Dr. Gijsbert Oonk

Biographical Note

If you don’t know the past, you get lost in the future

Gijsbert Oonk (1966) is Head of the Department of History at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) Rotterdam, Netherlands. He is Associate Professor of African and South Asian History at ESHCC. He also serves as the 'South Asian area/history' editor of the Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO) as well as editor of Geschiedenis Magazine (History Magazine, published in Dutch). In 2011-2012 he is the Alfred D. Chandler Jr. International Visiting Fellow in Business History at the Harvard Business School (Boston).

He specializes in business, migration and economic history. He is particular interested in the role of South Asian (Indian) migrants and settlers in East Africa. Presently he is finalizing his research project: Settled Strangers: The Emergence of a Transnational Asian African Business Elite 1800-2000 (Sage Publication, forthcoming).  This research has been funded by the Dutch Foundation of Tropical research (WOTRO/NWO). He recently published a widely acclaimed biography of the South Asian business family Karimjee Jivanjee. The Karimjee Jivanjee Family: Merchant Princes of East Africa, 1800-2000, Amsterdam: Pallas publications 2009). He has received his Ph-D in non-western history at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1998: Ondernemers in ontwikkeling. Fabrieken en fabrikanten in de Indiase katoenin­dustrie, 1850-1930, [Entrepreneurs in Development. Mills and Millowners in the Indian Cotton Textile Industry (Hilversum 1998)]. His research and teaching activities are in the field of World History, especially African History and South Asian History in the nineteenth and twentieth century. His is interested in economic as well cultural aspects of migration, ethnic entrepreneurship, citizenship and change over time.