Hinterland: The political history of a geographic category from the scramble for Africa to Afro-Asian solidarity

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Matthew Unangst
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Longue Durée

Abstract This article traces the history of one geographical concept, hinterland, through changing political contexts from the 1880s through the 1970s. Hinterland proved a valuable tool for states attempting to challenge the global territorial order in both the Scramble for Africa and the postwar world of nation-states. In the context of German territorial demands in East Africa, colonial propagandists used hinterland to knit together the first longue-durée histories of the Indian Ocean to cast Zanzibar as a failed colonial power and win control of the coast. In the 1940s, Indian nationalists revived hinterland as a concept for writing about the Indian Ocean, utilizing the concept to link areas far from the ocean to an informal Indian empire that could be rebuilt to its premodern glory through naval expansion. In both contexts, hinterland provided a geographical framework to challenge British dominance on the Indian Ocean. The shifting meaning and usage of the term indicates continuities in territoriality between the Scramble for Africa and postwar internationalism.

The History of Islam in East Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicitas Becker
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
East African ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Government

The history of Islam in East Africa stretches back to around 1000 CE. Until the mid-20th century, it remained largely confined to the coast and closely bound up with the history of the Swahili towns situated on it. The Swahili language remains central to many East African Muslims, hence the occasionally heard phrase, “Swahili Islam.” East African Muslims are mostly Shafiites and some belong to Sufi orders, especially Qadiriyya and Shadhiliyya. Since c. 1850, Islam, with many variations in ritual, has become the religion of speakers of a multitude of languages across the region, second only to Christianity. The region’s independent nation-states initially promised equality for all religions within a secular order. Since c. 1990, though, the minority status of East African Muslims has fed into a multitude of grievances related to the region’s economic and political impasses. This situation has led to growing movements of Islamic preaching and activism, supported by increased contacts with congregations elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. At times, they have influenced electoral politics, especially in Zanzibar, where Islamic activism resonates with fear of marginalization by the mainland. In Kenya, Somali-influenced Islamist terrorists committed a series of atrocities in the 2010s. East African governments, in turn, have been proactive in tracking and disrupting such networks, and in Kenya, the government engaged in targeted assassination. Nevertheless, peaceful coexistence between Muslims and adherents of other religions remains the norm in East Africa, and its dynamics are often poorly understood.

scholarly journals Revisiting Michael Pearson’s Indian Ocean Littoral

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rila Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Social History ◽  
Common Heritage ◽  
Shared History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Longue Durée

This essay rethinks Pearson’s formulation of littoral society in two essays he wrote in 1985 and 2006. While the first made a case for coastal history, the second continued the theme into the littoral, the strip between land and sea. Pearson foregrounded the universality of a clearly discernible littoral culture on coastlines along and across the Indian Ocean. This translated consequently into a shared history and a common heritage across the ocean’s diverse shores. At a time when maritime historians were writing what were essentially land-based histories on ocean spaces, Pearson’s social history of the littoral over a longue duree was a significant intervention.

Michael Pearson: A Bibliography

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-103
Author(s):  
Editors of the JIOWS
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western India ◽  
Best Effort ◽  
Limited Space ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Longue Durée ◽  
Indian Ocean World

Since the late 1960s, Michael Pearson’s work has been at the forefront of thestudy of the Indian Ocean World. Pearson’s unparalleled contribution to thefield has long been recognized by his pears. In 1981, the famed historian ofGoa, Teotonio R. de Souza, wrote in an introduction to one of Pearson’s booksthat it ‘will stand out as the best effort on the part of a non-Indian historianto do justice to the Indian component of Indo-Portuguese history.’ In 2004,Pearson spoke to this acclaim in an interview with Frederick Noronha, a journalist-publisher based in Goa. He said: ‘Certainly this is what I have wantedto achieve when I write about the Portuguese in India: to locate them in theIndian context in which they operated and by which they were constrained.This is a deliberate attempt to counter the triumphalism, and even racism, ofmuch Portuguese writing on their empire.’ But Pearson’s influence was notlimited to Goa and the coastal western India. Across nearly four decades ofwork, Pearson was always a leader in developing the longue durée approach tostudying the Indian Ocean World.To honor this influence, the editors of the Journal of Indian Ocean WorldStudies have compiled an exhaustive bibliography of Michael Pearson’s work.They have also appended short descriptions to some of his most importanttexts. Limited space meant that abstracts could not be attached to each reference. The editors decided that where they existed, abstracts written by Pearson or his co-editors would be prioritized. They then selected some of his works without abstracts to write their own abstracts or mini reviews (indicated with **). Particular prominence has been given to some of his earlier, lesser-known works. The intention was to use the space to reflect the diversity of Pearson’s research, while highlighting some of its core themes.

The Indian Ocean and Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A. Alpers
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
African History ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
African Music ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Monsoon Winds ◽  
Indian Ocean World

The Indian Ocean has occupied an important place in the history of Africa for millennia, linking the continental land mass to the peoples, products, and ideas of the wider Indian Ocean world (IOW). Central to this relationship are environmental factors, including the biannual operation of monsoon winds, which determined the maritime movement of people, things, and ideas. The earliest of these connections involve the movement of food crops, domestic animals, and commensals both from and into Africa and its offshore islands. From the beginnings of the Current Era, Africa was an important Indian Ocean source of valuable commodities, such as ivory and gold; in more recent times, hardwood products like mangrove poles, and agricultural products like cloves, coconuts, and copra gained economic prominence. Enslaved African labor also had a long history in the IOW, the sources and destinations for the export trade varying over time. In addition, for centuries many different Indian Ocean immigrant communities played important roles as settlers, merchants, sailors, and soldiers. In the realm of culture and ideas, African music, dance, and spiritual concepts accompanied those Africans who were forcibly removed from the continent to the different Indian Ocean lands where they were enslaved. A further indicator of Indian Ocean connectivity is Islam, the introduction of which marks an important watershed in African history. The human settlement of Madagascar marks another significant Indian Ocean connection for Africa. At different times and in different ways, colonial rule—Portuguese, Dutch, Omani, French, and British—tied eastern African territories to India, Arabia, and Southeast Asia. Since regaining independence, African nation-states have established a variety of new linkages to other Indian Ocean states.

scholarly journals East African origins for Madagascan chickens as indicated by mitochondrial DNA

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 160787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Herrera ◽  
Vicki A. Thomson ◽  
Jessica J. Wadley ◽  
Philip J. Piper ◽  
Sri Sulandari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mitochondrial Dna ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
East Africa ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
East African ◽  
Mitochondrial Dna Control Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean

The colonization of Madagascar by Austronesian-speaking people during AD 50–500 represents the most westerly point of the greatest diaspora in prehistory. A range of economically important plants and animals may have accompanied the Austronesians. Domestic chickens ( Gallus gallus ) are found in Madagascar, but it is unclear how they arrived there. Did they accompany the initial Austronesian-speaking populations that reached Madagascar via the Indian Ocean or were they late arrivals with Arabian and African sea-farers? To address this question, we investigated the mitochondrial DNA control region diversity of modern chickens sampled from around the Indian Ocean rim (Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa and Madagascar). In contrast to the linguistic and human genetic evidence indicating dual African and Southeast Asian ancestry of the Malagasy people, we find that chickens in Madagascar only share a common ancestor with East Africa, which together are genetically closer to South Asian chickens than to those in Southeast Asia. This suggests that the earliest expansion of Austronesian-speaking people across the Indian Ocean did not successfully introduce chickens to Madagascar. Our results further demonstrate the complexity of the translocation history of introduced domesticates in Madagascar.

scholarly journals The Indo-Pacific: Indian View

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (5) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
A. Kupriyanov
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
String Of Pearls ◽  
Indian Foreign Policy

Received 06.02.2021. The article focuses on the Indian version of the Indo-Pacific concept. The author notes that the Russian attitude towards Indo-Pacific is ambiguous, and argues that the reason is the vague and unstructured concept as such. The article analyzes the origin and history of the term Indo-Pacific itself. The author traces its history back 170 years and describes in detail how it was transformed during these years, consistently evolving from an exclusively geographical name to a geopolitical construct, then to an oceanographic term, then to a geopolitical construct again. Further, the author analyzes in detail the preconditions in the political, cultural, economic and security spheres, that had developed by the time of the emergence of the Indo-Pacific concept: India’s desire to form a sphere of political influence within the borders of the Indian Ocean region, confirming its status as a great power; concerns about Chinese expansion and the alleged “String of Pearls” strategy in the Indian Ocean; the desire to restore the cultural and civilizational unity of the Indosphere; an attempt to build a comprehensive economic strategy that would allow India with relying on regional organizations, bilateral ties and trade megablocks to catch up with China economically. Because of these preconditions the idea of the Indo-Pacific, proposed by the experts, was immediately accepted by the political elites of India and turned into one of the pillars of Indian foreign policy. The author identifies two main visions of the Indo-Pacific in Indian discourse: as an anti-Chinese concept and as a broader cultural and civilizational concept, which should serve as a basis for India’s further expansion into the Pacific. However, economic problems may prevent this concept from being further strengthened and turned into a full-fledged initiative. Nevertheless, India is unlikely to abandon the idea of the Indo-Pacific, so Russia should develop its own version of the Indo-Pacific concept, which would be combined with the Indian one and at the same time correspond to the interests of Russia.

scholarly journals Coral Stone Architecture, Chinese Porcelain, and Indian Ocean Artifacts along the Swahili Coast: Cross-Cultural Dynamics in Medieval East Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera-Simone Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean

While the use of Chinese porcelain dishes in the stone towns along the Swahili coast has recently found much attention in art historical scholarship regarding the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, the pre-history of these dynamics in the medieval period has up to now only been fully considered in other fields such as archaeology and anthropology. This paper sheds new light on the interrelations between the built environment and material culture in coastal East Africa from an art historical perspective, focusing on premodern Indian Ocean trajectories, the role of Chinese porcelain bowls that were immured into Swahili coral stone buildings, and on architecture across boundaries in a medieval world characterized by far-reaching transcultural entanglements and connectivity. It will show how Chinese porcelain bowls in premodern Swahili architecture linked the stone towns along the coast with other sites both inland and across the Indian Ocean and beyond, and how these dynamics were shaped by complex intersections between short-distance and long-distance-relationships and negotiations between the local and the global along the Swahili coast and beyond.

INDIAN OCEAN WORLD CINEMA: VIEWING THE HISTORY OF RACE, DIASPORA AND NATIONALISM IN URBAN TANZANIA

Africa ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ned Bertz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
History Of Race

ABSTRACTThis essay considers the role of Hindi films in urban Tanzania in writing new chronologies of Indian Ocean world history. Examining films and movie theatres through overlapping local, national and transnational lenses, the article contributes to our understandings of the encounter between the Indian diaspora and nationalism in East Africa, and extends the history of Indian Ocean world connections into the second half of the twentieth century. In order to escape the historiographical dialectic between nation and diaspora which splits scholarship on Hindi films overseas, cinema needs to be denationalized, and everyday social histories of urban cinema halls can then be framed within the Indian Ocean world. To do so successfully, however, we must challenge scholarship which asserts the collapse of this world in the early modern or colonial period (at the latest), in order to extend an Indian Ocean scale to capture the vibrant twentieth-century creation of a regional popular culture. The history of Bombay films in urban Tanzania thus enables a viewing of the transnational production of culture, and the ways in which cross-cultural flows are part of the construction of important categories like race and nationalism across the history of East Africa.

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