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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2018
Trade, mobility, and the sea—as concepts and practices—have, in the last several years, been the focus of superb and fascinating scholarly work. This essay explores some of the themes and arguments linking, and dividing, a body of work that has reinvigorated and shifted conversations about the Middle East toward a recognition of the significance of the Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean for our understanding of colonial and economic history. As with any review, this one cannot be comprehensive; these texts are far too rich for these limited pages. Nevertheless, I aim to trace some of the main lines of inquiry of each monograph as well as to note some of the overlaps of and differences between their arguments and approaches.
1 See, for example, Sheriff, Abdul, Slave, Spices, and Ivory in Zanzibar (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Cooper, Frederick, Plantation Slavery on the East African Coast (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Cooper, , From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.
