ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to look at the dynamics and processes of identity formation among trading communities whose social profi le was predicated upon cultural and commercial practices within the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean functioned as a transnational zone of interaction with connections extending far across discrete civilisational units from which migrant merchant communities were drawn and thrown together to negotiate cross-cultural and commercial interfl ows and overlaps. The temporal dimensions of these interactions were important; the world of Islam generated one set of conditions for dialogue while the intervention of Western political domination served to introduce a very different set of demands and variables in the region. Equally infl uential was the assertion of nationalist aspirations and its accompanying cultural dynamics that at a later date infl ected very distinctly, the processes of community defi nition and aspirations. Documenting these processes as an empirical exercise, especially in the context of the more recent debates on diaspora models and regimes of circulation in the Indian Ocean, and how the latter served as sites of nationalist and transnationalist imaginings, forms some of the concerns of this chapter.
