In the book’s second chapter, the author Sugata Bose represents his great storytelling, which turns this writing an extraordinary one. Bose and Lord Curzon set sail along the Gulf of Persia, so as to express logic of colonial attitude’s part in violently reforming frontiers and states as well as redefining the importance of freedom. The author juxtaposes the droopily constructed, concepts of common sovereignty generally among the pre-colonial places in Indian Ocean with more firm concepts of unitary freedom acquired from Europe. The author also tracked the development of a method of fake sovereignty, started in usual rulers after year 1857 in India, and then went until the sheikdoms of paracolonial Gulf of Persia, which is also known as Pirate Coast.
In the third chapter, the author Bose portrays both the start of deviation and contact between the interregional and global roles of migrant employment and conciliator capitalists of India at some point in the last periods of nineteenth and early periods of twentieth century. The Indian business in pearl market Gulf of Persia, its commitment with the group of Zanzibar market, its operation of credit to Burmese workers for rice farming, and its loan expansions to migrant workers on Malaya’s rubber plantations, the author portrays how South Asian’s intermediary capital could function covering Indian Ocean along with a level of sovereignty from European investment, though not essentially in direct divergence or conflict. Once more, Bose portrays that while the majority of economic globalization histories tended to give attention to the part of American and European capitalists, the truth is, Asian capitalists were not lacking in supralocal, if it is not worldwide, ambitions.
While this review offers a sight of the Bose's thoughts, it was nearly impossible to review the layered strands of argumentation contained within the pages of these chapters. Simply put, this is a masterfully crafted writing, showing interesting stories and modern relevance needed to catch student’s attention and non-historians alike. In my opinion, it should prove a useful addition to undergraduate courses in upper-division in either world or South Asian history. This book, especially chapters two and three are must-read because the cautious points about the dangers of ignoring national, local, and regional narratives at the expense of international abstractions could help world history students learn how to compete with the complexities of globalization, while eliminating the excesses of their predecessors.
References
Bose, S. (2006). A hundred horizons: The Indian Ocean in the age of global empire. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
