Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean HistoryMonsoon Voyagers follows the voyage of a single dhow, the Crooked, along with its captain and crew, from Kuwait to port cities around the Persian Gulf and Western Indian Ocean, from 1924 to 1925. Through his account of the voyage, Fahad Ahmad Bishara unpacks a much broader history of circulation and exchange across the Arabian Sea in the time of empire. From their offices in India, Arabia, and East Africa, Gulf merchants used the technologies of colonial capitalism—banks, steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and more—to remake their own regional bazaar economy. In the process, they remade the Gulf itself. Drawing on the Crooked's first-person logbooks, along with letters, notes, and business accounts from a range of port cities, Monsoon Voyagers narrates the still-untold connected histories of the Gulf and Indian Ocean. The Gulf's past, it suggests, played out across the sea as much as it did the land. |
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Abdullah Abdulrahman bin Hussain accounts Aden Ahmad Al-'Asʻousi Al-Failakawi Al-Falaq Al-Ghanim Al-Hijji Al-Ibrahim Al-Kharafi Al-Khariji Al-Matrook Al-Qitami Al-Sabah Al-Sager Al-Sudairawi Allah alongside Arab Arabian Peninsula Arabian Sea Bahrain banks Basra bazaar Bishara Bombay British Calicut capital cargo century circulation coast crew Crooked Dalil dates debt dhow dhow trade dhow's divers East Africa economic Empire Fateh global Gujarati Gulf merchants harbor historian Ibn Majid imperial Indian Ocean world Iraq Islamic island Karachi Kathiawar Kuwait letters logbook Malabar maps mariners maritime marketplace microhistory Mohammerah Mubarak Mubarak Al-Sabah Muhammad Muscat Muslim nakhodas Nasser Nasser Al-Kharafi navigation officials Omani Ottoman pearl dive pearl merchants Persian Gulf port cities Portuguese Qawasim Ras Al-Khaimah Rashid region rice routes rulers ruznamah sailed sailors season Shaikh Shatt ship Sultan Tārīkh Al-Kuwayt tion took town transregional treaty University Press Villiers voyage Western Indian Ocean wrote Yousef Zanzibar