# THE AFRO-INDIAN DIASPORA AND THE RISE OF EUROPEAN INFLUENCE (1500-1700)  
Faaeza Jasdanwalla  
In the past two decades, there has been a steady increase in academic research and focus on the global African diaspora, particularly the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean region. Scholars such as Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, John McLeod, Kenneth X. Robbins, Sylviane Diouf and Beheroze Shroff are but a few who have written actively and prolifically about, and promoted awareness of, the subject.  
Scholars such as Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya explore the identity of Africans in the Asian trade routes, with special focus on cultural influences such as music and dance (De Silva Jayasuriya, 2010), while scholars such as Beheroze Shroff establish a link between African identity in India (especially in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat) and socioeconomic circumstances (Shroff, 2007); others, including Ababu Minda Yimene, associate African identity in eastern India with religion (Yimene, 2007). Many of the issues relating to African migrants in India who made their way up to the higher echelons are discussed in a single work entitled African Elites in India: Habshi Amarat, edited by Kenneth X. Robbins and John McLeod (2006). Most recently, the exhibition on the African diaspora in India launched in New York in 2013, curated by Sylviane Diouf and Kenneth X. Robbins, is travelling globally as well as within India. This volume of the General History of Africa will therefore raise awareness in an area of history that has received much interest in the past two decades  
and bring together a variety of perspectives and research in this field in one comprehensive work.