Product Description

The Arabian Seas is a magisterial work on the world political economy (trade, war, power) that explores the intersect of the worlds of Islam (including South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and East Africa) and the European world-economy (particularly the seafaring Portuguese, Dutch, and British) on the eve of the modern world system. It is likely to become a classic in its field and one of the pillars of the emerging literature in recent years that has begun to recast our understanding of the "early modern history" of Asia and the world economy, underlining the early and long predominance of Asia in the world economy and showing the long and deep ties between European and Asian economic and military interactions. This work centrally addresses current debates on the nature of the early modern world system and the relative strengths of East and West. There are no competitors for this book, but it may be compared with Braudel's masterful studies of the Mediterranean in the sense that it does for the Arabian Seas (Indian Ocean World) spanning South Asia, the Middle East, and the East African Coast and beyond what Braudel did for the Mediterranean.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1809731 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 588 pages

Customer Reviews

Weight without depth
This huge book of six hundred pages comes with high recommendations from authors like Gunder Frank and Martin Bernal, but significantly, from no real authority on the Indian Ocean's history. It uses, or claims to use, many languages such as Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Persian, Russian etc. But it is really based on the Dutch East India Company's sources.
Dealing with the Arabian Seas in the seventeenth century, author Barendse writes in a very poor style. Sometimes, individual sentences dont even make any sense. Whole paragraphs are incoherent. It is Dutch English without a copyeditor. Also, there is no clear thesis. After ploughing through many chapters that cover a lot of ground superficially but with no insights, the reader comes to the conclusion that Barendse diagrees with most people in his field. But why ? Is it just to score a point ? What does he have that is fresh or innovative to the reader of authors like Andre Wink or KN Chaudhuri ? We dont know.
Also, there are many grammatical and spelling errors in the use of European languages which makes one wonder how well he knows them. I cant comment on the Russian or Persian, but here too one can have one's doubts.
Overall, this book cant be used by students. It is also too confusing for the general reader. Will some specialist please tell us whether it is worth something ?