Eastern vibration of liberty

During the MPS meeting I met Razeen Sally whose talk was one of the greatest I ever listened. Here is a para from his article in Business Standards:

“The zenith of economic freedom outside the West in pre-modern history was medieval Indian Ocean trade beforeEuropean colonisation, a Golden Age of south and south-east Asian commerce. Before the Portuguese muscled in, the Indian Ocean was Mare Liberum, not controlled by any power and fully open to trade. Coastlines were dotted with “port-polities”, independent towns and cities whose lifeblood was overseas trade. Aden, Hormuz, Cambay, Goa, Calicut, Aceh, Malacca and Macassar were religiously tolerant, polyglot, cosmopolitan places, energised by trading diaspora. Freewheeling economic competition went in tandem with decentralised, flexible political institutions and advanced legal structures. Fractured geography and competing polities combined to promote economic freedom, growth and prosperity.”