The Western Indian Ocean as Cultural Corridor

What is it about?

The interactions between land and sea have influenced the histories of many societies and civilizations. Similar ecologies around the Indian Ocean, and the monsoon system that dominates this huge liquid region, have given rise to a great deal of similarities in the social, political, religious, and cultural fields, creating cosmopolitan maritime societies. The Swahili civilization, for example, developed at the confluence between the continental world of Africa and the maritime world of the Indian Ocean, that is visible in every aspect of their culture. Similar tendencies characterise the Hadhrami coast of Arabia, the Swahili littorals in Eastern Africa, and the Malabar coast of India. They were part of a global unity that long preceded the capitalist unification of the world from the sixteenth century, and the more recent process of globalisation.

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Why is it important?

The sea and the land: a water “drunkness”? Numerous experts did stress on the maritime and commercial orientation of regional and local economies, but have paid little attention to land-based subsistence activities, including farming and the exploitation of terrestrial flora and fauna in the Indian Ocean. And one of the results was an Indian Ocean history mainly focused on the sea, maybe for a - too - long period.

Perspectives