From the Indian Ocean to the Indo-Pacific

History - A look at Indian Sub-continent and Oceania

It seems that the Indian Ocean owes its name to Western imagination which has long seen India as the ultimate Orient, source of unimaginable wealth, route of spices, silk and so many other luxury goods and commodities. Indeed, the Indian Ocean is today, as it has always been, at the center of a vast transit zone for international trade, which is gradually witnessing emerging and assertive nationalisms, especially Chinese and Indian ones. As for India, it is, above all, a question of containing or even thwarting expanding Chinese power in what it considers to be its "backyard." Indeed, Beijing's ambitions have been known for a long time now thanks to the so-called "string of pearls" strategy. Thus, the Indian press regularly echoes the rivalries of New Delhi with China in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Seychelles or Myanmar, not to mention the growing concern about the port of Gwadar in Pakistan near which the Chinese intend to build a new military base. India is now betting on the "Look East Policy" started in the early 1990s and intended to connect with the dynamic economies of Southeast Asia. A little later, in the 2010s, this policy took the name of "Act East" and India got closer to the United States by strengthening its diplomatic and military ties with Washington. All these initiatives contributed to the development of an Indo-Pacific axis that took advantage of the Obama administration's policy of pivoting towards Asia in order to stem Chinese ambitions in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. While China is trying to pivot towards the Indian Ocean and India towards the Pacific, we are witnessing a paradigm shift. The new concept of Indo-Pacific replaces the much broader one of Asia-Pacific. This is a term which the Indian Government does not hesitate to employ. In this context, India is getting closer to Australia, its main supplier of raw materials, especially uranium, but also to Japan with whom it created the "freedom corridor" project in response to the Chinese "Silk Roads project" which reinforces authoritarian regimes in Central Asia and ignores other democratic regimes in Asia. This Indo-Pacific concept was clearly borrowed from the Australians and reflects the widening of India’s maritime horizon, which also sees the Indian flag flying over the Antarctic and the Arctic. However, the concept is deeply rooted in the modern and contemporary history of the region and more specifically in the legacy of the British colonial empire. Besides, the oceanic focus is one of the numerous emerging historiographies that are now aiming at exploring new ways of understanding the past through vast and innovative units of analysis such as seas and ocean basins aiming at transcending the traditional historical framework of the Nation-State. Therefore, this course will seek to explore these historical developments across the vast maritime unit of analysis that the new Indo-Pacific concept encompasses. This will include three former British colonies: India, New Zealand and Australia. The course will also focus on the creation of a vast imperial “global” network that connected these “Eastern” dominions of the Empire through explorations, discoveries and the spread of information by the press and other media supported by some of the technological accomplishments of the time such as the telegraph and steamship networks. Thus, this course will shift between past and present through vast historical and geographical territories. Class 1. Definitions, key concepts, geographical boundaries of our topic. History, nations and identities in the Indo-Pacific world. Historiographical debates, oceanic studies and geopolitics. The Indo-Pacific concept + choice of assignments. Class 2. The British Empire in the Indo-Pacific: History and legacy in India, Australia and New Zealand. The Commonwealth and British monarchy in the Indo-Pacific. Shifting away from Britain? Brexit, the Empire,