A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire

Bose, a professor of oceanic history and affairs at Harvard, argues that the peoples living along the vast rim of the Indian Ocean share a "common, historical destiny" and an "organic unity." Doing for this ocean what the renowned Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn recently did for "Atlantic history" and, before that, the late Fernand Braudel for the "Mediterranean world," Bose examines the Indian Ocean as "an interregional arena of political, economic and cultural interaction." Lapping at such far-flung and disparate territories as India, southern Africa, the East Indies and even western Australia, the Indian Ocean is more geographically complex and civilizationally diverse than its sisters. Of prime interest to Bose, however, is whether the imposition of European political and economic domination in the early 19th century broke through the walls enclosing the ocean's "arena." Most historians have believed that the Indian Ocean lost its unity, but Bose persuasively argues that the system retained its common identity even while its components nurtured nationalist goals. Bose lacks the lucidity of his colleague Bailyn, and this book, despite its promising subject, suffers from incomprehensible phrases ("votaries of multiple modernities in diasporic public spheres") and unfortunate sentence structure. 22 b&w illus., 1 map. (Apr.)