Scholar Voices: Alpers

Indian Ocean: Cradle of Globalization
Scholar Voices
Edward Alpers

In a career spanning four decades, Edward Alpers has conducted research in every region of East African Indian Ocean littoral. A social and economic historian by training, Alpers began with a monograph on nineteenth century caravan trade in Southeastern Africa, Ivory and Slaves, published in 1975. Thereafter, between teaching stints in Tanzania and Somalia, and administrative duties at UCLA, his interests moved progressively up the coast. During the 1980s and 1990s, he produced articles on trade and politics in precolonial Tanzania, Swahili household and community dynamics in coastal Kenya and Somalia, and on African laborers in Aden.

At present, Alpers is involved in a broad, synthetic project — African involvement in the wider, Indian Ocean world. He has worked diligently to forge links with scholars from a variety of institutions in Africa, Asia, and especially the islands of the Indian Ocean. In 2002, at UCLA, he organized the first ever, academic conference on Africa and the Indian Ocean world. And drawing upon his considerable expertise, Alpers is drafting a history of Africa diaspora in the Indian Ocean world.

Reading List:

Alpers, Edward A. 2002. Imagining the Indian Ocean World. [PDF format] UCLA Opening Address to the International Conference on Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World.

Borso, Giorgio (ed.). 1990. Trade and Politics in the Indian Ocean: History and Contemporary Perspectives. New Delhi: Manohar.

Casson, Lionel. 1984. The Periplus Maris Erythraei, Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chaudhuri, K.N. 1978. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chaudhuri, K.N. 1990. Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Curtin, Philip D. 1984. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Das Gupta, Ashin. 2001. The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant 1500-1800. Compiled by Uma Das Gupta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

De Romanis, F. and A. Tchernia (eds.). 1997. Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India. New Delhi: Manohar.

Graham, G.S. 1967. Great Britain in the Indian Ocean: a study of maritime enterprise 1810-1850. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hourani, George. 1995 [1951]. Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times. Revised and expanded by John Carswell. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lewis, Martin W. and Kären E. Wigen. 1997. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Martin, Esmond Bradley and Chrysee Perry Martin. 1978. Cargoes of the East: The Ports, Trade and Culture of the Arabian Seas and the Western Indian Ocean. London: Elm Tree Books.

McPherson, Kenneth. 1993. The Indian Ocean: A History of People and the Sea. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Pearson, Michael. 1998. Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Ratnagar, Shereen F. 1981. Encounters: The Westerly Trade of the Harappa Civilization. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Ray, Himanshu Prabha. 1994. The winds of change: Buddhism and the maritime links of early South Asia. Delhi : Oxford University Press.

Ray, Himanshu Prabha (ed.). 1999. Archaeology of seafaring: the Indian Ocean in the ancient period. Delhi : Pragati Publications.

Tibbetts, G.R. 1971. Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean Before the Coming of the Portuguese being a translation of Kitab al-Fawa'id fi usul al-bahr wa'l-qawa'id of Ahmad b. Majid al-Najid. London: The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Toussaint, Auguste. 1966. A History of the Indian Ocean. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

UNESCO. 1980. Historical Relations across the Indian Ocean. The general history of Africa, Studies and documents 3. Paris: UNESCO.

The UTS Review, 6/2 (2000): "The Indian Ocean," edited by Devleena Ghosh and Stephen Muecke.

Villiers, Alan. 1940. Sons of Sinbad. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Warmington, E.H. 1974. The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India. Revised ed. London and New York

Publications:

Alpers has published Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (1975) and a wide range of chapters in books and scholarly articles. He has co-edited with Pierre-Michel Fontaine Walter Rodney: Revolutionary and Scholar (1982), with William Worger and Nancy Clark Africa and the West: A Documentary history from the Slave Trade to Independence (2001), and with Vijaya Teelock History, Memory, and Identity: The Origins of Mauritian Slaves (2001). He is currently writing a political economy of eastern Tanzania in the nineteenth century while at the same time engaged in a long-term study of the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean. He will also be writing a text entitled The African Diaspora: A Global Perspective.

Edward A. Alpers

Professor of History University of California
Los Angeles

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