Indian Ocean Histories: The Many Worlds of Michael Naylor Pearson

This book offers a global history of the Indian Ocean and focuses on a holistic perspective of the worlds of water. It builds on maritime historian Michael Naylor Pearson’s works, his unorthodox approach and strong influence on the study of the Indian Ocean in viewing the oceanic space as replete with human experiences and not as an artefact of empire or as the theatre of European commercial and imperial transits focused only on trade. This interdisciplinary volume presents several ways of writing the history of the Indian Ocean. The chapters explore the changing nature of Indian Ocean history through diverse themes, including state and capital, regional identities, maritime networking, South Asian immigrants, Bay of Bengal linkages, the East India Company, Indian seamen, formal and informal collaboration in imperial networking, scientific transfers, pearling, the issues of colonial copyright, customs, excise and port cities. The volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of global history, modern history, maritime history, medieval history, Indian history, colonial history and world history.

About the Author

Rila Mukherjee is a professor, Department of History, University of Hyderabad, India. She works on spatial categories in the eastern Indian Ocean, especially in the northern Bay of Bengal, comprising the coasts of northern Odisha and West Bengal in India, littoral Bangladesh and Arakan. Her most recent publications are the co-edited Subversive Sovereigns Across the Sea: Indian Ocean Ports-of-Trade from Early Historic Times to Late Colonialism (2017); the book chapter ‘Silver-Links! Bagan-Bengal and Shadowy Metal Corridors: 9th to 13th Centuries’ in Yian, Miksic and Aung-Thwin (eds), Bagan and the World: Early Myanmar and its Global Connections (2018); and articles in Topoi , the International Journal of Maritime History , and Asian Review of World Histories .

Radhika Seshan is a professor and the head of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India where she has worked since 1996. She is the author of Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast (2012) and Ideas and Institutions in Medieval India (2013). Her most recent publications are the edited volumes Narratives, Routes and Intersections in the Pre-Modern Asian World (2016) and Re-searching Transition in Indian History (co-edited with Shraddha Kumbhojkar, 2018).