SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Encounters, Cultural Flows and Hybridity in the Indian Ocean

Abstract

European Intervention of Indian Ocean trade commencing in the late fifteenth century resulted in unpredictable effects on the cultures of the people in the region. Encounters of the Portuguese, the first westerners to engage in commerce with South Asians are studied through historical sources. But these sources are insufficient and other means must be explored. This paper reconsiders the Portuguese encounter in the region taking into account material culture. Homi Bhabha pointed out that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; the same signs can be appreciated, translated, rehistoricised, and read anew. The notion of hybridity as applied to cross-cultural outcomes will be interrogated.

Speaker Biography

Dr Shihan de Silva is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (University of London).  She has a PhD (Linguistics), an MSc (Finance) and a BSc Honours (Economics) from the University of London. She is the author of Tagus to Taprobane (Tisara Prakasakayo, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2001), An Anthology of Indo-Portuguese Verse (Edwin Mellen Press, UK, 2001), Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon (Athena Publications, London, 2001),  The Portuguese in the East:  A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire (I B Tauris, London, 2008),  African Identity in Asia (Markus Wiener Publishers: Princeton, New Jersey, 2008) and The African Diaspora in Asian Trade Routes and Cultural Memories (Edwin Mellen Press, UK, 2010).