"A House Moving Around the World": Shipboard Lives in the Monsoon Seas, 830–1760

Between the ninth and eighteenth centuries, the Monsoon Seas surrounding Asia and Africa were at the center of global trade, and sewn wooden ships carried people, animals and goods across these waters, driven only by the wind and the rhythm of the monsoon.
These vessels were floating microcosms of the surrounding terrestrial world: small, contained, multicultural, multispecies worlds. In this thesis, I analyse the Indo-Arabic ship as a small, mobile place. I trace how it was continuously made and remade materially. 
I investigate who its human and more-than-human inhabitants were, why they were onboard, and how they each attempted to make this shared temporary residence their own. And I examine how authority and social order were negotiated in a multicultural and multispecies maritime frontier space beyond the reach of the pre-modern state.
Combining global microhistory, more-than-human history, and anarchist social theory, this thesis reconstructs everyday life aboard ships during the longue durée of the old energy regime, an age powered by wind, and by human and animal labour.

All interested staff and students are welcome.
Contact: Toke Kløve Junge, toke@cas.au.dk

Poster
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