Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination
Gaurav Desai
Abstract
This book provides an alternative history of Africa's experience with slavery, migration, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. It draws on the life narratives and literary texts of South Asians writing in and about East Africa. In this way it broadens the scope of African and South Asian scholarship and provides a nuanced understanding of the Indian Ocean's fertile routes of exchange. It shows how the Indian Ocean engendered a number of syncretic identities and helped shape the medieval trade routes of the Islamicate empire, the early African independence movements (galvanized in part ... More
This book provides an alternative history of Africa's experience with slavery, migration, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. It draws on the life narratives and literary texts of South Asians writing in and about East Africa. In this way it broadens the scope of African and South Asian scholarship and provides a nuanced understanding of the Indian Ocean's fertile routes of exchange. It shows how the Indian Ocean engendered a number of syncretic identities and helped shape the medieval trade routes of the Islamicate empire, the early African independence movements (galvanized in part by Gandhi's southern African experiences), the invention of new ethnic nationalisms, and the rise of plural, multiethnic African nations. Calling attention to lives and literatures long neglected by traditional scholars, the book introduces rich, interdisciplinary ways of thinking not only about this specific region but also about the very nature of ethnic history and identity. Travelling from the twelfth century to today, it concludes with a look at contemporary Asian populations in East Africa and their struggles to decide how best to participate in the development and modernization of their postcolonial nations without sacrificing their political autonomy.
Keywords:
East Africa,
slavery,
migration,
colonialism,
nationalism,
globalization,
Islamicate empire,
postcolonial nations,
Indian Ocean
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780231164542 |
| Published to Columbia Scholarship Online: November 2015 |
DOI:10.7312/columbia/9780231164542.001.0001 |
