Monsoon

Monsoon

Author: Robert D. Kaplan

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0812979206

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On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as “Monsoon Asia”—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power. It is here that the fight for democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be lost or won, and it is here that American foreign policy must concentrate if the United States is to remain relevant in an ever-changing world. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, Kaplan exposes the effects of population growth, climate change, and extremist politics on this unstable region, demonstrating why Americans can no longer afford to ignore this important area of the world.


Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Author: Sunil S. Amrith

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-10-07

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0674728475

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The Indian Ocean was global long before the Atlantic, and today the countries bordering the Bay of Bengal—India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia—are home to one in four people on Earth. Crossing the Bay of Bengal places this region at the heart of world history for the first time. Integrating human and environmental history, and mining a wealth of sources, Sunil Amrith gives a revelatory and stirring new account of the Bay and those who have inhabited it. For centuries the Bay of Bengal served as a maritime highway between India and China, and then as a battleground for European empires, all while being shaped by the monsoons and by human migration. Imperial powers in the nineteenth century, abetted by the force of capital and the power of steam, reconfigured the Bay in their quest for coffee, rice, and rubber. Millions of Indian migrants crossed the sea, bound by debt or spurred by drought, and filled with ambition. Booming port cities like Singapore and Penang became the most culturally diverse societies of their time. By the 1930s, however, economic, political, and environmental pressures began to erode the Bay’s centuries-old patterns of interconnection. Today, rising waters leave the Bay of Bengal’s shores especially vulnerable to climate change, at the same time that its location makes it central to struggles over Asia’s future. Amrith’s evocative and compelling narrative of the region’s pasts offers insights critical to understanding and confronting the many challenges facing Asia in the decades ahead.


Monsoon Islam

Monsoon Islam

Author: Sebastian R. Prange

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-05-03

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1108342698

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Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, a distinct form of Islamic thought and practice developed among Muslim trading communities of the Indian Ocean. Sebastian R. Prange argues that this 'Monsoon Islam' was shaped by merchants not sultans, forged by commercial imperatives rather than in battle, and defined by the reality of Muslims living within non-Muslim societies. Focusing on India's Malabar Coast, the much-fabled 'land of pepper', Prange provides a case study of how Monsoon Islam developed in response to concrete economic, socio-religious, and political challenges. Because communities of Muslim merchants across the Indian Ocean were part of shared commercial, scholarly, and political networks, developments on the Malabar Coast illustrate a broader, trans-oceanic history of the evolution of Islam across monsoon Asia. This history is told through four spaces that are examined in their physical manifestations as well as symbolic meanings: the Port, the Mosque, the Palace, and the Sea.


Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds

Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds

Author: Smriti Srinivas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-11

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1000062163

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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.


Oceanic Histories

Oceanic Histories

Author: David Armitage

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1108423183

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Freshly presents world history through its oceans and seas in uniquely wide-ranging, original chapters by leading experts in their fields.


Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times

Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times

Author: George F. Hourani

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1995-07-23

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780691000329

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In this classic work George Hourani deals with the history of the sea trade of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean from its obscure origins many centuries before Christ to the time of its full extension to China and East Africa in the ninth and tenth centuries. The book comprises a brief but masterly historical account that has never been superseded. The author gives attention not only to geography, meteorology, and the details of travel, but also to the ships themselves, including a discussion of the origin of stitched planking and of the lateen fore-and-aft sails. Piracy in the Indian Ocean, day-to-day life at sea, the establishment of ancient lighthouses and the production of early maritime guides, handbooks, and port directories are all described in fascinating detail. Arab Seafaring will appeal to anyone interested in Arab life or the history of navigation. For this expanded edition, John Carswell has added a new introduction, a bibliography, and notes that add material from recent archaeological research.


Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

Author: Kousar J Azam

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-19

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1000651533

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The present volume curates papers presented at an international conference organized at OUCIP to engage with the oceanic turn in different fields of knowledge embracing Social Sciences, Humanities and, Physical Sciences to project the Indian Ocean as the new frontier of research across various disciplines. The papers are divided into four sections: The Oceanic Reach has papers reflecting on the received knowledge regarding the historical role and reach of the Indian Ocean and providing new insights in the evolving dynamics of the region. The section on Literature and Culture has essays reflecting the different trajectories within Humanities and Cultural Studies through which Indian Ocean has stimulated the imagination of scholars, intellectuals, diasporic writers, and culture historians. The section on Roots and Routes includes accounts of the historical, cultural, religious, trade and diasporic linkages across oceanic communities inhabiting the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean. The final section on Power Games includes papers that deal with the increasing interests of various international powers in the Indian Ocean region particularly in the context of the shift from the Asian land mass to the enormous presence of the Indian Ocean, and the economic, political and strategic significance that it has for the entire region. Taken together these contributions offer both an opportunity and a challenge for interested scholars to engage with Indian Ocean as a new frontier of knowledge with enormous potential for research and exploration. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka


Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region

Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region

Author: R. Krishnan

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-12

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9811543275

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This open access book discusses the impact of human-induced global climate change on the regional climate and monsoons of the Indian subcontinent, adjoining Indian Ocean and the Himalayas. It documents the regional climate change projections based on the climate models used in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and climate change modeling studies using the IITM Earth System Model (ESM) and CORDEX South Asia datasets. The IPCC assessment reports, published every 6–7 years, constitute important reference materials for major policy decisions on climate change, adaptation, and mitigation. While the IPCC assessment reports largely provide a global perspective on climate change, the focus on regional climate change aspects is considerably limited. The effects of climate change over the Indian subcontinent involve complex physical processes on different space and time scales, especially given that the mean climate of this region is generally shaped by the Indian monsoon and the unique high-elevation geographical features such as the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Tibetan Plateau and the adjoining Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal. This book also presents policy relevant information based on robust scientific analysis and assessments of the observed and projected future climate change over the Indian region.


The Ocean of Churn

The Ocean of Churn

Author: Sanjeev Sanyal

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2016-08-10

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 9386057611

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Much of human history has played itself out along the rim of the Indian Ocean. In a first-of-its-kind attempt, bestselling author Sanjeev Sanyal tells the history of this significant region, which stretches across East Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent to South East Asia and Australia. He narrates a fascinating tale about the earliest human migrations out of Africa and the great cities of Angkor and Vijayanagar; medieval Arab empires and Chinese ‘treasure fleets’; the rivalries of European colonial powers and a new dawn. Sanjeev explores remote archaeological sites, ancient inscriptions, maritime trading networks and half-forgotten oral histories, to make exciting revelations. In his inimitable style, he draws upon existing and new evidence to challenge well-established claims about famous historical characters and the flow of history. Adventurers, merchants, explorers, monks, swashbuckling pirates, revolutionaries and warrior princesses populate this colourful and multifaceted narrative. The Ocean of Churn takes the reader on an amazing journey through medieval geopolitics and eyewitness accounts of long-lost cities to the latest genetic discoveries about human origins, bringing alive a region that has defined civilization from the very beginning.