The Western Indian Ocean

In this volume, The Hassam Toorawa Trust brings together six thought-provoking essays by scholars of Mauritius and other Indian Ocean islands. Together, they explore the experiences of islanders past and present, of placement and displacement, of locals and globals. The volume opens with a Foreword by Megan Vaughan (King's College Cambridge), situating the essays in the broader context of the historical processes in the Indian Ocean. Ned Alpers (University of California, Los Angeles) places the islands of the Western Indian Ocean in the wider African context. Himanshu Prabha Ray (Jawaharlal Nehru University) discusses ancient and medieval seafaring in the Indian Ocean. Shawkat Toorawa (Cornell University) muses on the Indian Ocean location of the medieval Waqwaq islands. Paul van der Velde (International Institute for Asian Studies) reflects on Dutch traveler Jacob Haafner's late eighteenth century description of his visit to Mauritius. Larry Bowman (University of Connecticut) describes the nineteenth century visit of mariner Joshua Slocum to Rodrigues and Mauritius. Jocelyn Chan Low (University of Mauritius) puts the plight of the Chagos Islanders (Ilois) into the context of Cold War realpolitik and Mauritius independence.

The present volume sets forth to analyse illustrative aspects of the deep-rooted immersion of the populations of the eastern coasts of Africa in the vast network of commercial, cultural and religious interactions that extend to the Middle-East and the Indian subcontinent, as well as the long-time involvement of various exogenous military, administrative and economic powers (Ottoman, Omani, Portuguese, Dutch, British, French and, more recently, European-Americans).

This book provides recent environmental, ecological and hydrodynamic information for the major estuaries and the coastal marine systems of the Western Indian Ocean Region. It covers various functions and values of the region’s estuarine ecosystems and their respective habitats, including the land/ocean interactions that define and impact ecosystem services. The Western Indian Ocean region covered by this volume consists of the continental coastal states of Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania and the island states of Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Comoros.

This book studies recent attempts to restructure maritime security sectors through capacity building. It innovates both theoretically and empirically. It proposes a new framework for understanding maritime capacity building, drawing on work in peacebuilding and security sector reform. The framework is then applied across empirical case studies from the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region written by scholars from the Global South. The WIO region is a paradigmatic case to study maritime security and capacity building in action. Countries in the region face the full gamut of maritime security challenges, while their indigenous capacities to deal with these are often weak. In consequence, the region functions as an engine of innovation for maritime capacity building more widely. The lessons and best practices from the region have importance consequences for addressing maritime security across the globe.

Based on substantial ethnographic, textual and archival research, this interesting book offers a new perspective on the anthropology of the western Indian Ocean. Writing in a clear, engaging style, and covering an impressive range of theoretical terrain, Simpson critically explores the relationships between people and things that give life to the region and drive shifting patterns of social change among Muslims in the highly-politicized state of Gujarat. Scholars of the Indian Ocean, Muslim society in South Asia, and Hindu nationalism, as well as anthropologists in general, will find this a fascinating read and a major contribution to research in this area.

In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New communities turned to Islam, and Muslim communities turned to new texts, practices and religious leaders. On the East African coast, the orders were both a vehicle for conversion to Islam and for reform of Islamic practice. The impact of Sufism on local communities is here traced geographically as a ripple reaching beyond the Swahili cultural zone southwards to Mozambique, Madagascar and Cape Town. Through an investigation of the texts, ritual practices and scholarly networks that went alongside Sufi expansion, this book places religious change in the western Indian Ocean within the wider framework of Islamic reform.