Biography

Fahad Bishara specializes in the economic and legal history of the Indian Ocean and Islamic world. His current book, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1940 (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press) is a legal history of economic life in the Western Indian Ocean, told through the story of the Arab and Indian settlement and commercialization of East Africa during the nineteenth century. His next project is a microhistory of the dhow trade between the Gulf and the Indian Ocean during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and will take on issues of international law, empire, mobility, writing, and scale -- all in a shifting seascape. He received his B.A. from the University of Southern California, an M.A. from the University of Exeter, and Ph.D. from Duke University.