What is it about?

This study will open the discussion on the Baloch people from South Central Asia and their role in the Persian/Arab Gulf and in East Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth century. The major motivations to Baloch movements were originated from environmental issues as well as from socio-economic and political conditions in their land. These conditions implied numerous consequences such as the expansion of lawless habits throughout their region, enslaving by external powerful groups, and the progressive creation of new roles in the Gulf region and in East Africa such as the military one.

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Why is it important?

We are aware of the nowadays many integration problems between nationals and non-nationals in most of the Gulf countries, and the Baloch contribution to the richness of Gulf culture could represent a significant step towards a future potential cooperation and integration through reform governmental projects. The Indian Ocean culture was in fact a ‘global’, although not ‘globalised’, community since immemorial times; nevertheless, each ethnic group composing this cosmopolitan world succeeded in preserving its own cultural identity.

Perspectives

The gradual creation of an ‘empty space power’ in this area often lead to wrong focuses on the processes of dominance; at the same time, numerous contemporary local and regional interpretations were too blinded by resentment, sorrow and injustice to offer lucid analysis. International, as well as regional policies that did ignore consistently both of these perspectives were, and probably will, destined to fail. Consequently, we believe that only an inward looking perspective to the region and to the identity of the Baloch, essentially a cultural identity regardless of political boundaries, could ease and develop new, and more empathic approaches to the study of their roles throughout the Indian Ocean region.

Prof. Ph.D. Beatrice Nicolini
Catholic University, Milan, Italy

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This page is a summary of: “Hearing the Sound of the Flute from Zanzibar”: Migrating Communities and Slave Trade Routes in the Indian Ocean, December 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004356481_010.
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