Dust off your French if you have to but La fabrique de l’océan indien is a must read for all Indian Oceanists. Emanuelle Vagnon and Eric Vallet have produced a seminal study of the cartography and imagination of the Indian Ocean space. Available through Amazon (UK site and .com) there is no excuse not to read this. Besides the text, the illustrations are stunning and with so many of them the book is a bargain at only GBP 31.16.
Author: elizabethlambourn_t1gbar
Abraham’s luggage list travels to Marseille
A month now until the exhibition Aventuriers des Mers. Méditerranée—océan Indien, VIIe-XVIIe siècle opens at the MUCEM in Marseille (7 June – 9 October 2017) after a successful run at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. If you can’t get there the exhibition catalogue Aventuriers des mers, de Sindbad à Marco Polo is worth getting hold of.
V&A’s Cambay tombstones return to Oman
For beautiful photographs of the three Cambay tombstones from Rasulid Dhofar, now in the V&A, see Johanna Puisto’s blog about the
Preparation of three 14th century gravestones for a display at the National Museum of Oman. It’s rare to find colour photographs that capture this marble’s beautiful creamy, sometimes honey tones – no wonder these were the “must have” grave memorials of Indian Ocean elites.
Just out – Fahad Bishara’s A Sea of Debt
Out now:
Fahad Bishara, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (Cambridge University Press).
It’s available from Amazon and CUP
An innovative legal history of economic life in the Western Indian Ocean, charting the emergence of a trans-oceanic contractual culture.