Book excerpt: This book problematises established histories of slavery and indentured labour, as carried out through European empires, to interpret the impact of trade, particularly in the region surrounding the Indian Ocean. The discourse within these chapters explores the aesthetics of silence, poetics of relation, creolisation, agency and assertion of identities, musical practices, cuisine, knowledge transfers, decolonisation, and afterlives of empire. These critical analyses draw from Africa, India, Indonesia, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Suriname as their case studies. This book breaks the silence on several legacies of empire, looking through the prisms of history, politics, economics, sociology, linguistics, literature, anthropology and ethnomusicology, all the while employing a range of concepts. The authors of these chapters search through the annals of history for ways of living harmoniously in an increasingly globalised world.