African Merchants of the Indian Ocean - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook African Merchants of the Indian Ocean write by John Middleton. This book was released on 2003-11-07. African Merchants of the Indian Ocean available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This new monograph serves as an authoritative introduction to an unusual people of eastern Africa known as Swahili. Middleton, who has known these people for a half a century, describes their highly stratified, merchant society and civilization, documenting their importance both for anthropologists and for others interested in Africa. Swahili continue today their centuries-old role as merchants in long-distance international trade, a role that has led them to form a society very distinct from any other in Africa. Middletons brief, personal treatment discusses Swahili recorded history as an integral part of their rich tradition and civilization. He clears up past confusions and mistaken assumptions without trying to define a single Swahili identity. His lucid approach unravels contradictions about Swahili being merchants and yet fishermen, who live in both cities as well as small villages, and who reckon various kinds of kinship and marriage. Swahili are often considered by non-Swahili as being both Africans and Arabs, but Middleton shows that they remain African despite having long adopted Islam and many aspects of Arab and Asian cultures.
East Africa and the Indian Ocean
East Africa and the Indian Ocean - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook East Africa and the Indian Ocean write by Edward A. Alpers. This book was released on 2009. East Africa and the Indian Ocean available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "For centuries, East Africa has played a central role within the Indian Ocean world. The Arabs built the first trade networks there; these were laid siege to by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, followed by British colonialists in the nineteenth century. An interregional trade linked different subregions of East Africa to other Indian Ocean economies. For example, Hindu merchants from Gujarat played a leading role in the ivory trade of East Africa during the past four centuries. In the nineteenth century, Zanzibar became a major center of the Asian slave trade. While slave trading, slave raiding, and their consequences provide one thematic focus of this book, the author also demonstrates that Indian Ocean commercial networks were much more complex in the range of products exchanged, including luxury goods and staple food items, as well as enforced labor. Islam provided yet another connective tissue linking East Africa to the Indian Ocean world and served as a cultural matrix through which popular beliefs and practices were transmitted. This book offers an eye-opening perspective on an often neglected area of world history."--Publisher's description.
Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900
Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900 - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900 write by Gwyn Campbell. This book was released on 2019-07-18. Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900 available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The history of Africa's historical relationship with the rest of the Indian Ocean world is one of a vibrant exchange that included commodities, people, flora and fauna, ideas, technologies and disease. This connection with the rest of the Indian Ocean world, a macro-region running from Eastern Africa, through the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia to East Asia, was also one heavily influenced by environmental factors. In presenting this rich and varied history, Gwyn Campbell argues that human-environment interaction, more than great men, state formation, or imperial expansion, was the central dynamic in the history of the Indian Ocean world (IOW). Environmental factors, notably the monsoon system of winds and currents, helped lay the basis for the emergence of a sophisticated and durable IOW 'global economy' around 1,500 years before the so-called European 'Voyages of Discovery'. Through his focus on human-environment interaction as the dynamic factor underpinning historical developments, Campbell radically challenges Eurocentric paradigms, and lays the foundations for a new interpretation of IOW history.
Problems in the History of Modern Africa
Problems in the History of Modern Africa - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Problems in the History of Modern Africa write by Robert O. Collins. This book was released on 1997. Problems in the History of Modern Africa available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A presentation of important issues in the study of modern Africa. It addresses: decolonization and the end of Empire; democracy and the nation state; epidemics in Africa - the human and financial costs; development - failure or success; the African environment - origins of a crisis; and more.
The Merchant Houses of Mocha
The Merchant Houses of Mocha - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Merchant Houses of Mocha write by Nancy Um. This book was released on 2011-12-01. The Merchant Houses of Mocha available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Gaining prominence as a seaport under the Ottomans in the mid-1500s, the city of Mocha on the Red Sea coast of Yemen pulsed with maritime commerce. Its very name became synonymous with Yemen's most important revenue-producing crop -- coffee. After the imams of the Qasimi dynasty ousted the Ottomans in 1635, Mocha's trade turned eastward toward the Indian Ocean and coastal India. Merchants and shipowners from Asian, African, and European shores flocked to the city to trade in Arabian coffee and aromatics, Indian textiles, Asian spices, and silver from the New World. Nancy Um tells how and why Mocha's urban shape and architecture took the forms they did. Mocha was a hub in a great trade network encompassing overseas cities, agricultural hinterlands, and inland market centers. All these connected places, together with the functional demands of commerce in the city, the social stratification of its residents, and the imam's desire for wealth, contributed to Mocha's architectural and urban form. Eventually, in the mid-1800s, the Ottomans regained control over Yemen and abandoned Mocha as their coastal base. Its trade and its population diminished and its magnificent buildings began to crumble, until few traces are left of them today. This book helps bring Mocha to life once again.
