Slaves, convicts, and unfree immigrants have traveled the oceans throughout human history, but the conventional Atlantic World historical paradigm has narrowed our understanding of modernity. This provocative study contrasts the Atlantic conflation of freedom and the sea with the complex relationships in the Indian Ocean in the long 19th century.

When the Portuguese first entered the Indian Ocean centuries ago, they intruded upon an ancient creole and cosmopolitan world. Also, they entered a world with age-old connections to the Mediterranean. This book explores some of the intriguing interstices of colonial and other spaces in the ocean, through a scrutiny of personages, texts, and authors between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries, in a variety of locales, namely, Goa (India), Macau (China), Malabar (Kerala, India), and Melaka (Malaysia). As the narrative goes back and forth between the ethnographic present and the past, it...

Trade, Circulation, and Flow in the Indian Ocean World is a collection which covers a long time span and diverse areas around the ocean. Many of the essays look at the Indian Ocean before Europeans arrived, reminding the reader that there was a cohesive Indian Ocean. This collection includes empirical studies and essays focused on particular area or production. The essays cover various aspects of trade and exchange, the Indian Ocean as a world-system, East African and Chinese connections with the Indian Ocean World, and the movement of people and ideas around the ocean.

This interdisciplinary work presents essays on disease and medicine in the Indian Ocean World, spanning over a millennium. It is the first work on medical history in the region. Themes include medical theory, concepts of fertility, material culture, healing, diplomacy, and colonialism, public health, slavery, migrant labour, and medicine.

This interdisciplinary work presents essays on disease, medicine, and healing in the Indian Ocean World. It is the first work on medical history in the region. Themes include medical theory, concepts of fertility, material culture, healing, diplomacy, and colonialism, public health, slavery, migrant labour, and medicine.

This volume comprises a selection of essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines that discuss the exchange relationship between Africa and the wider Indian Ocean world (IOW), a macro-region running from East Africa to China, from early times to about 1300 CE.

Slaves, convicts, and unfree immigrants have traveled the oceans throughout human history, but the conventional Atlantic World historical paradigm has narrowed our understanding of modernity. This provocative study contrasts the Atlantic conflation of freedom and the sea with the complex relationships in the Indian Ocean in the long 19th century.

Sudan has historically suffered devastating famines that have powerfully reshaped its society. This study shows that food crises were the result of exploitative processes that transferred resources to a small group of beneficiaries, including British imperial agents and indigenous elites who went on to control the Sudanese state at independence.

This collection examines cloth as a material and consumer object from early periods to the twenty-first century, across multiple oceanic sites-from Zanzibar, Muscat and Kampala to Ajanta, Srivijaya and Osaka.