The Island Frontier: Socotra,Sri Lanka and the Shape of Commerce in the Late Antique Western Indian Ocean

ABSTRACT

The islands of Sri Lanka and Socotra c. 200–700 provide a useful comparison, both with each other and with islands in the Late Antique and medieval Mediterranean. Using the analytical framework of frontiers as a comparative tool, this study proposes using the parameters of scale and proximity in order to evaluate where the frontier(s) of an island lay (along the shoreline or within an island space, sometimes both) and the difficulty or ease of controlling them from inside or outside the island. In its results, this analysis allows for change over time, but also establishes the diachronic effect of physical parameters. It offers a new way through the insular dichotomy of isolation versus connectivity and indicates a particularity of Mediterranean islands. This exploratory approach also sheds new light on an embargo established in ancient Socotra, suggesting it to have been a much shorter-lived phenomenon than previously speculated.