Becoming Arab: Creole Histories and Modern Identity in the Malay World, by Sumit K. Mandal

Abstract

Becoming Arab interrogates the colonial project of racialisation and the formation of modern ethnic identity by examining the history of the Arabs, specifically the Hadramis, in the Malay world. The book starts in the pre-colonial era charting the movement of Hadramis from Yemen to the region, by way of different ports and diaspora, and their interactions and integration with other groups in the Malay Archipelago. The more fluid category of Creole Hadramis was stifled by the 19thcentury colonial project of racial categorisation and control that positioned the Arabs into alienated figures with restrictive controls on their economic access and mobility. The colonial categories while powerful were not totalising, as identities remain porous as illustrated by creole histories evocatively presented here. Sumit Mandal argues that by "representing interconnectedness, the creole margins raise question about the exclusionary claims of race as at the centre" (p. 7).

Becoming Arab interrogates the colonial project of racialisation and the formation of modern ethnic identity by examining the history of the Arabs, specifically the Hadramis, in the Malay world. The book starts in the pre-colonial era charting the movement of Hadramis from Yemen to the region, by way of different ports and diaspora, and their interactions and integration with other groups in the Malay Archipelago. The more fluid category of Creole Hadramis was stifled by the 19thcentury colonial project of racial categorisation and control that positioned the Arabs into alienated figures with restrictive controls on their economic access and mobility. The colonial categories while powerful were not totalising, as identities remain porous as illustrated by creole histories evocatively presented here. Sumit Mandal argues that by "representing interconnectedness, the creole margins raise question about the exclusionary claims of race as at the centre" (p. 7).