Studying the Asian Ocean-Sea

Rila Mukherjee
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Rila Mukherjee: Rila Mukherjee is Professor of History at the University of Hyderabad, India. She has a PhD from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Her recent co-edited publications are From Mountains Fastness to Coastal Kingdoms: Hard Money and ‘Cashless’ Economies in the Medieval Bay of Bengal World (Manohar, 2019), Cross-Cultural Networking in the eastern Indian Ocean Realm (Primus 2019) and Indian Ocean Histories: The Many Worlds of Michael Naylor Pearson (Routledge, 2020).

India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, 2020, vol. 76, issue 3, 425-443

Abstract: This article urges a rethinking of South Asian cosmography to counter our notion of seascapes lying outside notions of sovereignty, territoriality and technologies of control. While seas have emerged as central to economic and political security for most of the worlds’ states, this is seen as a comparatively new phenomenon because South Asia’s territoriality has always been seen as land-based. The emphasis on the modern has resulted in a neglect of South Asia’s rich tradition of maritime expressiveness and generates a ‘maritime blindness’ affecting policy formulation, despite works on seafaring which trace diverse maritime perceptions from Pali and Sanskrit literature, sculptures, coins, paintings and epigraphy. This article claims that waterscapes were not absent in Asian ideas of territoriality, but differentiating between awareness in literary expressions of political selfhood wherein rulers saw the sea as boundary or even space of overlordship, and actual instances of ordering and controlling maritime spaces is important. By contrast, China’s example as keeper of meticulous records pertaining to maritime matters shows attempts at actively controlling maritime spaces and provides new ways of reading South Asian perceptions of the sea.

Keywords: China; India; oceans; inner seas; coastal seas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indqtr:v:76:y:2020:i:3:p:425-443

DOI: 10.1177/0974928420936137

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