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WORK TITLE: Disapora and Nation in the Indian Ocean
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://manoa.hawaii.edu/history/people/faculty/bertz/ * http://www.hawaii.edu/csas/people/ * http://manoa-hawaii.academia.edu/BertzNed/CurriculumVitae
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), B.A. (history), B.S. (accountancy) 1994; University of Iowa, M.A., 1998, Ph.D., 2008; also spent a year abroad studying at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, educator, and writer. University of Hawaii at Manoa, associate professor of history.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa, edited by Sara Dorman, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent, Brill, 2007; Journeys and Dwellings: Indian Ocean Themes in South Asia, edited by Helene Basu, Orient Longman, 2008; and South-South Cooperation: Africa on the Centre Stage, edited by Renu Modi, Palsgrave Macmillan, 2011. Contributor to professional journals, including Africa.
SIDELIGHTS
Ned Bertz grew up in Chicago, Illinois and went on to earn undergraduate degrees in history and accountancy and graduate degrees focusing on modern South Asian and African history. Berti studies historical exchanges between South Asia and East Africa and has conducted extensive fieldwork in India and Tanzania, including studying Swahili, Hindi, and Gujarati. In his first book, Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean: Transnational Histories of Race and Urban Space in Tanzania, Bertz uses the themes of colonialism, nationalism, race, and urban space to trace the transoceanic connections of the Indian diaspora in Tanzania. In the process he links western India to east Africa during the twentieth century.
Drawing from primary evidence based on archival research and the author’s own wide-ranging interviews, Bertz examines how race and space intertwined in both the colonial and postcolonial environment of the western Indian Ocean. In the process, he clarifies debate about race among Indians, Africans, and Europeans as they occur in day-to-day encounters. Bertz presents new views concerning migration, nation, and postcolonial histories in terms of the human experience and human encounters. He highlights the history of cross-cultural encounters that helped form regional ideas of nationhood and diaspora beginning with the the earliest days of colonial Tanganyika, which was sovereign state from December 9, 1961 until April 26, 1962. Tanganyika eventually joined with the People’s Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba to become the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar and then eventually just the United Republic of Tanzania. During this period of transformation, Indian settlement in the region began to dramatically expand.
Bertz focuses on the prominent city spaces of schools and cinemas because the first represents a government-related entity while the other is a commercial enterprise. Both spaces were centers of urban social interaction that were influenced by actions and ideas from throughout the Indian Ocean. “Governments usually use schools and education as their sphere of influence to construct the “nation” and to educate “national” civics,” wrote Journal of World History contributor Gilbert Oonk, who went on to point out: “Bertz persuasively shows that Indian and to a lesser extent African groups challenged elements of colonial education.”
According to Bertz, whether in the form of institutional apparatuses like networks of Indian teacher importation and curricula adoption or through the market predominance of the Indian film industry, schools and cinemas in East Africa historically were influenced by actions and ideas from around the Indian Ocean. Bertz presents his case that taking such a wide perspective fosters his examination of how transnational ideas about race are produced, especially in terms of changing relationships and new notions concerning nationhood and diaspora. Among the wide range of topics addressed by Bertz are the state, community organizations, nationalist movements, economic change, and Indian Ocean culture and capital in terms of transnationalism. Bertz shows how ideas about these topics were greatly influenced through a myriad of personal interactions.
Throughout the book, Bertz discusses how colonial authorities radicalized the spaces he focuses on. The goal was to segregate Africans, Indians, and Europeans. He examines nationalists’ efforts to both integrate the schools and to build a common national identity through cinema. and asserts that these efforts were often fought against by the authorities, both colonial an national. Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean “emphasizes the importance of the interchange of people and ideas in the context of changing power relations in late twentieth century,” wrote Journal of World History contributor Oonk. Noting Bertz provides a “sophisticated analysis,” Choice contributor T. Anderson goes on to note that by focusing on the twentieth century Bertz presents a needed new perspective that globalizes “a story of race and identity,” which is typically “seen as merely a story of the nation-state.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, April, 2016, T. Anderson, review of Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean: Transnational Histories of Race and Urban Space in Tanzania, p. 1215.
Journal of World History, September, 2016, Gijsbert Oonk, review of Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean, pp. 587-589.
ONLINE
University of Hawaii at Manoa Department of History Web site, http://manoa.hawaii.edu/history/ (March 15, 2017), author faculty profile.*
LC control no.: no2015055040
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Bertz, Ned
Field of activity: India--History
Africa, East--History
Fuller form of name
Ned O.
Affiliation: University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Iowa
Profession or occupation:
College teachers
Found in: Diaspora and nation in the Indian Ocean, 2015: ECIP title
page (Ned Bertz) ECIP data (assistant professor in the
Department of History at the University of
Hawaiʻi-Mānoa; Ph. D. from the University of Iowa in
2008)
OCLC, April 23, 2015 (access points: Bertz, Ned; Bertz, Ned
O.; usages: Ned Bertz; Ned O. Bertz)
Associated language:
eng
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
Ned Bertz
bertz_ned_2016_192x243
Associate Professor
South Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean, World History
Office: Sakamaki B409
Phone: (808) 956-6766
Email: bertz@hawaii.edu
BA & BS Illinois, 1994; MA, PhD Iowa, 1998, 2008
Background
Originally from Chicago, Ned Bertz attended the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), including a year abroad at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), and graduated with undergraduate degrees in History and Accountancy. He was trained in modern South Asian and African history while completing his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Iowa. Seeking to bridge area studies approaches and write about historical exchanges between South Asia and East Africa, Professor Bertz has spent many years conducting fieldwork in India and Tanzania, including studying Swahili, Hindi, and Gujarati. His first book traces the transoceanic connections of the Indian diaspora in Tanzania through the themes of colonialism, nationalism, race, and urban space, linking western India to East Africa across the history of the twentieth century. His current project is a transnational history of the Partition of India, reframing this critical event within a longer-term process in which new ideas about territoriality, mobility, and belonging reshaped people’s lives all around the western Indian Ocean.
Courses Offered
Professor Bertz teaches courses about the history of South Asia, Africa, and the Indian Ocean, in addition to world history, history and film, history and literature, senior thesis, and historiography, among other offerings. In 2013-14, he served as the Resident Director of the UH Study Abroad Center’s program in India while a Visiting Faculty Member at Ambedkar University, Delhi. In 2010, he was awarded the University of Hawaiʻi Regents Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Links
Center for South Asian Studies
Honors Program
Study Abroad program in Delhi, India
Undergraduate Certificate in Islamic Studies
Representative Publications
Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean: Transnational Histories of Race and Urban Space in Tanzania (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015).
“Indian Ocean World Cinema: Viewing the History of Race, Diaspora, and Nationalism in Urban Tanzania,” special issue on “Print Cultures, Nationalisms, and Publics of the Indian Ocean,” Africa 81 (2011): 68-88.
“Traces of the Past, Fragments for the Future: South-South Cooperation in the Indian Ocean,” in Renu Modi, ed., South-South Cooperation: Africa on the Centre Stage (UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011): 61-72.
“Indian Ocean World Travellers: Moving Models in Multi-Sited Research,” in Helene Basu, ed., Journeys and Dwellings: Indian Ocean Themes in South Asia (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2008): 21-60.
“Educating the Nation: Race, Diaspora, and Nationalism in the History of Tanzanian Schools,” in Sara Dorman, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent, eds., Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2007): 161-80.
Ned bertz
BS & BA Illinois, 1994; MA, PhD Iowa, 1998, 2008
Assistant Professor in History (South Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean, World History)
Email: bertz@hawaii.edu
Originally from Chicago, Ned Bertz attended the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), including a year abroad at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), and graduated with undergraduate degrees in History and Accountancy. He was trained in modern South Asian and African history while completing his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Iowa. Seeking to bridge area studies approaches and write about historical exchanges between South Asia and East Africa, Professor Bertz has spent many years conducting fieldwork in India and Tanzania, including studying Swahili, Hindi, and Gujarati. His first book traces the transoceanic connections of the Indian diaspora in Tanzania through the themes of colonialism, nationalism, race, and urban space, linking western India to East Africa across the history of the twentieth century. His current project is a transnational history of the Partition of India, reframing this critical event within a longer-term process in which new ideas about territoriality, mobility, and belonging reshaped people’s lives all around the western Indian Ocean.
Professor Bertz teaches courses about the history of South Asia, Africa, and the Indian Ocean, in addition to world history, history and film, history and literature, senior thesis, and historiography, among other offerings. In 2010, he was awarded the University of Hawaiʻi Regents Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2013-14, he served as the Resident Director of the UH Study Abroad Center’s program in India while a Visiting Faculty Member at Ambedkar University Delhi. He is teaching there again in Fall 2016 and then is on research sabbatical until August 2017.
CV: http://manoa-hawaii.academia.edu/BertzNed/CurriculumVitae
Bertz, Ned. Diaspora and nation in the Indian Ocean: transnational histories of race and urban space in Tanzania
T. Anderson
53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1215.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Bertz, Ned. Diaspora and nation in the Indian Ocean: transnational histories of race and urban space in Tanzania. Hawai'i, 2015. 275p bibl index afp ISBN 9780824851552 cloth, $59.00; ISBN 9780824857394 ebook, contact publisher for price
53-3619
DT443
2015-15819 CIP
In this sophisticated analysis, historian Bertz (Univ. of Hawai'i at Manoa) examines the emergence of Tanzania as a product of global as well as nationalist forces, arguing that urban areas and attitudes about race were at the core of debates about imperialism and national identity. He focuses on schools and cinema, devoting to each a chapter during the colonial period and then another under the nation-state. Bertz contends that colonial authorities racialized these spaces, effectively segregating Africans, Indians, and Europeans. Nationalists attempted to integrate schools and the cinema to build a national identity, yet Bertz notes that the cosmopolitan component of these urban spaces meant that they were contested by colonial and national authorities. By focusing on the 20th century, Bertz's study ultimately provides a welcome dimension to the study of the Indian Ocean and its diasporas, which too often neglects this period, while globalizing a story of race and identity that is often seen as merely a story of the nation-state. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--T. Anderson, Merrimack College
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Anderson, T. "Bertz, Ned. Diaspora and nation in the Indian Ocean: transnational histories of race and urban space in Tanzania." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1215. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661750&it=r&asid=6a09126fb56e6cfd4b0d257ca9f55cd0. Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449661750
eviewed by
Gijsbert Oonk
Diaspora and Nation in the Indian Ocean: Transnational Histories of Race and Urban Space in Tanzania. By ned bertz. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015. 288 pp. $59.00 (cloth).
The Indian Ocean region has been a zone of human interaction throughout global history. The ocean does not divide land masses and continents but connects them. This geographical fact has been neglected for decades in major studies on East Africa and South Asia. Historians, sociologists and anthropologists are often still trained in area specialization, like “African studies” or “Asian studies.” French historian Fernand Braudel pioneered a movement of observing cross economic and cultural interaction in treating the Mediterranean Sea as an integrated historical and geographic region that extended beyond its immediate shores. His research encouraged other historians to develop their own studies of maritime zones of interaction. For the Indian Ocean, scholars such as K. N. Chaudhuri and Michael Pearson, Ned Alpers, Abdul Sheriff, and a few others have contributed to the field of Indian Ocean studies, which has finally grown mature. These scholars highlight the role of scarcity in driving trade. For example, products like wood were lacking in Arabia but plentiful in East and Central Africa, prized spices and perfumes grew only in the islands of South East Asia, and textile products, tea, medicines, and ivory drove profitable trade across long distances of water.
The book under review emphasizes the importance of the interchange of people and ideas in the context of changing power relations in late twentieth century. The author builds upon the work of the aforementioned great pioneers of Indian Ocean studies. Nevertheless, Bertz’s focus is not so much on trade, scarcity of products, or seafaring people. Instead, he highlights the transnational production of ideas like “race” and “nation” in relation to a sense of belonging. His concern is with the larger framework of empire, the quest for independence, nation building (rightly seen as a continuous historical and ongoing process), and diaspora (especially the role of the South Asian diaspora in Tanzania). The book primarily highlights two areas of interaction among Africans, Indians, and Europeans: schools and education (chapters 2 and 4) and cinemas (chapters 3 and 5). Governments usually use schools and education as their sphere of influence to construct the “nation” and to educate “national” civics. While the intersection of colonialism and education is still an understudied topic and its literature is dominated by singular nationalist contexts, Bertz persuasively shows that Indian and to a lesser extent African groups challenged elements of colonial education [End Page 587] practices. However, he acknowledges that they largely had to work through educational practices established by the colonial government. The interplay of ethnic and religious rivalries in terms of well-united and protected educational systems, forms the center of this chapter. Bertz rightly concludes that the “tripartite colonial educational system created vastly unequal opportunities for students based on their racial group … and ideas about race penetrated urban schools” (p. 88).
Cinemas are generally seen as a bastion of commercial enterprise and not of government regulation. In the chapters on cinema, Bertz goes beyond the customary idea that Bollywood films are escapist fare for African cinemagoers and an expression for nostalgic longing for the Indian diaspora. By intermingling a great variety of bottom-up notions of “nation” and “diaspora” Bertz provides a diverse Indian Ocean region perspective that emphasizes cross-cultural and transregional production of “nation” and ideas of race, nationalism, and usage of space in urban Dar es Salaam (pp. 194–195). On the one hand, cinema halls were racially segregated public spaces that reinforced notions of the colonial state and race. On the other hand, African and Indian groups were able to challenge the administrative reliance on racial categories. State efforts to harness the cinema industry for nation building and control over public and private spheres largely failed because of persistent audience preferences for Hindi movies.
The book is well grounded in a range of archival, oral, and newspaper sources from Tanzania and India. Bertz reads Swahili, English, as well as Indian (Hindi) papers. It is, however, unclear, how many people he interviewed or what their respective backgrounds are. Did he...