The study of the history of oceans and seas has been subject to a revival of interest in recent years. The “new thalassology”, as it has been coined by two scholars, is driven by efforts to develop new approaches to the study of global history in a way that moves away from grand generalizations. It also aims to challenge the area-studies paradigm by avoiding sharp, and oftentimes arbitrary, breaks between world areas. Instead, it attempts to think and imagine global history through the webs of connections, interactions and networks both within and between different terrestrial and aquatic regions of the world.

The study of the Red Sea maritime space or region is a latecomer to this scholarly arena. The dry, hot, and generally inhospitable environment of its littorals has marginalized it and promoted its perception as merely an interface, a transit space, between the maritime systems of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In addition, the African/Middle Eastern Studies divide has inadvertently masked the animated and intense connections across the Red Sea area, chiefly, but not exclusively, between northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Yet the particularly narrow bodies of water in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have always promoted the brisk flows and criss-crossing of people, goods and ideas across this area.

This special issue of Northeast African Studies seeks to investigate the variety of transmarine connections, interactions and exchanges in the Red Sea area and propose new ways to rethink and imagine this historical space sui generis and its connections with other regions. Among an array of themes which privilege the relationships between actors, space, mobility, connectivities and networks, we seek contributions that examine the ways by which a host of imperial powers, as well as the advent of the nation-state, influenced, transformed and reconfigured notions of space, borders, mobility and identities across the Red Sea area since the sixteenth century.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Empire and notions of sovereignty, boundary and space in the Red Sea region
- Imperial maritime control and policing, mobility and the production of categories of ‘legality’/‘illegality’ in the Red Sea (e.g. Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Italy)
- Empire, nation, state, and the transformation of Red Sea littoral identities (cosmopolitan to nation-state?)
- Histories of piracy, smuggling and contraband in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden
- The production, commercialization and consumption of stimulants, intoxicants and psychoactive
substances in the Red Sea area (e.g. coffee, khat, tobacco)
- North-east African communities in Arabia (e.g. Zabid, Jiddah, Aden, Mukha, Hudayda, Sanaa)
- Arabian communities in North-east Africa (Hadramis, Yemenis, in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti; the Rashayda in Eritrea/Sudan)
- The histories of Red Sea and Gulf of Aden port cities/towns/entrepots and inter-port connections
- Slavery, the slave trade and abolition in the Red Sea area
- Labor, commercialization and the global dimensions of Red Sea marine economies (e.g. pearls)
- Red Sea labor flows (seasonal or more permanent)
- Egyptian/Hadrami/Yemeni/Hijazi/Indian merchants, trade and brokerage networks in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden
- Is there a Red Sea architectural style? (Sawakin, Jiddah, Massawa, Hudayda, Mukha, Djibouti)
- Shipping networks / Sailing boat vs. steamer in the Red Sea since ca. 1830
- Inter-coastal trading and cabotage networks
- Inter-coastal financial connections: credit institutions and currencies
- Red Sea crossings and the Muslim hajj to Mecca / European colonial control and the hajj
- Cross-Red Sea Sufi networks and circuits (e.g. the Khatmiyya)
- Hijazi, Hadrami and Yemeni Islamic religious networks (e.g. legal scholars) in the Horn of Africa
- North-east African Muslims in the religious academies of the Hijaz and Zabid, and back in the Horn
- Islamic revivalist and reform movements and Red Sea connections (e.g. the Wahhabiyya)
- Red Sea connections, culture and identities in travel accounts/literature
- The politics of Red Sea cartographies (16th – 20th cent.)
- Red Sea connections with other areas: the eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, the Swahili Coast

Article proposals (500 words) as well as any inquiries regarding the issue should be sent to the guest editor, Jonathan Miran (Jonathan.Miran@wwu.edu).

Deadlines
15 January 2011: submission of article proposals
1 March 2011: notification of acceptance
30 July 2011: submission of articles