Synopsis This collection brings together some seminal essays of the late Professor Ashin Das Gupta -- one of the pioneers of maritime studies in India. It is organized in two parts: one containing Das Gupta's general essays, the other his more specific ones linked to his two major projects on Malabar and Surat. These essays chronicle the rise and fall of Indian port cities and of the communities of merchants who traded from them. This book supplements an earlier collection in bringing together the full corpus of Ashin Das Gupta's essays, the medium through which he tested out many of his most important ideas. In particular, they demonstrate the author's lifelong pre-occupation with the relationship between individual lives and larger historical processes.