Events

A talk by André Wink on his new book,

The Making of the Indo-Islamic World c. 700-1800 CE

In his new book, André Wink outlines his major reinterpretation of the long-term history of India and the Indian Ocean region from the perspective of world history and geography. He situates the history of the Indianized territories of South Asia and Southeast Asia within a wider history of the Islamic world.  Wink argues that the long-term development and transformation of Indo-Islamic history be understood as the outcome of a major shift in the relationship between the sedentary peasant societies of the river plains, the nomads of the great Saharasian arid zone, and the seafaring populations of the Indian Ocean. This revisionist narrative redraws the Asian past as the outcome of the fusion of these different types of settled and mobile societies, placing geography and environment at the center of human history.

André Wink is Emeritus Professor, Department of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He earned his PhD in Indian History in 1984 at the University of Leiden.   His publications include the three volume history, Al-Hind, the making of the Indo-Islamic world: Volume I: Early medieval India and the expansion of Islam, 7th-11th centuries (1990, 1991, 1996); Volume II: The slave kings and the Islamic conquest, 11th-13th centuries (1997, 1999); and Volume III: Indo-Islamic society, 14th-15th centuries (2003, 2009).  His most recent book is The Making of the Indo-Islamic World c.700–1800 CE, 2020.