The Dimensions of the Indian Ocean World Past (Conference)

Conference announcement (h/t Paul Lane):

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD PAST: SOURCES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK IN INDIAN OCEAN WORLD HISTORY, 9TH -19TH CENTURIES
The Western Australian Maritime Museum, Victoria Quay, Fremantle, 12-14 November 2012

Overview
This conference provides a forum for a rare interdisciplinary discussion between archaeologists, historians, ethnographers and geographers about the materials, problems and opportunities for interdisciplinary work on the Indian Ocean World (IOW) from the 9TH—19TH centuries. Stretching from the coast of East Africa to the China Seas, the IOW had by the 13th century developed what economic historians have called the world's 'First Global Economy', shaped by the distinct winds of the monsoons- a sophisticated durable system of long distance exchange of commodities, ideas, technology and people. Calling upon Archeology, History, Geography, and Ethnography, this conference will explore aspects of the growth and importance of the IOW trade between the 9th-19th centuries, as well as the interactions between the environment, commerce, and people. There is a compelling need to understand how people and communities in the IOW past responded to climatic and other environmental changes in a geopolitical area with a wide variety of trade and cultural relationships that included a broad arc stretching from the East African coast, through the Gulf States and South Asia, to East and Southeast Asia.

The papers and interdisciplinary discussions will focus upon three main research thrusts: archeological, economic and environmental. Participants will explore the emergence of aspects of the IOW economy from archeological and historical records. Historians, geographers and ethnographers will examine and measure fluctuations and impacts in human-environmental interaction over time. Together, participants will also assess the impacts of certain imperatives of the cultures of consumption of the first global economy as commodities were sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings within the IOW.

This ARC/MCRI conference will examine aspects of the socially regulated processes of circulation, human–environment interactions, and responses to environmental change, in the First Global Economy. As a joint Murdoch-McGill initiative, the conference represents a crucial Australian step of the global project 'The Indian Ocean World: the Making of the First Global Economy in the Context of Human-Environment Interaction' led by Professor Gwyn Campbell, McGill University.

http://wwwarc.murdoch.edu.au/research/iow_conf.html