Indian Ocean World

Hanumanic devotion did not travel alone. Along the maritime currents linking Tamil temples of Nagapattinam with the Buddhist sanctuaries of Quanzhou, the divine monkey of South Indian epic lore entered new worlds of meaning, gesture, and form. Rather than a simple replication, the result was a semiotic transformation that produced a cosmologically ambivalent Monkey Pilgrim, re-scripted within Buddhist ritual, sculpture, marionette drama, and vernacular literature. This hybrid figure, encoded in stone on the West Pagoda of Kaiyuan temple and animated in the marionette play Sanzang Qujing, moved across media as a dynamical objectan interpretive force shaped and reshaped in transit. Such signs are never still. In poetic and narrative traditions of the Song period, including texts such as Yijian zhi, the monkey becomes a cipher for karmic entrapment, spiritual aspiration, and moral unease. Here, semiotic translation is not a mechanical transfer but a living process-one that unfolds across textual, visual, and performative thresholds, and is sustained by maritime routes, religious flows, and acts of embodied interpretation. The journey from Hanuman to the Monkey Pilgrim is not one of loss but of proliferating significance, carried forward by oceanic motion and cultural reimagination through a living chain of interpretants. Keywords Hanuman • China and South India • Maritime exchange • Material and performative mediation • Song narrative culture • Semiotic transformation

This paper talks about Indian Ocean, role of external actors in Indian Ocean, geo-strategic importance of Indian Ocean, Chinese influence in Indian Ocean, string of pearls, USA naval deployment in Indian Ocean, role of QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), India -Japan maritime exercise, project mausam, and maritime silk road initiative .

The East African Digo tribe is a young Islamic group, just a hundred years old. In addition to their unique, folk Islamic religion, they have strong tribal traditions and customs, which can be felt in all areas of their society. This duality also appears in areas of regulations in culture and music. By studying them, on the one hand, we can help preserve these special legal customs, and on the other hand, they can help us to understand how Shariah functions in young Muslim groups.

In 1442, the Ming court received a memorial from Gelek Gyaltsen (Keluo'e Jiancan 克羅俄監粲), grand pacification commissioner (xuanweishi 宣慰使) of Dongbuhanhu 董卜韓胡. 1 Being a native chieftaincy (tusi 土司) located along the Sichuan-Tibetan frontier, Dongbuhanhu remained largely semiautonomous from imperial administration during the Ming dynasty. 2 In the memorial, Gelek Gyaltsen raised a series of seemingly aggressive demands: He not only requested the establishment of a new tributary route traversing the territory of Zagu 雜谷, a native chieftaincy neighboring Dongbuhanhu, but also sought the Ming's provision of official documentation, linguistic *This article is sponsored by the Major Program of National Social Sciences Foundation of China "Textual Research and Atlas Compilation of the Historical Geography of Chinese Tusi" (23&ZD260). 1. In this article, proper nouns (such as personal names, place names, and organization names) are restored to their original language's English spelling. When restoration is not possible, they are presented in Chinese Pinyin, along with the original Chinese text. 2. Throughout imperial Chinese history, the central government frequently endorsed powerful local leaders to implement indirect rule over frontier regions. The "haltered and bridled" prefectures (jimi fuzhou) during the Tang and Song dynasties exemplified this negotiated relationship between central courts and frontier powers. During the Yuan dynasty, Mongol rulers gradually integrated these indirectly ruled regions into a hierarchy of politicalmilitary administration. This system eventually consolidated into a standardized institution of extrabureaucratic governance, commonly known in the Ming and Qing dynasties as the tusi system, with appointed frontier leaders serving as native officials. For a concise overview of the tusi system and its relationship with the imperial central government, see Crossley, Siu, and Sutton, Empire at the Margins, 7-10.

The global ocean commons have emerged as one of the defining governance challenges of the twenty-first century, situated at the intersection of environmental sustainability, economic development, and geopolitical competition. Covering more than seventy percent of the Earth's surface, the oceans regulate the global climate, sustain marine biodiversity, facilitate international trade, and support the livelihoods of billions of people. Yet accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, marine pollution, overexploitation of living resources, and growing interest in deep-sea mineral extraction have exposed significant weaknesses in existing governance frameworks. Simultaneously, intensifying competition among major powers for strategic influence, critical maritime infrastructure, shipping routes, and seabed resources has transformed the oceans into a central arena of global geopolitics. This article examines the evolving challenges of governing the high seas and the broader global ocean commons through an interdisciplinary lens that integrates international law, environmental science, political economy, and strategic studies. It argues that traditional state-centric approaches are increasingly inadequate for addressing transboundary oceanic threats and that a new paradigm of integrated ocean governance is required. The study explores the implications of the High Seas Treaty, the rise of deep-sea mining, the strategic significance of maritime connectivity, and the concept of ecological security. Ultimately, it contends that the future stability of both marine ecosystems and the international order depends upon humanity's capacity to reconcile sovereignty, sustainability, and collective stewardship within an increasingly interconnected and contested maritime domain.

This essay examines the complexities of maritime connections between China and South Asia created by the entry of multiple states and non-state actors in the Indian Ocean arena between the thirteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Divided into three chronological sections, it focuses on the role of private traders, shippers, coastal polities, and European colonial enterprises in shaping and regulating long-distance commercial activity, diplomatic encounters, and their involvement in cross-regional interactions, exchanges, and conflicts. The networks of Chinese and South Asian traders that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean is highlighted in the first section. The second section analyzes the impact of the seven voyages of Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433) in the early fifteenth century on restructuring maritime interactions between China and South Asia. The final section centers on case studies of two entrepreneurs, one Chinese and one Indian, who utilized British colonial networks to advance their own commercial ventures and contributed to the expansion of the maritime exchanges between the two regions. The essay provides new insights into the multifaceted nature of commercial and diplomatic interactions between China and South Asia when there were no set of norms or regulations, beyond specific coastal polities and regions, that regulated trans-oceanic mobilities.

It is commonplace to say that languages are at the heart of diplomatic exchanges, and
several studies have analysed the role played by linguistic diversity during diplomatic
negotiations and audiences.Mastering a common language can encourage negotiation
and contribute to its success, while unmediated linguistic plurality during negotia-
tions opens the door to confusion, manipulation and misunderstanding, ultimately
contributing to their failure.
Linguistic interactions between European and other political entities have been
analysed rather extensively. Several studies have researched the linguistic diplomatic
cultures of Byzantium and the medieval Mediterranean in relation with the Islamic
World. Focusing on cultural and political relations  between European powers and the
Ottoman Empire, Venice and the Safavids, or the Portuguese and the Mughals, the
literature on early modern diplomacy has also touched on the language issue.

The controversy surrounding Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin’s statement about a letter of intent with the United States on possible access for U.S. military aircraft to Indonesian airspace raises important questions about the direction of Indonesia’s foreign and defense policy. Although the government has emphasized that the document is non-binding and that any future arrangement must respect Indonesian sovereignty and national law, the issue remains politically sensitive. Airspace access is not simply a technical matter. In the context of U.S.-China rivalry, it can be interpreted as a geopolitical signal by Washington, Beijing, ASEAN partners, domestic political actors, and the Indonesian public. This article examines whether Indonesia-U.S. defense cooperation, particularly the possible use of Indonesian airspace by U.S. military aircraft, remains consistent with Indonesia’s bebas aktif foreign policy or whether it reflects a gradual move toward limited alignment with the United States. It argues that cooperation with Washington does not automatically undermine Indonesia’s strategic autonomy. However, airspace access is different from ordinary defense exercises because it may offer operational mobility, intelligence value, logistical advantages, and symbolic association with U.S. regional strategy. If access is clearly defined, approved on a case-by-case basis, limited to non-combat or humanitarian purposes, and placed under civilian oversight, it can remain compatible with bebas aktif. However, if access becomes broad, routine, automatic, linked to South China Sea operations, or supportive of U.S. surveillance and contingency planning, Indonesia may gradually move toward limited alignment without formally declaring an alliance. The long-term risks include tensions with China, pressure on ASEAN centrality, domestic debate over foreign military presence, and a weakening of Indonesia’s credibility as a country committed to a free and active foreign policy.

This study investigates the Mamluk-Nusantara nexus (13th-early 16th centuries), a remarkable instance of pre-modern, non-coercive trans-civilizational influence spanning the Indian Ocean. While the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria never projected military power beyond Aden, its symbolic revival of the Abbasid caliphate, guardianship of Mecca and Medina, and monopolistic control over the spice trade generated profound ideational attraction in the Malay Archipelago. Employing a qualitative multiple-case-study design and processtracing methodology, the research draws on Ibn Battuta's Rihla, Mamluk chancery documents, Jawi manuscripts, and local chronicles to test four hypotheses rooted in constructivist, network, world-systems, and soft-power theories. The analysis reveals that shared Shafi'i jurisprudence, trust-based Karimi and Hadrami merchant networks, educational pilgrimages to Al-Azhar, and the adoption of Jawi script functioned as conduits for a peaceful, syncretic Islamisation that birthed the tolerant Islam in Nusantara. This multi-causal model challenges realist assumptions by demonstrating that caliphal legitimacy and cultural affinity, not coercion, drove diplomatic alignment and identity formation across 5,000 miles. The findings offer a historical template for contemporary cultural diplomacy, halal trade corridors, and inter-civilisational cooperation, underscoring the enduring relevance of the spice-scented bridge between Cairo and the Archipelago.

This long review article examines Daniel Majchrowicz’s The World in Words: Travel Writing and the Global Imagination in Muslim South Asia, a major study of Urdu travel writing from 1840 to 1990, while also offering a sustained critical reflection on “global imagination” as an analytical category. The review argues that Majchrowicz’s book compellingly reveals the heterogeneity of Urdu travel writing, showing how travelers from diverse social, religious, gendered, and regional backgrounds imagined the world through travel. At the same time, it asks whether these competing global visions remained more deeply shaped by colonial modernity, racial hierarchy, imperial mobility, and the modern travelogue as a genre than the language of plurality alone can fully capture. Moving across discussions of women’s writing, pilgrimage, pleasure travel, print culture, vernacular literary publics, and Partition-era homecoming narratives, the review situates The World in Words as an important contribution to Urdu literary studies and Muslim South Asian history. It also places the book in conversation with precolonial and vernacular traditions of journeying, wonder, pilgrimage, romance, and ethical self-cultivation in order to ask what is gained—and what is obscured—when modern Urdu travel writing is read primarily through the framework of the “global,” without a fuller investigation of what “global” itself means in historically specific contexts. In doing so, the article positions Majchrowicz’s work as a starting point for broader debates in South Asian literary history, Indian Ocean studies, world literature, colonial modernity, and the study of travel writing. It argues that any account of global imagination in South Asia must look beyond the modern period to recover older and competing ways of imagining the world.

Arabic-Afrikaans Literature at the Cape Tuan Guru -the first official imam at the Cape -used Malayu as the medium of instruction in the Dorp Street madrasah (Muslim religious school) which he established at the end of the 18 th century. This changed in the middle of the 19 th century when Cape Dutch was adopted as the language of instruction. While the children were familiar with this language they could not read the Latin script since they were barred from attending the public schools. Cape Muslims could, however, read the Arabic script which they had to learn for liturgical purposes -though they could not speak Arabic. To overcome this conundrum, numerous scholars and teachers began to translate Arabic texts into Cape Dutch and then transcribing these in the Latin script. These "readers" came to serve as official textbooks in the madrasahs at the Cape. This article traces the development of this genre of literature which came to be known as Arabic-Afrikaans, comments on manuscripts that were identified by Adrianus van Selms, Achmat Davids and Hans Kähler and highlights the daunting challenge of transcribing Afrikaans phonetically in the Arabic script.

This study explores the reception and adaptation of Roman and Roman-inspired materials in South Asia and Southeast Asia during the early historic period. Drawing on a database of over 300 objects, it compares materials such as glass vessels, beads, engraved gems, and coin adaptations. While South Asia shows greater diversity and quantity of Roman imports, Southeast Asia demonstrates selective appropriation and creative transformation, often filtered through South Asia, particularly peninsular India. Southeast Asia favoured high-quality imports and innovative hybrid adaptations blending Mediterranean and Indic elements. In contrast, South Asian adaptations tended either to evoke Roman originals more closely using easily accessible raw materials such as in the case of terracotta bullae, or, when made from more valuable raw materials, often to diverge more substantially from the Roman prototypes. This pattern is further complicated by the emergence of Sri Lanka as a key crossroads in Indian Ocean networks after the fourth century CE. The study highlights regional differences in integrating Roman materials, revealing unique cultural priorities and engagement with global trade networks.

Although Annam maintained its independence through a tributary relationship with the Song dynasty, the Mongols subjugated Annam in 1258 in the course of Uriyangkhadai's campaign during the reign of Möngke. With the accession of Khubilai, the diplomatic relationship between the Mongols and Annam did not follow the typical Mongol pattern of a dichotomy between the submissive (il irgen) and the resistant (bulgha irgen); instead, Khubilai's diplomacy assumed a more flexible character. This flexibility formed

The present paper examines the intersections of food, gender and dietary practices in Pre-modern Kerala, spanning the 12th to 18th century CE. It explores how gender norms were embedded in domestic tasks, such as food preparation, kitchen, and other household chores, while also analysing societal attitudes toward domestic cooking and public cooking. The study highlights how social expectations of ideal womanhood were closely tied to cooking responsibilities and kitchen chores and how women despite being central to food production and preparation often marginalised in food consumption. This paper draws upon a variety of historical sources, including Maṇipravāḷam literature, normative texts, foreign accounts, early Malayāḷam literature as well as oral and folk traditions, the paper investigates both normative prescriptions and lived realities.

On 28 February 2026, satellite tracking systems recorded an event without precedent in the modern history of global trade: the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 25 per cent of the world's oil and 20 per cent of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) transit under normal conditions, ceased to function as a transit corridor. Iranian forces, responding to United States and Israeli air strikes that had neutralised Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared the strait closed. Within fortyeight hours, traffic had collapsed to zero. Brent crude surpassed $126 per barrel; the International Energy Agency described the event as "the most significant disruption in the history of the global oil market"; the International Monetary Fund warned of a shock transmitting in "cumulative waves". Several European states faced the concrete risk of technical recession. Contested Waters was conceived and written in the years preceding that morning. The articles forming its analytical core-published between 2020 and 2025 in Rivista Marittima and Notizie Geopolitiche-did not predict the specific details of the Hormuz crisis. They did, however, systematically examine every structural element that rendered such a crisis not merely possible but, in retrospect, foreseeable. This book is the documented prehistory of a shock the international system was not prepared to absorb.

C'est dans les premières heures du mercredi 6 mai 2026 autour d'une heure du matin (l'heure de Paris) que Dr Ahmed Sharif, un pilier de la lutte pour l'indépendance des Comores, s'est éteint à l'hôpital Global dans la vieille ville de Zanzibar. Retraité de l'Organisation des Nations unies, Ahmed Sharif vivait aux États-Unis, près de ses enfants, avant de s'installer, il y a deux ans, à Zanzibar.

This study examines how Oman has been represented in Western scholarship across a wide range of sources, including political reports, travel narratives, translations, academic studies, and artistic productions. It traces European and American engagement with Oman from the medieval period to the present, demonstrating how commercial networks, imperial interests, and evolving scholarly practices shaped these representations. The article highlights contributions by British, French, German, Italian, Russian, and American scholars working across diverse fields, including history, philology, Ibadi theology, archaeology, and anthropology. In doing so, it charts the gradual transition from colonial-era modes of description toward more critical and academically grounded approaches, while also acknowledging the enduring influence of Orientalist scholarship on both Western interpretations of Oman and Omani historiography itself.

In 2024, the US arms industry announced historic profits worth billions of dollars (Stone, 2024), including trading futures based on the rising value of defence corporations’ stocks (Barhat, 2024). These profits came at the same time that the US and German governments affirmed their resolution to continue to provide arms to Israel, even while it commits genocide in Palestine (Albanese, 2024) and is expanding its attacks to Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria (Middle East Monitor, 2025). At the same time, a huge investment in Cop Cities across the US is redistributing public money from public services to militarized policing (KYRC, 2024). Even more funds are being allocated to building super prisons (Gabbatt, 2023), and there is a sharp rise in unpaid prison labour being provided to multinational corporations (Sainato, 2024). In the Democratic Republic of Congo, genocide has been underway for years, along with a child slavery labour system to extract rare minerals, such as cobalt, for a Global North tech industry that is profiting at an enormous scale (Audu, 2023).

Este trabalho apresenta uma tradução lusófona do  proêmio  de  uma  crônica  em  língua  árabe  produzida  no  âmbito  da  intelectualidade  afro-muçulmana  suaíli,  na  passagem  dos  séculos  XIX-XX.  Trata-se  do  Kitāb  al-Zunūj,  que  obje-tiva  a  fixação  de  uma  história  árabe-persa  da  chamada Costa Suaíli – conforme a ideologia da aristocracia waungwana. À exposição contextual, segue-se uma crítica comparada das edições ita-liana (Cerulli 1957) e anglófona (Ritchie e Von Sicard  2020),  além  de  um  esboço  de  reconsti-tuição  do  teor  original  dos  MSS  conhecidos,  e  sua  tradução:  “K”  (de  Kismayo,  atual  Somália)  e “L” (de Witu, atual Quênia), face à ingerência colonial sobre suas respectivas narrativas.

Sumatra has long been recognized as a pivotal crossroads for trade in the Indian Ocean, with evidence of this activity dating back to the late first millennium when the Srivijaya regional polity emerged. The predominant hypothesis regarding this trade is that upland areas supplied forest products to lowland centers, which functioned as international trading marketplaces. These marketplaces received imported materials, some of which were exchanged with upland groups. However, evidence of this trade is still poorly supported by archaeological materials. This paper presents the first comprehensive study of glass beads from Sumatra via laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine the elemental compositions of the beads. The study encompasses a wide range of sites from upland and lowland areas and various temporal periods, extending from prehistoric to early historic times in Southern Sumatra, Jambi, and South Sumatra Province. The study provides not only improved chronologies, but also data on upland–lowland exchanges that definitively show the upland megalithic sites are not prehistoric, but rather contemporary with Srivijaya. Furthermore, it provides data on the pre-Srivijayan port-settlements and the regional networks in which they were involved, thanks to the presence of certain types of glass, including Mediterranean glass.

This article reports findings from a qualitative study undertaken to explore the career trajectories of Australian portfolio musicians including their interactions and engagement with formal, non-formal, and informal modes of music education. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 18 musicians, selected with a desire to represent musical, cultural, social, and gender diversity. The participants exhibited composite or “portfolio” careers, consisting of work across multiple domains. The investigation revealed that such career formation happens in an episodic rather than linear fashion, as opportunity and adversity lead to portfolio diversification. Ongoing theorisation of the data identified ways in which musicians’ portfolio diversification is enabled by knowledge and skill connections, and, by a keen awareness of intra- and inter-personal values, beliefs, and personal qualities. By observing the ways that musicians construct and then draw upon their epistemic and social foundations laid down both in and outside of formal education, higher music education providers may be able to better plan and enact meaningful curriculum reform for the future.