Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros

by Iain Walker

Overview

Many people today have never heard of the Comoros, but these islands were once part of a prosperous regional trading economy that stretched halfway around the world. A key node in the trading networks of the Indian Ocean, the Comoros prospered by exchanging slaves and commodities with Arab and Indian merchants. By the sixteenth century, the archipelago served as an important supply point on the route from Europe to Asia. The twentieth century brought the establishment of French colonial rule and a plantation economy. Since declaring its independence in 1975, the Comoros has been blighted by more than twenty coups, a radical revolutionary government and a mercenary regime. Today, the island nation suffers chronic mismanagement and relies on remittances from a diaspora community in France. Nonetheless, the Comoros is largely peaceful and culturally vibrant— connected to the outside world in the internet age, but, at the same time, still slightly apart.

Iain Walker traces the history and unique culture of these enigmatic islands, from their first settlement by Africans, Arabs and Austronesians, through their heyday within the greater Swahili world, to their decline as a forgotten outpost of the French colonial empire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190071301
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2019
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Iain Walker has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Sydney and has held positions at the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, and the University of Oxford. He is currently Research Officer at Martin Luther University and Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, both in Halle, Germany.

Editorial Reviews

"Comprehensive, compelling, and engagingly written, Iain Walker's history is a major work and an indispensable and impressive contribution to the scarce scholarly literature in English on the Comoros."— Michael Lambek, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto Scarborough and author of Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayott

"This detailed and authoritative history of the Comoros is long overdue. At last, with their richly documented past and their numerous traditional histories, these islands can be better understood as lying at the very centre of the maritime economy and culture of the western Indian Ocean."—Malyn Newitt, author of A Short History of Mozambique

"A much-needed and wide-ranging study of the complex history of the Comoros. Walker reveals how these islands of luxuriant jungles and the fragrance of ylang ylang became the site for violent contention, and offers a comprehensive case study of the long-term legacies of colonialism.'"—Robert Aldrich, Professor of European History, University of Sydney

"It is a particular strength of Iain Walker's deeply researched history of the Comoros that he both locates the islands in their wider regional and global contexts and deftly explains their very complex social system."—Edward Alpers, Research Professor of History, UCLA, and author of The Indian Ocean in World History

From the Publisher