This is a history of Massawa, the Red Sea port of what is now the independent state of Eritrea, over the period 1800–1910. Chapter One traces the history of the na'ibs or governors of Massawa, to whom the Ottomans – who had first conquered the city in 1557 – transferred power in about 1650. In the political space that opened up as a result of indirect and distant Ottoman rule and the absence of a strong, central Ethiopian state (especially during the period 1769–1855), the na'ibs of Massawa expanded their political authority and economic wealth by regulating and taxing the import and export trade. Egypt ruled the island port of Massawa and its hinterland during three different periods, twice under the aegis of the Ottomans (1813–41, 1846–9) and once on its own authority (1865–85), this last being a period of transformation of the Red Sea trade because of the opening of the Suez Canal. Caught between a revitalized Ethiopian state and expansive European powers, the families associated with the position of na'ib lost much of their political authority but not their economic wealth and influence.

In the era of the steamship (from the 1830s onwards) and under the direct rule of Egypt – which initiated a building boom in Massawa, stimulated agriculture in its environs, and modernized the administration of trade – the city developed into a flourishing center of regional (rather than only long-distance) trade and a significant terminus for the caravan trade from both the Ethiopian highlands and the Sudanese hinterland of Kassala. If gold, ivory, and slaves had dominated trade until the 1860s, now the local and regional products of livestock herders, fishermen, and pearl divers became prominent exports. This led, as Miran explains in Chapter Two, to a commodification and monetization of the regional economy, whose consequences, however, remain unexplored. Chapter Three is devoted to the merchant families that gained prominence in Massawa in the nineteenth century. Here the reader is introduced to families with lineages pointing to Hadrami, Indian, and Yemeni (as well as local) inland connections, all adding a lasting dimension to Massawa's cosmopolitan citizenry in this period. From 1885 to 1899 Massawa served as the capital of the newly established Italian colony (thereafter administered from Asmara). As its middle class flourished, its underclass also grew and was gradually removed to the city's mainland periphery.

In Chapter Four, Miran traces the history of Islam in the wider coastal area, emphasizing the ‘holy’ families and Sufi brotherhoods that gained great influence in the nineteenth century. In this context, the author also draws on the records of Massawa's qadi's courts and gives some attention to popular cultural and devotional practices. Given that Miran has already noted an upsurge of local devotional literature in the vernacular for the Somali coastal city of Brava (in response to the intensification of the Italian colonial presence), a comparative focus might have directed his analysis more firmly here. Chapter Six, finally, focuses on what ‘being Massawan’ meant to the inhabitants of the city and from what kinds of sources Massawa's elite drew their authority and prestige.

Overall this is an excellent study, which draws on a wealth of sources in an impressive number of languages (including Arabic but not Tigre, Tigrinya, or Amharic). However, the book does not live up to its author's emphatic and repeated claims that his is a new, transoceanic approach and epistemology that transgresses and subverts conventional chronology and analytical categories and has yielded a study that is ‘a bridge linking the Horn … with its wider region and … the Ethiopian orbis with its wider environment’ (p. 16). This is simply not true. Not only is the Ethiopian state's side of the story absent but, with the exception of Sudanese Sawakin, there are also no comparative references to other African Red Sea towns – not even towns in such close geographical proximity as Zeila, Djibouti, and Berbera, which shared many features and, one expects, trading and labor diaspora with Massawa. Port cities on the Arabian side of the Red Sea and other north-west Indian Ocean ports receive mention but come into focus almost exclusively from the viewpoint of sources about Massawa. Thus, apart from the attention given to the eastern Sudan, the focus on regional connections touted by Miran emerges less from a trans-regional or transoceanic approach than – as a matter of course – from Massawa's character as a trade port. It might have been more productive had the author conceptualized his study as part of the new scholarship on cities, since, in that case, the built environment (and those who expressed power and ambition through it), everyday life, and perhaps local popular production in the vernacular might have received more attention than they now do.

That a book about one single port city, even one as excellent and superbly researched as this one, cannot deliver a comprehensive picture of ‘Red Sea society’ or the wider Horn is not at all surprising and perhaps even inevitable. We will need many more studies like this one to accomplish such an overview. However, as a history of Massawa in the long nineteenth century, this is an important, well-researched, and beautifully illustrated book that deserves to be widely read.