Refining the chronology and distribution of mid-fifteenth to mid-seventeenth century Indian Ocean world glass

Morphological and compositional analysis of glass beads from three shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean world has increased our understanding of the chronology and distribution of mid-fifteenth to mid-seventeenth century glass.

Enslavement in the Indian Ocean World: Introducing a Theme

No abstract

Religion and Migration in Rakhine

The historical migration and religious development in Rakhine (Arakan) up to the end of the second decade of the 21st century is complicated. This region was a crossroads for South and Southeast Asian civilizations and existed at the overlap of the frontiers of Islam and Theravada Buddhism. Existing in an ecological niche with a difficult topography and climate and a low population base, Rakhine social and state formation was built around inclusivity and tolerance. Although for much of its history the dominant religions of the population of the region were animism and then Brahmanism, successive waves of immigrants from both Bengal and Myanmar meant that Islamic and Theravada Buddhist influence was very strong. The early modern kingdom that emerged at Mrauk-U, its main political center, was built on maritime connectivity with the Indian Ocean world and developed a court culture that was both Muslim and Buddhist and ruled over a population that was religiously heterogeneous. Toleration was challenged, however, by the conquest of Rakhine by Myanmar in 1785 and efforts to eradicate local religious autonomy. Things did not improve under British rule after the British annexation of 1826. The Myanmar and British rulers of Rakhine politicized the region’s history and tried to retell the history of the region in ways that excluded some populations and included others, leading to efforts to force the Rohingya out of Rakhine from August 2017.

Review: Wilson Chacko Jacob, For God or Empire: Sayyid Fadl and the Indian Ocean World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019

No Abstract

“Owned them like a Father": Labor Contractors, Port Workers, and the Makings of Ethnicity in Singapore

Despite the importance of ports to the Indian Ocean world, labor contracting systems in ports remain understudied. By focusing on ethnic divisions of labor among port workers in colonial Singapore from the 1930s to the 1950s, this article shows how labor contractors constructed these divisions and how social organization in modern Singapore is rooted in labor contracting at the port. Past scholarship has explained merchants’ propensity to form partnerships within the same kin or ethnic circles with the notion of trust: that those of the same kin or ethnicity could be trusted more easily. However, this article argues that labor contractors often recruited migrant workers from the contractors’ home villages and regions because shared kinship and ethnicity allowed contractors to better control workers’ laboring, social, and cultural life. Performances of shared kinship and ethnicity gave contractors power as both employers and community leaders. After World War II, port workers also solidified ethnic divisions by organizing into unions along the lines of ethnicity, and they secured benefits as ethnic blocs, rather than for all port workers. This post-war moment of organizing labor by ethnicity has shaped labor activism in Singapore today as migrant workers continue to strike in ethnic blocs to protest disparities in working conditions between workers of different ethnicities.

India and the Compagnie des Indes in the Age of the French Revolution

This article examines the global history of the Age of Revolution through the lens of the Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes (1785–94). Established in the aftermath of the American Revolution, the company was not only a commercial entity but also an integral part of a diplomatic strategy for reestablishing the postwar Franco-British relationship. The geopolitical context of the Indian Ocean world forced French political and commercial actors to imagine forms of imperial and commercial power that frequently placed French interests under British protection, often in ways that provoked significant opposition in the metropole. Amid ideologies of competition, Anglophobia, and militarism, the case of the Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes reveals how both state and private actors struggled to promote wide-ranging commercial collaboration between France and Britain in the 1780s and 1790s in ways that often anticipated later partnerships between the two empires. Cet article examine l'histoire globale de l’ère de la Révolution française à travers le prisme de la Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes (1785–94). Etablie après la guerre d'indépendance américaine, la compagnie n’était pas seulement une entité commerciale, mais une partie intégrante d'une stratégie diplomatique pour rétablir les relations franco-britanniques. Le contexte géopolitique de l'océan Indien exigeait que les acteurs politiques et commerciaux français imaginent de nouvelles formes de pouvoir impérial et commercial. Celles-ci plaçaient fréquemment les intérêts français sous la protection britannique, souvent d'une manière qui provoquait de fortes résistances dans la métropole. Dans un contexte idéologique de compétition, d'anglophobie et de militarisme, le cas de la Nouvelle Compagnie des Indes révèle que des acteurs aussi bien étatiques que privés essayaient de promouvoir une vaste collaboration commerciale entre la France et la Grande-Bretagne dans les années 1780 et 1790, en anticipant souvent les partenariats ultérieurs entre les deux empires.