“Instead of treating the ocean as a space for frictionless accumulation, can we imagine a “blue new deal” that refuses to carve up water into routes and resources controlled by the most pow...
https://thegamming.org/2022/02/23/planet-b-laleh-khalili-on-sovereignty-and-seafarers/
I gave a talk to the Millennium Conference in October which can be seen here: And hopefully it will be published in the next few months!
On 15 May 2020 I had a really great conversation with Indian Ocean historian Dr Saarah Jappie about a visual artefact that should be included in an SSRC time capsule on COVID-19. Here is the resu...
https://thegamming.org/2020/06/04/ssrc-a-time-capsule-for-future-social-researchers/
I have been reading Arab navigation manuals and travelogues, and there is such poetry in the navigation manuals in particular. It is the liminality of the navigation texts in particular – betwe...
https://thegamming.org/2017/09/13/the-poetry-of-medieval-maritime-travel/
“More interesting is the testimony of Ibn al-Mujawir who reports that in 626 A.H./1228-9 A.D. a ship arrived in Aden from Qumr (Comoros or Madagascar); the art of navigation of the people of Qu...
And yet these unbearable deaths are borne by those who turn away. As I am left mute with horror, I shall post these poems which I think speak to the deaths of so many in this watery graveyard:...
https://thegamming.org/2015/04/20/the-unbearable-deaths-of-thousands-in-the-deep/
7 February 2015 15.00 Last night I was invited by the Filipino crew members to one of the crew members’ birthday party. He is an engine -fitter and he will be turning 40 tomorrow. The crew re...
https://thegamming.org/2015/02/23/une-annee-sans-lumiere-encounters-before-suez-canal/
6 February 2015 “For a ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.” (Melville, White-Jacket – did Conrad plagiarise Melville as...
https://thegamming.org/2015/02/21/marsaxlokk-jabal-ali-besotted-with-the-sea/
5 February 2015 I borrowed Braudel’s discussion of the presidios on the North African coast yesterday to reflect on logistics… But as I read on, there was also the counterinsurgency element a...
https://thegamming.org/2015/02/20/areia-de-salamanca-the-razzia-in-the-16th-century/
The Sea is History By Derek Walcott Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that grey vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History...