"One of the works great strengths is its ability to articulate how the context and sources for the Indian Ocean differ from those of the Atlantic world, especially for enslavement and indenture. Enslavement in the Indian Ocean world produced a legal archive unlike that of the Atlantic Ocean, allowing Boer to ask and answer questions about enslaved life that could not be posed in the Atlantic. This has the dual effect of bringing into relief what is unique about each while simultaneously helping to bring Atlantic world scholars into the world of the Indian Ocean." - Jared Asser (Emotions: History, Culture, Society) "A keen sense of form enables [ Boer] to plot a course through a vast array of legal and literary texts that span centuries and include court rulings, legal complaints, testimonies, and political pamphlets alongside poetry, folk songs, fiction, and memoirs. It is no small feat to weave together an archive as expansive and complex as the Indian Ocean itself, and Boer manages to do so with striking clarity and precision. . . . The Briny South offers a new paradigm for scholars and readers of Indian Ocean literature, histories of enslavement, indenture, internment, inter-imperialism, or South African apartheid."
- Tyler Scott Ball (ISLE) "The Briny South makes an important contribution to the scholarship on law and literature, colonial legalities, law and empire, and legal histories of the Indian Ocean World and those set in the South." - Kalyani Ramnath (Law & Society Review) "The Briny South is an important addition to the emerging body of scholarship in Indian Ocean literary studies. It offers new theoretical and methodological tools for studying transoceanic linkages between Asia and Africa, an area of research that is been understudied in South Asian studies." - Kritish Rajbhandari (South Asian Review) "The book combines the historical breadth and environmental focus of ocean studies with the political and ethical drive towards understanding the subaltern experience of globalization that marks Global South studies. . . . The book is full of interesting and binding narratives. Boer has done great work tracing these stories and using an analytical framework to scarping out sentiments from the documents from various chronological periods." - Rishabh Verma (IIAS Review) "This book is many things: a historical analysis of South Africas Indian Ocean worlds, a study of the ontology of unfreedom, and a meditation on race and racial identity formation. Above all, though, it is a strident call for an oceanic perspective when approaching questions of historical power, with the Indian Ocean offered as a salient space to do so. . . . For scholars of the region, and those of slavery and indenture, Boers book is an exciting and critical intervention." - Robert Rouphail (Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim)
