"The Most Valuable of All Indian Trees": The Circulation of Teak Timber and Teak-Built Ships in the Early Modern Maritime World

European ships travelling to the Indian Ocean in the early modern period acquired more than trade goods and bullion at the Indian Ocean seaports. They also acquired locally sourced raw materials and employed local expertise and labour for their upkeep after months of exposure to the elements, and if they were unfortunate, even attacks of rival navies and pirate ships. My paper will focus on the sourcing and use of Indian wood timber in European colonial shipyards in South Asia for their ship repair and shipbuilding activities between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The ships built at European colonial shipyards like the Bombay Dockyard and the Cochin Timmerwerf were constructed of Malabar teak - a wood timber that was highly prized by South Asian shipbuilders for the preservative qualities of its natural oils and its greater resilience to extreme climates compared to other standard shipbuilding woods like oak. Parsi shipwrights at the Bombay Dockyard built ships from teak for the English East India company with careers spanning fifty to a hundred and fifty years sailing between the warm tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the freezing cold waters of the North Atlantic. As all of Europe faced a timber shortage following the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, and alternative sources of timber began being sought in overseas colonies, both teak as a building material and teak-built ships became much sought after.

By studying the circulation of teak timber and teak-built ships between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, I bring together the various histories of technology, labour, commerce, and geopolitics vis-à-vis European colonial enterprises in the Indian Ocean in an early instance of the establishment of global networks of material goods, technology, and technological expertise.