Commerce with the universe : Africa, India, and the Afrasian imagination /

Desai's book has a rich genealogy. The notion that coastal territories must be understood as part of a trans-maritime world was formulated by Fernando Pessoa's 1920s work on the "transatlanticism" of modernism. In 1949, it was much expanded by Fernand Braudel in his massively influential study of the Mediterranean world, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (published in French, 1949; Eng. tr., CH, Jun'74). The notion has been dominant since the 1980s. This "maritime optic" insists that though, say, California is in the US's far West, it was also shaped by its trans-Pacific connections with Japan and China. Desai (English and diaspora studies, Tulane Univ.) looks through this maritime optic at the ways in which East Africans, the Indian diaspora, and many inhabitants of India were shaped by their interactions across the Indian Ocean. He explores the mobility and cultural traffic of Indian migrants, businessmen, and writers and examines how their experience created an "Afrasian imagination" and literature. Fortunately, this erudite study works not abstractly but through richly detailed portrayals of individual figures, such as Nanji Kalidas Mehta and his narrative. Desai explores surprising relationships between Indian businessmen and diasporic Indian culture and touches on class and ethnic relations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; researchers. K. Tololyan Wesleyan University