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This talk thinks through the question of what it would mean to write a history of capitalism from the bazaars of the Western Indian Ocean. It looks at the ephemera of the maritime bazaar – contracts, account ledgers, letters, and receipts – but also more durable forms of writing like fatwas, manuals, and logbooks to explore the different forms of thinking and practice that animated exchange across the maritime marketplace.

Fahad Ahmad Bishara is Associate Professor of History and Rouhollah Ramazani Professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and of a number of articles on the legal and economic history of the Indian Ocean world.