The Worlds of the Indian Ocean
A Global History

Volume 1 reorients world history, placing the Indian Ocean, not Europe, at the center of the globalization of the pre-modern world.

Philippe Beaujard (Author)

9781108424561, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 October 2019

946 pages, 26 b/w illus. 80 colour illus. 40 maps 15 tables
28.6 x 22.2 x 4.5 cm, 2.97 kg

'… a really interesting journey through the history of all states of Afro-Eurasian World …' Fabrizio Martino, Global Maritime History

Europe's place in history is re-assessed in this first comprehensive history of the ancient world, centering on the Indian Ocean and its role in pre-modern globalization. Philippe Beaujard presents an ambitious and comprehensive global history of the Indian Ocean world, from the earliest state formations to 1500 CE. Supported by a wealth of empirical data, full color maps, plates, and figures, he shows how Asia and Africa dominated the economic and cultural landscape and the flow of ideas in the pre-modern world. This led to a trans-regional division of labor and an Afro-Eurasian world economy. Beaujard questions the origins of capitalism and hints at how this world-system may evolve in the future. The result is a reorienting of world history, taking the Indian Ocean, rather than Europe, as the point of departure. Volume I provides in-depth coverage of the period from the fourth millennium BCE to the sixth century CE.

Prologue: the geography of the Indian Ocean and the navigation
Part I. The Ancient Routes of Trade and Cultural Exchanges and the First States (6th-2nd Millenia BC): Introduction
1. The birth of the state
2. Early Bronze Age I in Western Asia and in Egypt (ca. 3000–2700 BC)
3. Early Bronze Age II (ca. 2700–1950 BC)
4. The new spaces of the Middle Bronze Age in Asia and in Egypt (ca.2000–1750 BC) 
5. The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1100 BC), an Area Unified around the Eastern Mediterranean 
6. East Asia. From Villages to States (Ca. 5000–1027 BC)
7. The emergence of intermediary spaces
Conclusion: Were there world-sytems during the Bronze Age?
Part II. The Birth of the Afro-Eurasian World-System (1st Millennium BC-1st Century AD): Introduction
8. The beginnings of the Iron Age
9. The roads to the Orient
10. India. The birth of a new core
11. Southeast Asia, an interface between two oceans
12. China. From kingdoms to unification
13. Arabia. Maritime cultures and the rise of the caravan trade
14. East Africa: the emergence of a pre-Swahili culture on the Azanian coast
15. The Austronesian expansion and the first Malagasy cultures.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF], General & world history [HBG]