Dr. Zhongping Chen et al.

Dr. Zhongping Chen (history), Dr. Greg Blue (history) and Ying Liu (library), join a team of international researchers investigating the rise and development of the Indian Ocean region, including Eastern Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the emerging superpowers of China and India. “The Indian Ocean World: The Making of the First Global Economy in the Context of Human-Environment Interaction” is the first large-scale attempt to investigate and analyze how environmental factors, including natural disasters, influenced human society in the Indian Ocean World and how human activities changed the environmental conditions. It will also address how the human-environmental interaction led to the rise of the first global economy.