The present volume curates papers presented at an international conference organized at OUCIP to engage with the oceanic turn in different fields of knowledge embracing Social Sciences, Humanities and, Physical Sciences to project the Indian Ocean as the new frontier of research across various disciplines. The papers are divided into four sections: The Oceanic Reach has papers reflecting on the received knowledge regarding the historical role and reach of the Indian Ocean and providing new insights in the evolving dynamics of the region. The section on Literature and Culture has essays reflecting the different trajectories within Humanities and Cultural Studies through which Indian Ocean has stimulated the imagination of scholars, intellectuals, diasporic writers, and culture historians. The section on Roots and Routes includes accounts of the historical, cultural, religious, trade and diasporic linkages across oceanic communities inhabiting the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean. The final section on Power Games includes papers that deal with the increasing interests of various international powers in the Indian Ocean region particularly in the context of the shift from the Asian land mass to the enormous presence of the Indian Ocean, and the economic, political and strategic significance that it has for the entire region. Taken together these contributions offer both an opportunity and a challenge for interested scholars to engage with Indian Ocean as a new frontier of knowledge with enormous potential for research and exploration. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Contributed articles.

The Indian Ocean and its Role in the Global Climate System provides an overview of our contemporary understanding of the Indian Ocean (geology, atmosphere, ocean, hydrology, biogeochemistry) and its role in the climate system. It describes the monsoon systems, Indian Ocean circulation and connections with other ocean basins. Climatic phenomena in the Indian Ocean are detailed across a range of timescales (seasonal, interannual to multi-decadal). Biogeochemical and ecosystem variability is also described. The book will provide a summary of different tools (e.g., observations, modeling, paleoclimate records) that are used for understanding Indian Ocean variability and trends. Recent trends and future projections of the Indian Ocean, including warming, extreme events, ocean acidification and deoxygenation will be detailed. The Indian Ocean is unique and different from other tropical ocean basins due to its geography. It is traditionally under-observed and understudied, yet plays a fundamental role for regional and global climate. The vagaries of the Asian monsoon affect over a billion people and a third of the global population live in the vicinity of the Indian Ocean. It is also particularly vulnerable to climate change, with robust warming and trends in heat and freshwater observed in recent decades. Advances have recently been made in our understanding of the Indian Ocean's circulation, interactions with adjacent ocean basins, and its role in regional and global climate. Nonetheless, significant gaps remain in understanding, observing, modeling, and predicting Indian Ocean variability and change across a range of timescales. As such, this book is the perfect compendium to any researcher, student, teacher/lecturer in the fields of oceanography, atmospheric science, paleoclimate, environmental science, meteorology and geology, as well as policy managers and water resource managers. - Provides interdisciplinary content with a comprehensive overview for students and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines as well as for stakeholders - Presents a broad overview and background on the current state of knowledge of the variability, change, and regional impacts of the Indian Ocean - Includes links to animations, slideshows, and other educational resources

The Indian Ocean is of tremendous geo-political and strategic relevance. More than eighty per cent of global seaborne trade in oil passes through the Ocean. Access to resources is under-regulated (fishing) or has yet to be conceived (deep sea bed mining) and security concerns such as piracy and the stability of strategically located states, are propelling countries to rethink naval capabilities and priorities. This applies to littoral countries as well as to extra-regional powers such as China, Japan, European countries and the United States, each of which is keenly interested in maintaining and securing open sea-lanes of communication. The revival in maritime concern is prompting new dynamics of competition and cooperation in a region that has historically been characterised by dense cultural, economic and political networks. The Indian Ocean is an extensive and expansive space where no one power has been able to hold sway. Hence, multilateralism and open regionalism are key contributors to stability, both in terms of military as well as commercial coordination. In this issue, scholars from Asia, Europe and the US examine institutions and examples of maritime governance within the Indian Ocean including security arrangements, evolving forms of alliance building and counter-balancing, policy planning and forecasting. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region.

This report, written by senior scholars of international studies and Indian Ocean studies, focuses on international relations in the Indian Ocean region and covers many aspects of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. The report covers strategic reviews, major events and related data in this region, as well as the origin and aims, frameworks and regional and global impacts of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. The contributors hail from five prominent institutes in China. Together they provide the readers a comprehensive and authentic picture of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. This year’s Annual Report is the third in the series and the only one that focuses exclusively on the Indian Ocean region in China.

This volume is a comprehensive, fully illustrated catalogue of the sharks, batoid fishes, and chimaeras of the Indian Ocean. It includes 10 orders, 23 families, 45 genera, and 78 species of cartilaginous fishes, providing accounts for all orders, families and genera, and all keys to taxa are fully illustrated.

Indian Ocean, third largest Ocean in the world surpasses the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Being world’s most populated Region, one-third of the world’s bulk cargo and two-thirds of world’s oil ship tankers passes through the Indian Ocean. China’s interests in the Indian Ocean Region can be traced and backed by early 60’s. Ever since Beijing has been increasingly deepening its presence in the Indian Ocean Region for a variety of reasons, such as, oil, trade and security etc. Over 30 per cent of China’s seaborne trade worth about $ 300 billion transits across Indian Ocean Region. Sharing a quarter of the world’s population, China facing ever increasing demand for energy. China has little choice but to look beyond its borders for its energy requirements. Around 77 percent of its oil imports are sourced from West Asia and Africa and these are transporting through the Indian Ocean via Malacca Strait. Thus, China’s dependency on Indian Ocean Region continues to grow for energy imports from gulf and to import resources from Africa and trade with Europe. With China steadily spreading its footprints in the IOR with increasing military presence and with rapidly growing its navy being equipped with warships, destroyers and nuclear submarines through a strategy, called ‘String of Pearls’ which can encircle India in its convenient time in the near future. So, China has been emerging as biggest threat for India by analyzing its actions in the Indian Ocean Region and along with India-China border from Easter Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh as stand-off continues since June 2020.

This book focuses on international relations in the Indian Ocean region and examines bilateral and multilateral relations in the Indo-Pacific region. Written by leading researchers in the fields of international studies and Indian Ocean studies, the report provides a strategic review, major events and related data in this region. It is divided into three major parts: the General Report examines new characteristics in the relations between great powers, the strategic landscape of South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, and strategic competition and multilateral relations in the Indo-Pacific region. The second part explores current bilateral relations: India-Myanmar, Sino-Myanmar, Sino-India, US-Myanmar, and Japan-Myanmar, while the third highlights issues such as Myanmar’s democratization, India and TPP. Despite the turmoil in this region, the report shows that it will predominantly be one characterized by peace, development and cooperation in the years to come. At the same time, it is vital that a new type of great power relations be established to ensure peace and prosperity in the Indian Ocean region. In closing, the report puts forward a number of suggestions for improving relations between China and Indian Ocean countries.

The vibrant Swahili coast port city of Dar es Salaam—literally, the “Haven of Peace”—hosts a population reflecting a legacy of long relations with the Arabian Peninsula and a diaspora emanating in waves from the Indian subcontinent. By the 1960s, after decades of European imperial intrusions, Tanzanian nationalist forces had peacefully dismantled the last British colonial structures of racial segregation and put in place an official philosophy of nonracial nationalism. Yet today, more than five decades after independence, race is still a prominent and publicly contested subject in Dar es Salaam. What makes this issue so dizzyingly elusive—for government bureaucrats and ordinary people alike—is East Africa’s location on the Indian Ocean, a historic crossroads of diverse peoples possessing varied ideas about how to reconcile human difference, social belonging, and place of origin. Based on a range of archival, oral, and newspaper sources from Tanzania and India, this book explores the history of cross-cultural encounters that shaped regional ideas of diaspora and nationhood from the earliest days of colonial Tanganyika—when Indian settlement began to expand dramatically—to present-day Tanzania, a nation always under construction. The book focuses primarily on two prominent city spaces, schools and cinemas: the one a site of education, the other a site of leisure; one typically a programmatic entity of government, the other usually a bastion of commercial enterprise. Nonetheless, the forces shaping schools and cinemas as they developed into busy centers of urban social interaction were surprisingly similar: the state, community organizations, nationalist movements, economic change, and the transnational winds of Indian Ocean culture and capital. Whether in the form of institutional apparatuses like networks of Indian teacher importation and curricula adoption, or through the market predominance of the Indian film industry, schools and cinemas in East Africa historically were influenced by actions and ideas from around the Indian Ocean. Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean argues that an Indian Ocean–wide perspective enables an examination of the transnational production of ideas about race against a backdrop of changing relationships and claims of belonging as new notions of nationhood and diaspora emerged. It bridges an academic divide, because historians often either focus on the Indian diaspora in isolation or write it out of the story of African nation building. Further, in contrast to the swell of publications on global Indian or South Asian diasporas that highlight longings for and contacts with the “homeland,” the book also demonstrates that much of the creative production of diasporic Indian identities formed in East Africa was a result of local (albeit cosmopolitan) encounters across cities like Dar es Salaam.