Restoring the Sultans in the Arabian Sea: Imperial Careers in the Nineteenth Century, by Seema Alavi

This talk inserts the Omani sultans and their royal household into the Arabian Sea world to shift the focus away from the histories of imperial hegemony and capitalist expansion that dominate its historiography.  It analyzes princely careers as they evolved drawing from multiple contexts that were accessed by the excessive mobility of the protagonists, both overseas and over land.  It views the Western Indian Ocean as a wide canvas for Omani careering in which the Sultans remained entangled in imperial networks and translated Western obsessions -- likely slavery and radical Islam -- making them locally legible.