A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace Volume 33

A Sea of Wealth is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position in the Indian Ocean. Here the reign of Oman’s longest-serving ruler, Saʿid bin Sultan, offers a keyhole through which we can peer to see the entangled histories of Arabia and the Gulf, South Asia, and East Africa in the Omani Empire. In centering this empire, Nicholas P. Roberts shows how Arabs, Africans, and Asians actively shaped the conditions of commercial engagement in the Western Indian Ocean, uniting the empire’s domains into a single oceanic marketplace in which Europeans and Americans had to accede if they wished to succeed. Drawing upon sources in three languages from four continents, A Sea of Wealth is a vivid narrative full of colorful characters that upturns many conventional understandings of our modern world.

Nicholas P. Roberts was formerly Assistant Professor of History at Norwich University and W. Nathaniel Howell Postdoctoral Fellow for Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies at the University of Virginia. He is currently earning a J.D. in international law, specializing in war crimes, at Case Western Reserve University.