Shipped but Not Sold

Author(s):  
Nancy Um

In the early decades of the eighteenth century, Yemen hosted a lively community of merchants that came to the southern Arabian Peninsula from the east and the west, seeking, among other products, coffee, at a time when this new social habit was on the rise. Shipped but not Sold argues that many of the diverse goods that these merchants carried, bought, and sold at the port, also played ceremonial, social, and utilitarian roles in this intensely commercial society that was oriented toward the Indian Ocean. Including sumptuous foreign textiles and robes, Arabian horses, porcelain vessels, spices, aromatics, and Yemeni coffee, these items were offered, displayed, exchanged, consumed, or utilized by major merchants in a number of socially exclusive practices that affirmed their identity and status, but also sustained the livelihood of their business ventures. These traders invested these objects with layers of social meaning through a number of repetitive ceremonial exercises and observances, in addition to their everyday protocols of the trade. This study looks at what happened to these local and imported commodities that were diverted from the marketplace to be used for a set of directives that were seemingly quite non-transactional.

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 295-313
Author(s):  
Kristin Plys

During India’s Emergency, anti-state poetry of a decidedly amateurish quality proliferated. Anti-Emergency poetry did little to bring about the restoration of democracy, nor could it have reasonably been mistaken for great art. So what was the purpose of writing resistance poetry if it was not meant to directly influence politics nor to be great art? Poetry as politics has a long history in the Islamicate world, dating back to the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. While until the 19th century Islamicate poetry was tied to the Caliphates who employed poets to extol the virtues of the ruling classes, after the so-called ‘Rise of the West’ Islamicate poetry became associated instead with anti-colonial and anti-state movements across the Islamicate world from Morocco to Indonesia and from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. In this essay, I argue that the utility of resistance poetry in anti-state movements in South Asia has been to build solidarity among social movement participants. The sociology of social movements has long placed emphasis on the role of affective bonds and solidarity building for predicting social movement success, and poetry, in the Islamicate context especially, I argue, does exactly that. By circulating poems, social movement participants inform the reader that resistance and opposition exist, they inspire participants and would-be participants and calm fears that participants might have, especially in moments of political repression. These poems generate emotional and cultural bonds among social movement participants by linking anti-state movements to the centuries-old tradition of Islamicate poetry, thereby fostering solidarity and providing a firm basis for collective action.


2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 285-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tint Lwin Swe ◽  
Kenji Satake ◽  
Than Tin Aung ◽  
Yuki Sawai ◽  
Yukinobu Okamura ◽  
...  

A post-tsunami survey was conducted along the Myanmar coast two months after the 2004 Great Sumatra earthquake ( Mw=9.0) that occurred off the west coast of Sumatra and generated a devastating tsunami around the Indian Ocean. Visual observations, measurements, and a survey of local people's experiences with the tsunami indicated some reasons why less damage and fewer casualties occurred in Myanmar than in other countries around the Indian Ocean. The tide level at the measured sites was calibrated with reference to a real-time tsunami datum, and the tsunami tide level range was 2–3 m for 22 localities in Myanmar. The tsunami arrived three to four hours after the earthquake.


1876 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-154
Author(s):  
A. H. Schindler

The part of Belúchistán now under Persian rule is bounded upon the north by Seistán, upon the east by Panjgúr and Kej, upon the south by the Indian Ocean, and upon the west by Núrámshír, Rúdbár, and the Báshákerd mountains.This country enjoys a variety of climates; almost unbearable heat exists on the Mekrán coast, we find a temperate climate on the hill slopes and on the slightly raised plains as at Duzek and Bampúr, and a cool climate in the mountainous districts Serhad and Bazmán. The heat at Jálq is said to be so intense in summer that the gazelles lie down exhausted in the plains, and let themselves be taken by the people without any trouble.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (16) ◽  
pp. 11973-11990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Fiehn ◽  
Birgit Quack ◽  
Irene Stemmler ◽  
Franziska Ziska ◽  
Kirstin Krüger

Abstract. Oceanic very short-lived substances (VSLSs), such as bromoform (CHBr3), contribute to stratospheric halogen loading and, thus, to ozone depletion. However, the amount, timing, and region of bromine delivery to the stratosphere through one of the main entrance gates, the Indian summer monsoon circulation, are still uncertain. In this study, we created two bromoform emission inventories with monthly resolution for the tropical Indian Ocean and west Pacific based on new in situ bromoform measurements and novel ocean biogeochemistry modeling. The mass transport and atmospheric mixing ratios of bromoform were modeled for the year 2014 with the particle dispersion model FLEXPART driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis. We compare results between two emission scenarios: (1) monthly averaged and (2) annually averaged emissions. Both simulations reproduce the atmospheric distribution of bromoform from ship- and aircraft-based observations in the boundary layer and upper troposphere above the Indian Ocean reasonably well. Using monthly resolved emissions, the main oceanic source regions for the stratosphere include the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal in boreal summer and the tropical west Pacific Ocean in boreal winter. The main stratospheric injection in boreal summer occurs over the southern tip of India associated with the high local oceanic sources and strong convection of the summer monsoon. In boreal winter more bromoform is entrained over the west Pacific than over the Indian Ocean. The annually averaged stratospheric injection of bromoform is in the same range whether using monthly averaged or annually averaged emissions in our Lagrangian calculations. However, monthly averaged emissions result in the highest mixing ratios within the Asian monsoon anticyclone in boreal summer and above the central Indian Ocean in boreal winter, while annually averaged emissions display a maximum above the west Indian Ocean in boreal spring. In the Asian summer monsoon anticyclone bromoform atmospheric mixing ratios vary by up to 50 % between using monthly averaged and annually averaged oceanic emissions. Our results underline that the seasonal and regional stratospheric bromine injection from the tropical Indian Ocean and west Pacific critically depend on the seasonality and spatial distribution of the VSLS emissions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Thomas Blom Hansen

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92
Author(s):  
Chiara Bocci

Abstract This study examines two entries in Huang Zhong’s Words of the Sea: ‘fierce-fire oil’ and ‘tumi-dew’ (rose-water), whose connection goes back at least to the tenth century, when they were offered as tributes by the king of Champa. They continued to appear together down through the centuries, thus reinforcing the idea of a particular relation; a curious circumstance, given their utterly different nature: an incendiary medium to destroy enemies, and an intoxicating fragrance. Going back in time, one realizes that they shared a Middle Eastern origin: Byzantium, Persia and the Arabian Peninsula. As the sea-routes took on a more prominent role and new powers like Srivijaya emerged (see Kulke, 2016), they got to be appreciated along the shores of the Indian Ocean, where they generated such great profits that the locals learned to manufacture their own alternatives. Huang Zhong seems to be the first to name ‘tumi-flower dew’ this alternative rose-water.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prasannan Parthasarathi ◽  
Giorgio Riello

1978 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-193
Author(s):  
Ruth Lapidoth

The strait of Bab al-Mandeb, “the gate of tears” or “the gate of the wailing yard”, joins the high seas of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean to those of the Red Sea. The name is primarily used by geographers to designate the narrowest part of the passage, between Ras Bab al-Mandeb on the Asian shore and Ras Siyan in Africa. At this point it is bordered on the east by the Yemen Arab Republic (Northern Yemen) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (Southern Yemen), and in the west by the Republic of Djibouti (formerly the French Territory of the Afars and Issas). About 14 miles farther north, where the Red Sea (or, for that matter, the strait) is nearly 20 miles wide, lies the coast of Ethiopia (the province of Eritrea). All the riparians claim a territorial sea of 12 miles, and the Yemen Arab Republic, as well as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, also claim jurisdiction for certain purposes in an additional zone of 6 miles.On the eastern shore of the strait of Bab al-Mandeb lies the peninsula of Ras Bab al-Mandeb, which is about 6–10 km. wide. It consists of rocky, volcanic plains with several hills of 200–300 m. The coast of Ras Bab al-Mandeb is surrounded by coral reefs of a width of up to 1500 m. The border between North Yemen and South Yemen passes down the middle of Ras Bab al-Mandeb.


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