Description: A sharp analysis of the many cultures, religions and political systems of the 'Global Indian Ocean', the world's most unpredictable macro-region.
Brief description: Harry Verhoeven is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the Convenor of the Oxford University China-Africa Network and a Senior Adviser at the European Institute of Peace. He is the author of Water, Civilization and Power in Sudan, Why Comrades Go To War and editor of Environmental Politics in the Middle East. Anatol Lieven is a senior fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC, and was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and King's College London. In the 1980s and 1990s he worked as a British journalist in South Asia and the former Soviet Union, and is the author of several books on these regions including Pakistan: A Hard Country. His most recent book, Climate Change and the Nation State, appeared in paperback in 2021
Review Quotes: "Persuasively makes the case that the 'Global Indian Ocean, ' which has been a longstanding site for imperial projections, experiments in state-building, and unprecedented circulations of peoples, goods and ideas, is critical to understanding the historical and contemporary infrastructures of liberal world order. The essays illustrate that far from a North Atlantic project that extends out to the rest of the world, the liberal order was made and remade in the so called peripheries. This volume's method of tacking back and forth between the macro-region of the Indian Ocean and the global order is an exemplary model for the on-going effort to pluralize and globalize the field of international relations."-- Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination
"With contributions from some of the most knowledgeable observers of regional change, this book provides a helpful antidote to prevalent simplistic policy analysis, and paints a picture of the diverse forces operating in the countries and societies around the Indian Ocean."-- Stefan Dercon, Professor of Economic Policy, University of Oxford
"A fascinating overview of the Indian Ocean region and its role in international affairs. Given the increasing significance of the area, this should be on the reading list of anyone interested in Asia's global future."-- Odd Arne Westad, Director of International Security Studies, Yale University
"The authors reveal innovative ways of envisioning not only how the different political and economic forms in and across this macro-region were adapted as the illiberal ground of the liberal order, but also how these formations persist, evolve and challenge the liberal order."-- Prasenjit Duara, Oscar Tang Chair Professor of East Asian Studies, Duke University
"One significant contribution the book makes is raising the analytical mileage of the Indian Ocean as a maritime political geography in the post-warmilieu of nation-states." -- Nisha Mathew, Mahindra University, Hyderabad