Research & Subject Guides: HIS 301.02: Indian Ocean World: Books & E-Books

Spotlight E-Book

Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India by Peter Gottschalk
ISBN: 9780195393019
Publication Date: 2012
Peter Gottschalk offers a compelling study of how, through the British implementation of scientific taxonomy in the subcontinent, Britons and Indians identified an inherent divide between mutually antagonistic religious communities. England's ascent to power coincided with the rise of empirical science as an authoritative way of knowing not only the natural world, but the human one as well. The British scientific passion for classification, combined with the Christian impulse to differentiate people according to religion, led to a designation of Indians as either Hindu or Muslim according to rigidly defined criteria that paralleled classification in botanical and zoological taxonomies. Through an historical and ethnographic study of the north Indian village of Chainpur, Gottschalk shows that the Britons' presumed categories did not necessarily reflect the Indians' concepts of their own identities, though many Indians came to embrace this scientism and gradually accepted the categories the British instituted through projects like the Census of India, the Archaeological Survey of India, and the India Museum. Today's propogators of Hindu-Muslim violence often cite scientistic formulations of difference that descend directly from the categories introduced by imperial Britain. Religion, Science, and Empire will be a valuable resource to anyone interested in the colonial and postcolonial history of religion in India.
Bombay Islam: The religious economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915 by Nile Green
Call Number: E-BOOK
Publication Date: Cambridge, 2011
Bombay Islam traces the ties between industrialization, imperialism, and the production of religion to show how Muslim migration from the oceanic and continental hinterlands of Bombay in this period fueled demand for a wide range of religious suppliers, as Christian missionaries competed with Muslim religious entrepreneurs for a stake in the new market. Enabled by a colonial policy of non-intervention in religious affairs, and powered by steam travel and vernacular printing, Bombay's Islamic productions were exported as far as South Africa and Iran. Connecting histories of religion, labour, and globalization, the book examines the role of ordinary people mill hands and merchants in shaping the demand that drove the market.
The Ottoman Age of Exploration by Giancarlo Casale
ISBN: 0199874042
Publication Date: 2011
In 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim "the Grim" conquered Egypt and brought his empire for the first time in history into direct contact with the trading world of the Indian Ocean. During the decades that followed, the Ottomans became progressively more engaged in the affairs of this vast and previously unfamiliar region, eventually to the point of launching a systematic ideological, military and commercial challenge to the Portuguese Empire, their main rival for control of the lucrative trade routes of maritime Asia. The Ottoman Age of Exploration is the first comprehensive historical account of this century-long struggle for global dominance, a struggle that raged from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Straits of Malacca, and from the interior of Africa to the steppes of Central Asia. Based on extensive research in the archives of Turkey and Portugal, as well as materials written on three continents and in a half dozen languages, it presents an unprecedented picture of the global reach of the Ottoman state during the sixteenth century. It does so through a dramatic recounting of the lives of sultans and viziers, spies, corsairs, soldiers-of-fortune, and women from the imperial harem. Challenging traditional narratives of Western dominance, it argues that the Ottomans were not only active participants in the Age of Exploration, but ultimately bested the Portuguese in the game of global politics by using sea power, dynastic prestige, and commercial savoir faire to create their own imperial dominion throughout the Indian Ocean.

Spotlight Books

Britain's Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, C.1550-1850 by H. V. Bowen (Editor); Elizabeth Mancke (Editor); John G. Reid (Editor)
Call Number: Main Library Stacks DA16 .B679 2012
ISBN: 9781107020146
Publication Date: 2012
This pioneering comparative study of British imperialism in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds draws on the perspectives of British newcomers overseas and their native hosts, of metropolitan officials and corporate enterprises, migrants and settlers. Leading scholars examine the divergences and commonalities in the legal and economic regimes that allowed Britain to project imperium across the globe. They explore the nature of sovereignty and law, governance and regulation, diplomacy, military relations and commerce, shedding new light on the processes of expansion that influenced the making of empire. While acknowledging the distinctions and divergences in imperial endeavours in Asia and the Americas - not least in terms of the size of indigenous populations, technical and cultural differences, and approaches to indigenous polities - this book argues that these differences must be seen in the context of what Britons overseas shared, including constitutional principles, claims of sovereignty, disciplinary regimes and military attitudes.
Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920 by Clare Anderson
Call Number: Main Library Stacks HN683.5 .A654 2012
ISBN: 9781107645448
Publication Date: 2012
Subaltern Lives uses biographical fragments of the lives of convicts, captives, sailors, slaves, indentured labourers and indigenous peoples to build a fascinating new picture of colonial life in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean. Moving between India, Africa, Mauritius, Burma, Singapore, Ceylon, the Andaman Islands and the Australian colonies, Clare Anderson offers fresh readings of the nature and significance of 'networked' Empire. She reveals the importance of penal transportation for colonial expansion and sheds new light on convict experiences of penal settlements and colonies, as well as the relationship between convictism, punishment and colonial labour regimes. The book also explores the nature of colonial society during this period and embeds subaltern biographies into key events like the abolition of slavery, the Anglo-Sikh Wars and the Indian Revolt of 1857. This is an important new perspective on British colonialism which also opens up new possibilities for the writing of history itself.
The Economics of the Indian Ocean slave trade in the nineteenth century by William Gervase Clarence-Smith, ed.
Call Number: Main Library Stacks HT1327 .E26 1989
This collection of eleven essays provides a comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of the eastern coast of Africa from Suez to Cape Town. Themes include the aggregate volume of slave exports, the occupations of slaves (under European, Middle Eastern and Asian owners), the financing of the slave trade, conditions at sea, prices of slaves, and sex ratios and mortality levels in slave populations. Clarence-Smith includes a good map showing the volume and direction of this eastern slave trade (though the map leaves out the exports of slaves from the Somali coast documented in the article by Timothy Fernyhough). The articles, which range from brief notes to long and detailed studies, combine nicely to balance three dimensions of the issue: the trade in Africa, the trade on the seas, and the trade abroad in Asia and the islands of the Indian Ocean.
Maritime India: Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean by Pius Malekandathil
Call Number: Main Library Stacks HF3785 .M33 2010
ISBN: 9380607832
Publication Date: 2010
This volume discusses the various socio-economic and political processes that evolved over centuries in the vast coastal fringes of India and out of the circuits of the Indian Ocean, ultimately giving it the distinctive consciousness and identity of Maritime India. The book comments on a wide range of issues, including the nature of maritime trade of the Sassanids with India; the impact of maritime trade on the political processes of Goa; the impact of Portuguese commercial expansion on the traditional Muslim merchants of Kerala and the role of private traders in the structure and the functioning of Estado da India.

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Some examples of Library of Congress Subject Headings for Indian Ocean topics:

Indian Ocean Region -- History [History of the overall region]
Indian Ocean -- Commerce -- History. [Note the use of "Commerce" rather than "Trade"]
Great Britain -- Colonies -- Asia [Note use of "Great Britain;" their colonies in an area]
India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 [History of one country: India - specifically dealing with the British occupation]

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HIS 301.02: Indian Ocean World: Books & E-Books