Beyond Empires: Global, Self-Organizing, Cross-Imperial Networks, 1500-1800
Beyond Empires: Global, Self-Organizing, Cross-Imperial Networks, 1500-1800

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-06-10

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9004304150

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Beyond Empires explores the complexity of empire building from the point of view of self-organized networks, rather than from the point of view of the central state. This focus takes readers into a world of cooperative strategies worldwide that emphasises the role played by individuals, rather than institutions, in the overseas expansion and consequent development of European empires. While unveiling the practices and mechanisms of cooperation between individuals, this volume show cases the role played by individuals for the creation, development and maintenance of self-organized networks in the Early Modern period. Applying new conceptual and theoretical inputs, this book values the contributions of different ‘worlds’, bringing to the fore the interactions of Europeans and non-Europeans, Christians and non-Christians, people living within-, on- or just outside the border of empire.

Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897-1964
Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897-1964

Author: Sarah Longair

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1317158776

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As one of the most monumental and recognisable landmarks from Zanzibar’s years as a British Protectorate, the distinctive domed building of the Zanzibar Museum (also known as the Beit al-Amani or Peace Memorial Museum) is widely known and familiar to Zanzibaris and visitors alike. Yet the complicated and compelling history behind its construction and collection has been overlooked by historians until now. Drawing on a rich and wide range of hitherto unexplored archival, photographic, architectural and material evidence, this book is the first serious investigation of this remarkable institution. Although the museum was not opened until 1925, this book traces the longer history of colonial display which culminated in the establishment of the Zanzibar Museum. It reveals the complexity of colonial knowledge production in the changing political context of the twentieth century British Empire and explores the broad spectrum of people from diverse communities who shaped its existence as staff, informants, collectors and teachers. Through vivid narratives involving people, objects and exhibits, this book exposes the fractures, contradictions and tensions in creating and maintaining a colonial museum, and casts light on the conflicted character of the ’colonial mission’ in eastern Africa.

Rome and the Indian Ocean Trade from Augustus to the Early Third Century CE
Rome and the Indian Ocean Trade from Augustus to the Early Third Century CE

Author: Matthew A. Cobb

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 9004376577

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In Rome and the Indian Ocean Trade from Augustus to the Early Third Century CE Matthew Adam Cobb examines the development of commercial exchange between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean worlds from the Roman annexation of Egypt (30 BCE) up to the early third century CE. Among the issues considered are the identities of those involved, how they organised and financed themselves, the challenges they faced (scheduling, logistics, security, sailing conditions), and the types of goods they traded. Drawing upon an expanding corpus of new evidence, Cobb aims to reassess a number of long-standing scholarly assumptions about the nature of Roman participation in this trade. These range from its chronological development to its economic and social impact.

Currencies of the Indian Ocean World
Currencies of the Indian Ocean World

Author: Steven Serels

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-08-24

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 3030209733

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This book is the first to trace the unique monetary history of the Indian Ocean World. Long-distance trade across the region was facilitated by a highly complex multi-currency system undergirded by shared ideas that transcended ethno-linguistic, religious and class divisions. Currencies also occupied key roles in local spiritual, aesthetic and affective practices. Foregrounding these tensions between the global/universalistic and the local/particularistic, the volume shows how this traditional currency system remained in place until the middle of the twentieth century, and how aspects of the system continue to inform monetary practices throughout the region. With case studies covering China, India, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, East Africa, Zanzibar, Madagascar and Mauritius from the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries, this volume explores the central role currencies played in economic exchange as well as in establishing communal bonds, defining state power and expressing religious sentiments.

The Indian Ocean in the Making of Early Modern India
The Indian Ocean in the Making of Early Modern India

Author: Pius Malekandathil

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 1351997459

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This volume looks into the ways Indian Ocean routes shaped the culture and contours of early modern India. IT shows how these and other historical processes saw India rebuilt and reshaped during late medieval times after a long age of relative ‘stagnation’, ‘isolation’ and ‘backwardness’. The various papers deal with such themes including interconnectedness between Africa and India, trade and urbanity in Golconda, the changing meanings of urbanization in Bengal, commercial and cultural contact between Aceh and India, changing techniques of warfare, representation of early modern rulers of India in contemporary European paintings, the impact of the Indian Ocean on the foreign policies of the Mughals, the meanings of piracy, labour process in the textile sector, Indo-Ottoman trade, Maratha-French relations, Bible translations and religious polemics, weapon making and the uses of elephants. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of early modern Indian history in general and those working on aspects of connected histories in particular.

Indian Ocean Imaginings
Indian Ocean Imaginings

Author: Joshua Esler

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-11-28

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 166692217X

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This book is a multidisciplinary study of the Indian Ocean region, bringing together perspectives from the disciplines of history, defense and strategic studies, cultural and religious studies, and environmental studies. From the earliest exchanges through Sumerian and Harappan trade, to emerging geopolitical alliances in the twenty-first century, this volume demonstrates both the continuity and change of the region as well as its unity and diversity. The expanse of this ocean and its littoral rim is connected through the social imaginary, which enables these processes. It is with the stories of the peoples inhabiting this rim that this book is concerned—told both through micro studies of the everyday lives of the region’s people and through macro studies centered around civilizations, empires, nation-states, and climate change.

Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims
Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims

Author: Donna R. Gabaccía

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-04-11

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 9004193162

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With a series of rich case studies focused on mobile laborers, this book demonstrates how the regional migrations of the early modern era came to be connected, contributing to the creation of an increasingly integrated nineteenth-century world.

African Islands
African Islands

Author: Toyin Falola

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 158046954X

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Explores the culturally complex and cosmopolitan histories of islands off the African coast

Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean
Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 9004365982

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The book describes the worlds where Swahili is spoken as multi-centred contexts that cannot be thought of as located in a specific coastal area of Kenya or Tanzania. The articles presented discuss a range of geographical areas where Swahili is spoken, from Somalia to Mozambique along the Indian Ocean, in Europe and the US. In an attempt to de-essentialize the concepts of translocality and cosmopolitanism, the emphasis of the book is on translocality as experienced by different social strata and by gender and cosmopolitanism as an acquired attitude. Contributors are: Katrin Bromber, Gerard van de Bruinhorst, Francesca Declich, Rebecca Gearhart Mafazy, Linda Giles, Ida Hadjivayanis, Mohamed Kassim, Kjersti Larsen, Mohamed Saleh, Maria Suriano, Sandra Vianello.