AbstractMaritime complex, infinite horizon, interregional arena, floating cosmopolis, Afrasian sea, poet's muse, linguistic caravan, coastal zone, superpower battleground, bookseller's highway, aquatic maelstrom, girmit passageway, civilizational basin, trade circuit, piecework carrier, pilgrim path, monsoon corridor, seafarer's route, mobile marketplace, province of pirates, burial ground – the Indian Ocean is all of these things and much more besides. Though historians have long imagined it as a world both unto itself and integral to histories of global capital, nation‐building, imperial rivalry and sustainability in many dimensions, the Indian Ocean and environs have become a preoccupation for scholars from a wide variety of locations, disciplinary and institutional, in the last two decades.