Legacies of Trade and Empire

This book problematises established histories of slavery and indentured labour in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America, as carried out through European empires, to interpret the impact of trade, particularly in the region surrounding the Indian Ocean. The discourse within the chapters by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, Ute Fendler, Tom Hoogervorst, Xin Li, Frederick Noronha, Marie-Christine Parent and Beheroze Shroff explores the aesthetics of silence, the poetics of relation, creolisation, agency, knowledge transfers, decolonisation, and the afterlife of empire, as well as the assertion of identities, musical practices, and cuisines. These critical analyses utilise case studies from India, Indonesia, Seychelles, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Suriname. To break the silence on legacies of empire, the authors look through the prisms of history, politics, economics, sociology, linguistics, literature, anthropology and ethnomusicology. They search through the annals of history for ways of living harmoniously in an increasingly globalised world.