ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses economic, commercial and geopolitical trends amongst the countries of the Indian Ocean world, paying particular attention to East Africa. The research reviews the history of exchange in the region and draws conclusions from current social, political, and economic data to present a framework for the status of the region in the 21st century. I will argue that in an increasingly multipolar world and with the emergence of a new consensus on global political economy, East Africa is benefiting from the wide array of commerce within the Indian Ocean. This phenomenon highlights the importance of the region’s history in understanding its unfolding transcontinental dynamics. The Indian Ocean can be understood as the Mediterranean of the East, a
historically and profoundly interconnected space of encounter between all the peoples along its shores. Certainly we cannot refer to the Indian Ocean as a place with a homogeneous identity. Nevertheless, we can refer to an Indian Ocean cultural understanding or entente. The French historian Michael Mollat writes the following:
The mediterranean seas [middle of the Earth seas] – for the Indian Ocean is such – have always been centres of civilization … A zone of encounters and contacts, crossed in all directions by the axes of circulation, centre of all types of exchanges and sensitive to the most diverse and distant influences, the Indian Ocean, more than many other oceans and seas, is a privileged crossroads of culture …2
The Indian Ocean is a cultural and social melting pot that organically brings together all of the civilizations connected by its waters. Interestingly, throughout history, the Indian Ocean has also been prone to the intervention and influence of political entities beyond its coastlines. Naturally, said intervention, be it from the Ottomans, the British or the Chinese, has constantly been met with varying degrees of success. Today, out of the large bodies of water in the world, the Indian Ocean is the major geopolitical space to escape Western military and economic hegemony, it is an ocean in transition. Vast in
size and rich in the amount of resources that it connects between developing nations, the 21st century Indian Ocean has escaped structures such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the North American-driven TransPacific Partnership. Other than substantial military presence by the United States and France on their insular possessions and around the Arabian Peninsula, the world’s third largest ocean is not of easy access to the Western powers.
