On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World
A History of Lake Tanganyika, c.1830-1890
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:4th Aug '22
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The first history of Lake Tanganyika and of eastern Africa's relationship with the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century.
Philip Gooding analyses Lake Tanganyika as a crucial frontier zone of the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century. Using interdisciplinary sources and methods, he positions African peoples and environments as integral to the histories of global economies, religions, and cultures.This is the first interdisciplinary history of Lake Tanganyika and of eastern Africa's relationship with the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century. Philip Gooding deploys diverse source materials, including oral, climatological, anthropological, and archaeological sources, to ground interpretations of the better-known, European-authored archive in local epistemologies and understandings of the past. Gooding shows that Lake Tanganyika's shape, location, and distinctive lacustrine environment contributed to phenomena traditionally associated with the history of the wider Indian Ocean World being negotiated, contested, and re-imagined in particularly robust ways. He adds novel contributions to African and Indian Ocean histories of urbanism, the environment, spirituality, kinship, commerce, consumption, material culture, bondage, slavery, Islam, and capitalism. African peoples and environments are positioned as central to the histories of global economies, religions, and cultures.
'This book challenges our previous understanding of the 19th-century relations between the East African interior and the coast. Thanks to a truly original combination of sources and methodologies, Gooding's work discusses topics and perspectives that historians of East Africa and of the Indian Ocean could not ignore in the future.' Karin Pallaver, University of Bologna
'Gooding shows how East African frontier zones centred on Lake Tanganyika became integrated into the Indian Ocean world through the spread of Swahili and Arab influences, Islam, and the dynamics of the ivory trade. His second contribution is to write the first expansive history of this neglected yet important region.' Stephen J. Rockel, University of Toronto
'a much-needed contribution to African historiography … [it] offers groundbreaking contributions that bring together the often disconnected histories of the African interiors and the broader oceanic worlds; it also provides insights into the environmental and material-cultural processes that have animated the shared histories of Lake Tanganyika and the Indian Ocean world. … Its chapters can be read as standalone introductions, which is helpful for undergraduate- and graduate-level seminars on oceanic Africa's transregional, environmental, economic, and cultural histories.' Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi, H-Net.org
'Gooding takes an innovative approach to what, in some hands, might have been limited to a regional East African study of this historiographically neglected zone by locating Lake Tanganyika as a frontier of the Indian Ocean World. … he recognizes the biases of his European sources and is meticulous in his reading of them. He is also careful in his use of oral sources.' Edward A. Alpers, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
ISBN: 9781009100748
Dimensions: 235mm x 157mm x 20mm
Weight: 540g
252 pages