Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era

by Michael N. Pearson

Overview

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

In Port Cities and Intruders, historian Michael Pearson explores the role of port cities and their orientation, relations between the coast and the interior, the place of the coast in the world economy, and the impact of the Portuguese in the early modern period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801870286
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	10/14/2002
Series:	The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History , #23
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael N. Pearson is a professor emeritus of history at the University of New South Wales.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introduction: Locating Coastal East Africa
Chapter 2. The Swahili Coast in the Afrasian Sea
Chapter 3. The Swahili Coast and the Interior
Chapter 4. East Africa in the World-Economy
Chapter 5. The Portuguese on the Coast
Chapter 6. Conclusion
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Michael Pearson . . . provides us with a fascinating collection of anecdotes, data, and quotations. We travel with him through a range of debates about world systems, littoral societies, [and] the meaning of world history.
—Times Literary Supplement

A deeply researched, attractively presented, and question-raising book.
—Choice

Pearson, a distinguished scholar of South Asia and Portuguese expansion, boldly takes on the complex history of coastal East Africa during an especially dramatic period that witnessed the coming together of two major pre-modern world systems.
—Edward A. Alpers, Historian

Michael Pearson has put together an imaginative and yet solidly grounded book about the east African coast extending for 1,500 miles from Mogadish to Delagoa Bay.
—Colin Simmons, English Historical Review

This book is valuable, well written, and clearly argued, with a refreshing sense of excitement at new interpretations . . . [It is] a pleasure to read for both its content and its style, and his elegantly argued and wide view of the trading system of the Afrasiatic Sea.
—John Middleton, Journal of World History

This intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking publication is recommended as essential reading for historians, anthropologists, and all those interested in the history of social, economic, and political formations in the Indian Ocean basin and the Swahili world.
—Mohamed Ahmed Saleh, International Journal of African Historical Studies

From the Publisher

A deeply researched, attractively presented, and question-raising book.

Choice

Michael Pearson has put together an imaginative and yet solidly grounded book about the east African coast extending for 1,500 miles from Mogadish to Delagoa Bay.

English Historical Review - Colin Simmons

Michael Pearson . . . provides us with a fascinating collection of anecdotes, data, and quotations. We travel with him through a range of debates about world systems, littoral societies, [and] the meaning of world history.

Times Literary Supplement

Pearson, a distinguished scholar of South Asia and Portuguese expansion, boldly takes on the complex history of coastal East Africa during an especially dramatic period that witnessed the coming together of two major pre-modern world systems.

Historian - Edward A. Alpers

This intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking publication is recommended as essential reading for historians, anthropologists, and all those interested in the history of social, economic, and political formations in the Indian Ocean basin and the Swahili world.

International Journal of African Historical Studies - Mohamed Ahmed Saleh

This book is valuable, well written, and clearly argued, with a refreshing sense of excitement at new interpretations . . . [It is] a pleasure to read for both its content and its style, and his elegantly argued and wide view of the trading system of the Afrasiatic Sea.

Journal of World History - John Middleton

This intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking publication is recommended as essential reading for historians, anthropologists, and all those interested in the history of social, economic, and political formations in the Indian Ocean basin and the Swahili world.

— Mohamed Ahmed Saleh

International Journal of African Historical Studies

This book is valuable, well written, and clearly argued, with a refreshing sense of excitement at new interpretations... [It is] a pleasure to read for both its content and its style, and his elegantly argued and wide view of the trading system of the Afrasiatic Sea.

— John Middleton

Journal of World History

Michael Pearson has put together an imaginative and yet solidly grounded book about the east African coast extending for 1,500 miles from Mogadish to Delagoa Bay.

— Colin Simmons

English Historical Review

Pearson, a distinguished scholar of South Asia and Portuguese expansion, boldly takes on the complex history of coastal East Africa during an especially dramatic period that witnessed the coming together of two major pre-modern world systems.

— Edward A. Alpers

Historian