Discovered but Forgotten

Bin Yang is a professor of history at City University of Hong Kong. His books include Between Winds and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan (Columbia, 2008) and Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History (2019).

Even today, the Maldives is a sparsely populated, tiny nation consisting of a few small islands, reefs, and atolls strung garland-like across the Indian Ocean, nearly a thousand kilometers to the southwest of Sri Lanka. But don't be deceived by the Maldives' size and isolation, even more than half a millennium ago. In the pages of Bin Yang's capacious Discovered but Forgotten, old Maldives comes astonishingly alive. The author provides an abundance of precise details—all documented by reliable historical and archeological sources—about ships, shipwrecks, cowries, coconuts, coir ropes, dragon's spittle (ambergris), frankincense, and all manner of other exotic commodities and daily necessities, and of the people who made, used, and transported them to far-flung places around the world. This is an engrossing book, one that is hard to put aside once you dive into its oceanic depths.

• List of Figures, Maps, and TablesNote on Chinese Weights and Measures in the Ming DynastyAcknowledgmentsPart I. The Stage1. Small, Remote, but Significant2. From Zaitun3. Sailing to the Indian OceanPart II. A Destination4. Who Once Landed in the Maldives?5. The Kingdom of Atolls6. Monsoons and Currents 7. Between the Son of Heaven and the SultanPart III. The Cargo8. The Trees of the Maldives9. Ships Without Nails10. Cowrie Shells11. Dried Fish, Grains, and Handkerchiefs12. Dragon’s Spittle13. Laka Wood and FrankincensePart IV. Reminiscences14. A Ruined Buddhist Past15. Port Marriage16. A True Romance17. An Echo: The “China Bird”NotesBibliographyIndex