Babak Fakhamzadeh
Amrith constructs a gorgeous impression of the shores and history of the Bay of Bengal, roughly along a chronological path. Fascinating for its rich histories, he leaves the reader with a thorough insight in the complex markup of the region, his story meandering from topic to topic, from location to location, from personal history to personal history.
Except for the Bay itself, Amrith’s history doesn’t really have a central focus, or theme, meaning that the book is really a, well told, whirlwind of over 500 years of history, spanning all countries along the shores of the Bay of Bengal, though perhaps with a somewhat stronger focus on Tamil migrations along its shores. Though, a broad range of influences get a mention, including Yemenite traders, and Mozambican slaves that the Brits at some point imported to Indonesia.
A few interesting remarks from throughout the book:
+ The rise and decline of the Bay of Bengal as a region parallels the rise and collapse of British imperialism in Asia.
+ Bangladesh *is* the Himalayas, flattened out.
+ The [Dutch] saw themselves as different from the swashbuckling Portuguese: more ordered, more rational, more enlightened. But [these] European powers had much in common; they came for Asia’s wealth in spices and textiles, they shared their dependence on inter-Asian trade, they struggled to balance their public and private interests. But, the Dutch brand of capitalism was the stronger, and more successful one. If, eventually, the Brits prevailed. And, the English were the most effective of all at combining moralism and self-interest.
+ A throwaway remark that warrants investigation: “everywhere [Muharram] was a major public celebration, and that seemed to upend the prevailing social order”. Was this celebrated as a kind of carnival?
+ The author claims that modern laws around migration, legal and illegal, were given shape at the start of the 20th century, in cases involving forced, and unforced, migration in and around the Bay of Bengal.
+ Part of One chapter is dedicated to the cosmopolitanism of Burma at the start of the 20th century. Exemplary for how tides can turn.
Near the end, Amrith argues that nationalism in and around the Bay, in the 1930s and 1940s, dovetailed with the invasion of Japan, and several successive waves of independence, with the drying up of the historical cycles of migrations around the bay, as a consequence, diminishing trade and travel. This was followed by decades of reverse migrations, where a number of countries strove for stronger ethnic unity, at the cost of denying long-term, not first-generation, migrants citizenship, or even requiring them to return to their countries of ‘origin’.
Amrith constructs a gorgeous impression of the shores and history of the Bay of Bengal, roughly along a chronological path. Fascinating for its rich histories, he leaves the reader with a thorough insight in the complex markup of the region, his story meandering from topic to topic, from location to location, from personal history to personal history.
Except for the Bay itself, Amrith’s history doesn’t really have a central focus, or theme, meaning that the book is really a, well told, whirlwind of over 500 years of history, spanning all countries along the shores of the Bay of Bengal, though perhaps with a somewhat stronger focus on Tamil migrations along its shores. Though, a broad range of influences get a mention, including Yemenite traders, and Mozambican slaves that the Brits at some point imported to Indonesia.
A few interesting remarks from throughout the book:
+ The rise and decline of the Bay of Bengal as a region parallels the rise and collapse of British imperialism in Asia.
+ Bangladesh *is* the Himalayas, flattened out.
+ The [Dutch] saw themselves as different from the swashbuckling Portuguese: more ordered, more rational, more enlightened. But [these] European powers had much in common; they came for Asia’s wealth in spices and textiles, they shared their dependence on inter-Asian trade, they struggled to balance their public and private interests. But, the Dutch brand of capitalism was the stronger, and more successful one. If, eventually, the Brits prevailed. And, the English were the most effective of all at combining moralism and self-interest.
+ A throwaway remark that warrants investigation: “everywhere [Muharram] was a major public celebration, and that seemed to upend the prevailing social order”. Was this celebrated as a kind of carnival?
+ The author claims that modern laws around migration, legal and illegal, were given shape at the start of the 20th century, in cases involving forced, and unforced, migration in and around the Bay of Bengal.
+ Part of One chapter is dedicated to the cosmopolitanism of Burma at the start of the 20th century. Exemplary for how tides can turn.
Near the end, Amrith argues that nationalism in and around the Bay, in the 1930s and 1940s, dovetailed with the invasion of Japan, and several successive waves of independence, with the drying up of the historical cycles of migrations around the bay, as a consequence, diminishing trade and travel. This was followed by decades of reverse migrations, where a number of countries strove for stronger ethnic unity, at the cost of denying long-term, not first-generation, migrants citizenship, or even requiring them to return to their countries of ‘origin’.