Long before a maritime culture developed in Europe, one existed in the lands around the Indian Ocean. This was a product of history as well as geography. While this maritime culture gave the inhabitants of the Indian Ocean an early lead in world trade, making the Indian Ocean the center of that trade, Europeans eventually made up for their initial disadvantages and became proficient traders to the point that the center of world trade was moved sharply to the West.
One of the reasons that a maritime culture developed in the Indian Ocean first was because that is where all of the major civilizations were connected. While Europe was in the midst of its Dark Ages, the Islamic World, India, Southeast Asia, and Chine traded vigorously with each other. A common ocean, the Indian ocean facilitated that trade.
The Indian Ocean was also much more predictable than the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans. Weather patterns there were influenced mostly by monsoon cycles that occurred with great regularity. Since the weather in the Indian Ocean was dominated by a single weather feature, it was relatively easy to predict. Over the years, traders learned when monsoons came and from what direction the wind blew. This knowledge made navigation easier and made trading less of a risky venture.
In contrast, the Europeans were at the edge of the world, cut off from oceanic world trade for a long time. It was not until Europeans made it around the coast of Africa and encountered traders in the Indian Ocean that they could learn how that ocean worked. It took them a long time to get there, however, because it took Europeans many centuries to figure out how to navigate into headwinds and navigate the unpredictable Atlantic. Weather in the Atlantic was much less regular and less easier to predict than it was in the Indian Ocean. Since navigating the Atlantic was navigating the unknown, Europeans were initially reluctant to journey beyond what was familiar to them.
European traders therefore grew to accept more risk than traders in the Indian Ocean. Europeans proved more willing to set off into the unknown. This would prove a big advantage when they would travel to places where no one from the Old World had ever sailed. As new technology and an ever increasing understanding of the complexities of oceanic navigation allowed them to catch up with the navigation skill of the traders in the Indian Ocean, the Europeans quickly surpassed those traders as the leaders in world trade. By that time, Europeans had developed better technology and largely shed their fear of the unknown. This eventually gave them the advantage of those Indian Ocean traders even though those skills were the product on an initial disadvantage.
