Milo Kearney is Professor Emertius at the University of Texas at Brownsville. His books include Boom and Bust: The Historical Cycles of Matamoros and Brownsville (1991), Border Cuates: A History of the U.S.–Mexican Twin Cities (1995), and Medieval Culture and the Mexican–American Borderlands (2001).

• List of maps, Acknowledgments, 1 Introduction, 2 The earliest leadership in Indian Ocean trade, 3 Early northern Mediterranean and Chinese influence, 4 The Arab golden age, 5 The Chinese and northern Mediterranean resurgence, 6 The first assertion of North Atlantic influence, 7 The British Raj period, 8 The Cold War period, 9 The latest turn of the wheel, Index

Milo Kearney is Professor Emertius at the University of Texas at Brownsville. His books include Boom and Bust: The Historical Cycles of Matamoros and Brownsville (1991), Border Cuates: A History of the U.S.–Mexican Twin Cities (1995), and Medieval Culture and the Mexican–American Borderlands (2001).

• List of maps, Acknowledgments, 1 Introduction, 2 The earliest leadership in Indian Ocean trade, 3 Early northern Mediterranean and Chinese influence, 4 The Arab golden age, 5 The Chinese and northern Mediterranean resurgence, 6 The first assertion of North Atlantic influence, 7 The British Raj period, 8 The Cold War period, 9 The latest turn of the wheel, Index

Milo Kearney is Professor Emertius at the University of Texas at Brownsville. His books include Boom and Bust: The Historical Cycles of Matamoros and Brownsville (1991), Border Cuates: A History of the U.S.–Mexican Twin Cities (1995), and Medieval Culture and the Mexican–American Borderlands (2001).

• List of maps, Acknowledgments, 1 Introduction, 2 The earliest leadership in Indian Ocean trade, 3 Early northern Mediterranean and Chinese influence, 4 The Arab golden age, 5 The Chinese and northern Mediterranean resurgence, 6 The first assertion of North Atlantic influence, 7 The British Raj period, 8 The Cold War period, 9 The latest turn of the wheel, Index