The Indian Ocean Read online

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  The Indian Ocean

  The Indian Ocean, used and travelled by humans for over 5,000 years, is by far the 'oldest' sea in history. In this stimulating and authoritative study, Michael Pearson reverses traditional maritime history and looks from the sea to its shores – its impact on the land through trade, naval power, travel and scientific exploration. This vast ocean, both connecting and separating nations, has shaped many countries' cultures and ideologies through the movement of goods, people, ideas and religions across the sea.

  The Indian Ocean moves from a discussion of physical aspects such as shape, winds, currents and boundaries, to a history from pre-Islamic times to the modern period of European dominance. Going far beyond pure maritime history, this compelling survey is an invaluable addition to political, cultural and economic world history.

  Michael Pearson is Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia and Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. His previous publications include Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era (1998) and Pious Passengers: The Hajj in Earlier Times (1994).

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  SEAS IN HISTORY

  Series editor: Geoffrey Scammell

  Published titles

  THE ATLANTIC

  THE BALTIC AND THE NORTH SEAS

  Forthcoming titles

  THE MEDITERRANEAN

  THE PACIFIC

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  The Indian Ocean

  Michael Pearson

  LONDON AND NEW YORK

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  First published 2003

  by Routledge

  11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

  Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

  by Routledge

  29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

  Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

  This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

  © 2003 Michael Pearson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  has been applied for

  ISBN 0-203-41413-6 Master e-book ISBN

  ISBN 0-203-41429-2 (MP PDA Format)

  ISBN 0-415-21489-0 (Print Edition)

  Copyright © 2002/2003 . All rights reserved.

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  Reader's Guide

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  Dedication

  TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO SAILED THESE WATERS BEFORE ME:

  SINNAPPAH ARASARATNAM, CHARLES BOXER, FRANK BROEZE,

  ASHIN DAS GUPTA, HOLDEN FURBER AND DENYS LOMBARD

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  Contents

  List of illustrations

  Series editor's preface

  Preface

  Map of the Indian Ocean

  Introduction

  1 Deep structure

  2 Humans and the sea

  3 The beginning of the ocean

  4 Muslims in the Indian Ocean

  5 Europeans in an Indian Ocean world

  6 The early modern Indian Ocean world

  7 Britain and the ocean

  8 History in the ocean

  Notes

  Select bibliography

  Index

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  Illustrations

  1 A Terry Dinghee

  2 Indian Sailing Boats

  3 Surat in East India

  4 The Honourable East India Company's Iron War Steamer, the Ship Nemesis

  5 Custom House Wharf (Calcutta)

  6 Madras

  7 Study of yacht Sunbeam

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  Series editor's preface

  Seas and oceans cover roughly two-thirds of the surface of the globe. Since time immemorial they have provided mankind with food. In our own age they have been found to contain a rich diversity of resources whose exploitation remains a matter of contention. But the waters of the world are more than a prime instance of nature's munificence, or a handy dumping ground for the refuse of civilisation. They can be formidable obstacles to societies lacking the will or the means to cross them. Equally they can be a powerful stimulus to technology and a challenge to the skills of those who, for any reason, seek to use them. They can unite the cultures and economies of widely dispersed and radically different peoples, allowing knowledge, ideas and beliefs to be freely transmitted. The ports that develop along their littorals often have more in common with one another than with the states or communities in which they are sited.

  Yet since seas are in themselves so rich,and since for centuries they alone gave access to the wealth of many distant regions, land powers have put forward ambitious claims to exercise authority over them. In Europe the justification or denial of such title has concerned thinkers and apologists since the days of Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Economic, political or strategic necessity, real or imagined, stimulated the growth of navies, which became formidable expressions of the power of the modern state. Seaborne commerce entailed the construction of ships which, however propelled, were for long among the most expensive and technologically advanced products of contemporary economies. The shipping industries of the world support a labour force whose social organisation and way of life radically differ from those of the rest of society.

  But there is more to the history of the sea than the impressive chronicle of man's triumph over the elements, or of battles fought, freight's carried and ships launched. Everywhere seas and oceans have had a significant cultural influence on the civilisations adjoining them.

  These themes, and much else besides, are examined by Michael Pearson in this illuminating and authoritative book. Professor Pearson is internationally renowned for his innovative studies of the Portuguese pioneers in India and for his stimulating writings on the Indian Ocean and maritime history in general. In this new and fascinating work he brings together the fruits of a lifetime's scholarship. The learning is impressive, but lightly borne, the writing felicitous and the whole enriched by a warm sympathy for, and close familiarity with the area. His book will be invaluable not only to scholars, but to all interested in the history of an ocean for centuries the meeting place of some of the world's most distinguished civilisations and of political, economic and cultural forces from much of the globe. It is particularly fitting too that this study is from a scholar based in Australia, the source in recent years of so many seminal ideas and works on the history of the sea.

  Geoffrey Scammell

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  Preface

  My thanks to my former colleagues in the School of History, University of New South Wales, especially its several Heads of School, and to successive Deans of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Onesimo Almeida and Charles Neu made it possible for me to spend a very productive (and extremely underemployed) four months at Brown University in the Fall of 2000. Librarians on four continents have been universally helpful. My thanks to Geoffrey Scammell f
or first inviting me to undertake this task, which fell to me after the untimely death of a dear colleague and friend, Ashin Das Gupta. Victoria Peters was a firm, but supportive, senior editor at Routledge, and is responsible for this book not being about twice as long as it is. For research assistance I thank Philippa Colin, and (yet again) Martin Braach-Maksvytis. My immediate family, Denni and James, have always taken a keen interest, while Ben and Mathew supported me from afar.

  Michael Pearson

  A note on names and measures

  As is usual, deciding on these matters has been a perplexing task. I use modern, indigenous, spellings of place names when I consider they have achieved wide currency: thus Mumbai, Melaka, Kolkata, Chennai. When this is not the case I have used older, more familiar, spellings: thus Calicut, not Kozhikode. I am aware that many readers will be more used to Bombay than to Mumbai. However, many of these major ports have had several name changes over the centuries, and to follow these would be a confusing task indeed. Hence I use the most widely accepted modern name throughout this book.

  My sources use a very wide variety of measures and units of currency. Where appropriate I have given metric equivalents, but in cases where the data merely gives an impression of change I have decided that conversions would be otiose, and I have retained the originals.

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  Introduction

  Our perceptions of the sea have changed dramatically over the last few decades. In a First World country, such as the Island Nation of Australia, where the vast bulk of the population lives within an easy drive of the shore, it is part of recreational life. Many people have their own boats, and follow round-the-world yacht races with interest. Celebratory occasions often feature the Tall Ships, some of their sails emblazoned with the logos of their sponsors. Children 'check the surf' every day after school. Historic replicas of more or less authenticity are popular. One example is the replica of the Batavia, an ill-fated Dutch East India Company ship which in 1629 sped across the southern Indian Ocean towards Australia, but failed to turn north towards Indonesia soon enough and instead ran aground on the Abrulhos Islands, 60 kms off the Western Australian coast. Stirring scenes of mutiny, murder, survival and executions followed. Part of the original ship has been salvaged and is displayed in a purpose-built museum in Geraldton. Indeed, this part of the Western Australian coast has been christened, with an eye to the tourist market, the 'Batavia Coast,' complete with marinas, souvenirs, and expensive development projects. The replica was built in the Netherlands between 1985 and l995 (the original was built in seven months in 1628) and has become a popular sight around the Australian coast.

  For most of us today the sea has little practical significance. This is very recent. When I first went overseas from New Zealand in 1965 to America I travelled by sea, but this was just at the end of the sea era, for planes were becoming dominant, and I have only once travelled by sea again, except for pleasure. Yet, common perceptions aside, Australia is intricately tied in to the world, exporting raw materials and importing manufactured goods, and these are mostly carried by sea. Much of the world is dependent on oil from the Middle East, carried in great tankers across the Indian Ocean to First World destinations.

  In the past the sea was much more central in our minds, connecting people and goods all over the world, inspiring great literature. Conrad, a novelist and a seaman, was one of the best. A ship is in the Arabian Sea, bound for the Cape of Good Hope:

  The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her, ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always imposing.1

  Or more generally, this is what the open sea means to those who travel it:

  The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land; and when He sends there the messengers of His might it is not in terrible wrath against crime, presumption, and folly, but paternally, to chasten simple hearts – ignorant hearts that know nothing of life, and beat undisturbed by envy or greed.2

  This maritime literature, with its universal appeal, presented the sea as both mystical and utilitarian, and with a strong preference for sailing ships. The stunning series of maritime novels by Patrick O'Brian are, significantly, about men on sailing ships two hundred years ago. In contrast, how many great novels or poems have there been about air travel or container ships? Such sea literature as there is today reflects its recreational role.

  For most of the past five millennia the sea was important for humans. Those who travelled long distances often went by sea. Today few travel by sea, some goods go by air, and bulk goods which do go by sea involve very little human experience with the sea. With the end of passenger ships, and the new container ships and oil tankers which have a minimum of crew (indeed it is technically feasible to guide a ship by computers and satellites from land, so that no one need be on board from port to port) fewer people than ever before have any sea experience. Containerisation has also shrunk dramatically the number of people needed on the wharves to unload a ship. This is a major change of the last few decades. One sign of this is seen in the Muslim pilgrimage, the hajj. Up to the 1970s most pilgrims had some sea experience on their way to the Holy Cities. Today nearly all come by air, arriving at the huge airport at Jiddah, designed specifically to handle the pilgrims. Similarly, in the sixteenth century the Portuguese complained of Muslim religious authorities travelling by ship and converting southeast Asia, but today swamis and godmen jet about. The air and the land have triumphed over the sea. Today's seafarers are mostly on cruise ships which are designed to replicate a floating block of luxury flats or a casino. Equally removed from the sea are the floating gin palaces in the harbours, and huge catamarans and hovercraft which treat the sea with negligent contempt. In 1993 I went on a Russian built hovercraft from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar. I spent my time on deck trying to spot dhows and whales, but the locals all sat below in a large air-conditioned cabin and watched videos of 'Bollywood' movies. A western dilettante could experience the sea as exotic; the locals pragmatically saw it merely as a medium to be crossed to get from one place to another, no different from a trip by plane or bus, where indeed similar videos are provided to while away the time.

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  Historians have too often neglected the role of the sea in world history. This has produced skewed, incomplete histories of human kind. They have forgotten that 'In any pre-industrial society, from the upper Palaeolithic to the nineteenth century AD, a boat or (later) a ship was the largest and most complex machine produced.'3 As Reade noted,

  The sea has always offered our species a range of resources which, while sometimes seasonal, are more reliable, less vulnerable to factors like drought and over-exploitation, than those available inland. From deep prehistory up to modern times, many communities have found that gathering food along and off the shore constitutes an entirely viable way of life. Their historical significance has been underrated because of the agrocentric presumptions built into much archaeological thought.4

  In similar fashion, the Indian Ocean, the subject of this book, has been known and ignored, dismissed and described. European scholars often saw it as a passive region, part of the unchanging East, on which impacted exogenous Roman, Islamic and Western European influences. The Indian Ocean was brought into history when some external force came to it. According to the great historian of the Atlantic, Pierre Chaunu, the Indian Ocean had no intrinsic importance, and no unity: he considered 'the problem of whether this universe of Arab navigation should be considered as really autonomous compared with the Mediterranean one. Obviously not: it was scarcely more than an extension of the eastern Mediterranean'.5 In this he echoes the great poet of the early Portuguese voyages, Luis de Camoens, who famously wrote that the Portuguese sailed 'por mares nunca dantes navegados' ('through seas never before navigated'). Contrary to this, we can no
te that the Indian Ocean is by far the oldest of the seas in history, in terms of it being used and traversed by humans. The first sea passage in human history was over its waters, regular connections between two early civilisations date back over 5,000 years. By comparison, the Atlantic is 1,000 years old, if one takes account of the Viking voyages, while the whole geographic Atlantic is just over 500 years old. The Pacific has seen long-distance voyaging for at most 2,000 years, though nowhere near the density of communication as that over the Indian Ocean. Indeed, Spate considers that

  there was not, and could not be, any concept 'Pacific' until the limits and lineaments of the Ocean were set: and this was undeniably the work of Europeans…. The fact remains that until our own day the Pacific was basically a Euro-American creation, though built on an indigenous sub-structure.6

  The Indian Ocean is not only older, it also has a fundamentally different history. The Mediterranean has always been dominated by people from its littoral; the North Atlantic is the creation of people from one of its coasts; the Pacific arguably was created by Europeans, but in the Indian Ocean there is a long history of contact and distant voyages done by people from its coasts, and then a brief hiatus, maybe 150 years, when westerners controlled things. Andre Gunder Frank has claimed that the Indian Ocean area, extending to the South China Sea, has been central in global history in all the millennia up to about 1800, and now is re-emerging again as central. European dominance in the world covers at most 200 years out of a total of perhaps six millennia;7 so also external control of the Indian Ocean was transitory.