A sweeping history of capitalism, empire, and the limits of cosmopolitanism
Does international trade promote intercultural understanding? Can the simple act of connection foster sympathy between different cultures? And if not, why not? Consumer goods move effortlessly between different human environments around the globe. But the same cannot be so easily said for knowledge of the cultures that globalization brings into contact. Rather than assume economic liberalism leads inevitably to cosmopolitanism, Sea of Difference explores why cross-cultural understanding proves so challenging in even the most interconnected parts of the planet.
Nile Green explores this problem around the Indian Ocean, which between the 1860s and 1930s became the crucible of an unprecedented experiment in liberal economics. As British rule expanded from India to Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and East Africa, millions of workers and traders were pulled into a newly connected world. But as Sea of Difference argues, increasing international trade did not heighten cross-cultural understanding, and new communication systems spread disputes that fractured fragile market-based societies. Drawing on travelogues, language guides, histories, and other efforts to make sense of unfamiliar peoples, Green shows how elusive cosmopolitanism proved to be in the first age of globalization.