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Asian Affairs
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South Asia
Syed Badrul Ahsan, Michael Kyle, Simon Gillett, William Crawley, R. F. Rosner & Michael Neale Available online: 21 Oct 2011

To cite this article: Syed Badrul Ahsan, Michael Kyle, Simon Gillett, William Crawley, R. F. Rosner & Michael Neale (2011): South Asia, Asian Affairs, 42:3, 511-522 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2011.605613

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Asian Affairs, vol. XLII, no. III, November 2011

South Asia
Srinath Raghavan. War and Peace in Modern India. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, Hants, 2010. pp. xxiii + 359. Maps. Notes. Bibliog. Index. Hb. 55. ISBN 9 7802 3024 2159 There is little question of Indias rising global prominence at this point of time. That it is today an inuential world player is a truth even the most cynical of India observers will acknowledge, perhaps a trie grudgingly. But then, it was not always thus. Srinath Raghavan gives the reasons. For War and Peace in Modern India is essentially a study of the country in its formative years. More specically, it is an account, a pretty detailed one, of India as it was under Jawaharlal Nehru. Anyone familiar with the story of Indias vivisection in 1947 will not fail to comprehend the gigantic nature of the problems with which the newly independent country, together with the Muslim state of Pakistan prised out of it, was confronted following the departure of the British colonial rulers. There remain the oft-told tales of mass migrations, with the murders of tens of thousands of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs along the way, as a divided India sought to come to terms with new realities. But Raghavans focus is somewhere else. He starts out with an assessment of the military challenges India faced almost immediately at the stroke of the midnight hour, in Nehrus unforgettable words, when India emerged into freedom. Steeped in Western liberal traditions, Nehru was convinced that the new exigencies of what were soon to be a post-colonial era required a modernistic approach to diplomacy for India. Raghavan dwells at length on the principles Indias rst prime minister brought into a shaping of foreign policy, with non-alignment being symbolic of the pragmatism Nehru thought was a necessary force in his times. In all seriousness, Nehru and India ought to have taken off smoothly in their endeavours to deal with the world on their terms. And yet there were the irritants, eventually to balloon into serious crises, which threatened to derail Indias global aspirations. The partition of the subcontinent, wrought on the communal basis of Indias Muslims needing the separate state of Pakistan for themselves, threw up in its wake such disturbing factors as Junagadh, Kashmir and Hyderabad. When the ruler of Junagadh began to manoeuvre, months before Partition, to either stay independent of a future India and Pakistan or, to all intents and purposes, become part of Pakistan, the political realities were not quite taken note of. Junagadh was, numbers-wise, a Hindu state, but
ISSN 0306-8374 print/ISSN 1477-1500 online/11/030511 12 http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2011.605613

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that did not stop its ruler and his dewan or chief minister (in this instance none other than Sir Shahnewaz Bhutto, father of Pakistans future prime minister Zulkar Ali Bhutto) from demonstrating an inclination to hand over the territory to Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, oblivious to the realities on the ground or probably tempted to hold Junagadh as a bargaining chip in future negotiations over Muslim-majority Kashmir, proved stubborn in their view that Junagadh would not be part of India. If Nehru and his colleagues in government were reluctant, and quite naturally too, to have a small enclave of Pakistan within a broader geographical Indian context, they were equally unwilling to have the Nizam of Hyderabad go his separate way in a territory whose population comprised 80 percent Hindus. Raghavan sets out the intricate details of the protracted negotiations the Indian authorities and the Nizam engaged in prior to a military solution being brought to bear on the situation by an exasperated Delhi. In hindsight, it may well be argued that in the matter of Junagadh and Hyderabad, India had logic and history on its side. With Kashmir, it was to be a whole new ball game. The despatch of tribals into the territory by Pakistan within months of the departure of the British, the swift accession to India by Kashmirs ruler and the eventual bifurcation of the state into Pakistani-controlled and Indian-administered zones were to prove an intractable problem for Nehru. Kashmir would lead India and Pakistan into two wars (a third one would be fought over Bangladesh in 1971). Raghavans examination of the Indo-Chinese conict of 1962 offers fresh new insights into a crisis that almost left Nehru a broken man. In more ways than one, it was the Indian leaders idealism that took a battering through what he clearly considered, without publicly saying as much, the perdy of the Chinese. The seemingly unstoppable advance of Chinese troops into Indian territory set alarm bells ringing in Delhi and would not stop until Beijing on its own called a halt to its march. That war, as also the earlier ones over territorial readjustments in post-1947 India, was to leave India enervated as a nation. For all that negativism though, every conict was to take India closer to the thought that diplomacy needed to run in parallel with military strength if it were to carve a niche for itself in the global scheme of things. Pragmatism was coming into play and would soon take centre stage in a post-Nehru India. In Raghavans telling of the tale, the curtain falls in 1962. It is just as well. Observers of modern Indian history know now of the sharp, energetic turnings India was to take, beginning in 1965 and going all the way to 1971, in its quest for military and political dominance of the subcontinent. And its rise as a global economic power was in the future. SYED BADRUL AHSAN #2011

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Bruce Riedel. Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad. Brookings Institution Press, Washington DC, 2011. pp. xxi + 180. Notes. Index. Hb. $24.95. ISBN 9 7808 1570 5574 Rohan Gunaratna & Khuram Iqbal. Pakistan: Terrorism Ground Zero. Reaktion Books, London, 2011. pp. 260. Appendices. Notes. Index. Hb. 19.95/$29.00. ISBN 9 7818 6189 7688 Writing this review on 2 May, the morning of the announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden, emphasises the immediacy of the issues raised in these two volumes, reminds us of the kinetic nature of the problems, and emphasises the need for decision makers to understand the underlying history in order properly to assess their responses. The nal revenge of the USA for 9/11 will help President Obamas poll ratings but whether it will have a benecial, or even signicant, effect on the continued terrorist threat is difcult to assess. But it is certain that these books can help. Both books are dealt with in one review, not because they are too limited to earn individual coverage, but because they complement each other; and linking the comparisons will be especially useful in the light of the days news. Bruce Riedels narrative reects the authors long and close involvement in the policy process and offers a practical commentary on the problems posed. The Gunaratna/Iqbal weightier tome provides an extensively researched background to the creation of the threat of terrorism and does an excellent job of placing in context the current threats, particularly in its analysis of the origins of the various movements, and the consequent assessment of the impact on the threat they might present beyond the borders of their areas of origin. Deadly Embrace is written in a style immediately recognisable to anyone who has worked in government. And Riedel writes from a base of great personal experience, through direct involvement in the relevant areas of government, supplemented by extensive research. Thus, his prose reects the demands of preparing papers for busy decision makers and focused meetings. In the rst three chapters, he deals succinctly with the history of the rise of the terrorist threat, the USAs initial involvement through its support for the Mujahidin, and the volatile events of Pakistans history during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and its aftermath. These chapters, and the subsequent accounts of the events of the 1990s and the beginning of the Global War on Terror, are largely factual, with some limited analysis of pressures faced, and choices made, by decision takers in the West. It is an American-based account, with the sole reference to British involvement in the area related to the UKs role in helping to defuse the 2002 India/Pakistan military confrontation. Riedel

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lets himself down a little in the penultimate chapter by a discussion of the responses to a jihadist Pakistan. This adventure into that Bermuda Triangle of serious historians the what-if area of history does not add signicantly to the book. And it is in sharp contrast to the nal chapter, which is an excellent analysis of the policy problems facing the USA in dealing with todays Pakistan, accompanied by succinct and practical suggestions for dealing with these. This chapter reects the strength of Riedels book, a work written by a man experienced in presenting accurate and researched, but concise, analyses of situations, and clear proposals for the policy response.
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In contrast, Pakistan: Terrorism Ground Zero is a detailed review, based on extensive and thorough research, of the origins of all the insurgent and terrorist groups in the Pakistan/Afghanistan area, and of those in India which are relevant to Pakistan. A wider picture of the relevant part of Pakistan/Afghan/ Indian history is presented in brief in the introductory chapters and, in contrast to the detached and academic prose of the rest of the book, occasionally indulges in subjective language presumably reecting the views of the writers. But the bulk of the writing, as bets an academic study and this subject, is objective and detailed. It is rather more detailed than the general reader may want and, although readable, it will probably be more a volume for consultation than re-reading. That said, the wide range of the book makes it an excellent adjunct to the more focused writing of Deadly Embrace. Gunaratna/Iqbals work sets the current and immediate threat in historical context and, equally, reminds the reader that the origins of much of the threat have been around for many years and, sadly, that they were as intractable a problem then as they are now. Their analytical approach also identies those movements which are linked to, or have grown, from the jihadi motivations of the original Al Qaeda, and those which are essentially regionally based and therefore demand a more subtle set of policy responses. Interestingly, the analyses of the origins of the various groups also make clear the importance of adopting the co-ordinated approach to counter-insurgency which was successful in Malaya although the authors make no explicit reference to that conict. Gunaratna/Iqbals prose is detailed and academic but not dense. However, it would have beneted from more rigorous editing of a number of incidents which are repeated in full detail, sometimes more than once, rather than as a simple reference to the earlier account. And their comments on potential policy solutions, whilst related to the origins of the problems, are too general. For his part, Riedel skilfully enhances his book by personal recollections, although one must beg leave to doubt that anyone in government, even in the

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aftermath of 9/11, would have re-iterated the notorious Vietnam-era threat of General Curtis Lemay about bombing a nation back into the Stone Age. After 9/11 the US government gave the Pakistanis a stark choice to cooperate or suffer the consequences, but in more specic and measured terms. But none of the above detracts from the interest, importance and timeliness of both books, which are valuable additions to understanding one of the most important challenges of current times.
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MICHAEL KYLE #2011 Shahid M. Amin. Pakistans Foreign Policy. A Reappraisal. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2010. pp. 356. Notes. Index. Pb. Rs395/12.99. ISBN 9 7801 9547 9126 Pakistans diplomacy has largely been a consequence of its historical background. A reading of Shahid M. Amins exhaustive review of the way foreign policy has been shaped in Pakistan, and the extent to which it has worked, only validates the argument that the circumstances of the establishment of the Pakistani state have all too often inuenced the way the world has looked upon it. The wrenching nature of the partition of India in 1947 brought in its wake issues, Kashmir for instance, that were to cloud relations between Delhi and Islamabad. The mutual suspicion consequent upon the vivisection of India has lingered, to a point where India and Pakistan have engaged in three wars and quite a good number of low intensity conicts. One could include Kargil in that latter category. One cannot, at the same time, ignore the other underlying realities relating to Pakistan that have stymied its efforts towards carving a bigger niche for itself in the diplomatic arena. Unlike India, where parliamentary democracy has been a sustained political process, Pakistan has had the long, continuing misfortune of seeing its politics seized at frequent intervals by the military. It was on the brutal watch of a military dictatorship that the country lost its eastern province in 1971. East Pakistan, part of the structural construct built around a so-called two-nation theory implying the presence of two nations Hindus and Muslims in pre-1947 India, reinvented itself as the secular republic of Bangladesh through a nine-month war of independence. In all fairness, therefore, Pakistans foreign policy has paid a price for its internal politics.

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And then too have come all the geopolitical factors that have held Pakistan back from asserting itself in the international arena. The Bangladesh war of 1971 led its rst elected leader, Zulkar Ali Bhutto, into articulating a new foreign policy for what he termed a New Pakistan. The emphasis now was on a cultivation of close ties with Muslim nations in the Middle East and Central Asia. The summit of leaders of Islamic nations in Lahore in 1974 was certainly a feather in Bhuttos cap. Bhuttos earlier experience as Foreign Minister under General Ayub Khan in the 1960s appeared to have beneted him. He was able to build new bridges with the West, especially the USA despite his perceived pro-Chinese inclinations in the 1960s. And yet, in the mid-1970s, Bhuttos relations with the Americans cooled over Pakistans nuclear ambitions and were not to recover until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979. Pakistans new dictator Ziaul Haque, a pariah until then, suddenly turned into a valuable ally for Washington in the coming struggle against the Soviets. Observed across a wider historical canvas, Pakistani diplomacy has essentially been reactive in nature. The countrys handling of the Kashmir dispute with India is a case in point. Its foreign policy suffered grievously in 1971, when the brutal suppression of Bengalis in East Pakistan infuriated governments, such as the Soviet Unions, and turned public opinion against it, as in the West. But the countrys search for a credible foreign policy suffered its earliest blow when Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan opted to decline an invitation to visit Moscow and instead chose to agree to visit Washington. Throughout the 1950s, Pakistans growing dependence on the West, particularly the USA, for military hardware was to lead it increasingly toward embracing an anti-Communist global stance. That was to be typied by its membership of the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) and the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), bodies dominated by Washington and geared to resisting communism in Asia. Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy would decisively egg the country toward closer links with the West during his year-long stint in ofce in 1956 1957. Shahid M. Amins analysis of the twists and turns in Pakistans diplomacy is admirable, considering that he served abroad as his countrys diplomat in various capacities, including as ambassador. In a part of the world where foreign policy often becomes hostage to negative internal politics, Amin reminds students of diplomacy of the tortuous course Third World nations often must take to keep themselves in global circulation.

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Lionel Carter (ed and comp). United Provinces Politics 1939: The End of the First Congress Ministry; Governors Fortnightly Reports and other Key Documents. Manohar, New Delhi, 2010. pp. 419. Map. Appendices. Notes. Index. Hb. Rs1050. ISBN 9 7881 7304 8685 This is the third of the ve volumes of correspondence between successive governors of the United Provinces and the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow. With the outbreak of World War II, the Congress Ministry headed by Pandit Pant resigned on 3 November and, on 5 December, Sir Harry Haig, who had been governor since 1936, retired from service in India and handed over to Sir Maurice Hallett, the governor of Bihar. It is perhaps signicant and certainly not surprising that both Haig and Pant had been in poor health earlier in the year. The strain of administering a province with a population twice that of Britain must have been overwhelming for men in late middle age, given the increasingly divergent goals of Congress and the British government. Again and again in this volume, we nd Haig stressing to the Viceroy that, however pragmatic and indeed cautious both Pant and his ministers may be, they are at the mercy of the national leadership of Congress who in one way or another Gandhis, Nehrus or Subbas Chandra Boses are determined to exploit the opportunity presented by Britains war with Germany to accelerate Indias independence. In his report dated 24 April, Haig gives an account of his interview with Nehru whom he describes as certainly the most inuential man in the Province. He nds him charming and reasonable, but unable to see that unless the Muslim League was brought into the Ministry communal conicts were bound to intensify. This failure was compounded by the Pant ministrys distrust of the Indian Civil Service and police. This, in Haigs view, was largely responsible for a dangerous deterioration in law and order and does much to illuminate the conclusion to his nal and valedictory dispatch:
For many years I have regarded our position and policy in India as that of ghting a rear-guard action. We are deliberately surrendering our power and we ought to do it with good will; but we must not let the rear-guard action turn to a rout. There are times when we have to stand and ght, even though at the end of it we continue to retire; and I think we may perhaps before long reach such a stage.

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SIMON GILLETT #2011

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Leslie Mallam and Diana Day. Frogs in the Well. Foreword by Dr Humayun Khan. Introduction by Victoria Schoeld. Librario Publishing, Milton Brodie, Kinloss, Scotland, 2010. pp. 271. Maps. Illust. Appendices. Glossary. Index. Pb. 9.99. ISBN 9 7819 0677 5230 Lt Col (later the Reverend) Leslie Mallam was an Indian army ofcer during the 1914 1918 war and later political ofcer in the North West Frontier administration until India and Pakistans independence in 1947. He was not among the most prominent of the great Frontiersmen men such as Sir George Cunningham or Sir Olaf Caroe. But Mallams ideas about building on the political institutions of the Pathan tribes and developing the economy of the tribal areas were original and far-sighted. They found no favour with the greats who were his bosses and no attempt to implement them was made either under British or Pakistani rule. But world events have since brought the tribal areas into strategic centre stage. Mallam advocated detailed research into the tribal political and judicial systems. He argued that they incorporated the elements of a viable modern democratic system which could enable the integration of the tribal areas into the mainstream political system in India and later in Pakistan. He undertook original anthropological research himself into Pathan tribal institutions, in particular the distinctive legal and political practices of the Yusufzai tribe. His ideas have a strong resonance for contemporary discussion on how to resolve current conicts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. As Development Commissioner for the Frontier he played a key role in drawing up a long-term development plan for the province and for the tribal areas within it. This was a belated initiative in what proved to be the nal two years of British rule. His and his teams plans for the development of the Frontier were supported by the Congress-led ministry of Dr Khan Sahib and formally approved by the Government of India shortly before Partition. This was a triumph for Mallam in the face of opposition from senior ofcials both British and Indian, but a short-lived one. By August 1947, the Congress government in the North West Frontier Province had been swept from power, and the Development Plan with it. Mallam takes pride in the fact that the Plan had been prepared and approved in time by a hairs breadth to be included in the record of British administration. But with so many intractable nancial and administrative problems in newly independent Pakistan, (as Dr Humayun Khan conrms in an illuminating Foreword), Mallams plans were largely ignored. Mallams memoir, written 30 years after the events he describes, and published for the rst time, reveals a passionate and closely reasoned commitment to promoting the welfare of the Pathan tribes within a modern state. The enigmatic

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title derives from a Pashtun proverb the frogs have no hope of getting out of the well without outside assistance. It has some surely unintended echoes of paternalist attitudes, from which the author seems to have been refreshingly free. The memoir has much of interest to social historians, from the thrills and skills of pig-sticking to the stoically-borne tragedies of British expatriate family life; in Mallams case the death within a year of his wife and young daughter. The lucid introductory essays by Humayun Khan and Victoria Schoeld each put this fascinating period piece into a contemporary context.
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WILLIAM CRAWLEY #2011 John Hislop. A Soldiers Story, From the Khyber Pass to the Jungles of Burma. Newhaven Publishing, Newhaven, UK, 2010. pp. 276. Maps. Illust. Notes. Bibliog. Hb. 25. ISBN 9 7809 5658 1501 The years following World War II saw an outpouring of military memoirs and biographies of the great leaders of the conict. Many were written to justify strategies and actions which had been called to question in the memoirs and biographies of other great leaders. There is, however, one, surprisingly numerous, group of authors of military memoirs who were not generals of renown, although many, if not most, were undoubtedly outstanding commanders of men in the tactical as opposed to the strategic sense. They were regular British ofcers of the Indian Army, as it existed between 1930 and 1947. Their accounts of the lives they lived during those years, invariably beginning with their time at Sandhurst followed by an initial year attached to a British regiment and nally acceptance into and acceptance by the Indian Army regiment that became their home, reveal the extraordinary extent to which they relished their way of life. No matter how exciting it is to read about the perils of action on the North-West Frontier, pig sticking, tiger hunts, mountaineering and the joys of commanding the exceptional soldiers which every ofcer believed his particular type of Sepoys to be, the reader and, of course, the author are aware that this life is doomed to end in the cauldron of war and the end of the Raj. John Hislops book, edited by his daughter, was intended to be read by his family. It lacks, therefore, much of the polish of others of this genre, especially John Masters Bugles and a Tiger, his rst and arguably best book. A Soldiers

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Story is nonetheless engrossing and speaks with a very distinct and personal human voice, especially in the beginning regarding the arrangements to pay for Hislops fees at Sandhurst and at the end, the dilemma he faced in 1947 whether to retire on a reduced pension and strike out on a new career or transfer to the British army proper. Of interest is the fact that the author, while from a military family, did not come, as he puts it, from the ofcer class. Both his grandfather and father began in the ranks. The former rose to sergeant-major as did the latter, who, however, went a signicant step further, becoming a quartermaster with the honorary rank of captain. The family obviously had ambitions for their sons to enter the ofcer class in the proper way. The author attended Bedford, a public school that had produced other notable soldiers, such as Frederick Burnaby, Nevertheless, he was, at least at the very beginning of his service, sensitive to the attitude of the ofcers of the British battalion to which he was rst assigned to the fact his father had risen from ranks. However, it was something that he states he never denied. Hislops pathway to permanent command of a battalion was impeded by a tendency to speak his mind, coupled with a constitutional inability to suffer fools gladly. He often butted heads with British Army ofcers over their refusal, or inability, to recognise the unique qualities and requirements of the Indian Sepoy. He spent a large part of the war in Burma as second-incommand with long spells as acting CO of a battalion of his regiment The Jats. In addition to his frequently expressed warm feeling towards and friendships with Indian Other Ranks and Viceroys Commissioned Ofcers, Hislop appears to have made real friendship with Indians holding the Kings Commission including two who rose to head the post-independence Army of India. Although apparently a successful staff ofcer, Hislop did not believe that he could look forward to much of a career in the Artillery of the post-war British Army. Therefore, after much effort and in spite of the professions generally negative attitudes towards the perceived blimpishness of Indian Army colonels, he became a chartered accountant, at which profession he spent 30 years, twice as long as he spent in the army. However, from what he has written in this book, his heart always remained with the Hindu Jats and the Muslim Rajputs and Punjabis of the Jat Regiment of the old Indian Army.

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R. F. ROSNER #2011

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Abdul Sheriff. Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam. Hurst and Company, London/Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute, 2010. pp. xv + 351. Illust. Notes. Maps. Bibliog. Index. Hb. 50. ISBN 9 7818 4904 0075. Pb. 18.99. ISBN 9 7818 4904 0082 In 1498, an Indian pilot guided the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama, after he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, from Malindi in East Africa to Calicut in India, thus opening the Indian Ocean to European domination. Through the threat of their cannons, the Europeans were able hold sway over a vast ocean for several centuries: after the Portuguese came the Dutch, the English and the French. Its northern reaches had previously, over several millennia, developed into a mare liberum, a sea open to free trade, as a complement to the overland silk route from China to the Mediterranean and, indeed, as an alternative to it during its disruptions by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. This trading network of transoceanic and coastal relay routes linked innumerable port city-states, ranging from the Swahili Coast of Africa, to the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Indian peninsula, the Malay and Indonesian archipelagos and the South China Sea. Its peace was threatened by pirates but not, until the Portuguese came, by armed trading nations. Dependent on cyclical monsoon winds, its polyglot and polygamous seafarers were forced to stay for long periods in foreign ports. With a wife in every port they left a polyethnic legacy of mingled peoples and cultures encompassing four civilisations Irano-Arabic, Hindu, Chinese and Indonesian. The Indonesian sarong, for example, in its various guises, is worn all along the oceans rim. Dhows of sewn timbers nails were long eschewed by boat-builders because of the Hindu belief that magnetic elds would suck iron into the oceans depths had plied its coasts from as long ago as the civilisations of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in 2500 BC . Roman galleys traded gold for pepper from South India. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Persians dominated Indian Ocean trade, until Arabs subsumed them under the banner of Islam in the epoch of Sinbad the Sailor. Then, in the 15th century, long before Vasco da Gama, and with ships far bigger than any built in Europe, came the tribute-seeking Chinese eets of Zheng He, the Muslim eunuch admiral employed by a Buddhist emperor: Chinas only foray to Africa before the 20th century. Chinas eets could then have conquered the world, but drew back. Professor Abdul Sheriff, from Zanzibar, acknowledges his debt to the French e approach historian of the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel, whose longue dure he emulates. He also follows the trail in Indian Ocean studies blazed by the Indian historian K. N. Chaudhuri. The result, in the words of one specialist, is the best history to date of the Western Indian Ocean, its network of

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international relations, and its exchange of commodities, ideas, technology and people. Critics may cavil at Professor Sheriffs anti-European, pro-Islamic bias. They may disagree with his argument that the Indian Ocean enjoyed a golden age of peace and religious tolerance before Vasco da Gama ushered in violent European imperialists to spoil it all. With the help of scholars in Germany and Norway, he has nevertheless produced a well-written, wellillustrated and often fascinating account. He describes the development of the dhow and methods of navigation, He analyses the oceans cultural continuum historically and geographically, with emphasis on the spread of Islam. He devotes a whole chapter to the slave trade an estimated 17 million slaves were taken from Africa to Arabia and Asia, compared to the 11 million transported across the Atlantic to the Americas. He examines the phenomenon of the Indonesian-African island of Madagascar. He gives details of the commodities traded, both luxury and staple goods, of the industries behind them and of the shifting entrepots where ship-owners and merchants became rich. From Africa, besides slaves, they shipped ivory, rhino horn, tortoise, turtle, cowrie shells, copal, hardwoods, mangrove poles, copra, shark, ambergris; from Arabia, horses, dates, dried sh, frankincense, myrrh, pearls; from India, cotton goods, roof tiles, coconut products, cardamom, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, precious stones, sandalwood, mahogany, teak, food grains; from Indonesia, spices, tin, gold; from China, silk, porcelain, glass, musk, camphor; from Sri Lanka, gems and pearls. This book should appeal to readers who live near the Indian Ocean, or who are drawn to it by travel, work or curiosity.

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MICHAEL NEALE #2011