Across The Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440–1640

A history of two centuries of interactions among the areas bordering the western Indian Ocean, including India, Iran and Africa. ‘This book is an example of connected histories at its best. Subrahmanyam has a unique command of archival materials and carefully recounts forgotten histories of slaves, warriors, merchants, writers and rulers, masterfully evoking the polyphony of this early modern maritime world.’ ‘An impressive feat of scholarship. Subrahmanyam brings ways of life that have been obscured by anachronistic understandings of identity and culture back to life. This book clearly demonstrates why Subrahmanyam’s “connected histories” approach is one of the best tools for a polyphonic history of the early modern world.’ ‘I don’t think anyone who has followed the developments of the last thirty years in the discipline of history will be surprised if I say that Subrahmanyam is one of the most important historians of our time.’ Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, the regions bordering the western Indian Ocean – ‘the green sea,’ as it was known to Arabic speakers – underwent vast transformation. An era of commercial and cultural exchange blossomed between the Red Sea and Mecca, the Persian Gulf, East Africa, Kerala and western India. In Across the Green Sea, Sanjay Subrahmanyam recounts the history of this ocean from a variety of shifting viewpoints. He sets the scene 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 centre and its dominated peripheries, Across the Green Sea reveals the complexity of a truly dynamic and polycentric system through the use of connected histories, a method which he has pioneered.

• | Author: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
• | Publisher: Saqi Books
• | Publication Date: Jul 02, 2024
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9780863569517
• | ISBN-10: 086356951X