 641) were put off by the Parthians apparently claiming that Rome was at least another two years travel away along the Silk Road. Even if the Chinese embassy was unsuccessful there are some records of other embassies along the Silk Road including that of Kanishka who was the ruler of the Kushan Empire, which straddled the Silk Road routes around Samarkand that led to both to China and into northern India. He sent at least one embassy to Trajan (Wood The Silk Road, p 41) although it is unclear from my source what the outcome of the embassy was.

[caldrail]

Apparently the Parthians persuaded Pan Ch'ao not to meet Trajan, whose army was only two days march away.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

A recent article on the blog "Cog and Galley" takes a look at the ancient sea trade between India and western nations (western to India of course, thus it includes Mesopotamia and Egypt), the articles sums up the opinion of various scholars and gives the sources in order to provide further research. A good ressource to start digging in this complex issue.

 

http://nestmitchtri.blogspot.com/2010/08/i...-with-west.html

Edited August 1, 2010 by Bryaxis Hecatee