Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: Introduction; Economic and Trade History: Spain and Spanish trade in southeast Asia; Brokers in western Indian port cities: their role in servicing foreign merchants; Goa-based seaborne trade, 17th-18th centuries; Asia and world precious metal flows in the early modern period; Indians in East Africa: the early modern period. Social and Religious Themes: Littoral society: the case for the coast; Goa during the first century of Portuguese rule; Conversions in south-east Asia: evidence from the Portuguese records; The search for the similar: early contacts between Portuguese and Indians; Gateways to Africa: the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea; The East African coast in 1498: a synchronic study. Medical Exchanges: Hindu medical practice in sixteenth-century western India: evidence from the Portuguese records; The Portuguese state and medicine in sixteenth-century Goa; The thin end of the wedge: medical relativities as a paradigm of early modern Indian-European relations; First contacts between Indian and European medical systems: Goa in the sixteenth century. Index.