4 Dissertationen und Habilita- tionen / Dissertations and Habilitations

REZENSIONEN BOOK REVIEW
ty’ and ‘The Gulf and the Indian Ocean’ shed light on
different aspects of the overriding idea that the sea
provided bonds, which were more durable than the
conditions which may have been imposed by the climatic
or political conditions of different hinterlands.
In the third section entitled ‘The Role of the Outsiders’
it becomes obvious that the overriding power of
the bonds of maritime trade become gradually diminished
since the 16th century due to interests, which
were played out in Lisbon, Holland, Paris, London or
Washington.
Dan Potts’ opening article sets the scene for the role
of trade as well as cultural and religious exchange between
Mesopotamia, the Gulf littorals and the Indus
valley in antiquity, detailing, how pearls, dates, horses
and metals were exchanged for goods from Iran and
Iraq or from further afield such as India and China.
Excavations at the long-since defunct Sasanian port of
Siraf on the Persian coast unearthed early Islamic pottery,
glass, lapis lazuli but also fragments of Chinese
porcelain together with coins from Spain, Russia and
Syria. The intensity of the archaeological work in
Arabia, made possible through the various littoral
governments’ generosity, adds substantially to the understanding
of the written sources – Greek, Roman,
Christian or early Islamic – all of which themselves
help to confirm the interconnectedness of the different
urban centres at various times.
When Shakespeare mentioned Hormuz in his plays,
his Elizabethan audience easily made the association
with opulence, oriental spices, gems and silks. From
the 12th to the 17th century this island at the mouth of
the Gulf symbolised the continuity and intensity of
economic exchange and marine trade, which over
time involved a plethora of port cities around the
shores of the Gulf, the Arabia Sea, the Red Sea and
the Indian Ocean – even as their fortunes rose and
fell. The sea was the highway of commerce and social
interaction. The compact shape of the Gulf and relatively
short distances between focal points further favoured
the development of cultural homogeneity between
its shores – although with the advent of outsiders
the title ‘The Persian Gulf Cultural Word’, given
to the first of the volume’s fife maps, also denotes the
progressive loss of this traditional ease of cultural interaction
particularly in the 20th century.
The wooden sailing ships, which plied these seas for
millennia, depended on the monsoon for their journey
in one direction and had to wait for the wind to blow
the other way to sail home. Meanwhile the sailors had
to integrate into the life in the various ports, where
they spent months or years and often founded another
family, cementing the cultural unity of the region.
Two articles detail particular directions of such mutual
influence. The history of acculturation between the
Gulf and the Swahili Coast is seen from the island of
Zanzibar by Abdul Sheriff, Director of the Zanzibar
Indian Ocean Research Institute. The article by Patricia
Risso highlights the changing relationship between
the Gulf and India since the Mughal period.
Each one of the five articles of the third section
highlights the ways, in which the foreigners initially
tried to become part of the established trading patterns
through mutually beneficial agreements with the local
powers. But in later centuries external forces came to
the fore and the outsiders were less inclined to accommodate
to the exigencies and interdependence of
the Gulf region’s economies than to introduce procedures
suitable to their own needs. The Portuguese, the
first non-regional power, sought a route around Africa
to capture the eastern spice trade, conquered Hormuz
and stationed a permanent naval force there in 1515
and then interacted with the Gulf for more than two
centuries. They were followed – and eventually
eclipsed – by the Dutch East India Company. The Ottoman
reach into the Gulf and Eastern Arabia in the
16th century and again briefly in the 1870s had the
aim of securing these southern borders of the empire
against European encroachment. Domination of the
Persian Gulf was not the ultimate objective of either
the Portuguese or the Dutch; they focussed on the
spice trade to be had beyond the Gulf. For Britain,
too, the Gulf mattered in relation to the establishment
and maintenance of the Empire centred on India. For
the United States the Gulf region became relevant
during the Cold War, when it looked as though the
Soviet Union might aim for the warm waters of the
Gulf via Afghanistan. The five articles all view the
involvement of these outside powers from many angles.
What they have in common is that these outsiders’
engagement with the Gulf primarily served economic,
political or strategic interests beyond the geographical
area and that the Gulf itself was seldom the
primary focus of their involvement.
At the very end of the 20th century, where the last
chapter ends, we see a region, which is carved up into
nation states. Yet their physical barriers and administrative
frontiers do not stem the continued exchange
of people and goods between the shores of the Gulf,
let alone the flood of immigrants from all corners of
the world. These 15 individual articles all demonstrate
in one way or another that the region has always been
open to economic, religious and cultural impulses
from within the Gulf area and beyond – and usually
thrived on it.
In some respects this book cannot possibly fulfil the
promise, which the title might suggest in that it is not
the ultimate overview of the history of the Persian
195