The Indian Ocean
Description. A short description of a book from my bookshelf, not a review.
Michael Pearson writes a history of the Indian Ocean as a single world, held together by monsoon winds, trade and the movement of people over several thousand years. He moves from the ancient trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus to the Islamic trading networks, the arrival of the Portuguese and the long era of European dominance.
The book's strength is its ocean-centred view. Rather than treating the sea as a gap between land empires, Pearson shows how ports, merchant communities and seasonal winds shaped the societies around the rim. For anyone interested in India's maritime past, and in why the Indian Ocean matters again today, it is a thoughtful foundation.
From the bookshelf · read 2019–2020