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© 2008 The Author
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
History Compass 6/5 (2008): 1382–1393, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00538.x
Scholars and the Sea: A Historiography of the
Indian Ocean
Sebastian R. Prange*
University of London
Abstract
This essay won the 2007 History Compass Graduate Essay Prize, World
Section.
This article surveys the historiography of the Indian Ocean to examine the
problems and opportunities of using maritime spaces as frameworks for world
history studies. It first considers the problem of demarcating maritime space according
to different material and mental definitions. Its second part assesses different
periodizations that reflect the main themes of scholarly engagement with the
Indian Ocean. The final section looks at the emerging field of network studies as
a new approach to the study of interconnections across the Indian Ocean world.
Ever since Fernand Braudel conceptualized a ‘Mediterranean world’,
maritime spaces have formed a basis for the study of large-scale historical
processes. Seas are useful analytical units to transcend national boundaries
and explore history in the longue durée. This is reflected in the growing
number of monographs focused on the history of a sea or ocean.1 This
article surveys the historiography of the Indian Ocean to examine the
problems and opportunities of using maritime space as a framework for
World History.2 It first considers the problem of demarcating maritime
space according to different material and mental frameworks. The second
part assesses different periodizations that reflect the main themes of
scholarly engagement with the ocean. The final section argues for the
application of network theory as a promising new direction of research.
Fluid Borders: Encompassing the Ocean
Of the three great oceans, only the Indian Ocean does not stretch from
ice to ice; its main orientation is east-west rather than north-south.3 It is
enclosed on three sides by an almost continuous landmass made up of the
East African coast, the Arabian Peninsula, the South Asian continental
plate, and the Southeast Asian archipelagos. Because of this configuration,
the Indian Ocean has been described as an ‘embayed ocean’4 and even
© 2008 The Author History Compass 6/5 (2008): 1382–1393, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00538.x
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Scholars and the Sea 1383
likened to a land-locked sea. Its most prominent geographical feature is
the Indian subcontinent, which juts out for almost a thousand miles
and subdivides the ocean into the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. The
geographic centrality of India is reflected in the literature, which has often
viewed Indian Ocean history as ‘pivoting around the Indian peninsula’.5
In India and the Indian Ocean, Kavalam Panikkar stressed the importance
of the ocean to the history (and future defence) of India and, in turn,
claimed that India shapes the character of the Indian Ocean,6 a sentiment
that seems reflected in the in the ocean’s name.
Scholars have engaged with this notion in different ways, prompting
new attempts to define the ocean’s limits and character. Sources as diverse
as Sanskrit inscriptions, Arabic travelogues and European records all
indicate the cosmopolitan nature of Indian Ocean trade. They combine
to give a sense of the development and complexity of different mercantile
networks across the ocean. This impression is borne out by detailed
studies of port cities, merchant groups, and polities engaged in Indian
Ocean commerce. It is also supported by religious and cultural movements
that followed and underpinned the trade routes. The dissemination and
limits of, for example, Buddhism, the Sanskrit cosmopolis, or Islam suggest
different approaches to defining an ‘Indian Ocean world’.7 Historians who
have endeavoured to write Indian history in the longue durée have synthesized
this literature and tended to define the ocean in the broadest sense. New
names have been suggested to emphasize this view of the ocean as an
interconnected cultural and economic sphere: both ‘Asian Seas’ and ‘Afrasian
Sea’ are supported by well-argued justifications.8 Such proposals reflect the
view that the Indian Ocean was not only a means of connecting regions
but constituted in toto a zone of connections created by cross-cultural
exchanges and the movement of goods, ideas and people.
The underlying element that enabled this communication was the
monsoon system of the Indian Ocean. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a great
advocate for the role of wind in world history, regards the Indian Ocean
as ‘the world’s most benign environment for long-range voyaging’ because
of the monsoon.9 As the Arabic root of the word suggests, the monsoon
is not so much a wind but a pattern of seasons, characterized by pre-
dominant wind and weather systems. The reliability of the seasonal reverse
between north-easterly and south-westerly winds allowed sailors to anticipate
the time and conditions of their return voyage. The understanding of
the monsoon was the basis for Graeco-Roman sojourns into the Indian
Ocean, and made the difference between Vasco da Gama’s smooth passage
to western India under the guidance of a knowledgeable pilot and his
difficult return journey against the monsoon.10 The monsoon system is
of additional significance because it not only dictated the rhythm of sea
voyages but also that of agriculture across much of Asia. Merchants
predicted, with varying degrees of accuracy, seasonal gluts and dearths
in different regions by observing the monsoon. Kirti Chaudhuri first
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© 2008 The Author History Compass 6/5 (2008): 1382–1393, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00538.x
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
proposed that around the eleventh century, Indian Ocean trade became
segmented into three major circuits, respectively centred on the Arabian
Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.11 This subdivision reflected
the quarterly shifts of the monsoon and the maximum navigational scope
during each season. By confining voyages to a single circuit and transhipping
goods, merchants reduced their transaction costs compared to investments
in long-distance voyages stretched over several seasons. Consequently,
ports located on the intersection of different trade circuits (such as India’s
west coast or archipelagic Southeast Asia) developed into major emporia and
often independent polities, orientated towards the ocean and its traffic.
While such port cities are readily ascribed to the maritime sphere, the
extent to which the ‘Indian Ocean world’ includes the lands and societies
around the ocean is less certain. In his history of the Indian Ocean,
Michael Pearson argues that maritime history ‘needs to be amphibious,
moving easily between land and sea’.12 In terms of social history, the
concept of ‘littoral society’13 seeks to examine the different gradations of
involvement with the sea through the criteria of location, occupation and
culture. A merchant in Hadramawt on the edge of the Arabian desert, for
example, was likely to have had much deeper familial, economic and
cultural connections to the Indian Ocean world than a peasant who
happened to live on the coast. Analogous questions can be asked of
economic history. The commercial cycles of the Indian Ocean were
shaped by the economic and political situations of the major markets,
many of which were located far away from its waters. India’s demand for
precious metals, for instance, mobilized maritime traders from East Africa
to the Sea of Japan.14 In the sixteenth century, through its links to the
European metropoleis and the Latin American silver economy, the Indian
Ocean was at the centre of the birth of the global economy.15 Furthermore,
the Indian Ocean world was interwoven with ‘terrestrial’ economies not
only through trade: Gang Deng’s perspicacious study of the maritime
sector in pre-modern China highlights both the backward linkages that
support maritime activities (such as shipbuilding and finance) and forward
linkages that result from maritime activities (such as export industries).16
From this literature, long-distance trade emerges as the crucial facilitator of
the multiple exchanges (commercial, cultural, biological) that ‘transformed
the Indian Ocean into a unified space’.17
These considerations prompt the ‘fascinating question’ of ‘how far the
Indian Ocean made its influence felt in the vast sweep of land in the north
and southwest, in the direction of Asia and Africa’.18 Moreover, the
ocean reaches into the social, economic and political affairs not only of
its neighbours but also of lands far removed from its shores: its links to
Europe’s metropoleis or the silver mines of Latin America are comprehensively
documented. Yet the ocean space also extends into another dimension:
the perceptions and imagination of societies, the mentalités of Annalist
terminology. In The Social Construction of the Ocean, Philip Steinberg examines
© 2008 The Author History Compass 6/5 (2008): 1382–1393, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00538.x
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Scholars and the Sea 1385
how different societies have interacted with the sea through their uses,
regulations and representations of the maritime sphere.19 For the Indian
Ocean, this can be traced for example in religious imagination, seasonal
maritime occupations of coastal communities, or the changing attitudes to
the sea of political elites. However, the permeability of the Indian Ocean
as a spatial construct also has its potential pitfalls. Maritime regions are not
‘permanent and stable units of historical and geographical analysis’ but
change their contours according to economic, technological or social
circumstances.20 Braudel himself noted the paradox of the sea being on
the one hand the facilitator of exchange while on the other hand forming
a ‘great divider, the obstacle that had to be overcome’.21 The extent of the
Indian Ocean world, then, can be defined by the extent to which it was
unified by human activity and interaction at different periods of history.
Shifting Horizons: Marking Time
Although space has been described as ‘a more fundamental, rational, and
a priori dimension’,22 much effort has been expended on defining periods
of Indian Ocean history. The choices of individual historians are inevitably
influenced by their thematic preoccupations. Political histories have
traditionally identified the European expansion into the Indian Ocean as
its central juncture. They divide the history of the Indian Ocean into
pre-European and European periods, with the latter further subdivided
into Portuguese, Dutch and English periods according to the preeminent
power of the time. In this view, agency is firmly assigned to the Europeans
who imposed themselves on a static Indian Ocean. Such works are indicative
of the discipline’s own partaking in the colonial venture and are based
almost exclusively on European sources. The European expansion in the
Indian Ocean is portrayed in a grand narrative arc that describes a sort of
natural progression from the Portuguese discovery of the Cape route in 1498
to British imperial domination. An important subtext in the Anglophone
historiography is the supposed superiority of the north European empires
of the Dutch and British to the earlier, ineffectual Iberian ones.23
In this Whiggish view of history, the arrival of the Europeans has been
interpreted as the pivotal event that ushered in the ‘Vasco da Gama epoch’
of Indian Ocean history.24 This period, it is argued, was a pinnacle in the
historical significance of the Indian Ocean, as it marked the ‘dominance
of maritime power over the land masses of Asia’.25 Historians were clearly
swayed by the bias inherent in the European sources, which often present
imperial ambition as actual achievement, as well as their sheer volume,
presenting incomparably more data than is available for earlier periods.
However, subsequent studies of European activities in the Indian Ocean
were able to produce important correctives by accessing Asian sources and
engaging more critically with European records – by reading them
‘against the grain’ and by using different types of material, especially
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Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
intra-Asian correspondence of lower-level officials that more accurately
reflected actual conditions. Their findings prompted a major re-evaluation
of the early European impact on the Indian Ocean world by replacing the
linear view of European ascendancy with an emphasis on the resilience
and adaptation of existing structures and the often marginal role Europeans
played therein. Despite the decisive changes they introduced in the conduct
of naval warfare, the Europeans depended on the cooperation and support
of local intermediaries, financiers and rulers. In most aspects, the impact of
the Portuguese on the Indian Ocean world was minor, and overall much
more characterized by cooperation and interaction than by dominance.26
Much of the evidence for this re-evaluation of the European impact on
the Indian Ocean has emerged from detailed examinations of its commercial
structures. Micro studies of port cities have shown the complexity of trade
networks in the pre-European period.27 Such works have provided the
monographic foundation for more broadly conceived studies of Indian
Ocean commerce focused on specific regions.28 Far from static, the Indian
Ocean world emerges as fully endowed with the dynamic elements of
cooperation, competition and state involvement traditionally assigned to
the Europeans interlopers. From the arrival of the Portuguese to the
assumption of British control in the mid-eighteenth century, ‘Europeans
accepted the system [of Indian Ocean trade] just as the Indians and Asians
did, and by their commerce strengthened it’.29 Ashin Das Gupta, one of
the most eloquent proponents of this view, has thus proposed the notion
of an ‘Age of Partnership’ to express the resilience of the ocean’s commercial
structures from 1500 to 1800.30 While Das Gupta draws on evidence for
India, Anthony Reid arrives at a comparable conclusion for Southeast Asia.
He proposes an ‘Age of Commerce’ between 1400 and 1650 that emphasizes
both the pre-European origins of the commercial system and its continuities
that echo the ‘long sixteenth century’ of Braudel’s Mediterranean.31
Trade has also been at the centre of the formulation of world-systems
analysis and its periodization of Indian Ocean history. Developed in the
writing of Immanuel Wallerstein and drawing on the Braudelian notion
of an early modern capitalist world economy, it places economic relations
in a hierarchy of cores and peripheries. The temporal dimensions of
world-systems are defined by short-term economic cycles and long-term
secular trends, with a modern world-system centred on Europe emerging
from the eighteenth century. Janet Abu-Lughod applied this type of
analysis to define a thirteenth-century precursor in a world-system centred
on the Indian Ocean.32 Andre Gunder Frank, an exponent of world-system
analysis as well as critic of Wallerstein’s Eurocentrism, characterizes the
period 1400 to 1800 as an ‘Asian Age’, a global carousel of trade revolving
around the Indian Ocean.33 Frank’s view is reflected in the work of the new
‘California School’ of history that has refuted the inevitability of the ‘rise
of the West’ by demonstrating the comparable or even superior economic
strength of Asia (especially China) until the mid-eighteenth century.34
© 2008 The Author History Compass 6/5 (2008): 1382–1393, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00538.x
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Scholars and the Sea 1387
The major temporal juncture that emerges from these considerations of
the economic history of the Indian Ocean is the eighteenth century, due
to the rise in the economic and military prowess of a rapidly industrializing
Britain. The harnessing of steam power is also behind the argument of
Michael Pearson,35 who situates this break in the nineteenth century and
attributes it to the introduction of steam ships that operated independent
of the monsoon ‘which for so many millennia had acted as a strait jacket
on Indian Ocean sailing’.36 This periodization of Indian Ocean history
according to its ‘deep structure’, immovable until technology allowed man
to ‘conquer nature’, follows in the mould of the Braudelian archetype.37
Other historians have stretched the longue durée even further to arrive at
‘big history’: here the Indian Ocean becomes subsumed into a global
narrative of the very long term trends in human history.38
New Directions
Scholarly concerns with political competition, commercial exchange,
religious and cultural transformations, or long-term trends of economic
and human development are thus reflected in different periodizations of
Indian Ocean history. The spatial and temporal dimensions of the Indian
Ocean world have been conceived and interpreted in different and often
competing terms according to different sources, methods, theories and
priorities. The very process of proposition and refutation of different
models has proven a major impetus to the field. The development and
institutionalization of world history as a discipline has literally broadened
the canvas and promoted the multi-disciplinary study of interactions and
interconnections. The historiography of the Indian Ocean is in a process
of rapid expansion, and this final part seeks to a highlight a key theme
that shapes this emerging corpus.
Network theory has been increasingly applied to different aspects of
historical enquiry and has become extraordinarily prominent in studies of
the Indian Ocean world. Commercial networks of South Indian merchant
guilds, Buddhist and Islamic networks, or religious and kinship networks
of Sufi orders become identified, linked, and situated in the Indian Ocean
context.39 The study of networks serves as an organizing principle for the
multiple levels of material and intellectual connections across the ocean.
What is again affirmed is the role of long-distance trade as the facilitator
of communication and exchange. Commercial networks were interwoven
with kinship, religious, and scholarly networks: Buddhist temples were
situated on trade routes; scholarly prestige was established through association
with a teacher on the other end of the ocean; pilgrimage was inseparable
from economic activity; religious specialists often had an eye for profitable
business; and intermarriage created ever more layers of complexity. The
study of networks has underpinned new attempts at defining the Indian
Ocean world-system, but also thrown up its own set of core-periphery
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Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
questions.40 Within networks, cores are often defined in terms of origins,
be it of a kinship group, religious movement or trade good. However, as
the network expands and evolves, its centre of gravity may shift. The
spread of Islam, a seminal process in Indian Ocean history, for instance is
no longer viewed as a linear process emanating from the Hijaz across the
ocean to East Africa, India, Southeast Asia and China. Rather, it is now
understood that Islamicate practices underwent acculturations as they
circulated through different networks: multiple levels and directions of
exchange between regions supplant any simple notion of core-periphery
transmission. The Indian Ocean is thus conceptualized of as a zone of
cultural negotiation as well as economic exchange.
New histories of the Indian Ocean must in one way or other engage
with the same questions of space and time that the existing historiography
has grappled with in such diverse ways. This corpus informs any attempt
to situate individual studies in the context of the Indian Ocean world,
however defined. To the world historian, this historiography and the
questions asked of it are both part of the ongoing project to elucidate new
‘connexions and comparisons’41 across the ocean and on a global scale.42
Short Biography
Sebastian R. Prange holds a B.A. from Goldsmiths College, a M.Sc. in
Global History from the London School of Economics, and is presently
a Ph.D. History candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(all University of London). In 2007/8, he is the Isobel Thornley Research
Fellow at London’s Institute of Historical Research and has previously
held a postgraduate award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
His doctoral research centres on the social and economic organization of
Muslim trading groups on the Malabar Coast between the twelfth and
sixteenth centuries. His thesis seeks to situate these merchant groups in a
trans-oceanic context by examining their commercial, familial, scholarly
and religious networks. The nature of these trans-regional networks and
the sources for their study reflect the author’s engagement with world
history approaches.
Notes
* Correspondence address: Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, Russell Square, London WC1H OXG, UK. Email: prange@soas.ac.uk.
1 Some of the most recent examples include, on the Mediterranean: P. Horden and N. Purcell,
‘AHR Forum: The Mediterranean and “the New Thalassology”’, American Historical Review,
111/3 (2006): 722–40; on the Baltic Sea: A. W. Palmer, Northern Shores: A History of the Baltic
Sea and its Peoples (London: John Murray, 2005); on the Black Sea: C. King, The Black Sea: A
History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); on the Red Sea in Antiquity: M.-F. Boussac
and J.-F. Salles (eds.), A Gateway from the Eastern Mediterranean to India: The Read Sea in Antiquity
(New Delhi: Manohar, 2005); on the Atlantic: Bailyn Atlantic History: Concept and Contours
© 2008 The Author History Compass 6/5 (2008): 1382–1393, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00538.x
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Scholars and the Sea 1389
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); on Oceania: P. D’Arcy, The People of the
Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press,
2006); on the Indian Ocean: M. N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003).
2 World (or Global) History here refers to the modern academic discipline that seeks to identify
historical processes and interconnections of global significance, not the historiographical
tradition of universal histories that dates back to Herodotus; cf. P. O’Brien, ‘Historiographical
Traditions and Modern Imperatives for the Restoration of Global History’, Journal of Global
History, 1/1 (2006): 3–39.
3 Allan Villiers, The Indian Ocean (London: Museum Press, 1952), 15 argues that only the
Atlantic, Pacific and Indian constitute oceans, while the Arctic and Antarctic are seas.
4 Ibid.
5 A. Das Gupta, ‘Introduction II: The Story’, in A. Das Gupta and M. N. Pearson (eds.), India
and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999 [1987]), 26.
6 K. M. Panikkar, India and the Indian Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian
History (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1945): 19.
7 Buddhism: H. P. Ray, The Winds of Change: Buddhism and the Maritime Links of Early South Asia
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); the Sanskrit cosmopolis: S. I. Pollock, The Language of
the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 2006); Islam: M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 2:
The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974);
P. R i s s o , Merchants and Faith: Muslim Commerce and Culture in the Indian Ocean (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1995).
8 ‘Asian Seas’: F. Broeze (ed.), Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th to 20th Centuries
(Kensington, N.S.W.: New South Wales University Press, 1989), 21; ‘Afrasian Sea’: Pearson,
Indian Ocean, 14.
9 Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 36.
10 See S. Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 145–54.
11 K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise
of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 37–9.
12 Pearson, Indian Ocean, 5.
13 M. N. Pearson, ‘Littoral Society: The Concept and the Problems’, Journal of World History,
17/4 (2006): 353–73.
14 J. McGuire, P. Bertola and P. Reeves (eds.), Evolution of the World Economy, Precious Metals and
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
15 D. O. Flynn and A. Giraldez, ‘Born with a “Silver Spoon”: World Trade’s Origin in 1571’,
Journal of World History, 6/2 (1995): 201–21.
16 G. De ng, Maritime Sector, Institutions, and Sea Power of Premodern China (Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 1999).
17 P. Beaujard, ‘The Indian Ocean in Eurasian and African World-Systems before the Sixteenth
Century’, Journal of World History, 16/4 (2005): 411.
18 Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, 160.
19 I am grateful to Professor M. N. Pearson for bringing this reference to my attention.
20 J. H. Bentley, ‘Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis’, Geographical
Review, 89/2 (1999): 217.
21 F. B r a u d e l , The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1966), 2 vols.,
trans. S. Reynolds from rev. French ed. (London: Collins, 1972–73): 14.
22 K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise
of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 112.
23 Danvers, Report on the Portuguese Records Relating to the East Indies (London, 1892).
24 M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco Da Gama Epoch of Asian
History, 1498–1945 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953).
25 Ibid., 12.
26 M. N. Pearson, The Portuguese in India (The New Cambridge History of India, I.I) (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 2.
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27 Recent micro studies that display particular awareness of the wider Indian Ocean context
include, on Quanzhou: A. Schottenhammer (ed.), The Emporium of the World: Maritime
Quanzhou, 1000–1400 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2001); on Soqotra: Z. Biedermann,
Soqotra: Geschichte einer christlichen Insel im Indischen Ozean vom Altertum bis zur frühen Neuzeit
(Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2006); on Aden: R. E. Margariti, Aden & the Indian Ocean Trade: 150
Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (Chapel Hill, IL: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
28 On maritime Southeast Asia: L. N. Shaffer, Maritime Southeast Asia to 1500 (Armonk, NY:
M. E. Sharpe, 1996); on the Persian Gulf: W. Floor, The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic
History of Five Port Cities, 1500–1730 (Washington, DC: Mage, 2006).
29 A. Das Gupta, The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500 –1800: Collected Essays of Ashin
Das Gupta (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 124.
30 Ibid., 122.
31 A. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, vol. 2: Expansion and Crisis
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 1–61.
32 J. L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989).
33 A. G. Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1998).
34 R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe,
and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
35 Pearson, Indian Ocean, 206.
36 However, despite the growing number of steamers traversing the ocean, traditional Arab
dhows and Malay prahus had a ‘much longer afterlife than commonly supposed.’ S. Bose, A
Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006), 28.
37 Pearson, Indian Ocean, 13, 206.
38 D. Ch r is tia n, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2004).
39 South Indian merchant guilds: M. Abraham, Two Medieval Merchant Guilds of South India
(New Delhi: Manohar, 1988) and Chakravarti R., ‘An Enchanting Seascape: Through
Epigraphic Lens’, Studies in History, 20/2 (2004): 305–15; Buddhist and Islamic networks:
T. Sen , Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400
(Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003) and U. Freitag, ‘Islamische Netzwerke im
Indischen Ozean’, in D. Rothermund and S. Weigelin-Schwiedrzik (eds.), Der Indische Ozean:
Das afro-asiatische Mittelmeer als Kultur-und Wirtschaftsraum (Wien: Promedia, 2004), 61–81;
religious and kinship networks of Sufi orders: E. Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Geneaology and
Mobility across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California
Press, 2006).
40 P. Beaujard, ‘The Indian Ocean in Eurasian and African World-Systems before the Sixteenth
Century’, Journal of World History, 16/4 (2005): 411–65.
41 O’Brien, ‘Historiographical Traditions’.
42 A central element of world history is the dialogue between different specializations. In 2003,
a conference brought together three dozen scholars working on different seas and oceans; a
volume of some of the contributions is published as J. H., Bentley, R. Bridenthal and K. Wigen
(eds.), Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges (Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawai’i Press, 2007).
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Scholars and the Sea 1391
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