On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World: A History of Lake Tanganyika, c. 1830–1890 by Philip Gooding

Since the publication of Kirti N. Chaudhuri’s Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean (New York, 1985), historical studies of the Indian Ocean World (iow) have grown exponentially. Coming to grips with this vast oceanic space has challenged subsequent generations of historians to think creatively about how best to address its great diversity in both time and space. An important feature of this recent scholarship is its interdisciplinarity. In the volume under review, Gooding takes an innovative approach to what, in some hands, might have been limited to a regional East African study of this historiographically neglected zone by locating Lake Tanganyika as a frontier of the iow. By defining the Indian Ocean littoral as the core of this watery world, he boldly proposes that this great African lake lay at its frontier. Specifically, in this analysis, he depicts a dynamic interaction that links the Swahili coast...