 This provided historians with a wide range of reliable statistical data on early modern trade and shipping, and Chaudhuri's conclusions point to the way early modern capitalism and business methods developed in Europe and the Indian Ocean.Economic History Net described the book as one of the most significant works in twentieth century economic history.In 1980, the Cambridge University Press commissioned Chaudhuri to write a two-volume work on the history of the Indian Ocean similar in scope and narrative to the work of the French historian Fernand Braudel.