A wonderful read
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Empires of the Monsoon is a narrative of the countries bordering the Indian Ocean from just before the advent of Islam up till the 1950s. It tells of the major influences on the area and some of the notable travellers that passed through.
Ibn Battuta, perhaps the most famous Arab voyager is a frequent visitor to the earlier pages of the book. One surprising fact I learnt about him was the ease of which he divorced his wives. Often he would reside in a town for a number of months or years and more often than not he would marry many times during his stay. However as soon as the opportunity arose to set off once again on his travels he would simultaneously divorce all his wives (who by this time where more often than not pregnant) and resume his journey. Another fascinating character is the Chinese Admiral Zheng He. Born a Muslim he was castrated (one imagines to his dismay) at the age of ten in preparation for his entry to the royal court. He went on to serves as China's most prodigal seafarer making journeys ranging from Mombasa to America (admittedly there is still some contention whether he reached America, for if he did he would have beaten Columbus by a good 200 years).
The Portuguese also made impact on the Indian Ocean in a most brutal way. Once Vasco da Gama had made the pioneering journey from Portugal to India around the Cape of Good Hope things took a turn for the worse for the inhabitants under the attempted Portuguese colonisation. Though they made have described the people of Africa as savage their actions soon made any barbarism from the Africans tame in comparison. Many of their victims tortured and killed in the most gruesome manner, often as they killed Muslims they would force them to eat pork. Of all the colonisers of the countries of the Indian Ocean the Portuguese were the most brutal.
The book will be of especial interest for those who come from Mombasa (like myself) as the book goes into some detail on the history of the city. Often bad luck played a part on the fortunes of its inhabitants. In period of 200 years the Portuguese razed the city to the ground three or four times. The Sultan of the Ottamans had on one occasion sent down a small fleet of ships protect the city from an impending Portuguese invasion when the island was beset from the other side by a horde of cannibals called the Zimba who proceeded to devour the inhabitants of Mombasa. These cannibals were later killed by people from Malindi. The Mazrui family (from which I believe the prominent academic Ali Mazrui descends) often played an important role in Mombasa's history. At one point when in control of the city they offered it to the British to occupy instead of allowing the Sultan of Oman control of it.
Overall the first two thirds of this book make fantastic reading. Unfortunately the last third isn't as good and in truth should probably be skipped. The chapters are short and for the most part the book is written in an extremely readable style. There is a plethora of information to be beheld between its pages and I learnt an incredible amount, it covers the slave trade and its abolition in some detail and much of the European colonisation of South Asia and Africa.
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A vastly enjoyable narrative history.
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This is a well-written, easily-read narrative history covering a huge sweep both historically and geographically. Its three-part division is natural and logical. The first section provides an overview of the various cultures and civilisations bordering the Indian Ocean in the centuries prior to European penetration. The topics covered are as diverse as the settlement of Madagascar from the Indonesian Archipelago, the extension of an Arab trading network down the East-African Coast, the brief but large-scale series of Chinese naval expeditions in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries and the rise of Great Zimbabwe. The heart of the book is the second section, dealing with the epic, bloody and audacious incursion by Western Europeans, led by the Portuguese. This story is dominated by two themes: the crushing superiority afforded by judicious use of what was then white-hot technology - the ship-mounted cannon - and the effective employment of terror as a deliberate weapon by the Portuguese when faced with otherwise impossible odds. Nobody comes with much credit from the grim catalogue of mass-murder, torture and mutilation that provides a sub-text to the creation of the ramshackle Portuguese trading empire which managed, somehow, to persist into living memory. The last part of the book is the weakest, attempting too much as it sketches later developments along the East-African coast up to our own day. The writer would perhaps have been better advised to keep his material for this section for another book - there is certainly enough, and more, for one. The greatest strength of Richard Hall's book is that it rescues from obscurity so many otherwise forgotten, and often bizarre and unlikely episodes. Chief among these are the accounts of the attempted Portuguese alliance with Ethiopia, culminating in the death of Vasco da Gama's son Christofe, and of epic siege of Fort Jesus at Mombassa in 1696. Of no less fascination are the travels of Ibn Battuta, Morocco's rival to Marco Polo, the story of the arrival of Yankee traders at Zanzibar in the 1830's and the rise and fall of the Omani empire along the East-African littoral. In summary this book is a delight from start to finish - one longs for another on the same theme, filling in the areas only hinted at here.
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Go on, don't hesitate, buy this book now!
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An astonishingly comprehensive yet satisfyingly detailed historical account of trade, politics and imperialism. Cracks along at an engrossing pace coupled with not inconsiderable narrative breadth, wit and flair. Informative and hugely entertaining.
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Will Sweep You Along!
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I was lucky to pick up this book by chance in a wonderful bookshop in Ottawa,Canada. I had never heard of this book or the author and was just browsing. It was a great find! Mr. Hall has done a prodigious amount of research but this book is the opposite of stuffy and pedantic. It is a tribute to Mr. Hall that even after 500 pages you will be sorry that you have finished. He leaves you wanting more and fortunately he gives you a very nice bibliography which will allow you to satisfy your curiousity. This book moves along at a breakneck pace and sweeps you along from place to place all along the coasts of East Africa and the Horn Of Africa up into the Persian Gulf and along the west coast of India. A few early chapters even take you over to China and Indonesia. There are enough interesting characters to populate a novel by Tolstoy and you will learn a lot of interesting and horrible things that they never taught you about in school. What was done in the name of religion by both Christians and Muslims is very sad. An educated person might not be surprised by the fact of man's inhumanity but I guarantee you will be surprised by the quantity and nature of what went on, and by the sheer joie de vivre of some of these folks! To give you only one "small" example, Vasco da Gama (who was held up to me in school as being a "great explorer") once won a small battle off of the coast of India and when he took some of his foes captive he cut off their ears,noses and hands and then put them all on a ship and set the ship ablaze. When the fire was over not everyone was dead so he took the survivors and had them hoisted up on the masts of one of his own ships and let his archers have some target practice... This book is full of adventure,greed,hypocrisy and self-delusion. In other words, it is a wonderful mirror held up to life. Enjoy!
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Excellent history and exceptionally readable !
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History books after often dry and dull, right ? Yes, well that's my experience anyway. This book definitely breaks this mould and manages to be both factual and entertaining. Full of fascinating accounts ( E.g. The Chinese ventures to East Africa in the fifteenth century, The fabled Christian kingdom of Preston John and its reality in Ethiopia, the landing of Vasco Da Gama at Calicut in West India and his meeting with the Hindu Zamorin ), this book is mostly about the Christian ( and other ) invaders of the Indian Ocean. I read this 500 page book in under a week and found it to be highly rewarding. This book is highly recommended and gets a 12/10
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