WSJ Review | Shallow Blue Empire
We’re excited to celebrate Stony Brook University environmental historian Tamara Surani Fernando, whose book Shallow Blue Empire: A History of Pearl Diving in the Indian Ocean, 1850–1930 is the subject of a new review in The Wall Street Journal. The book explores the history of pearl diving in the Indian Ocean and the encounters between local, precolonial knowledge and British colonial efforts to map, document, and extract wealth from the sea. As the review highlights, pearl divers possessed generations of intimate knowledge of reefs, currents, and the ocean floor—knowledge that became essential to colonial efforts to expand the pearl trade during the Great Pearl Boom. 🌊 Read the review: “Shallow Blue Empire” Review: The Riches Beneath the Sea in The Wall Street Journal.
READ THE WSJ REVIEW!
