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

Panel Convenor(s)

• BB

  Bhaswati Bhattacharya

  Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany

Panel Chair(s)

• MK

  Mahmood Kooria

  University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Presenter(s)

• BB

  Bhaswati Bhattacharya

  Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
• SG

  Sarvani Gooptu

  Netaji Institute For Asian Studies, India
• CG

  Chhaya Goswami

  S K Somaiya Degree College of Arts, Science and Commerce, University of Mumbai, India

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:

• 14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)

  Structure and Agency in the World of Indian Ocean Commerce, 1700-1800
  

  Presenter: Bhaswati Bhattacharya – Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• 14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)

  Understanding the self and the other: Travels in Indonesia by Bengali intellectuals in 20th century
  

  Presenter: Sarvani Gooptu – Netaji Institute For Asian Studies
• 14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)

  Maritime Violence and Power in the Gulf of Kachchh
  

  Presenter: Chhaya Goswami – S K Somaiya Degree College of Arts, Science and Commerce, University of Mumbai