On The Frontiers Of The Indian Ocean World

The first history of Lake Tanganyika and of eastern Africa's relationship with the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century.

"Across the world, historians have taken an oceanic turn. New maritime histories offer fresh approaches to the study of global regions, and to long-distance and long-term connections. Cambridge Oceanic Histories includes studies across whole oceans (the Pacific, the Indian, the Atlantic) and particular seas (among them, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the North Sea, the Black Sea). The series is global in geography, ecumenical in historical method, and wide in temporal coverage, intended as a key repository for the most innovative transnational and world histories over the longue durée. It brings maritime history into productive conversation with other strands of historical research, including environmental history, legal history, intellectual history, labour history, cultural history, economic history and the history of science and technology. The editors invite studies that analyse the human and natural history of the world's oceans and seas from anywhere on the globe and from any and all historical periods"--

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.

By the sixteenth century Europeans were part of this world as partners in trade with the indigenous peoples, but from the eighteenth century this economic relationship changed as the economies of the Indian Ocean world integrated with the capitalist economies of the West. The change from commercialism to capitalism ended the insularity of the Indian Ocean world and began its integration, as a region, into the global economy and its territorial division amongst various European powers. This transition altered the ancient web of regional relationships and, with the arrival of European settlers and rulers, added yet another layer to the palimpsest of cultures which flourished on the shores of the Ocean. By the twentieth century the Ocean was no longer a major force binding the peoples on its shores in a selfconscious entity, but the legacy of the past is still evident in their common religious, cultural and historical experience.

This book explores histories of droughts and floods in the Indian Ocean World, and their connections to broader global climatic anomalies. It deploys an interdisciplinary approach rooted in the emerging field of climate history to investigate the multifaceted effects of global climatic anomalies on regions affected by the Indian Ocean Monsoon System – regularly conceived of as the macro-region’s ‘deep structure.’ Case studies explore how droughts and floods related to anomalous climatic conditions have historically affected states, societies, and ecologies across the Indian Ocean World, including in relation to food security, epidemic diseases, political (in)stability, economic change, infrastructural development, colonialism, capitalism, and scientific knowledge. Tracing longue durée patterns from the twelfth to the early twentieth centuries, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of global climatic events and their effects on the Indian Ocean World. It highlights essential historical case studies for contextualizing the potential effects of global warming on the macro-region in the present and future.

The history of the Indian Ocean provides a snapshot of many of the key issues in world history.

This book charts the convergence of science, culture, and politics across Portugal's empire, showing how a global geographical concept was born. In accessible, narrative prose, this book explores the unexpected forms that science took in the early modern world. It highlights little-known linkages between Asia and the Atlantic world.

Famously referred to as the "cradle of globalization," the Indian Ocean has received increasing attention from scholars. However, few have examined the 'human' dimensions of the ocean. In this volume, historians, geographers, anthropologists and literary analysts each address a specific human factor in Indian Ocean exchanges.