scholarly journals Convicts, Commodities, and Connections in British Asia and the Indian Ocean, 1789–1866

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (S27) ◽  
pp. 205-227
Author(s):  
Clare Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Bay Of Bengal ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Company Governance ◽  
Convict Transportation ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article explores the transportation of Indian convicts to the port cities of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean during the period 1789 to 1866. It considers the relationship between East India Company transportation and earlier and concurrent British Crown transportation to the Americas and Australia. It is concerned in particular with the interconnection between convictism and enslavement in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Examining the roots of transportation in South Asia in the repressive policies of the East India Company, especially in relation to its occupation of land and expropriation of resources, it moves on to discuss aspects of convicts’ lives in Moulmein, Singapore, Mauritius, and Aden. This includes their labour regime and their relationship to other workers. It argues that Indian convict transportation was part of a carceral circuit of repression and coerced labour extraction that was intertwined with the expansion of East India Company governance and trade. The Company used transportation as a means of removing resistant subjects from their homes, and of supplying an unfree labour force to develop commodity exports and to build the infrastructure necessary for the establishment, population, and connection of littoral nodes. However, the close confinement and association of convicts during transportation rendered the punishment a vector for the development of transregional political solidarities, centred in and around the Company's port cities.

Persians, Pilgrims and Portuguese: The Travails of Masulipatnam Shipping in the Western Indian Ocean, 1590–1665

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Bay Of Bengal ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Maritime Trade ◽  
Western India ◽  
Grain Trade ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Relationship

The Coromandel port of Masulipatnam, at the northern extremity of the Krishna delta, rose to prominence as a major centre of maritime trade in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Its growing importance after about 1570 is explicable in terms of two sets of events: first, the consolidation of the Sultanate of Golkonda under Ibrahim Qutb Shah (r. 1550–1580), and second, the rise within the Bay of Bengal of a network of ports with a distinctly anti-Portuguese character, including the Sumatran centre of Aceh, the ports of lower Burma, of Arakan, as well as Masulipatnam itself. Round about 1550, Masulipatnam was no more than a supplier of textiles on the coastal network to the great port of Pulicat further south, but by the early 1580s its links with Pegu and Aceh had grown considerably, causing not a little alarm in the upper echelons of the administration of the Portuguese Estado da Índia at Goa. The ‘Moors’ who owned and operated ships out of Masulipatnam did so without the benefit of carlazes from the Portuguese captains either at São Tomé or at any other neighbouring port, and while developing an intense trade within the Bay of Bengal, strictly avoided the Portuguese-controlled entrepot at Melaka. The Portuguese in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were heavily involved in it in western India and a recent study has marshalled evidence from Portuguese sources on the mechanics of that trade in a port on the Kanara coast.2 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the entry into the Indian Ocean of the large Chartered Companies, evidence on the grain trade is substantially increased, enabling us to see it in sharper focus in the broad canvas of Asian trade. the port was no more than a minor nuisance, and in the engagements that ensued, the Portuguese frequently had the worst of it, subsequently negotiating to recover prisoners lodged at Masulipatnam or at the court in Golkonda.2 However, by about 1590, the tenor of the relationship between the viceregal administration at Goa and the court at Golkonda had begun to show signs of change

Spatial and Temporal Continuities of Merchant Networks in South Asia and the Indian Ocean (1500-2000)

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 91-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gita Dharampal-Frick ◽  
Bhaswati Bhattacharya ◽  
Jos Gommans
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
The People ◽  
Merchant Networks ◽  
The Indian Ocean

AbstractWe believe ourselves to be the most astute men that one can encounter, and the people here surpass us in everything. And there are Moorish merchants worth 400,000 to 500,000 ducats. And they can do better calculations by memory than we can do with the pen. And they mock us, and it seems to me that they are superior to us in countless things, save with sword in hand, which they cannot resist.

A Secret People of South Asia. The Origins, Evolution and Role of the Luso-Indian Goan Community from the Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries

Itinerario ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Ocean Region ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Until fairly recently, histories of European imperial expansion in the Indian Ocean region have been written largely in terms of the endeavours of Europeans in creating and controlling empire. Only in the last couple of decades has recognition been given slowly to the role of the indigenous economic and political compradors, both large and small, who were vital to the evolution and sustenance of European colonial empires.

scholarly journals Coffee: An Indian Ocean Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-81
Author(s):  
Shane J. Barter
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Coffee Production ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
History Of ◽  
Coffee Farmers ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World

Abstract Studies of coffee production and consumption are dominated by emphases on Latin American production and American consumption. This paper challenges the Atlantic perspective, demanding an equal emphasis on the Indian Ocean world of Eastern Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. A geographical approach to historical as well as contemporary patterns of coffee production and consumption provides an opportunity to rethink the nature of coffee as a global commodity. The Indian Ocean world has a much deeper history of coffee, and in recent decades, has witnessed a resurgence in production. The nature of this production is distinct, providing an opportunity to rethink dependency theories. Coffee in the Indian Ocean world is more likely to be produced by smallholders, countries are less likely to be economically dependent on coffee, farmers are more likely to harvest polycultures, and countries represent both consumers and producers. A balanced emphasis of Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds allows us to better understand coffee production and consumption, together telling a more balanced, global story of this important commodity.

scholarly journals Beaching patterns of plastic debris along the Indian Ocean rim

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam van der Mheen ◽  
Erik van Sebille ◽  
Charitha Pattiaratchi
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Bay Of Bengal ◽  
Plastic Material ◽  
Monsoon Season ◽  
Southwest Monsoon ◽  
Plastic Waste ◽  
Ocean Dynamics ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Southwest Monsoon Season

Abstract. A large percentage of global ocean plastic waste enters the northern hemisphere Indian Ocean (NIO). Despite this, it is unclear what happens to buoyant plastics in the NIO. Because the subtropics in the NIO is blocked by landmass, there is no subtropical gyre and no associated subtropical garbage patch in this region. We therefore hypothesise that plastics "beach" and end up on coastlines along the Indian Ocean rim. In this paper, we determine the influence of beaching plastics by applying different beaching conditions to Lagrangian particle tracking simulation results. Our results show that a large amount of plastic likely ends up on coastlines in the NIO, while some crosses the equator into the southern hemisphere Indian Ocean (SIO). In the NIO, the transport of plastics is dominated by seasonally reversing monsoonal currents, which transport plastics back and forth between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. All buoyant plastic material in this region beaches within a few years in our simulations. Countries bordering the Bay of Bengal are particularly heavily affected by plastics beaching on coastlines. This is a result of both the large sources of plastic waste in the region, as well as ocean dynamics which concentrate plastics in the Bay of Bengal. During the intermonsoon period following the southwest monsoon season (September, October, November), plastics can cross the equator on the eastern side of the NIO basin into the SIO. Plastics that escape from the NIO into the SIO beach on eastern African coastlines and islands in the SIO or enter the subtropical SIO garbage patch.

Kinship as Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danna Agmon
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Family Networks ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Kinship Ties ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the role of family networks, both French and Tamil, in the development of French empire in India. It charts how two Tamil dynasties drew on their kinship ties to create commercial networks that spanned the Indian Ocean, and highlights the involvement of of one local woman in the relationship between French colonists and local familial institutions.

Indonesia and the Arab World, Then and Now

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-55
Author(s):  
Mirjam Lücking
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter provides a historical overview of ambivalent encounters between Indonesia and the Arab world through findings that show the relationship between Indonesia and the Middle East. It recounts the Indonesians' earliest encounters with Arab traders in the seventh century, from confrontations with Indo Persian Sufi up to the current democratization process that have been marked by contradictory dynamics. It also explains how Arabs have been acknowledged as teachers of Islam and allies in the postcolonial nonbloc movement. The chapter describes the gloomy counterimage of the Arab world against which Indonesian officials and religious leaders drew the picture of a tolerant, pluralist Indonesian Islam. It mentions the key role of the mobility across the Indian Ocean in the formation of Islamic culture in Indonesia.

France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Marvin ◽  
Blake Smith
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
French Military ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The 19Th Century

France was a latecomer to the Indian Ocean among European powers. After some tentative and short-lived initiatives by private merchants, the first French East India Company was founded in 1664 by a French monarchy eager to catch up with England and the Netherlands, which had founded companies of their own at the beginning of the 17th century. Competing with the English and Dutch to replace the Portuguese as the preeminent European power in the Indian Ocean, France gradually established a network of colonial holdings that included the island colonies of the Mascarenes in the southwestern Indian Ocean (Réunion and Mauritius) as well as a network of trading posts along the shores of the Indian subcontinent. Plans to expand this colonial empire to Madagascar, however, met with repeated failure. Established as a regional power by the middle of the 18th century, France would be reduced by the century’s end to the role of a spectator of Britain’s rising hegemony. Nevertheless, France held on to some of its Indian Ocean territories, including Réunion and Pondicherry in South Asia. These outposts of French imperialism would inspire nostalgia, regret, and new colonial ambitions among metropolitan observers, and they would become sites of cultural hybridity and exchange. Indeed, while France’s empire in the Indian Ocean is often overshadowed by the emergence of British dominance in the 19th century, or by the intensity of French investment in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean was a key area of French military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural interest in the 17th and 18th centuries, and beyond.

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