Under Empire: Muslim Lives and Loyalties Across the Indian Ocean World, 1775-1945

Michael Francis Laffan's Under Empire explores two centuries of interactions among Muslim subjects of empires and future nation-states around the Indian Ocean world, highlighting their engagements with Western, Islamic, and pan-Asian imperial formations. It ranges from the late eighteenth century to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining how Indian Ocean Muslims asserted loyalty to colonial states or sought spiritual unity in the Ottoman Empire or Egypt.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 480 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2022
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Michael Francis Laffan's book, Under Empire: Interlinked Lives and Journeys in Two Centuries of Interactions Among Muslim Subjects of Empires and Future Nation-States Around the Indian Ocean World, is a sweeping exploration of two centuries of interactions among Muslim subjects of empires and future nation-states around the Indian Ocean world. It examines engagements with Western, Islamic, and pan-Asian imperial formations to consider the possibilities for Muslims in an imperial age. The book ranges from the dying era of the trading companies in the late eighteenth century through the period of Dutch and British colonial rule up to the rise of nationalist and cosmopolitan movements for social reform in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Laffan emphasizes how Indian Ocean Muslims by turns asserted loyalty to colonial states in pursuit of a measure of religious freedom or looked to the Ottoman Empire or Egypt in search of spiritual unity. Bringing the history of Southeast Asian Islam to African and South Asian shores, Under Empire is an expansive and inventive account of Muslim communal belonging on the world stage.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231202633