Gardens, Regions, Worlds. The Central-European Vision of the Indian Ocean

The basis of explanation is the Central-European researcher’s refusal to accept his own peripheral status. In systemic terms, I present the Indian Ocean as a world, assuming it was one of small-scale, market-oriented gardens with cooperative ties to other regions. It was a precapitalist and precolonial network of relations of stationary systems that did not form a relationship of domination and subordination. In this littoral-oriented borderland space, two strangers may meet in an Encounter.