Structure and Agency in the Indian Ocean during 1500-1900 II

Panel Convenor(s)

• BB

  Bhaswati Bhattacharya

  Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany

Panel Chair(s)

• MK

  Mahmood Kooria

  University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Presenter(s)

• AS

  Anjana Singh

  University of Groningen, Netherlands
• SM

  Sara Mondini

  University of Gent, Belgium
• 

  Meenu Kanojia

  Independent Research Scholar, Singapore

This panel looks at the complex interaction between structure and agency in the Indian Ocean during this long period keeping the local and global history in mind. An ever-growing literature underlines the historical forces unifying the landmass encompassing the Indian Ocean. The spread of Islam and a Persianate culture, the adoption of features of Islamic law, and the presence of polyglot ports housing polyphonous individuals of multiple origins were certain universal features common in states across the giant waterbody from the South China Sea in the East to the Eastern Mediterranean in the West. Socio-cultural processes and ties across cultural, religious and national boundaries in this extensive region point to an interconnectedness of the cultures and societies facilitating circulation of goods, ideas, people and myths. A dominant feature throughout the area, through the transmission of belief and rituals of prayer blending with local customs and practices, Islam transcended the local to become quasi universal. Caravans, marketplaces, ships and ports saw people of diverse ethnic groups travelling with, living in the proximity of, tolerating and interacting with each other at spaces across the ocean and overland. This led to the development of an indigenous cosmopolitanism in the Indian Ocean World in the early modern times. (e.g., Lefèvre et al 2015, Subrahmanyam 2018). The strength of the diverse interregional, transnational ties across the Indian Ocean is said to be persistent, surviving major changes affecting the nature of the polities across the Indian Ocean, and generating new kinds of connections.

A less researched aspect of this history is the tension between structure and agency. For, notwithstanding the age-old connections forged by diplomats, traders, convicts, labourers, preachers and the like, the lives of individual border-crossers negotiating territorial and cultural displacements often reflect an alienation (Subrahmanyam 2011).  

The panel invites papers on different aspects shedding light on the multifaceted relationship between structure and agency. How did the “internally connected” Indian Ocean “world within a world” (Alpers 2013), adjust its form and structure in response to the changing polities along its littoral? To what extent did the structure condition the agency? How did the agency of slaves work out vis-à-vis the intersections of slavery, racism, and the expansion of colonial empires (Horne, 2020)?  Exploring such longue durée elements through historical changes at the micro and the micro level, the panel will underline aspects of human history that defy the logic of state, cultural and regional boundaries.

Presentations:

• 16:15 – 18:00 (GMT+7)

  Connected Cochin: VOC's Shipping network in the Indian Ocean World 1663-1795
  

  Presenter: Anjana Singh – University of Groningen
• 16:15 – 18:00 (GMT+7)

  Is the architectural vocabulary reflecting the tensions between structure and agency? The case of Malabar mosques
  

  Presenter: Sara Mondini – University of Gent
• 16:15 – 18:00 (GMT+7)

  The Case Study of Shah Muncher Jee and his Trading Networks in South and Southeast Asia in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.
  

  Presenter: Meenu Ashish Kanojia – Independent Research Scholar