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The Contest for the Indian Ocean And the Making of a New World Order

Join Darshana M. Baruah for a discussion of her new book "The Contest for the Indian Ocean And the Making of a New World Order."

Date & Time

Monday
Dec. 2, 2024
4:00pm – 5:30pm ET

Location

Online Only

Overview

Throughout history, the Indian Ocean has been an essential space for trade, commerce, and culture. Every European power has sought to dominate it. Now, after a lull in the postwar period, control of major shipping routes has once again become a critical aspect of every rising state’s ambition to be a global power.

Darshana M. Baruah shows how governments from Washington, DC, to Nairobi and Canberra are expanding their interests in the region. The Indian Ocean is resource rich, strategically placed, and home to over two billion people. Island nations have become more important than ever, with Madagascar forming ties with Russia and the Comoros with Saudi Arabia. It is also through the region that China engages with Africa and the Middle East. This is a compelling account of the geopolitical significance of the Indian Ocean—showing how the region has taken center stage in a new global contest.

Darshana M. Baruah is Director of Geopolitics and Security at the Australia India Institute, Sydney. She is a foreign policy scholar with a research focus on maritime security with experience in think tanks in Delhi, Canberra, Tokyo, and Washington, DC. Darshana previously directed the Indian Ocean Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. She engages with policymakers and officials across the world on issues of maritime security, the Indo-Pacific, and geopolitics. 

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year.

Speaker

Darshana M. Baruah

Darshana M. Baruah

Director of Geopolitics and Security at the Australia India Institute, Sydney

Panelists

Edward A. Alpers

Edward A. Alpers

Research Professor (Emeritus) of History at the University of California, Los Angeles
Guyot-Rechard, Berenice

Berenice Guyot-Rechard

Former Fellow;
Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in 20th Century International History, King's College London

Hosted By

History and Public Policy Program

The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.  Read more

Indo-Pacific Program

The Indo-Pacific Program promotes policy debate and intellectual discussions on US interests in the Asia-Pacific as well as political, economic, security, and social issues relating to the world’s most populous and economically dynamic region.   Read more

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