Indian Ocean but not African Sea

Abstract

The first of the three connected propositions presented in this article is that the East African achievement in seaborne trade and commerce during the 15th and 16th centuries was originally devalued because of lack of knowledge by European commentators. The second is that the basis of the continuing devaluation of East African trade derives from European notions about the Muslim and African other developed in medieval times and during the Portuguese voyages of discovery in the 15th century. Finally, this virtual erasure of the East African achievement continued by generations of Eurocentric historians is symbolized by the use of the term Indian Ocean not just for the seas that wash the littoral of the Indian subcontinent, but for the African Sea that stretches from the southernmost point of Africa along the East coast to the Red Sea. The Portuguese, as is well known, had fought the Muslim conquerors of the Iberian peninsula since the ninth century A.D. Indeed, the very definition of the Portuguese identity was linked to the difference between them and their Muslim other. To the Portuguese, all Muslims in the Magrib and in Iberia, whether they were Arabs or Berbers, were Mouros or Moors, the first Islamic ethnic category they created and hence knew. Whereas it is often argued that wars of Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula increased religious fanaticism among both Muslims and Christians, it is not often kept in mind that the 15th and 16th centuries were also periods when intense and brutal conflicts between Christians and Muslims