{"title":"Nira Wickramasinghe","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNira Wickramasinghe\u003c\/strong\u003e offers a compelling exploration of Sri Lanka’s past, weaving together personal narratives and broader historical contexts. Her works, such as \u003cem\u003eCinnamon\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eSlave in a Palanquin\u003c\/em\u003e, provide insightful perspectives on colonial history, social change, and cultural identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders interested in the nuances of history and military influence will find her storytelling rich with detail and critical reflection. Wickramasinghe’s books invite contemplation of the intricate relationships between power, tradition, and human experience within South Asian history.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"slave-in-a-palanquin-by-nira-wickramasinghe-9780231197632","title":"Slave in a Palanquin","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also a crossroads in the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was present in multiple forms in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—when the British conquered the island in the late eighteenth century and began to gradually abolish slavery. Yet the continued presence of enslaved people in Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century has practically vanished from collective memory in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNira Wickramasinghe uncovers the traces of slavery in the history and memory of the Indian Ocean world, exploring moments of revolt in the lives of enslaved people in the wake of abolition. She tells the stories of Wayreven, the slave who travelled in the palanquin of his master; Selestina, accused of killing her child; Rawothan, who sought permission for his son to be circumcised; and others, enslaved or emancipated, who challenged their status. Drawing on legal cases, petitions, and other colonial records to recover individual voices and quotidian moments, Wickramasinghe offers a meditation on the archive of slavery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eShe examines how colour-based racial thinking gave way to more nuanced debates about identity, complicating conceptions of blackness and racialisation. A deeply interdisciplinary book with a focus on recovering subaltern resistance, \u003cem\u003eSlave in a Palanquin\u003c\/em\u003e offers a vital new portrait of the local and transnational worlds of the colonial-era Asian slave trade in the Indian Ocean.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000742822124,"sku":"9780231197632","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/8033023482270.jpg?v=1763301710"},{"product_id":"cinnamon-by-nira-wickramasinghe-9781761381812","title":"Cinnamon","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe sweeping cultural history of a spice so coveted it launched empires across oceans, reshaped global trade, and bound generations of Sri Lankan peelers to colonial rule.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFor millennia, cinnamon has been treasured for its healing powers and warm unmistakable aroma. But behind its familiar scent lies a tumultuous past steeped in conquest and rebellion. In \u003cem\u003eCinnamon\u003c\/em\u003e, acclaimed historian Nira Wickramasinghe traces the remarkable story of this 'queen of spices', from ancient Egyptian embalming tables and medieval Mughal kitchens to disastrous expeditions to mythical cinnamon lands in the Americas and the fierce imperial rivalries of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. She reveals how global demand for 'true' cinnamon transformed Sri Lanka, where an entire caste of peelers, neither enslaved nor free, were compelled to harvest the bark under systems of semi-servitude, at times rising up in rebellion.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing from meticulously researched global history and mythology, Wickramasinghe brings to life the smugglers, merchants, cooks, botanists, conquerors, and peelers who built the cinnamon trade. A vivid journey across centuries and continents, \u003cem\u003eCinnamon\u003c\/em\u003e is the definitive portrait of a spice through which the turmoil and richness of our world come alive.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'A meticulously researched and fascinating journey, tracing the path of one of the world's most fought-over commodities through colonial, global, and labour history, with remarkable insight into the strange \"privileged servitude\" of Sri Lanka's cinnamon peelers.'\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n— Alan Lester, Professor of Historical Geography, University of Sussex, and editor of \u003cem\u003eThe Truth About Empire\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'From the Hebrew Bible to Sappho and Hippocrates, and from legacies of slavery and enduring techniques of its Sri Lankan peelers all the way to mythical accounts of immortality trees on the moon, Nira Wickramasinghe takes us into fascinating voyages of a mysterious, sensuous, medicinal, and spiritual tree bark. The ethereal spice that once seduced the world, and now resides unceremoniously in your kitchen will never seem the same to you.'\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n— Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, author of \u003cem\u003eReOrienting Histories of Medicine\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePraise for \u003cstrong\u003eMetallic Modern:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'This is a fascinating book, rich in ideas about what we do with technology's reception and reconstitution in the colonial world.'\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n— \u003cem\u003eSouth Asia: journal of South Asian studies\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233116172524,"sku":"9781761381812","price":45.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781761381812-cinnamon-1.jpg?v=1787726050"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/nira-wickramasinghe.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}