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. It moves beyond usual focuses on a single fibre (such as cotton) or place (such as India) to provide a fresh, expansive perspective of the ocean as an “interaction-based arena,” with an internal dynamism and historical coherence forged by material exchange and human relationships. Contributors map shifting social, cultural and commercial circuits to chart the many histories of cloth across the region. They also trace these histories up to the present with discussions of contemporary trade in Dubai, Zanzibar, and Eritrea. Richly illustrated, this collection brings together new and diverse strands in the long story of textiles in the Indian Ocean, past and present.

Tracing the history of the sugar trade and its consumption in the Persian Gulf during the 18th century, this book explores the interplay of social, economic and political interests created by this popular commodity. The study of sugar has, until now, focused mainly on its significant growth in European markets from the mid-17th century and, more recently, parallel developments in East Asia. In this book, Daito shows how the sugar trade also developed in, and became important to, the Indian Ocean World. Studying how the consumption of sugar wavered after the brutal overthrow of the Safavid dynasty in 1722, this book shows how the Dutch East India Company and the trading network responded to political upheavals in the region and, consequently, the changing trading conditions. Arguing that sugar continued to be imported and consumed despite these political disturbances, Sugar and the Indian Ocean World proves this was not a period of economic stagnation for the region, and shows how sugar became an important intersection between socio-cultural practices and the Indian Ocean economy.

The book integrates the latest scholarly literature on the entire Indian Ocean region, from East Africa to China. Issues such as India's history, India’s changing status in the region, and India's cross-cultural networking over a long period are explored in this book. It is organized in specific themes in thirteen chapters. It incorporates a wealth of research on India’s strategic significance in the Indian Ocean arena throughout history. It enriches the reader's understanding of the emergence of the Indian Ocean basin as a global arena for cross-cultural networking and nation-building. It discusses issues of trade and commerce, the circulation of ideas, peoples and objects, and social and religious themes, focusing on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The book provides a refreshingly different survey of India’s connected history in the Indian Ocean region starting from the archaeological record and ending with the coming of empire. The author’s unique experience, combined with an engaging writing style, makes the book highly readable. The book contributes to the field of global history and is of great interest to researchers, policymakers, teachers, and students across the fields of political, cultural, and economic history and strategic studies.

This book examines trades in animals and animal products in the history of the Indian Ocean World (IOW). An international array of established and emerging scholars investigate how the roles of equines, ungulates, sub-ungulates, mollusks, and avians expand our understandings of commerce, human societies, and world systems. Focusing primarily on the period 1500-1900, they explore how animals and their products shaped the relationships between populations in the IOW and Europeans arriving by maritime routes. By elucidating this fundamental yet under-explored aspect of encounters and exchanges in the IOW, these interdisciplinary essays further our understanding of the region, the environment, and the material, political and economic history of the world.

Blessed with numerous safe harbours, accessible ports, and a rich hinterland, Gujarat has been central to the history of Indian Ocean maritime exchange that involved not only goods, but also people and ideas. This volume maps the trajectory of the extra-continental interactions of Gujarat and how it shaped the history of the Indian Ocean. Chronologically, the volume spans two millennia, and geographically, it ranges from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia The book focuses on specific groups of Gujarati traders, and their accessibility and trading activities with maritime merchants from Africa, Arabia, Southeast Asia, China, and Europe. It not only analyses the complex process of commodity circulation, involving a host of players, huge investments, and numerous commercial operations, but also engages with questions of migration and diaspora. Paying close attention to current historiographical debates, the contributors make serious efforts to challenge the neat regional boundaries that are often drawn around the trading history of Gujarat.

This book focuses on the significant role of West African consumers in the development of the global economy. It explores their demand for Indian cotton textiles and how their consumption shaped patterns of global trade, influencing economies and businesses from Western Europe to South Asia. In turn, the book examines how cotton textile production in southern India responded to this demand. Through this perspective of a south-south economic history, the study foregrounds African agency and considers the lasting impact on production and exports in South Asia. It also considers how European commercial and imperial expansion provided a complex web of networks, linking West African consumers and Indian weavers. Crucially, it demonstrates the emergence of the modern global economy.

A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching Indian Ocean histories for the first time or who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi as well as those who want to incorporate Indian Ocean histories into their world history courses. Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow offer course design principles that will help students navigate topics ranging from empire, geography, slavery, and trade to mobility, disease, and the environment. In addition to exploring non-European sources and diverse historical methodologies, they discuss classroom pedagogy and provide curriculum possibilities that will help instructors at any level enrich and deepen standard approaches to world history. Alpers and McDow draw readers into strategically designing courses that will challenge students to think critically about a vast area with which many of them are almost entirely unfamiliar.

This book breaks new ground by bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to examine contemporary Indian Ocean worlds. It reconfigures the Indian Ocean as a space for conceptual and theoretical relationality based on social science and humanities scholarship, thus moving away from an area-based and geographical approach to Indian Ocean studies. Contributors from a variety of disciplines focus on keywords such as relationality, space/place, quotidian practices, and new networks of memory and maps to offer original insights to reimagine the Indian Ocean. While the volume as a whole considers older histories, mobilities, and relationships between places in Indian Ocean worlds, it is centrally concerned with new connectivities and layered mappings forged in the lived experiences of individuals and communities today. The chapters are steeped in ethnographic, multi-modal, and other humanities methodologies that examine different sources besides historical archives and textual materials, including everyday life, cities, museums, performances, the built environment, media, personal narratives, food, medical practices, or scientific explorations. An important contribution to several fields, this book will be of interest to academics of Indian Ocean studies, Afro-Asian linkages, inter-Asian exchanges, Afro-Arab crossroads, Asian studies, African studies, Anthropology, History, Geography, and International Relations.

The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. This book and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World, explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago – the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general.

Explores how the long history of fashion from antiquity to c. 1800 created global networks and animated world communities.