Western Impact on East Sumatra and North Tapanuli: The Roles of the Planter and the Missionary

1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl J. Pelzer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
The Political ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Forward Movement ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Strait Of Malacca

The two administrative units of Sumatra with which this paper is concerned are East Sumatra, stretching along the Strait of Malacca, and North Tapanuli, extending from the mountainous interior around Lake Toba to the Indian Ocean.At the beginning of the nineteenth century, East Sumatra and Tapanuli (except for a small number of Indian-Ocean settlements and trading posts in the latter) were completely outside of the political sphere of interest of European powers. The Treaty of London of 1824, however, delineated Malaya as a British sphere of interest and Sumatra as a Dutch sphere. But it was nearly another forty years before the Dutch turned their attention to East Sumatra and North Tapanuli. In the forward movement which then began, planters and Christian missionaries played highly significant and critical roles; in the pioneer decades they were actually either ahead of the flag or were overshadowing the colonial government officials.

Western Impact on East Sumatra and North Tapanuli: The Roles of the Planter and the Missionary

1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-71
Author(s):  
Karl J. Pelzer
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
Strait Of Malacca

The two administrative units of Sumatra with which this paper is concerned are East Sumatra, stretching along the Strait of Malacca, and North Tapanuli, extending from the mountainous interior around Lake Tobe to the Indian Ocean.

Editorial Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Editors of the JIOWS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
Shed Light

The editors are proud to present the first issue of the fourth volume of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies. This issue contains three articles, by James Francis Warren (Murdoch University), Kelsey McFaul (University of California, Santa Cruz), and Marek Pawelczak (University of Warsaw), respectively. Warren’s and McFaul’s articles take different approaches to the growing body of work that discusses pirates in the Indian Ocean World, past and present. Warren’s article is historical, exploring the life and times of Julano Taupan in the nineteenth-century Philippines. He invites us to question the meaning of the word ‘pirate’ and the several ways in which Taupan’s life has been interpreted by different European colonists and by anti-colonial movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. McFaul’s article, meanwhile, takes a literary approach to discuss the much more recent phenomenon of Somali Piracy, which reached its apex in the last decade. Its contribution is to analyse the works of authors based in the region, challenging paradigms that have mostly been developed from analysis of works written in the West. Finally, Pawelczak’s article is a legal history of British jurisdiction in mid-late nineteenth-century Zanzibar. It examines one of the facets that underpinned European influence in the western Indian Ocean World before the establishment of colonial rule. In sum, this issue uses two key threads to shed light on the complex relationships between European and other Western powers and the Indian Ocean World.

scholarly journals Islam and matriliny along the Indian Ocean rim: Revisiting the old ‘paradox’ by comparing the Minangkabau, Kerala and coastal northern Mozambique

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liazzat J.K. Bonate
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
British Colonial

The coexistence of Islam and matriliny has been viewed as a ‘paradox’ because of strict patriliny that Islam prescribes. This article attempts to disentangle this enigma by comparing the Minangkabau, Kerala and coastal northern Mozambique that represent the most well-known cases of simultaneous practice of Islam and matrilineal kinship, which initially was a result of peaceful Islamisation through Indian Ocean networks. In the nineteenth century, the Dutch and British colonial regimes helped matriliny to survive, despite all the efforts of the Islamists to the contrary, by codifying local juridical rules. The Portuguese integration of the local matrilineal nobility into their colonial administrative system preserved matriliny within the local Muslim order. Nowadays these communities are influenced by modernisation, nation-state policies, and Islamic reformist movements, but matrilineal principles still regulate the use of the ancestral land.

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.

The Promises and Perils of Subjecthood and Jurisdiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Weiss Muller
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East India Company ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Government ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Chapter 5 moves to the Indian Ocean and centers on the vibrant trading community of Calcutta. The East India Company’s assumption of the diwani for Bengal in 1765 and its accelerating territorial expansion in the Indian subcontinent provoked concerns about subject status and jurisdiction over those residing in Company territories. These concerns were never fully resolved by the 1773 Regulating Act and were intimately connected to struggles over authority between the British government and the East India Company. This chapter identifies the range of individuals actually subject to the Supreme Court of Judicature, founded in 1774, at the same time as it focuses on the political and jurisdictional repercussions of subject status. It underlines why the judiciary became a central site for negotiations over subjecthood and how subject status became a malleable tool in the hands of judges.

Le Droit des Nations aux Indes Orientales Aux XVIE, XVIIE, XVIIIE siècles (1964)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
European Law ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
The Law

This chapter challenges the projection of nineteenth-century assumptions onto the historical reality of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries by arguing that the earlier transactions between European and Asian powers took place under the rubric of the law of nations. The classical European authors founded their theories on natural law and considered the family of nations universal, and Europeans acquired territorial rights in Asia in accord with principles of European law, through conquest or treaties of cession. The law of nations in Europe at this time was still in formation, and juridical developments were affected by the practice of states in the Indian Ocean. The chapter considers uncertainties and debates around sovereignty (vassals, suzerains, trading companies), territorial title, and maritime law, particularly in the controversy between Grotius and Freitas, and the rise of discriminatory monopolistic treaties that restricted Asian sovereigns’ ability to deal with more than one European power.

scholarly journals From the Indian Ocean to the Pacific: Affranchis and Petits-Blancs in New Caledonia

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Elizabeth Speedy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Production Equipment ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Rich

The sugar crisis of 1860 in Reunion motivated the migration of thousands of Réunionnais to New Caledonia. Along with sugar planters, wealthy enough to transport their production equipment as well as their indentured workers, significant groups of both skilled and unskilled labourers made their way from Reunion to the Pacific colony in the second half of the nineteenth century. In previous publications, I have focused my attention on the sugar industry and the immigration of the rich planters and their coolies. While I have drawn attention to the heterogeneity of the sugar workers and have signalled the arrival and numeric importance of tradespeople, manual and low skilled workers from Reunion, I have not yet described these immigrants in detail. This is because this group has been largely ignored by history and details surrounding their circumstances are scant. In this paper, I discuss the background and origins of these people and highlight some of the fascinating stories to emerge from this migration to New Caledonia and beyond.

Sailing Ships, Naval Expeditions and ‘Project Mausam’

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu Prabha Ray
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Underwater Archaeology ◽  
Practical Training ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean

In recent years, sailing ships of the Indian Navy have been increasingly involved in diplomatic missions and cultural voyages across the world, in addition to their primary purpose of providing practical training in navigation techniques and seamanship. These three-masted barques built at the Goa Shipyard and used by the Indian Navy are very different from wooden sailing vessels that traversed the Indian Ocean in the premodern period prior to the development of steamship navigation in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, these distinctions have often been blurred as these modern naval ships have been utilised to recreate historical ‘expeditions’ such as the much-celebrated Chola invasion of Srivijaya in the Indonesian archipelago. Nor is India the only country to be involved in promoting this ‘popular history’ for contemporary geopolitical interests, as is evident from China’s efforts to rebuild ships used in the Voyages of Admiral Zheng He across the Indian Ocean. What gets short shrift in the process is investment in research in underwater archaeology and the discovery and preservation of shipwreck sites. This article highlights the urgent need for interdisciplinary research in premodern shipping and seafaring activity beyond the rhetoric of valorising national heroes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document