Introduction

This volume brings together a series of chapters all of which have been influenced either directly or indirectly by the work of Michael Naylor Pearson. Pearson’s work has engaged with many areas – the Indian Ocean, of course, but also different archives, global history, littoral societies, marginal people and shipboard life, coasts and hinterlands and the connections across worlds. The following chapters by scholars who have been influenced by Michael Pearson’s writing examine different aspects of all of these themes.