Ocean as Method: Thinking with the Maritime

The volume:

• Engages with the paradigms of oceanic narratives to identify connections between continents through trade, migration, and economic processes, thinking beyond the artificial distinctions between the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans;

• Discusses oceanic travel accounts by Muslim travellers to counter the idea that the colonial era was marked by European travel to Asia and Africa, without a counterflow of “native travel”;

•Examines the connections between South Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia through histories of Indian indenture and the slave trade, and engages with the idea of the ocean and enforced movement;

•Compares and connects recent scholarship in the social sciences and the humanities centring the ocean to break away from inherited paradigms which have shaped world history so far.

As a unique transdisciplinary collaboration, this volume will be of much interest to scholars and researchers of history, especially oceanic history, historiography, critical theory, literature, geography, and Global South studies.