The role of Oman in the Indian Ocean region prior to British domination; the author traces the tribal and religious dynamics of Omani politics, treating the area of influence as a geographical whole.

M. Reda Bhacker looks at the role of Oman in the Indian Ocean prior to British domination of the region. Omani merchant communities played a crucial part in the development of commercial activity throughout the territories they held in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially between Muscat and Zanzibar, using long established trade networks. They were also largely responsible for the integration of the commerce of the Indian Ocean into the nascent global capitalist system. The author, himself a member of an important Omani merchant family, looks in detail at the complex relationship between the merchant community and Oman's rulers, first the Ya'ariba and then the Albusaidis. He analyses the tribal and religious dynamics of Omani politics both in Arabia, where he looks especially at the Wahhabi/Saudi threat, and in Oman's sprawling `empire', with particular reference to Zanzibar where the Omani ruler Sa'id b Sultan had his court from 1840. His aim is to consider all Oman's overseas territories as a single entity, without the usual misleading compartmentalisation of African and Arab history. Dr Bhacker finds that despite their prestige and influence in the region neither the merchant communities nor the government were able to respond to Britain's determined onslaught. Bhacker traces the local and regional factors that allowed Britain to destroy Oman's largely commercial challenge and to emerge by the end of the nineteenth century as the commercially and politically dominant power in the region.

The ideal introduction to the history of modern Oman from the eighteenth century to the present, this book combines the most recent scholarship on Omani history with insights drawn from a close analysis of the politics and international relations of contemporary Oman. Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout offer a distinctive new approach to Omani history, building on post-colonial thought and integrating the study of politics and culture. The book addresses key topics including Oman's historical cosmopolitanism, the distinctive role of Omani Islam in the country's social and political life, Oman's role in the global economy of the nineteenth century, insurrection and revolution in the twentieth century, the role of Sultan Qaboos in the era of oil and Oman's unique regional and diplomatic perspective on contemporary issues.

This unique contribution to the growing field of western Indian Ocean studies brings new light and new perspective on the early 19th century expansion of both Omani Sultan and the British. The important role played by the Baluch in East Africa is here discussed thanks to little known archive documents integrated with field work.

A dramatic account of the slave trade in the early 19th century Indian Ocean is presented through the stories of the Omani Sultan Said and his daughter, Princess Salme, offering insight into the Arabian Peninsula kingdom's lucrative growth and ties to America.

The world today is far less a global village than a “global city”, as global network of multidimensional urban spaces of congestion prominently forming – and also formed by – globalization. But the relevance of cities is nothing but new. They were essential for culture and civilization worldwide, they allowed a centralization of power and knowledge and they were crucial for the division of labor and for the organization of mass demand. Further, as places of intense and continuous interactions, cities are the locations par excellence for global history to take place. Thus, there is a need to study the history of cities in connection with the history of globalization from this perspective. This book is dedicated to contribute to the still underdeveloped but growing literature connecting the history of cities worldwide and their relation to global processes. The authors do so from various disciplinary backgrounds and by referring to different times and places. We visit ancient Alexandria, nineteenth century Zanzibar, and modern-day São Paolo, among others, and we view these cities not only in their globality, but also through their heritage, their economic relevance, their architecture, or financial flows connecting them. Further, the book also contains systematic considerations about “global city”, especially the general role of cities in development, cities in global history teaching, and cities' relationships to global commodity chains.

This unique contribution to the growing field of western Indian Ocean studies brings new light and new perspective on the early 19th century expansion of both Omani Sultan and the British. The important role played by the Baluch in East Africa is here discussed thanks to little known archive documents integrated with field work.

An examination of the historical environment of Muscat, the capital of Oman, and the damage sustained by the city's historical legacy since 1970. It includes a historical gazetteer of Muscat and its environs and numerous maps and photographs.

From the beginning of history to the present, a sweep of the world's oceans and seas and how they have shaped the course of civilization. From the author of the acclaimed The Great Sea, ("Magnificent . . . radiates scholarship and a sense of wonder and fun," Simon Sebag Montefiore; Book of the Year, The Economist), David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans--the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian--which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people--free and enslaved--across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Far more than merely another history of exploration, The Boundless Sea shows how maritime networks gradually formed a continuum of interaction and interconnection. Working chronologically, Abulafia moves from the earliest forays of peoples taking hand-hewn canoes into uncharted waters, to the routes taken daily by supertankers in the thousands. History on the grandest scale and scope, written with passion and precision, this is a project few could have undertaken. Abulafia, whom The Atlantic calls "superb writer with a gift for lucid compression and an eye for the telling detail," proves again why he ranks as one of the world's greatest storytellers.

This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He considers the impact of European abolition and assesses slavery's role in African history. The book corrects the accepted interpretation that African slavery was mild and resulted in the slaves' assimilation. Instead, slaves were used extensively in production, although the exploitation methods and the relationships to world markets differed from those in the Americas. Nevertheless, slavery in Africa, like slavery in the Americas, developed from its position on the periphery of capitalist Europe. This new edition revises all statistical material on the slave trade demography and incorporates recent research and an updated bibliography.