A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global EmpireOn December 26, 2004, giant tsunami waves destroyed communities around the Indian Ocean, from Indonesia to Kenya. Beyond the horrific death toll, this wall of water brought a telling reminder of the interconnectedness of the many countries on the ocean rim, and the insignificance of national boundaries. A Hundred Horizons takes us to these shores, in a brilliant reinterpretation of how culture developed and history was made at the height of the British raj. Between 1850 and 1950, the Indian Ocean teemed with people, commodities, and ideas: pilgrims and armies, commerce and labor, the politics of Mahatma Gandhi and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore were all linked in surprising ways. Sugata Bose finds in these intricate social and economic webs evidence of the interdependence of the peoples of the lands beyond the horizon, from the Middle East to East Africa to Southeast Asia. In following this narrative, we discover that our usual ways of looking at history--through the lens of nationalism or globalization--are not adequate. The national ideal did not simply give way to inevitable globalization in the late twentieth century, as is often supposed; Bose reveals instead the vital importance of an intermediate historical space, where interregional geographic entities like the Indian Ocean rim foster nationalist identities and goals yet simultaneously facilitate interaction among communities. A Hundred Horizons merges statistics and myth, history and poetry, in a remarkable reconstruction of how a region's culture, economy, politics, and imagination are woven together in time and place. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Gulf between Precolonial and Colonial Empires | 36 |
Flows of Capitalists Laborers and Commodities | 72 |
Waging War for King and Country | 122 |
Expatriate Patriots Anticolonial Imagination and Action | 148 |
Pilgrims Progress under Colonial Rules | 193 |
A Different Universalism? Oceanic Voyages of a Poet as Pilgrim | 233 |
The Indian Ocean Arena in the Hlstory of Globalisation | 272 |
Notes | 285 |
Index | 315 |
Other editions - View all
A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire Sugata Bose No preview available - 2009 |
A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire Sugata Bose No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
anticolonial Arab Army Ayesha Jalal Bahrain Bengal Bombay Burma Burmese Büshehr Calcutta capital capitalists Chattopadhyay Chettiars Chinese cloves coast colonial communities cultural Curzon Daryabadi decades Delhi dian early East Africa economic European expatriates frontiers Gandhi global Gujarati hajj Hasan Hejaz Hindu Ibid imperial Indian merchants Indian National Indian Ocean Indian Ocean arena Indian Ocean rim interregional arena Iraq Islam Japanese Jatrir Java journey Karachi Khan Khilafat Kiani land leader London Malay Malaya Mecca Medina Mesopotamian campaign migration million rupees modern movement Mughal Muslim Natal Netaji Research Bureau nineteenth century Nizami number of Indian patriotism pearl percent Persian Gulf pilgrimage pilgrims poem poet Political Agent Political Resident port precolonial Prophet Punjabi Qatif Rabindranath Tagore Rangoon religious Report Shah sheikh ship Singapore South Africa South Asian Southeast Asia sovereignty Subhas Chandra Bose Sugata Bose Tagore's Tamil tion trade twentieth century unity Urdu voyage wrote Zanzibar
Popular passages
Page 37 - We opened these seas to the ships of all nations and enabled their flags to fly in peace. We have not seized or held your territory. We have not destroyed your independence, but have preserved it. We are not now going to throw away this century of costly and triumphant enterprise.
Page 103 - It is the Indian trader who, penetrating and maintaining himself in all sorts of places to which no White man would go or in which no White man who would earn a living, has more than anyone else developed the early beginnings of trade and opened up the first slender means of communication.
Page 234 - The Nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril.
Page 56 - For years a rebel colony has threatened our frontier, from time to time sending forth fanatic swarms, who have attacked our camps, burned our villages, murdered our subjects, and involved our troops in three costly wars.
Page ix - We have burned our bridges behind us - indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity.
Page 244 - I am sending you a Bengali book of poems which I wish I could place in your hands personally. I have dedicated it to you though you will never be able to know what it contains. A large number of poems in this book were written while I was in San Isidro .... I hope this book will have the chance of a longer time with you than its author had.
Page 190 - Though the INA failed in their immediate objective, they have a lot to their credit of which they might well be proud. Greatest among these was to gather together, under one banner, men from all religions and races of India, and to infuse into them the spirit of solidarity and oneness to the exclusion of all communal or parochial sentiment. It is an example which we should all emulate.
Page 285 - Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. II, pp.
Page 138 - India, which to me it seemed was based on "injustice" and to remove this injustice, I decided to sacrifice my everything, my life, my home, my family and its traditions. I made up my mind to fight even against my brother if he stood in my way, and in the actual fighting that followed in 1944 we actually fought against each other. He was wounded. My cousin and I were fighting each other in Chin Hill, almost daily for two months. In short the question before me was the King or the country: I decided...
References to this book
Rising India and Indian Communities in East Asia K Kesavapany,A Mani,P Ramasamy Limited preview - 2008 |