All the Seas Were Ink explores a history of Islam, constitutions, and the making of the international from a place where global histories of law and Islam do not generally begin. It uses the much-travelled figure of Abu Bakar of Johore (1833-1895) as its narrative and archival spine: his travels and encounters encapsulated a world of sovereigns in the shadow of empire, from Java to Japan, Delhi to Constantinople, Cairo to London. These travels made possible the promulgation of Southeast Asia's first constitution, and the longest-running continuous experiment in Islamic constitutionalism in the world. These lead us in new and critical directions in the study of the making of the modern Muslim state, revealing histories of imperialism and international law, and forgotten genealogies of sovereignty, constitutionalism, and Asian internationalism.

Iza Hussin is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge. Her publications and teaching are in the areas of comparative politics, Islam and Muslim politics, law and society and religion and politics. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the European Commission (Horizon2020). She holds a PhD from the University of Washington, an MA from Georgetown University and an AM and AB from Harvard University. Dr Hussin is PI of ‘Unboxing Skeat,’ a collaborative project connecting Malaya collections across the University through multi-disciplinary research and networks of access within Southeast Asia. She is a General Editor of the Cambridge University Press series Asian Connections, on the Editorial Boards of Indonesia and the Malay World, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde /Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia (BKI), and the International Books Board of Law and Social Inquiry. She is Associate Research Fellow at the Joint Centre for History and Economics, and a member of the Faculty in World History at Cambridge.