Soqotra: South Arabia's Strategic Gateway and Symbolic Playground

Contenu

Elie, Serge D. 2005. « Soqotra: South Arabia’s Strategic Gateway and Symbolic Playground ». British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 33 (2): 131-60. doi:10.1080/13530190600953278, bibliographie, consulté le 3 avril 2025, https://ibadica.org/s/bibliographie/item/34933

Titre: Soqotra: South Arabia's Strategic Gateway and Symbolic Playground
Créateur: Elie, Serge D. Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur
Sujet: Zanzibar Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur
Résumé: This article undertakes a critical retrospective of the symbolic appropriation process through which Soqotra was constituted as an imaginative geography, embodying the strategic desiderata of states as well as the ideational fantasies of men over millennia. The island’s location on the threshold of continents (Africa and Arabia), and on a cardinal node on the sea-lanes linking the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond, subjected its internal dynamics to the maelstrom of events in the larger world. Moreover, its physical isolation endowed it with an endemic biodiversity that has spurred reveries about the lost Garden of Eden, and made it a coveted haven for a mosaic of human aspirations. The article examines the strategic interests pursued, and the appropriating discourses deployed, by the European powers vying for political and economic hegemony at the different historical periods surveyed here: Antiquity, Portuguese, British, Soviet and the recent adoption of a United Nations-brokered environmental regime for Soqotra. Finally, it draws out the ramiﬁcations of this strategic entanglement and symbolic appropriation process on Soqotra’s estimated 50,000 inhabitants at the present historical conjuncture.
Est une partie de: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur
volume: 33
numéro: 2
pages: 131-160
Date: 2006
Langue: eng
doi: 10.1080/13530190600953278
issn: 1353-0194, 1469-3542

Position : 30595 (10 vues)