Maldives High Sea

The Maldives stretch across the Indian Ocean in a chain of low coral atolls southwest of India and Sri Lanka. Their waters carried trade between the islands and distant shores: cowrie shells gathered in the archipelago served as currency across much of Asia and parts of East Africa. The Chinese admiral Zheng He visited the Maldives in 1411 and 1430. More than a century later the Portuguese occupied the islands from 1558 until their expulsion in 1573.