Oct 6, 2026

Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves

America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire

Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi

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Summary

In the nineteenth century, global systems of capitalism and empire knit the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds into international networks in contest over the meanings of slavery and freedom. Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire (U California Press, 2023) mines multinational archives; profiles transnational human rights campaigns; shows how the discourses of poverty, kinship, and care could be adapted to defend servitude in different parts of the world; and reveals the tenuous boundaries that such discourses shared with Whiggish contractual notions of freedom. An intercontinental cast of empire builders and émigrés, slavers and reformers, a "cotton queen" and courtesans, and fugitive "slaves" and concubines populate the pages, fleshing out on a granular level the interface between the personal, domestic, and international politics of "slavery in the East," and in the age of empire. By extending the transnational framework of U.S. slavery and abolition histories beyond the Atlantic, Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa recover vivid stories and prompt reflections on the comparative workings of subaltern agency.

Gunja SenGupta: Professor of History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and currently visiting at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Her work places nineteenth-century United States history in global contexts of slavery, abolition, empire, race, gender, and poverty. She is also the author of From Slavery to Poverty and For God and Mammon

Awam Amkpa: Vice Provost for the Arts and Dean of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi, and a professor of drama and social and cultural analysis at New York University. A theater scholar, filmmaker, and curator, he is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires.

Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi: Assistant Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). A historian, academic, and translator, he focuses on the history of science, empire, law, and everyday life in the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Indian Ocean world.

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Ahmed Almaazmi

Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is an assistant professor of history at New York University Abu Dhabi. His research focuses on the intersection of empire, law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at a.almaazmi@nyu.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome.

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