Edward A. Alpers – författare

The Indian Ocean remains the least studied of the world's geographic regions. Yet there have been major cultural exchanges across its waters and around its shores from the third millennium B.C.E. to the present day. Historian Edward A. Alpers explores the complex issues involved in cultural exchange in the Indian Ocean Rim region over the course of this long period of time by combining a historical approach with the insights of anthropology, art history, ethnomusicology, and geography.The Indian Ocean witnessed several significant diasporas during the past two millennia, including migrations of traders, indentured laborers, civil servants, sailors, and slaves throughout the entire basin. Persians and Arabs from the Gulf came to eastern Africa and Madagascar as traders and settlers, while Hadramis dispersed from south Yemen as traders and Muslim teachers to the Comoro Islands, Zanzibar, South India, and Indonesia. Southeast Asians migrated to Madagascar, and Chinese dispersed from Southeast Asia to the Mascarene Islands to South Africa.Alpers also explores the cultural exchanges that diasporas cause, telling stories of identity and cultural transformation through language, popular religion, music, dance, art and architecture, and social organization. For example, architectural and decorative styles in eastern Africa, the Red Sea, the Hadramaut, the Persian Gulf, and western India reflect cultural interchanges in multiple directions. Similarly, the popular musical form of taarab in Zanzibar and coastal East Africa incorporates elements of Arab, Indian, and African musical traditions, while the characteristic frame drum (ravanne) of séga, the widespread Afro-Creole dance of the Mascarene and Seychelles Islands, probably owes its ultimate origins to Arabia by way of Mozambique.The Indian Ocean in World History also discusses issues of trade and production that show the long history of exchange throughout the Indian Ocean world; politics and empire-building by both regional and European powers; and the role of religion and religious conversion, focusing mainly on Islam, but also mentioning Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. Using a broad geographic perspective, the book includes references to connections between the Indian Ocean world and the Americas. Moving into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Alpers looks at issues including the new configuration of colonial territorial boundaries after World War I, and the search for oil reserves.

The Indian Ocean remains the least studied of the world's geographic regions. Yet there have been major cultural exchanges across its waters and around its shores from the third millennium B.C.E. to the present day. Historian Edward A. Alpers explores the complex issues involved in cultural exchange in the Indian Ocean Rim region over the course of this long period of time by combining a historical approach with the insights of anthropology, art history, ethnomusicology, and geography.The Indian Ocean witnessed several significant diasporas during the past two millennia, including migrations of traders, indentured laborers, civil servants, sailors, and slaves throughout the entire basin. Persians and Arabs from the Gulf came to eastern Africa and Madagascar as traders and settlers, while Hadramis dispersed from south Yemen as traders and Muslim teachers to the Comoro Islands, Zanzibar, South India, and Indonesia. Southeast Asians migrated to Madagascar, and Chinese dispersed from Southeast Asia to the Mascarene Islands to South Africa.Alpers also explores the cultural exchanges that diasporas cause, telling stories of identity and cultural transformation through language, popular religion, music, dance, art and architecture, and social organization. For example, architectural and decorative styles in eastern Africa, the Red Sea, the Hadramaut, the Persian Gulf, and western India reflect cultural interchanges in multiple directions. Similarly, the popular musical form of taarab in Zanzibar and coastal East Africa incorporates elements of Arab, Indian, and African musical traditions, while the characteristic frame drum (ravanne) of séga, the widespread Afro-Creole dance of the Mascarene and Seychelles Islands, probably owes its ultimate origins to Arabia by way of Mozambique.The Indian Ocean in World History also discusses issues of trade and production that show the long history of exchange throughout the Indian Ocean world; politics and empire-building by both regional and European powers; and the role of religion and religious conversion, focusing mainly on Islam, but also mentioning Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. Using a broad geographic perspective, the book includes references to connections between the Indian Ocean world and the Americas. Moving into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Alpers looks at issues including the new configuration of colonial territorial boundaries after World War I, and the search for oil reserves.

This is a new edition of volume two of Africa and the West: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to Independence. The second volume is be divided into two sections: Colonialism and Its Critics and The Contradictions of Post-Colonial Independence. This new edition uses all of the documents in the first edition, taken from both African and European sources, and adds some 20 pages of additional documents to cover the most recent developments. Some documents are the expected types, such as the Natives Land Act from South Africa, Mandela's "No Easy Walk to Freedom," and Nkrumah on pan-Africanism; others are more unusual, such as a German school examination for African children. Many of the sources have not previously appeared in print, or in books readily available to students. The authors have provided a detailed table of contents in place of impressionistic and often uninformative chapter titles; expanded the bibliography; added a list of websites for African historical resources; and added a few new maps.This book provides a unique resource both for African history survey courses and for topical courses on imperialism, colonialism, economic history, and East-West relations.

This is a new and expanded edition of the volume one Africa and the West: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to Independence. It covers the era of the slave trade through abolition and then conquest as the European scramble for Africa began. This new edition uses all of the documents in the first edition, taken from both African and European sources, as well as dozens of new photographs and over twenty new documents. Some are the expected types: missionaries' reports, government legislation and orders, slave memoirs; others are unexpected, such as a chart of the costs of African animals exported to Western zoos. Many of the sources have not previously appeared in print, or in books readily available to students. The authors have provided a detailed table of contents in place of impressionistic and often uninformative chapter titles; expanded the bibliography; added a list of websites for African historical resources; and added new maps.This book provides a unique resource both for African history survey courses and for topical courses on imperialism, colonialism, economic history, and East-West relations.

This book - previously published as a special issue of the journal Slavery and Abolition - provides pioneering studies on the nature and structure of resistance to forms of bondage in Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean world.

This important collection of essays examines the history and impact of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the Indian Ocean World, a region stretching from Southern and Eastern Africa to the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and the Far East.Slavery studies have traditionally concentrated on the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. In comparison, the Indian Ocean World slave trade has been little explored, although it started some 3,500 years before the Atlantic slave trade and persists to the present day. This volume, which follows a collection of essays The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (Frank Cass, 2004), examines the various abolitionist impulses, indigenous and European, in the Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It assesses their efficacy within a context of a growing demand for labour resulting from an expanding international economy and European colonisation.The essays show that in applying definitions of slavery derived from the American model, European agents in the region failed to detect or deliberately ignored other forms of slavery, and as a result the abolitionist impulse was only partly successful with the slave trade still continuing today in many parts of the Indian Ocean World.

This book provides a series of pioneering studies, by experts in the field, on resistance to forms of bondage in Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean world. It analyses the causes, duration and structure of resistance, from go-slows to flight, and theft to sabotage. It also examines the reaction to resistance by the propertied classes and assesses to what degree, if any, resistance was effective in alleviating the nature of bondage. The case studies, drawn from a wide spectrum of geographical areas and historical eras, underscore similarities and contrasts across the Africa-Asian regions. Summaries of these and a comparison with the much more publicized Atlantic system make this volume essential reading for scholars and students across a broad spectrum of disciplines and area studies.This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Slavery and Abolition.

Professor Shepperson says of this regional economic history of East Central Africa that it is a "refreshing combination of a scholarly survey of a relatively new field of African history and of a contribution to an important controversy on African underdevelopment." Alpers has written a history of the penetration and changing character of international trade in East Central Africa from the fifteenth to the later nineteenth century. His study focuses on a vast and little known region that includes southern Tanzania, northern Mozambique, and Malawi, with extension north along the Swahili coast and west as far as the Lunda state of the Mwata Kazembe. He examines both the competition between traders and their internal impact on the various societies of East Central Africa. Alpers' main concern is to demonstrate that the historical roots of underdevelopment in the area are to be found 'in the system of international trade which was initiated by Arabs in the fifteenth century, seized and extended by the Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dominated by a complex mixture of Indian, Arab and Western capitalisms in the nineteenth century'. Thus this readable and original book places East African trading systems within the larger Western Indian Ocean system and in the world capitalist system. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Professor Shepperson says of this regional economic history of East Central Africa that it is a "refreshing combination of a scholarly survey of a relatively new field of African history and of a contribution to an important controversy on African underdevelopment." Alpers has written a history of the penetration and changing character of international trade in East Central Africa from the fifteenth to the later nineteenth century. His study focuses on a vast and little known region that includes southern Tanzania, northern Mozambique, and Malawi, with extension north along the Swahili coast and west as far as the Lunda state of the Mwata Kazembe. He examines both the competition between traders and their internal impact on the various societies of East Central Africa. Alpers' main concern is to demonstrate that the historical roots of underdevelopment in the area are to be found 'in the system of international trade which was initiated by Arabs in the fifteenth century, seized and extended by the Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dominated by a complex mixture of Indian, Arab and Western capitalisms in the nineteenth century'. Thus this readable and original book places East African trading systems within the larger Western Indian Ocean system and in the world capitalist system. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

This important collection of essays examines the history and impact of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the Indian Ocean World, a region stretching from Southern and Eastern Africa to the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and the Far East.Slavery studies have traditionally concentrated on the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. In comparison, the Indian Ocean World slave trade has been little explored, although it started some 3,500 years before the Atlantic slave trade and persists to the present day. This volume, which follows a collection of essays The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (Frank Cass, 2004), examines the various abolitionist impulses, indigenous and European, in the Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It assesses their efficacy within a context of a growing demand for labour resulting from an expanding international economy and European colonisation.The essays show that in applying definitions of slavery derived from the American model, European agents in the region failed to detect or deliberately ignored other forms of slavery, and as a result the abolitionist impulse was only partly successful with the slave trade still continuing today in many parts of the Indian Ocean World.

A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching Indian Ocean histories for the first time or who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, as well as those who want to incorporate Indian Ocean histories into their world history courses. Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow offer course design principles that will help students navigate topics ranging from empire, geography, slavery, and trade to mobility, disease, and the environment. In addition to exploring non-European sources and diverse historical methodologies, they discuss classroom pedagogy and provide curriculum possibilities that will help instructors at any level enrich and deepen standard approaches to world history. Alpers and McDow draw readers into strategically designing courses that will challenge students to think critically about a vast area with which many of them are almost entirely unfamiliar.

A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching Indian Ocean histories for the first time or who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, as well as those who want to incorporate Indian Ocean histories into their world history courses. Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow offer course design principles that will help students navigate topics ranging from empire, geography, slavery, and trade to mobility, disease, and the environment. In addition to exploring non-European sources and diverse historical methodologies, they discuss classroom pedagogy and provide curriculum possibilities that will help instructors at any level enrich and deepen standard approaches to world history. Alpers and McDow draw readers into strategically designing courses that will challenge students to think critically about a vast area with which many of them are almost entirely unfamiliar.

Primary source documents are valuable learning resources preferred by many teachers because they give student the chance to decipher and interpret the history themselves. Africa and the West presents a range of hard-to-find primary source documents on Africa from the slave trade that started in the early part of the fifteenth century to independence and the problems of the post-colonial period.

This original collection brings islands to the fore in a growing body of scholarship on the Indian Ocean, examining them as hubs or points of convergence and divergence in a world of maritime movements and exchanges.