MDVL 380DThe Indian Ocean before 1800

Catalog

This course uses as its entry point, a historic center of global encounters and exchange: the Indian Ocean world, before it was dragged into global oil wars. It explores how commonly shared ideas of religion and objects like spices and textiles linked people from Madagascar to Myanmar, and from the Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca. Throughout, the course will probe the interconnected themes of environment, religion, commerce, and politics in the region. Students will study these oceanic themes in connection with the changing culture of the Arabs, Persians, Swahilis, Indians, Chinese, Malay and subsequently the Europeans. Through exchanged pottery, coinage, prayer, and merchant-letters students will gauge how history looks, feels, and sounds different from the vantage point of the ocean. In this way, they will be able to appreciate the long history of religious, political, and commercial networks that harnessed wind-power, networks of credit, and spiritual prowess across the ocean. Simultaneously, the course spotlights how the hunt for resources like timber, ivory, and gunpowder, and for enslaved labor, periodically ignited wars and disrupted the ocean, especially in the early modern period. Finally, students will examine maritime archives to evaluate how and why the ocean became more volatile or well connected at certain historical junctures. Overall, students should be able to appreciate the richness and complexity of a region which has been a historical center of world commerce, connections, and conflict.