at Tuebingen; to Engseng Ho and his Indian Ocean workshop at Duke; and to Ann Biersteker at Michigan State University. Anne Bang, Jonathan Glassman, Mandana Limbert, Brian Peterson, and Scott Reese provided important feedback on the book proposal.
Robert Harms has helped this book grow from a seminar paper to a dissertation, a series of articles, and now, a book. I hope that this book reflects his astute criticism, keen editorial eye, and commitment to good stories. I have also benefited from Abdul Sheriff’s generous mentorship and his willingness to share the research he collected for his own first book decades ago. The year I spent as a fellow at the Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute was formative for this project.
The editorial team at Ohio University Press has made this book better. I am grateful to the series editors Jean Allmen, Allen Isaacman, and Derek Peterson for their careful reading and feedback. Derek was an early champion of the manuscript, and his earnest encouragement is greatly appreciated. Two anonymous reviewers helped me sharpen my focus. Gillian Berchowitz’s kind leadership, patience, and professionalism set a high standard, and I am happy to join the ranks of authors who she has published.
In Oman, in Zanzibar, and mainland Tanzania, many people have been extraordinarily welcoming. I am particularly grateful for the hospitality and friendship of the following people and their families: Mariam Aboud, Taha-ria Said Aboud, Hamisi Ally Jumalhey, Fatma Khamis, Hilda Kiel, Leyla Said, Ibrahim Noor Shariff, Salum Saidi Suliman, and Ali al-Zefeiti. I regret that several people who influenced this project did not live to see its completion. I acknowledge my debt and sense of loss for Zein Hafidh al-Busaidi, Jan-Georg Deutsch, Suleiman Ali Suleiman al-Murjebi, and Randolph Whitfield.
This book has been written in many places, and several wonderful families have hosted me for writing retreats of various lengths including Croom and Sandy Coward, Christopher and Heather Gergen, Jonathan Holloway and Aisling Colon, and Jennifer Siegel. I owe an extra special thanks to Mike Thomas and Nancy Balfour, Chris and Dennis Harrington, Tim and Maggie Hobbs, and Randy and Suzanne Whitfield who, due to their weeks-long hospitality, got to see just how boring I am while working. Their generosity created this book.
I have benefitted from smart, engaged departmental colleagues at George Mason and at Ohio State. I am grateful to Benedict Carton, Michael Chang, Rob DeCaroli, Matt Karush, Brian Platt, and Joan Scully for their encouragement in Fairfax. In Columbus Sarah van Beurden, Nick Breyfogle, Theodora Dragistinova, Jane Hathaway, Robin Judd, Ousman Kobo, Scott Levi, Jennifer Siegel, Ahmad Sikainga, Mytheli Sreenivas, Christina Sessa, and Ying Zhang read, commented on, and discussed parts of this project with me and made it better. I am also grateful to the smart folks in the Space and Sovereignty Working Group, including Lisa Bhungalia, Melissa Curley, Becky Mansfield, Katherine Marino, Nada Moumtaz, Juno Parrenas, and Noah Tamarkin, for workshopping two chapters and generally being great intellectual company. Roxanne Willis’s editorial pen, friendship, and guidance helped me solidify chapters into a draft manuscript, and her encouragement made it fun.
I am also indebted to other academic friends who have helped me think through my work and sustained me: Eric Allina, Fahad Bishara, Bill Bissel, Justin Beckham, Sarah Beckham, David Bernstein, Lori Flores, Matt Hopper, Erik Gilbert, Sarah Igo, Pranav Jani, Arash Khazeni, Steve Lassonde, Jesse Kwiek, Lisa Moses Leff, Roger Levine, Nate Mathews, Christian McMillen, Ole Molvig, Ben Siegel, Wendy Warren, Eric Worby, and Ali al-Zefeiti. The friendships and insights of Todd Keithley and Ron Birnbaum have enriched me for nearly three decades.
Since I first started following people moving across the Indian Ocean, I have had three amazing children. While they have been incredible sources of inspiration, I could not have completed this project without the work of those who helped us take care of them, especially Kathleen Bergin, Abbie Carver, Bryna Harrington, Matt Miller, Kim Moore, Paige Phillips, Leyla Said, and Marielle Schweickart. A cadre of like-minded parents and neighbors has also sustained us: Seth Abel and Steffanie Wilk, Dana and Brent Adler, Tom and Andrea Easley, Maggie and Jeff Gumbinner, Gretchen Eiselt and Matt Harding, Elena Irwin and Brian Roe, Kelly Lynch and John Wix, Gillian Thomson and Kent Johnson, Cindy and Scott Tyson, and Kit Yoon and Jim MacDonald.
This is also a book about kinship. Thank you to my extended family, especially my own parents Croom and Sandy Coward, Thomas and Lucy McDow, and Bob and Peg Norris. Randy and Suzanne Whitfield read and patiently commented on a draft, and Clarkson McDow gave key feedback on the proposal. Maggie and Jeff Gumbinner, Randolph and Lauren McDow, Will and Leslie McDow, Mary Rincon, Eston Whitfield, and Louisa Whitfield unwittingly helped write chapter 5 by blurring the lines between siblings and cousins. Abby and Piers Norris Turner have been invaluable collaborators in all aspects of life. Maggie, Franklin, and Solomon McDow make every day better. The last person is always the most important: Without Alison Norris, this book, and my life, would not be complete.
While these pages may be poor recompense for everything that I have gained in writing them, I appreciate that the debts I have accrued bind together a wonderful network of colleagues, friends, and family that make this all worthwhile.
Note on Terms, Translation, and Transliteration
IN AMITAV GHOSH’S IBIS trilogy of historical novels that move across the worlds of the Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century, the characters speak in a variety of argots and cants specific to their particular social milieu. These include phrases from dialects of English, Hindi, Chinese, and Malayan languages, among others. Ghosh renders these wonderfully, yet I suspected that one of his goals in immersing the reader in this linguistic confusion is to underscore the multiethnic, polylingual world his characters inhabited. In this book, I would like to avoid this.
Certainly linguistic puzzles are one of the charms of the Indian Ocean. In an early round of research, I realized that the hard-to-decipher letter in front of me was not in Arabic, despite the script, but Portuguese. In this book, I have tried to solve all those puzzles for the reader by using common English spellings, where they exist, for words from other languages. In the text, I have dropped diacriticals from common names (Said for Sa‘īd, Muhammad for Muḥammad), though included them in the index. I have also used the historical place names for the period (Kutch for Kachchh, Bombay for Mumbai, Lake Nyasa for Lake Malawi). For Arabic terms and phrases that I transliterated, I have followed the standards of the International Journal of Middle East Studies for the first usage, and dropped the diacritical marks subsequently. Unless otherwise noted, all currencies are listed in Maria Theresa dollars (MT$).
Although I hope to evoke a world like Ghosh does, I am not a novelist. As a historian, one of my goals has been to translate this Indian Ocean world and ease your journey through it.
Introduction
Temporizing across the Indian Ocean
HE PROMISED TO DO it in two years. In 1869, Juma bin Salim wrote a contract, in his own hand in Arabic, to deliver 10,500 pounds of ivory to Zanzibar in two years. In exchange for a substantial advance, he agreed to bring the ivory to Ladha Damji, a Hindu financier and the leading creditor on that Indian Ocean island. In authoring the contract, Juma used the most formal version of his name—Juma bin Salim bin Mbarak bin Abdullah al-Bakri—and identified his hometown, Nizwa, in distant Oman. More than a decade before, Juma had left Oman and joined the caravan trails in central Africa, where he became known as Juma Merikani. He was famous for importing merikani, American-made cotton sheeting, which he exchanged for elephant tusks. Juma identified Ladha with an honorific title, the Arabicized version of his name, and by his position as the agent of “our lord,” the sultan of Zanzibar. The contract spelled out the exact weight of ivory and established that Ladha would pay the taxes on it. This was convenient, since Ladha and his firm collected all the taxes for the sultan.1
While
