Teaching Global History and Geography Using the Indian Ocean as a Unit of Analysis

Abstract

The units of analysis historians and geographers use dictate what questions are asked, which stories are told and eventually which patterns emerge. Units of analysis are framing tools that help scholars identify global patterns. By focusing on seas and ocean basins, one can bring out the processes of interaction that link peoples living in the various regions around a sea and ocean basin. Nowadays, as Global History is emerging as a new historical paradigm and as a form of “global geography” is being taught in French high schools, the Indian Ocean framework, like the Mediterranean Sea decades ago with historians such as Fernand Braudel, is commonly used to explain the early development of global trade networks and regional cross-cultural interactions in what is commonly referred to as the “Old World”, as opposed to the “New World” “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1492. This article deals with this recent and unprecedented use of the Indian Ocean as a global framework for historical and geographical analysis in teaching and research fields and explains why teaching about the Indian Ocean world as a zone of dynamic interaction between peoples makes more pedagogical, historical and geographical sense than teaching about it through traditionally delineated national or continental units in a globalized world. It also discusses the limitations of the use of such a broad unit of analysis and the potential consequences of a teleological bias that prompts historians and teachers to try integrating the human past into a comprehensive big picture that emphasises the shared experiences of all humans sometimes at the expense of a somewhat traditional historiography, focusing on the idea that the human past is marked by important differences between peoples across space and time. The conclusion assesses how global historians and geographers are attempting to reconcile the idea of an increasing integration at the global scale with that of proliferating difference at the local and regional scales and envisages the ways in which they can construct and teach a global historical and geographical narrative of the past and of our contemporary world that may help students understand the growing complexities and challenges of globalization, including global environmental issues such as the building of a sustainable future for all.