Cartographies of the Untimely in Postcolonial Historical Realism

2019 ◽  
pp. 29-64
Author(s):  
Greg Forter
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Indentured Servitude ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Do So

Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies develop cognitive-affective maps of empire that reveal its totalizing ambitions. They deploy realist techniques to do so while displaying an intense self-consciousness about such techniques’ limitations. The maps they draw link the Atlantic world (and slavery) with the Indian Ocean (and indentured servitude). This angle of vision moves the historical novel’s frame of reference beyond both the nation and the mono-oceanic paradigms that have emerged as alternatives to nation-based understandings. Finally, and drawing especially on the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty, the chapter shows that the novels retrieve from historicist time the inassimilable, heterotemporal residues of utopian alternatives to the colonial, which draw upon while radically refashioning “premodern” and pre-secular modes of affinity.

Contextualizing Complex Social Contact: Mauritius, a Microcosm of Global Diaspora

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krish Seetah
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Group Interaction ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Food Culture ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Plural Societies ◽  
Development Of Language

This article supplements current dialogue on the archaeology of slavery, offering an Indian Ocean counterpoint to a topic that has largely focused on the Atlantic world. It also delves into the essentially uncharted domain of the archaeology of indentured labour. New plural societies, characterized by cultural hybridity, were created around the world as a consequence of labour diasporas in the late historic period. What do these societies look like during the process of nation building and after independence? Can we study this development through archaeology? Focusing on Mauritius, this paper discusses the complexities of the island, and how it can be representative of similar newly formed plural societies in the Indian Ocean. During French and British imperial rule, the island served as an important trading post for a range of European imperial powers. These varied groups initiated the movement and settlement of African, Indian and Chinese transplanted communities. By exploring the dynamic nature of inter-group interaction on Mauritius, this paper emphasizes the nuanced nature of how different peoples arrived and made the island their home. Mauritius played a vital role in the transportation of forced and free labour, both within and beyond this oceanic world, and offers an important viewpoint from which to survey the ways in which historical archaeology can improve our understanding of the broader archaeo-historical processes of which these diasporas were an integral feature. The paper focuses on the outcomes of settlement, as viewed through the complex practices that underpin local food culture, the use and development of language and the way materials are employed for the expression of identity. The article also traces the roots of contemporary cultural retention for indentured labourers to administrative decisions made by the British, and ultimately explores how heritage and language can provide a powerful lens on mechanisms of cultural expression. In addition to illustrating the nuanced and multifaceted nature of group interaction on Mauritius itself, this article raises an issue of broader relevance—the need for historical archaeologists to give greater consideration to the Indian Ocean, rather than focusing on the Atlantic world. This would allow us to achieve a more informed understanding of European slave trading and associated systems of labour migration within a more global framework.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Greg Forter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Frederic Jameson ◽  
The Indian Ocean

The Introduction lays the theoretical groundwork and historical frame for the main chapters. It engages debates on materialist vs. poststructuralist approaches to postcolonial studies; on the utopian imagination; on expanding the black Atlantic frame of reference to include the Indian Ocean; on the Anglophone biases of postcolonial studies and how these implicate the discipline in contemporary capitalism; on the genesis of the historical novel in the nineteenth century; and on the cycles of finance capital to which the postcolonial inflection of historical fiction is a response. Theorists discussed include Giovanni Arrighi, Ian Baucom, Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Frederic Jameson, and Georg Lukács.

An International Legal Extravaganza in the Indian Ocean: Placing the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission outside the Framework of FAO

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-515
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Director General ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Treaty Law ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
International Legal Personality ◽  
International Character ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (established by treaty under Article XIV of the FAO Constitution) has tried to amend its own Agreement to place itself outside the framework of FAO in order to deal more effectively with "fishing entities". However, its attempts to do so have been thwarted in part by the refusal of the Director-General of FAO to circulate proposed amendments. This is evaluated and found to be contrary to Article 76.2 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which refers to the international character of a depositary and the need for impartiality. In addition, the Secretariat of FAO has asserted that it can be achieved only by a cumbersome treaty process involving termination of the present treaty and Commission and establishing a new treaty and new Commission. The paper evaluates the arguments for this position in the light of international treaty law, including the practice in other treaty bodies. It concludes that the arguments in support of such a convoluted approach are fundamentally flawed. Finally, the paper considers briefly whether the Commission has international legal personality, and concludes that it does.

The Oceans Become Global

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-38
Author(s):  
David Bosco
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Long Range ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Ocean Governance ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Inherent Nature ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do So

Aspects of ocean governance have ancient roots, including early anti-piracy campaigns and basic rules for maritime commerce. Sovereign rulers periodically attempted to control ocean space but usually lacked the means to do so. As Spain and Portugal mastered the art of long-range seafaring in the 15th century, however, they attempted to divide the world’s oceans between them, an effort that still stands as one of the most ambitious attempts to divide up the oceans. During that period, Portugal tried to exclude outsiders from the Indian Ocean and asserted the right to control all shipping in the area. Portuguese claims prompted objections from other European powers and set the stage for the Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius to articulate the doctrine of a “free sea,” based on what he saw as the inherent nature of the oceans. While it faced several rebuttals, Grotius’s conception of the oceans mostly prevailed.

scholarly journals Towards a global perspective on early modern slave trade: prices of the enslaved in the Indian Ocean, Indonesian Archipelago and Atlantic worlds

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Matthias van Rossum
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The Body ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
Trade Prices ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
First Time

Abstract Despite the growth of studies on slavery and slave trade outside the Atlantic world in recent years, especially in the early modern Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago worlds, our knowledge of regional price levels and their development remains surprisingly underdeveloped. This article questions how the price of enslaved people developed in the multi-directional and multi-faceted Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago slave trade, how this compared to the Atlantic world and what this tells us about slave trade and slavery in different parts of the world. Drawing on evidence from a large variety of sources, mainly from the Dutch Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago world, this article expands the body of data significantly and provides for the first time a reconstruction of the level of slave trade prices and their development in several important supplying and demanding slave trade regions in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago world and compares these to the development of slave prices in the Atlantic slave trade.

Shadows of Sovereignty

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Benton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Flexible Framework ◽  
Multiple Meanings

While highlighting the importance of protection to European ventures in the Indian Ocean, historians have tended to overlook its central role in structuring cross-polity relations in the Atlantic world. References to protection pervaded mutual security arrangements and anchored alliances across Atlantic regions. Rulers’ offer of protection to old and new subjects reinforced the legitimacy of imperial claims in the Americas. These multiple meanings of protection made the term politically useful and rhetorically irresistible. This chapter analyzes the way protection talk both structured alliances and created a flexible framework for cross-polity relations in the Atlantic world. It then suggests that meanings of protection began to shift in the early nineteenth century, when the term increasingly signaled more robust claims to sovereignty. The chapter honors Jerry Bentley’s insight that cultural encounters represented rich sites of political innovation in the early modern world.

Circulations of Law: Cosmopolitan Elites, Global Repertoires, Local Vernaculars

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iza Hussin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Do So

Bernard Cohn once called the imperial point of view the “view from the boat”. There were other boats as well.In 1893, the sovereign state of Johor adopted the OttomanMedjelle (Meḏj̱elle-yi Aḥkām-i˚ḥʿAdliyye, the civil code applied in the Ottoman Empire since 1877), being the only state among the Muslim sultanates of the Malay Peninsula to do so. In 1895, Johor promulgated a Constitution(Undang-Undang Tubuh Kerajaan Johor), being the first state in Southeast Asia to do so. This article takes this moment, of the intersection of two types of law from quite disparate sources, as a point of departure for tracing the pathways by which law made its way from one corner of the globe to another. Taking nineteenth century Johor as our vantage point provides a new optic for mapping law's geography and temporality and for exploring the logics of law's itinerancy and its locality. The travels of law were always material, and often embodied; on ships sailing the Indian Ocean between Johor and Cairo were diplomats, merchants, pilgrims, and lawyers faced with new pressures and new possibilities; in the growing traffic in letters and newspaper reports between London and New York, Tokyo and Constantinople, were debates about empire and culture, power and authenticity; in personal relationships made possible by the technologies of nineteenth century cosmopolitanism, were similarly worldly dramas of deception and demands for justice. In the 2 short years between the adoption of theMedjelleand the Constitution in Johor, the sultan of Johor, Abu Bakar (1833–1895), typified this mobility and interconnection. In his travels across the Indian Ocean to the Near East and Europe; in his appearance in diplomatic communiques in London, Constantinople and Washington D.C.; in his prominence as a figure of exoticism and intrigue in the newspapers and the courts of the English-speaking world, the sultan not only embodied law's movements in a figurative way, he was also himself a key carrier of the law, and one of its signal articulators.

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