The Indian Ocean: narratives in literature and law

这个项目考察了印度洋是如何在文学和法律叙事中表现出来的。它始于1497年瓦斯科·达·伽马横渡西印度洋时开始的法律理论化的高峰期。这一次以及随后的16世纪欧洲航海促使人们寻找文本当局，这些当局并没有禁止某些行为，而是为任何促进无限制获得土地、商品和市场的活动辩护--这种言论更多地是受到文学和神话的支持，而不是建立在法律先例的基础上。这部新兴的国际法没有禁止，而是允许了对非洲和亚洲沿海人民的零星压迫和国家资助的冒险者的海盗行为--并从那里转向适应荷兰、当时的葡萄牙和法国在印度洋的殖民统治的战略扩张。从16世纪初到18世纪末，海洋似乎代表了早期资本主义和欧洲殖民主义的合法无法无天。然而，随着荷兰东印度公司在18世纪末的衰落和英国在对法国的战争中的胜利，一个新的强国开始在印度洋上占据主导地位--其议程包括渴望道德权威和更全面地管理其领土周围的水域。从重商主义到19世纪自由贸易资本主义的转变在法律和文学文本中得到了记录。在这些作品中，海洋作为无法无天的比喻，具有不同的意义。它现在读起来是对管理海洋世界的困难的回应，是对掌握其特殊气质的困难的回应。它表明了人们对当地知识的焦虑，尽管欧洲人的进入改变了这种知识，但这种知识继续横跨大洋，超出了他们表面上的权威。无法无天意味着独特的地方性--对岛群、洋流和天气之间的遥远距离如何连接并周期性地隔离不同的生活方式的担忧或兴奋(取决于作者的观点)。这种比喻非但没有描述国际法，反而混淆了全球化的突出特点，并促进了不同的世界主义措施。这可能解释了为什么代表印度洋的英语创作作品尚未被视为一个群体，或尚未被视为一种独特的想象传统。该项目旨在收集从17世纪中期(第一批用英语写成的关于印度洋地区的虚构想象出版时)到现在(后殖民作家正在找回他们的印度洋遗产)的叙事。当这些故事放在一起时，值得注意的是，这些故事的关键时刻往往涉及对法治或法治缺失的反思。与此同时，调查印度洋的地方是如何在法庭和立法中被叙述的，揭示了文学观念对法律范围内的海洋意义的持续重要性。这个项目旨在产生对现代印度洋更具想象力的意识和法律上有用的理解。该项目将产生一个由对印度洋感兴趣的学者和其他专业人员组成的跨学科网络。但这个项目的工作也将针对内部，在学术实践和课程方面。希望将印度洋作为人文学科领域的研究，以及文学和法律的交叉学科，都能在英国学术环境中获得更大的突出地位。这是印度洋研究中的一个独特时刻。在2004年12月的海啸之后，人们强烈要求跨学科学习。对海洋的新认识目前正处于快速形成阶段。该项目旨在为更好地理解印度洋做出贡献。

This project examines how the Indian Ocean has been represented in literary and legal narratives. It begins with the proposal that a high period of legal theorizing began in 1497 with Vasco da Gama's voyage across the Western Indian Ocean. This and subsequent European voyages of the 16th century prompted a search for textual authorities that did not prohibit certain actions, but rather justified any activity that promoted unlimited access to lands, goods and markets - a rhetoric that was more often buoyed by reference to literature and myth than grounded in legal precedent. Permissive rather than forbidding, this nascent international law sanctioned the sporadic oppression of African and Asian coastal peoples and piracy by State-funded adventurers - and from there moved to accommodate the strategic expansion of Dutch, then Portuguese and French colonial rule in the Indian Ocean. From the early sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, the Ocean appeared to represent what might be described as the lawful lawlessness of early capitalism and European colonialism. However, with the decline of the Dutch East India Company in the late eighteenth century and British triumph in the wars against France, a new power moved to dominance over the Indian Ocean - one with an agenda that entailed a desire for moral authority and more complete management of the waters surrounding its dominions. This shift from mercantilism towards the free trade capitalism of the 19th century was registered in legal and literary texts. Within these works, the Ocean as a trope of lawlessness takes on a different meaning. It now reads as a response to the difficulties of administering the Ocean world, of mastering its particular temperament. It points to anxiety about local knowledge that, while altered by the entry of Europeans, continued to traverse the Ocean beyond their apparent authority. Lawlessness comes to signify the unique locality - a worried or exuberant (depending on the writer's perspective) recognition of how the vast distances between island groups, currents and weather connect and periodically isolate diverse ways of living. Rather than describing international law, this trope emerges to confound prominent these of globalization and promote different measures of cosmopolitanism. This might explain why creative works in English that represent the Indian Ocean have not yet been acknowledged as a group or explored as a distinct imaginative tradition.This project aims to gather narratives from the mid-1600s (when the first fictional imaginings of Indian Ocean locales written in English were published) to the present (in which postcolonial writers are retrieving their Indian Ocean heritage). When placed together, it is remarkable how the pivotal moments of these stories often involve reflections upon the rule of law or the absence of a rule of law. At the same time, investigating how places of the Indian Ocean have been narrated in court-rooms and legislation reveals the ongoing importance of literary notions to the meaning of the Ocean within the law.This project aims to generate a more imaginatively aware and legally useful understanding of the modern Indian Ocean. The project would generate an interdisciplinary network of scholars and other professionals with an interest in the India Ocean. But the work of this project would also be targeted inwards, at academic practice and curriculum. It is hoped that both the study of the Indian Ocean as a field within the humanities and the inter-discipline of literature and law would achieve greater prominence in the UK academic environment.This is a unique moment in Indian Ocean studies. Following the tsunami of December 2004, there is a great will for interdisciplinary learning. A new understanding of the Ocean is currently in a fast stage of formation. This project aims to contribute to this better comprehension of the Indian Ocean.