It is relatively rare for an Indian to script a book on an Indian Maritime theme in a regional language, in this instance Marathi, language of the Marathi speaking people of the western State of Maharashtra. This region of western India bordering the Arabian Sea has a notable maritime existence, tradition and therefore, history. This has been a seafaring region which has had deep trading relations with West Asia, Middle East in modern parlance, for something over five thousand years. These people built their trading ships from good shipbuilding timber available from forests backing the coasts. These ships, large and small, were of stitched design and construction, seaworthy for being so which took traders to far away shores in a flourishing two way trade. In early history of the region there is practically no record of conflict at sea between these maritime trading nations, the sea being regarded as an open arena, a freeway for trade and cultural intercourse. It was a felicitous arrangement, arrangement among peoples of the Indian Ocean, long before the doctrine of Mare Liberum was propounded by a Dutchman in fifteenth century Europe. Freedom of the sea did not come this way from the West. It was the other way round.
That changed with the arrival of the European in these seas, ostensibly to get a share of the lucrative trade in goods, spices and high quality finished cotton goods, in demand in Europe. The littoral principalities began equipping their ships with armed crews, later, with ship mounted guns, as their association with the Europeans advanced to closer and often acrimonious relations. I am simplifying a complicated relationship between a people with advanced maritime technology and those whose technology had remained static over aeons. The conflict at sea progressed into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the Common Era. It was bound to, with the changed and changing situation at sea. The traders gradually encroached upon land surrounding their tiny trading settlements, enclaves allowed them by one or other of the sovereign powers of the interior. The reasons for this creepingencroachment were several, principally the escalating disorder in the interior following thegradual weakening of the central governing authority. Many European nations, starting with the Portuguese had tried to establish their writ at sea, successfully for a while, yielding to the next European arrival. These musical chairs among European seafaring nations went on for three centuries, the while, the mainly land bound Indian powers watched with bated breath, the competition at sea. They had little power and less inclination to intervene. They simply lacked the means. By mid seventeenth century it was evident that the maincontest for the ultimate prize, Hindustan, would be between Bombay based, Calcutta governed, English East India Company and the Poona (Pune) based Maratha Confederacy whose principal protagonist was the Peshwa, the all powerful Prime Minister of the Maratha King, the Chatrapati, in Satara.
The Marathas had, for long, attempted to establish a navy which would regulate the traffic and the trade along the west coast. The person who had successfully thought this through was Shivaji, often referred to in Indian history as The Great, who had a vision of creating a navy which would defend the seaward limits of the kingdom he had carved out for his people by capturing territory from Ali Adil Shah in Bijapur and the Moghul in distant Delhi. To an extent he had been successful, how successful the reader of this book can find out for himself. Soon he had a well manned, well led off shore naval force with very elementary gun power. He had tried to correct the deficiencies with help from European gun casters and ammunition experts. He was soon to discover that he would have to depend on his own devices, much as we, his successors in the present day, are discovering for ourselves. Truly does history repeatitself for those who refuse to learn from it! Shivaji'svision of a navy for his newly established nation does lend him the aura of the founder of the modern Indian Navy of today. He left for his successors a well led, well manned, reasonably well equipped naval force, albeit an offshore one.
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