
Across the Green Sea
Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440-1640
- 288 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
A history of two centuries of interactions among the areas bordering the western Indian Ocean, including India, Iran, and Africa.
Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, the regions bordering the western Indian Ocean—"the green sea," as it was known to Arabic speakers—had increasing contact through commerce, including a slave trade, and underwent cultural exchange and transformation. Using a variety of texts and documents in multiple Asian and European languages, Across the Green Sea looks at the history of the ocean from a variety of shifting viewpoints: western India; the Red Sea and Mecca; the Persian Gulf; East Africa; and Kerala.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam sets the scene for this region starting with the withdrawal of China's Ming Dynasty and explores how the western Indian Ocean was transformed by the growth and increasing prominence of the Ottoman Empire and the continued spread of Islam into East Africa. He examines how several cities, including Mecca and the vital Indian port of Surat, grew and changed during these centuries, when various powers interacted until famines and other disturbances upended the region in the seventeenth century. Rather than proposing an artificial model of a dominant center and its dominated peripheries, Across the Green Sea demonstrates the complexity of a truly dynamic and polycentric system through the use of connected histories, a method pioneered by Subrahmanyam himself.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- A Note on Transliteration
- A Note on Currency and Tonnage
- Introduction: Conceptual Issues in Connected Histories
- Chapter 1. An Epoch of Transitions, 1440–1520
- Chapter 2. The View from the Hijaz, 1500–1550
- Chapter 3. The Afro-Indian Axis
- Chapter 4. The View from Surat
- A Conclusion: Toward Polyphonic Histories
- Notes
- Index