This book examines the dangers and the patterns of adaptation that emerge through exposure to risk on a daily basis. By addressing the influence of environmental factors in Indian Ocean World history, the collection reaches across the boundaries of the natural and social sciences, presenting case-studies that deal with a diverse range of natural hazards – fire in Madagascar, drought in India, cyclones and typhoons in Oman, Australia and the Philippines, climatic variability, storms and flood in Vietnam and the Philippines, and volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis in Indonesia. These chapters, written by leading international historians, respond to a growing need to understand the ways in which natural hazards shape social, economic and political development of the Indian Ocean World, a region of the globe that is highly susceptible to the impacts of seismic activity, extreme weather, and climate change.

December 2004, a tsunami swept over the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and other South Asian countries, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and many more without the resources to rebuild their lives. With casualties as far away as Africa, the aftermath was overwhelming: ships could be spotted miles inland; cars floated in the ocean; legions of the unidentified deadùan estimated 225,000ùwere buried in mass graves; relief organizations struggled to reach rural areas and provide adequate aid to survivors. The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster is the first comprehensive assessment of the environmental, social, and economic costs of this tragedy. Soon after the tsunami, an international team of geographers, geologists, anthropologists, and political scientists traveled to the most damaged areas to observe and document the tsunami's impact. The Indian Ocean Tsunami draws on data collected by this team. Editors Pradyumna P. Karan and Shanmugam P. Subbiah, along with contributors from multiple disciplines, examine numerous issues that arose in the aftermath of the tsunami, such as inequities in response efforts, unequal distribution of disaster relief aid, and relocation and housing problems. The Indian Ocean Tsunami is organized into several sections, the first of which deals with the ecological destruction of the tsunami. It includes case studies and photographs of the damage in Japan, Indonesia, South India, and other areas. The second section analyzes the economic and social aspects of the aid responses, specifically discussing the role of NGOs in tsunami relief, the strengths and weaknesses of the reconstruction process, and the lessons the tsunami offers to those who are responsible for dealing with future disasters. In the tsunami's aftermath, the inadequacies of governmental and privately funded aid and the challenge of rehabilitating devastated ecosystems quickly became apparent. With this volume, Karan and Suhbiah illuminate the need for the development of efficient, socially and environmentally sustainable practices to cope with environmental disasters. They suggest that education about the ongoing process of recovery will mitigate the effects of future natural disasters. Including maps, photographs, and statistical analyses, The Indian Ocean Tsunami is a clear and definitive evaluation of the tsunami's impact and the world's response to it.

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 is considered to have been one of the worst natural disasters in history, affecting twelve countries, from Indonesia to Somalia. 175,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, almost 50,000 were registered as missing and 1.7 million people were displaced. As well as this horrendous toll on human life

This book explores histories of droughts and floods in the Indian Ocean World, and their connections to broader global climatic anomalies. It deploys an interdisciplinary approach rooted in the emerging field of climate history to investigate the multifaceted effects of global climatic anomalies on regions affected by the Indian Ocean Monsoon System – regularly conceived of as the macro-region’s ‘deep structure.’ Case studies explore how droughts and floods related to anomalous climatic conditions have historically affected states, societies, and ecologies across the Indian Ocean World, including in relation to food security, epidemic diseases, political (in)stability, economic change, infrastructural development, colonialism, capitalism, and scientific knowledge. Tracing longue durée patterns from the twelfth to the early twentieth centuries, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of global climatic events and their effects on the Indian Ocean World. It highlights essential historical case studies for contextualizing the potential effects of global warming on the macro-region in the present and future.

Monsoon rains, winds, and currents have shaped patterns of production and exchange in the Indian Ocean world (IOW) for centuries. Consequently, as this volume demonstrates, the environment has also played a central role in determining the region’s systems of bondage and human trafficking. Contributors trace intricate links between environmental forces, human suffering, and political conditions, examining how they have driven people into servile labour and shaped the IOW economy. They illuminate the complexities of IOW bondage with case studies, drawn chiefly from the mid-eighteenth century, on Sudan, Cape Colony, Réunion, China, and beyond, where chattel slavery (as seen in the Atlantic world) represented only one extreme of a wide spectrum of systems of unfree labour. The array of factors examined here, including climate change, environmental disaster, disease, and market forces, are central to IOW history—and to modern-day forms of human bondage.

The book integrates the latest scholarly literature on the entire Indian Ocean region, from East Africa to China. Issues such as India's history, India’s changing status in the region, and India's cross-cultural networking over a long period are explored in this book. It is organized in specific themes in thirteen chapters. It incorporates a wealth of research on India’s strategic significance in the Indian Ocean arena throughout history. It enriches the reader's understanding of the emergence of the Indian Ocean basin as a global arena for cross-cultural networking and nation-building. It discusses issues of trade and commerce, the circulation of ideas, peoples and objects, and social and religious themes, focusing on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The book provides a refreshingly different survey of India’s connected history in the Indian Ocean region starting from the archaeological record and ending with the coming of empire. The author’s unique experience, combined with an engaging writing style, makes the book highly readable. The book contributes to the field of global history and is of great interest to researchers, policymakers, teachers, and students across the fields of political, cultural, and economic history and strategic studies.

The first history of Lake Tanganyika and of eastern Africa's relationship with the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century.