Maritime Worlds and Global History: Comparing the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean through Barcelona and Bombay

Abstract

Abstract While Indian Ocean and Mediterranean cities are usually examined separately, this essay presents a comparison of the port cities of Bombay and Barcelona between around 1850 and 1920 to assess the usefulness of the maritime worlds model of oceanic historians and the world‐system model of global historians. By tracing the many similarities in the urban, economic, and infrastructural development of two largely unconnected ports, the comparative exercise highlights areas of variability and distinctiveness that become clearer when viewed against a world‐system common background. A case is then made that it is in the cultural arena that historians will find answers to the variability of outcomes that have emerged from what otherwise appears to be the uniform character of modern global history.

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