The Indian Ocean World Podcast
History
Professor Jakobina Arch (Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington) discusses her research into coastal shipping of Tokugawa Japan (17th century -19th century), and accounts of shipwrecks' survivors as insights on the religious world of sailors. Unraveling how Western and Meiji sources have spoken disparagingly of the designs of the 'bezaisen' or coastal ships of the Tokugawa period, Arch proffers compelling evidence to point out the construction of the 'bezaisen' stemmed from specific environmental exigencies -- they were designed to easily navigate the shallow waters near the coast of Japan. Far from being an unchanging maritime vessel, Arch argues the 'bezaisen' underwent significant innovations during the Tokugawa period, responding to market forces and adapting to better understandings of the coastal environment of Japan. Delving into surviving oral narratives of sailors cast away by shipwrecks, Arch also highlights how the religious world of Japanese sailors caught in storms and/or shipwrecks drew upon a medley of Buddhist and Shinto religious practices to interact with the oceanic and terrestrial environments of Japan. She concludes that accounts of shipwrecks' survivors also form an alternative archive to researching weather and climatic patterns around the Sea of Japan in the early modern period.
For more on Prof. Arch’s publications, see her academic bio: https://www.whitman.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/history/history-faculty/jakobina-k-arch
This podcast was produced with the help of Renée Manderville (Project Manager, IOWC), Archisman Chaudhuri and Philip Gooding (both postdoctoral fellows, IOWC, McGill).
Tasha Rijke-Epstein - "Children of the Soil: The Power of Built Form in Urban Madagascar"
Nienke Boer - "The Briny South"
John Lee - "Sylvan Anxieties and the Making of Landscapes in Early Modern Korea" & "A State of Ranches and Forests"
Krishnendu Ray - "Culinary Cultures on the Move" & "Food in the Indian Ocean World"
Arunima Datta - "Race, Anxiety and Shopping in the Australian Outback: Indian Hawkers and Victoria's 1884 Smallpox Outbreak"
Chris Gratien - ”The Unsettled Plain”
Jeremy Prestholdt - Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim
Julien Greschner - ”Solutions to Poverty According to Those Who Live It: Case Study in Manyatta B Informal Settlement, Kisumu, Kenya”
James Parker - ”Ecologies of Development: Ecophilosophies and Indigenous Action on the Tana River”
James Beattie - ”Migrant Ecologies” & International Review of Environmental History
Sophie Chao - ”The Beetle or the Bug” & ”The Multispecies World of Oil Palm”
Tamara Fernando - ”Mapping Oysters and Making Oceans in the Northern Indian Ocean, 1880–1906”
The IOWC Research Assistants - Summer 2023 Research Roundup
Philip Gooding - “On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World: A History of Lake Tanganyika, c.1830-1890”
Alice Nyawira Karuri - “Adaptation of Small-Scale Tea and Coffee Farmers in Kenya to Climate Change”
Justin Raycraft - “Islamic Discourses of Environmental Change on the Swahili Coast of Southern Tanzania”
Pao K. Wang - The REACHES Database
Kasia Paprocki - “Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh”
Ruth Mostern - “The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History”
Ruth Morgan - “Health, Hearth and Empire: Climate, Race and Reproduction in British India and Western Australia”
Join Podbean Ads Marketplace and connect with engaged listeners.
Advertise Today
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Lore