New Books Network
Indian Ocean World
Indian Ocean World February 10, 2021

Miracles and Material Life

Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya

Teren Sevea

Hosted by Kelvin Ng
In Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge UP, 2020), Teren Sevea reveals the economic, environmental and religious significance of Islamic miracle workers (pawangs) in the …

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History February 10, 2021

The Boundless Sea

A Human History of the Oceans

David Abulafia

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Building on his 2011 work The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, David Abulafia's latest book, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans (Penguin, 2019), traces the history of …
Indian Ocean World January 28, 2021

Imperial Mecca

Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj

Michael Christo Low

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases …
Environmental Studies January 25, 2021

Scorched Earth

Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature

Emmanuel Kreike

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature (Princeton UP, 2021), Emmanuel Kreike offers a global history of environmental warfare and makes the case for why it should …
Indian Ocean World January 11, 2021

The Impoverishment of the African Red Sea Littoral, 1640–1945

Steven Serels

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
The African Red Sea Littoral, currently divided between Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, is one of the poorest regions in the world. But the pastoralist communities indigenous to this region …
Indian Ocean World December 31, 2020

Narrating Africa in South Asia

South Asian History and Culture, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2020

Mahmood Kooria, Khatija Khader, and Sofia Péquignot

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Narrating Africa in South Asia (Special Journal Issue: South Asian History and Culture, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2020) explores the multifaceted and longue durée history of the African diaspora in …
Indian Ocean World December 28, 2020

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth

Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics

J. Daniel Elam

Hosted by Kelvin Ng
World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics (Fordham University Press, 2020) recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocates collective inexpertise, unknowing, and unrecognizability. Early …
Indian Ocean World December 24, 2020

The Blue Frontier

Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire

Ronald C. Po

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In this revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Qing Empire from a maritime perspective, Ronald C. Po argues that it is reductive to view China over this period exclusively as a …
Indian Ocean World December 21, 2020

Land and Maritime Empires in the Indian Ocean

Beatrice Nicolini and Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Land and Maritime Empires in the Indian Ocean (Educatt, 2017) reconceptualizes the history of the Indian Ocean through the themes of mobility, encounters, empires, and slavery. The book aims to …
Indian Ocean World December 17, 2020

Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World

Martha Chaiklin, Philip Gooding, Gwyn Campbell

Hosted by Tamara Fernando
Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), edited by Martha Chaiklin, Philip Gooding, and Gwyn Campbell, examines trades in animals and animal products in the history of the …
Indian Ocean World December 14, 2020

Making Identity on the Swahili Coast

Urban Life, Community, and Belonging in Bagamoyo

Steven Fabian

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Situated at a crossroads of trade in the late nineteenth century, and later the economic capital of German East Africa, the thriving caravan and port town of Bagamoyo, Tanzania is …
Indian Ocean World December 10, 2020

Africa in the Indian Imagination

Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation

Antoinette Burton

Hosted by Michael Rumore
In Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation (Duke UP,  2016), Antoinette Burton reframes our understanding of the postcolonial Afro-Asian solidarity that emerged from the 195 …
Indian Ocean World December 7, 2020

A World at Sea

Maritime Practices and Global History

Lauren Benton and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal

Hosted by Kelvin Ng
L. Benton and N. Perl-Rosenthal's A World at Sea: Maritime Practices and Global History (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) consists of nine original essays that sharpen and expand our understanding of …
Indian Ocean World December 3, 2020

Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940)

Ripples of Reform

Anne K. Bang

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New communities turned to Islam, and Muslim communities turned to new texts, practices, and religious leaders …
Indian Ocean World November 30, 2020

Painter and Patron

The Maritime Silk Road in the Códice Casanatense

Peter Gordon and Juan José Morales

Hosted by Jenny Peruski
Today I talked to Peter Gordon and Juan José Morales about their book Painter and Patron: The Maritime Silk Road in the Códice Casanatense (Abbreviated Press, 2020). The Códice Casanatense …
Indian Ocean World November 23, 2020

The Emergence of the Gulf States

Studies in Modern History

J. E. Peterson

Hosted by Yasmine al-Bastaki
The Emergence of the Gulf States: Studies in Modern History (Bloomsbury, 2016) offers an overview of the history of Saudi Arabia and the five Persian/Arabian Gulf states that emerged from …
Indian Ocean World November 19, 2020

Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean

Transnational Histories of Race and Space in Tanzania

Ned Bertz

Hosted by Michael Rumore
The vibrant Swahili coast port city of Dar es Salaam—literally, the “Haven of Peace”—hosts a population reflecting a legacy of long relations with the Arabian Peninsula and a diaspora emanating …
Indian Ocean World November 16, 2020

Fluid Jurisdictions

Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia

Nurfadzilah Yahaya

Hosted by Kelvin Ng
Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia (Cornell University Press, 2020) by Prof. Nurfadzilah Yahaya is a wide-ranging, geographically ambitious book that tells the story of the Arab …
Indian Ocean World November 12, 2020

Waves Across the South

A New History of Revolution and Empire

Sujit Sivasundaram

Hosted by Kelvin Ng
In Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire (William Collins, 2020), Sujit Sivasundaram brings together far-flung archives across the world and the best new academic research …
East Asian Studies November 12, 2020

The City of Blue and White

Chinese Porcelain and the Early Modern World

Anne Gerritsen

Hosted by Sarah Bramao-Ramos
We think of blue and white porcelain as the ultimate global commodity: throughout East and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean including the African coasts, the Americas and Europe, consumers desired …