In this
innovative legal history of economic life in the Western Indian Ocean, Bishara
examines the transformations of Islamic law and Islamicate commercial practices
during the emergence of modern capitalism in the region. In this time of
expanding commercial activity, a mélange of Arab, Indian, Swahili and Baloch
merchants, planters, jurists, judges, soldiers and seamen forged the frontiers
of a shared world. The interlinked worlds of trade and politics that these
actors created, the shared commercial grammars and institutions that they
developed and the spatial and socio-economic mobilities they engaged in endured
until at least the middle of the twentieth century. This major study examines
the Indian Ocean from Oman to India and East Africa over an extended period of
time, drawing together the histories of commerce, law and empire in a
sophisticated, original and richly textured history of capitalism in the
Islamic world.
Here is the Table of
Contents:
Prologue
1. Life and
debt
2.
Inscribing obligation
3. Paper
routes
Interlude
4.
Translating transactions
5. Making
Africa Indian
6. Muslim
mortgages
7. Capital
moves
8.
Unravelling obligation
Epilogue
Full
information is available here.
