In 1024, Rajendra Chola dreamt up the grandest, riskiest, campaign ever planned by a medieval Indian ruler: an attack across the seas on Kedah (in today’s Malaysia). Both Rajendra Chola and the merchants of the Five Hundred guild knew now how wealthy Kedah had become – primarily by supplying goods the Tamil coast wanted.
And Rajendra had a plan. It was simply not profitable for the Cholas, or any land-based state, to set up a navy when most revenues came from crops and land-based wars. But both Rajendra’s generals and the Five Hundred had realized the possibilities of rapid, highly mobile operations supported by merchant shipping. No Indian Ocean king, except Rajendra Chola, had the imagination to plan something like this. None except Rajendra had the generals, the crack troops and the mercantile alliances to even dream they could pull it off. This constellation of factors never came together in India again.
Rajendra’s court had worked out most of the details. Conveyed by the great annual merchant fleet, Chola troops would attack and loot Kedah. The Five Hundred would expand into the political vacuum and soak up the profits. And so the centuries-old histories of three great powers in Monsoon Asia – the Chola...
