scholarly journals Islam and matriliny along the Indian Ocean rim: Revisiting the old ‘paradox’ by comparing the Minangkabau, Kerala and coastal northern Mozambique

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liazzat J.K. Bonate
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
British Colonial

The coexistence of Islam and matriliny has been viewed as a ‘paradox’ because of strict patriliny that Islam prescribes. This article attempts to disentangle this enigma by comparing the Minangkabau, Kerala and coastal northern Mozambique that represent the most well-known cases of simultaneous practice of Islam and matrilineal kinship, which initially was a result of peaceful Islamisation through Indian Ocean networks. In the nineteenth century, the Dutch and British colonial regimes helped matriliny to survive, despite all the efforts of the Islamists to the contrary, by codifying local juridical rules. The Portuguese integration of the local matrilineal nobility into their colonial administrative system preserved matriliny within the local Muslim order. Nowadays these communities are influenced by modernisation, nation-state policies, and Islamic reformist movements, but matrilineal principles still regulate the use of the ancestral land.

Editorial Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Editors of the JIOWS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
Shed Light

The editors are proud to present the first issue of the fourth volume of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies. This issue contains three articles, by James Francis Warren (Murdoch University), Kelsey McFaul (University of California, Santa Cruz), and Marek Pawelczak (University of Warsaw), respectively. Warren’s and McFaul’s articles take different approaches to the growing body of work that discusses pirates in the Indian Ocean World, past and present. Warren’s article is historical, exploring the life and times of Julano Taupan in the nineteenth-century Philippines. He invites us to question the meaning of the word ‘pirate’ and the several ways in which Taupan’s life has been interpreted by different European colonists and by anti-colonial movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. McFaul’s article, meanwhile, takes a literary approach to discuss the much more recent phenomenon of Somali Piracy, which reached its apex in the last decade. Its contribution is to analyse the works of authors based in the region, challenging paradigms that have mostly been developed from analysis of works written in the West. Finally, Pawelczak’s article is a legal history of British jurisdiction in mid-late nineteenth-century Zanzibar. It examines one of the facets that underpinned European influence in the western Indian Ocean World before the establishment of colonial rule. In sum, this issue uses two key threads to shed light on the complex relationships between European and other Western powers and the Indian Ocean World.

Sovereignty in a Minor Key

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Thomas Blom Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Theories Of Sovereignty ◽  
A Minor ◽  
State Form

Abstract Theories of sovereignty in the twentieth century are generally based on a teleological “out-of-Europe” narrative where the modern, centralized nation-state form gradually spread across the world to be the foundation of the international order. In this article, the author reflects on how the conceptualization of sovereignty may change if one begins a global account of modern sovereignty not from the heart of Western Europe but from the complex arrangements of “distributed sovereignty” that emerged in the Indian Ocean and other colonized territories from the eighteenth century onward. These arrangements were organized as multiple layers of dependency and provisional domination, captured well by Eric Beverley's term minor sovereignty. Thinking through sovereignty in a minor key allows us to see sovereignty less as a foundation of states and societies and more as a performative category, emerging in a dialectic between promises of order, prosperity, and law, and the realities of violent domination and occupation.

scholarly journals Globalisation and Difference: Cosmopolitanism Before the Nation-State

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhil Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Limited Perspective ◽  
The Indian Ocean

In this paper, I have tried to reflect on what cosmopolitanism might mean in a very different era of globalisation than the present. Although cosmopolitanism, as an expansive and sociable vision, is often contrasted with the geographically limited perspective and claustrophobic affinities of nationalism, the term originates in a historical period before the rise of nationalism in Europe. I argue that the residents of the civilisations around the Indian Ocean in the medieval and early modern world were cosmopolitan even by the standards of the high modernist meaning of the term. Not only did a range of people transact and translate across different languages, but they also knew how to conduct themselves in different cultural settings with people of different religious beliefs, while respecting the disparate religious, social, and cultural practices of their neighbours.

Cultural Geographies of the Malay World

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 370-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit K. Mandal
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Collaborative Effort ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
The Indian Ocean

This essay explores the cultural geography of the Malay world writ large by examining the trajectories of texts beyond the conventional national and regional boundaries of Southeast Asian studies. Although the Malay world could be studied in relation to a number of transregional orientations, this essay highlights its interconnectedness with the Indian Ocean. This orientation offers a broad enough frame to examine the transregional scale without losing sight of the local. The essay focuses on a collaborative effort at examining textual trajectories. It proposes a rethinking of the normative vocabulary of the nation-state by exploring the subterranean histories of the present. The essay proposes the term “Malay world” as a helpful vehicle for exploring the transregional connections that are not captured by the language of territory and boundedness. The cultural geography of the Malay world that emerges in this essay is multifarious as its interconnectedness with the Indian Ocean has taken complex and diverse forms. The trajectories of the texts examined have traced a world that has been enmeshed in the transregional traffic of people, goods, and ideas. The pervasiveness of the thinking and practice of the nation-state, has undermined, but not eliminated the multifarious cultural geography of the Malay world.

Le Droit des Nations aux Indes Orientales Aux XVIE, XVIIE, XVIIIE siècles (1964)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
European Law ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
The Law

This chapter challenges the projection of nineteenth-century assumptions onto the historical reality of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries by arguing that the earlier transactions between European and Asian powers took place under the rubric of the law of nations. The classical European authors founded their theories on natural law and considered the family of nations universal, and Europeans acquired territorial rights in Asia in accord with principles of European law, through conquest or treaties of cession. The law of nations in Europe at this time was still in formation, and juridical developments were affected by the practice of states in the Indian Ocean. The chapter considers uncertainties and debates around sovereignty (vassals, suzerains, trading companies), territorial title, and maritime law, particularly in the controversy between Grotius and Freitas, and the rise of discriminatory monopolistic treaties that restricted Asian sovereigns’ ability to deal with more than one European power.

scholarly journals From the Indian Ocean to the Pacific: Affranchis and Petits-Blancs in New Caledonia

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Elizabeth Speedy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Production Equipment ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Rich

The sugar crisis of 1860 in Reunion motivated the migration of thousands of Réunionnais to New Caledonia. Along with sugar planters, wealthy enough to transport their production equipment as well as their indentured workers, significant groups of both skilled and unskilled labourers made their way from Reunion to the Pacific colony in the second half of the nineteenth century. In previous publications, I have focused my attention on the sugar industry and the immigration of the rich planters and their coolies. While I have drawn attention to the heterogeneity of the sugar workers and have signalled the arrival and numeric importance of tradespeople, manual and low skilled workers from Reunion, I have not yet described these immigrants in detail. This is because this group has been largely ignored by history and details surrounding their circumstances are scant. In this paper, I discuss the background and origins of these people and highlight some of the fascinating stories to emerge from this migration to New Caledonia and beyond.

Sailing Ships, Naval Expeditions and ‘Project Mausam’

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu Prabha Ray
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Underwater Archaeology ◽  
Practical Training ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean

In recent years, sailing ships of the Indian Navy have been increasingly involved in diplomatic missions and cultural voyages across the world, in addition to their primary purpose of providing practical training in navigation techniques and seamanship. These three-masted barques built at the Goa Shipyard and used by the Indian Navy are very different from wooden sailing vessels that traversed the Indian Ocean in the premodern period prior to the development of steamship navigation in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, these distinctions have often been blurred as these modern naval ships have been utilised to recreate historical ‘expeditions’ such as the much-celebrated Chola invasion of Srivijaya in the Indonesian archipelago. Nor is India the only country to be involved in promoting this ‘popular history’ for contemporary geopolitical interests, as is evident from China’s efforts to rebuild ships used in the Voyages of Admiral Zheng He across the Indian Ocean. What gets short shrift in the process is investment in research in underwater archaeology and the discovery and preservation of shipwreck sites. This article highlights the urgent need for interdisciplinary research in premodern shipping and seafaring activity beyond the rhetoric of valorising national heroes.

Between Science and Religion: An Astrological Interpretation of the Asian Tsunami in India

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-249
Author(s):  
Liang Yongjia
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Indian Ocean Tsunami ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
The Indian Ocean

AbstractAstrology plays an important role in Indian social life. Indian astrologers' claim to have accurately predicted the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the Asian Tsunami, was an effort to legitimize astrology as a full science. This effort demonstrates a difficulty in knowledge categorization, for in India, astrology is neither classified as a science nor as a religion. This is a result of the idea of an Indian nation-state, which rests upon both science and religion as foundations, but at the expense of expelling astrology from religion for not being scientific. However, as astrology continues to be important in India, the astrological interpretation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami drew substantial public attention. Astrology's significant presence in Indian society shows the role of a mature civil society in India as well.

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