Blanche D’Souza’s book is a most  direct statement on ‘brown man’s’ transcripts over thousands of years of trade, labour and migrations for settlements against a pervading backdrop of Arab, British and Portuguese rivalries in the Indian Ocean.

In this wake Harnessing the Trade Winds adds to plural historical perspectives, in that the text upholds the value of diversity that shapes the identities and self-knowledge of the peoples of Asia and Africa. It challenges those who hold the political reigns and direct policy, on education as well as race relations.

Blanche Rocha D’Souza spent her early childhood in Kenya where her father was stationed as a district cashier. She was educated in Karachi and Mumbai where she trained and worked as a teacher. Back in Kenya she studied Library science, was senior cataloguer at the US Library of Congress and graduated in Social Psychology. Her book Harnessing the Trade Winds was a project for which she had been collecting material for many years. She says: ‘In all my research I found that Arab, and particularly European, sources of information downplayed the importance of Indian trade in the Indian Ocean which goes back at least three thousand years BC. Harnessing the Trade Winds attempts to kindle in the Indian diaspora a justifiable pride in the achievements of its forebears in East Africa, and indeed in others parts of the world. In East Africa they promoted the development of agriculture and industry and the globalization of trade stemming from their trading activities.