Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Author: Sunil S. Amrith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674728475
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
The Indian Ocean was global long before the Atlantic, and today the countries bordering the Bay of Bengal—India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia—are home to one in four people on Earth. Crossing the Bay of Bengal places this region at the heart of world history for the first time. Integrating human and environmental history, and mining a wealth of sources, Sunil Amrith gives a revelatory and stirring new account of the Bay and those who have inhabited it. For centuries the Bay of Bengal served as a maritime highway between India and China, and then as a battleground for European empires, all while being shaped by the monsoons and by human migration. Imperial powers in the nineteenth century, abetted by the force of capital and the power of steam, reconfigured the Bay in their quest for coffee, rice, and rubber. Millions of Indian migrants crossed the sea, bound by debt or spurred by drought, and filled with ambition. Booming port cities like Singapore and Penang became the most culturally diverse societies of their time. By the 1930s, however, economic, political, and environmental pressures began to erode the Bay’s centuries-old patterns of interconnection. Today, rising waters leave the Bay of Bengal’s shores especially vulnerable to climate change, at the same time that its location makes it central to struggles over Asia’s future. Amrith’s evocative and compelling narrative of the region’s pasts offers insights critical to understanding and confronting the many challenges facing Asia in the decades ahead.

Belonging across the Bay of Bengal

Author: Michael Laffan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350022632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Belonging across the Bay of Bengal discusses themes connecting the regions bordering the Bay of Bengal, mainly covering the period from the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries – a crucial period of transition from colonialism to independence. Focusing on the notion of 'belonging', the chapters in this collection highlight themes of ethnicity, religion, culture and the emergence of nationalist politics and state policies as they relate to the movement of peoples in the region. While the Indian Ocean has been of interest to scholars for decades, there has been a notable tilt towards historicizing the Western half of that space, often prioritizing Islamic trade as the key connective glue prior to the rise of Western power and the later emergence of transnational Indian nationalism. Belonging across the Bay of Bengal enriches this story by drawing attention to Buddhist and migrant connectivities, introducing discussions of Lanka, Burma and the Straits Settlements to establish the historical context of the current refugee crises playing out in these regions. This is a timely and innovative volume that offers a fresh approach to Indian Ocean history, further enriching our understanding of the current debates over minority rights and refugee problems in the region. It will be of great significance to all students and scholars of Indian Ocean studies as well as historians of modern South and Southeast Asia.

Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Author: Sunil S. Amrith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674728467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Book Description
For centuries the Bay of Bengal served as a maritime highway between India and China, and as a battleground for European empires, while being shaped by monsoons and human migration. Integrating environmental history and mining a wealth of sources, Sunil S. Amrith offers insights to the many challenges facing Asia in the decades ahead.

Bandung, Global History, and International Law

Author: Luis Eslava
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108501427
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 736

Book Description
In 1955, a conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia that was attended by representatives from twenty-nine nations. Against the backdrop of crumbling European empires, Asian and African leaders forged new alliances and established anti-imperial principles for a new world order. The conference came to capture popular imaginations across the Global South and, as counterpoint to the dominant world order, it became both an act of collective imagination and a practical political project for decolonization that inspired a range of social movements, diplomatic efforts, institutional experiments and heterodox visions of the history and future of the world. In this book, leading international scholars explore what the spirit of Bandung has meant to people across the world over the past decades and what it means today. It analyzes Bandung's complicated and pivotal impact on global history, international law and, most of all, justice struggles after the end of formal colonialism.

India’s Eurasian Alternatives in an Era of Connectivity

Author: Anita Sengupta
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819702364
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description

Monsoon as Method

Author: Lindsay Bremner
Publisher: Actar D, Inc.
ISBN: 1638408041
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
An edited volume by Monsoon Assemblages, a European Research Council funded research project. The book presents the methods that Monsoon Assemblages has evolved for engaging the monsoon, a globally connected weather system, as a coproducer of urban life and space in South and Southeast Asian cities. It challenges views of climate as an inert backdrop to urban life, instead suggesting that it is materially and spatially active in shaping urban politics, ecologies, infrastructures, buildings and bodies. It combines critical texts with cartography, photography and ethnography to present the project’s methodology and its outcomes and invites urban practitioners to think differently about space, time, representation and human and non-human agency. It offers intra-disciplinary, intra-active methods for rethinking human and non-human relations with weather in ways that meet the challenges of climate change and the Anthropocene.

Hooghly

Author: Robert Ivermee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1787385175
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
The Hooghly, a distributary of the Ganges flowing south to the Bay of Bengal, is now little known outside of India. Yet for centuries it was a river of truly global significance, attracting merchants, missionaries, mercenaries, statesmen, laborers and others from Europe, Asia and beyond. Hooghly seeks to restore the waterway to the heart of global history. Focusing in turn on the role of and competition between those who struggled to control the river--the Portuguese, the Mughals, the Dutch, the French and finally the British, who built their imperial capital, Calcutta, on its banks--the author considers how the Hooghly was integrated into global networks of encounter and exchange, and the dramatic consequences that ensued. Traveling up and down the river, Robert Ivermee explores themes of enduring concern, among them the dynamics of modern capitalism and the power of large corporations; migration and human trafficking; the role of new technologies in revolutionizing social relations; and the human impact on the natural world. The Hooghly's global history, he concludes, may offer lessons for India as it emerges as a world superpower.

At Nature’s Edge

Author: Gunnel Cederlöf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019909389X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
In an epoch when environmental issues make the headlines, this is a work that goes beyond the everyday. Ecologies as diverse as the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean coast, the Negev desert and the former military bases of Vietnam, or the Namib desert and the east African savannah all have in common a long-time human presence and the many ways people have modified nature. With research covering countries from Asia, Africa, and Australia, the authors come together to ask how and why human impacts on nature have grown in scale and pace from a long pre-history. The chapters in this volume illumine specific patterns and responses across time, going beyond an overt centring of the European experience. The tapestry of life and the human reshaping of environments evoke both concern and hope, making it vital to understand when, why, and how we came to this particular turn in the road. Eschewing easy labels and questioning eurocentrism in today’s climate vocabulary, this is a volume that will stimulate rethinking among scholars and citizens alike.

Unruly Waters

Author: Sunil Amrith
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465097731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
From a MacArthur "Genius," a bold new perspective on the history of Asia, highlighting the long quest to tame its waters Asia's history has been shaped by her waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia's history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas -- and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them. Looking out from India, he shows how dreams and fears of water shaped visions of political independence and economic development, provoked efforts to reshape nature through dams and pumps, and unleashed powerful tensions within and between nations. Today, Asian nations are racing to construct hundreds of dams in the Himalayas, with dire environmental impacts; hundreds of millions crowd into coastal cities threatened by cyclones and storm surges. In an age of climate change, Unruly Waters is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Asia's past and its future.

Exploring Natural Hazards

Author: Darius Bartlett
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351681222
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Book Description
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 has identified four priority areas for Disaster Risk Reduction: understanding disaster risk; strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience and enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response; and to "Build Back Better" in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction. Although tremendous progress has been made in recent decades in understanding the workings of the Earth systems and, in particular, its impacts on and responses to human actions, there remains a continuing and pressing need for knowledge that will allow society to simultaneously reduce exposure to global environmental hazards, while also meeting economic development goals. Exploring Natural Hazards: A Case Study Approach, contributes to the knowledge showcasing advanced practices for the monitoring of natural hazards. Through each case study, the book examines mainly hazards arising from processes within the hydrosphere and atmosphere, triggered or exacerbated by inputs to and transfers of energy between environmental components. It discusses the causes of these phenomena, and ways in which improved policy making, sometimes coupled with the application of appropriate modern technologies, can help to reduce people’s exposure to harm. Discussing challenges, lessons learned and recommendations, this book provides a snapshot of issues related to tropical cyclones and typhoons, desertification, floods, lightning as a hazard and the need for alert systems. It is a valuable resource for practitioners and professionals alike, for researchers, students and others who work at the intersection between environmental hazards, sustainable development and social justice.