Here are some pieces of broken pottery found on a beach in Tanzania. MacGregor uses them to make his point about trade, and the connections among cultures, because they’ve identified the origin of each individual piece: China (celadon pottery), Syria or Iraq, and a piece that was locally produced, here in East Africa, using imported techniques but local designs. That Indian Ocean is just a great big bathtub, and people and cultures and ideas slosh back and forth all over it. I remember feeling that way when I first spent some time in Honolulu, that it was a little like the drain at the bottom of the tub, that all the water in the Pacific, and all the muck floating in that water, eventually had to pass through this location.
That sounds uncharitable. The names of the cities along the East African coast there on the Indian Ocean are well-known: Mogadishu, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, not to mention the Swahili language that developed there. Historically these places were closely connected with India and Indonesia because the way the winds work in that ocean, you dash across and then wait six months before they push you back the way you came. While you’re there, your cultures intermingle: people get married, share recipes, teach each other how to make pots, etc. It ends up being a great melting pot, a mixing bowl, albeit the eastern version: I think of the Arabian Nights/Gozzi-inspired opera Turandot, in which the princess in Beijing has recently hosted (and killed) suitors from Persia, Kirghiz, Samarcand, and other far-flung places. They may all seem exotic to us; what’s interesting is that they may also be exotic to each other, although within reach. It’s all relative, and anyway, once you get there, don’t you think it’d just be a beach?
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