The Indian Ocean

by Michael Pearson

  South of the monsoon region lies a belt of southeast trade winds, around 15 to 30° S. These are more or less year-round. Alan Villiers took these once. In the 1930s he was crew on a big four-master barque with thirty sails and 35,000 square feet of canvas. These huge ships were very definitely not the more famous clipper ships, which he dismissed as 'lightly loaded kite-filled clippers'. This ship, and the other Cape Horn ships, he considered as 'Among man's working creations for the carriage of his goods, they alone were supremely beautiful.'31 The cargo was 5,000 tons of Victorian grain. The ship picked up an easterly as they left Melbourne, so the captain decided to go via the Cape of Good Hope rather than the more usual Cape Horn. Past Cape Leeuwin they got the southeast trades in latitudes 25–28° S. These would carry them to the south of Madagascar, where they would pick up the Agulhas current which would take them southeast to the Cape. Once around this they could pick up the southeast trades in the Atlantic. This was a recognised route, being used by some Dutch East India Company ships in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by the Torrens when Joseph Conrad was first mate, and once John Galsworthy went that way on the same ship when he was on a health trip.32

  Being trades, these are more or less continuous year-round. People from Indonesia could pick them up and reach Madagascar, but getting back in the same latitude was near enough to impossible. To do this they would have had to head further south, to 40 or even 50° S, where 'The wind has a fetch that goes round the world in the southern Indian Ocean, unchecked by any land.'33 This was the place for a wild, fast passage eastwards, where winds could reach 70 knots in the winter. Villiers said that these westerlies in the roaring 40s and fearsome or screeching 50s could blow a square rigged ship from the Cape to Australia, 6,000 miles, in three weeks or less. He did it in the well-named Joseph Conrad in the mid 1930s, 'I raced from off Good Hope to off the Leeuwin in less than three weeks, the little ship sometimes almost flying before the shrieking squalls. How the wind and sea could play down there! This was their home, this wild reach of the Indian Ocean where the wind and sea have almost uninterrupted rule all round the world'.34 This is not for the faint hearted. Kay Cottee, sailing alone around the world some years ago, went below 40° S, and had winds of 40–65 knots with continuous huge southern ocean swells and waves of 18 metres. The strength and predicability of these winds can produce strange results. Alan Villiers tells of one voyage from Melbourne to Bunbury, on the Western Australian coast, a voyage of about 3,000 miles. Once the barque Inverneil got out into the Great Australian Bight the captain found the westerlies so strong that he gave up and simply headed east right around Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, and so to Bunbury.35

  Apart from winds, there are also broader climatic changes which have substantially affected the Indian Ocean. Even something as apparently fixed and immutable as the sea level can change over time, true very long time, as a result of climatic change. Some 15,000 years ago the sea level was about 100 metres lower than it is at present, and even only 10,000 years ago it was still some 40 metres lower. The Gulf was more like a river than a sea channel. Australia and New Guinea were linked, and the passage from Sundaland to the north was only a short one, though a claim that one could go from one place to the other dryshod is an exaggeration.36 Between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago the sea rose dramatically, in some places by 100 or even 150 metres. Then change slowed or stopped completely. Since the maximum transgression of the middle of the fifth millennium BCE, sea levels overall have fallen by a global process known as eustatic adjustment, but not by enough to affect history very much, and not uniformly.37 At present we are witnessing what seems to be a new and very major change in sea levels, the first significant one for some 7,000 years. Low-lying Indian Ocean islands are threatened with being submerged as global warming raises sea levels comparatively precipitously.

  Rainfall distribution could produce major consequences, another example then of a deep structural element impacting decisively on humans. We know something of the little ice age in the seventeenth century in Europe, but this seems to have been a worldwide event. Rainfall data from Java, based on tree rings in teak forests, show that the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century were very dry. The consequences could include drought, and so famine, as in India in the early 1630s, less flooding in the delta areas and so less fertile soils, and possibly a slight drop in the sea level.38

  Three other deep structure matters affected travel by sea. First are ocean currents, which experienced sailors can 'read' and use to their advantage. Generally speaking, the earth's rotation along with winds means that it is in the western parts of the huge circulating gyres that currents are strongest. In other words, currents are more of a problem, or opportunity, off the East African coast than elsewhere. During the northeast monsoon, November to April, a weak counter-clockwise gyre produces a westward current that travels as fast as one knot. It hits the coast of Somalia and then turns south, and then east between 2 and 10° S. During the time of the southwest monsoon this current reverses, going east, and then north along the coast of Somalia, where it becomes the strong Somali Current. The situation below the monsoon zone is quite different. Here, south of 10° S, is a steady anti-cyclonic gyre, which means the South Equatorial Current flows west between 10 and 20° S, and divides at Madagascar. One arm goes north of Madagascar, and then south between Madagascar and Africa. The other branch goes south to the east of Madagascar and then curves back to the east towards South India. The first branch is known as the Lagullas or Agulhas current, and Marco Polo claimed that this meant Muslim sailors never went south of Madagascar, or even Zanzibar, because they thought the current meant there was no way to return to the north.39 Lobo, when his ship had trouble getting around the Cape, claimed that if it had kept closer to land in southeast Africa they could have made good progress as the Agulhas current between Madagascar and the East African coast was so strong that it would carry a ship to the south even when the winds were contrary.40 In April 1811 Mrs Graham was on a navy frigate off southeast Africa at about 32° S. It was very stormy:

  On the 7th the weather gradually moderated, the sea went down, and we had fine weather; so that though we seemed to have made but little way, the current, which had been checked on the 6th by the contrary wind [that is the southwest monsoon], returning to its usual course with impetuosity, carried us ninety-three miles to the southward of our reckoning in twenty-four hours.41

  The combinations further north could produce problems. In 1592 James Lancaster was in Zanzibar, and wanted to go northeast to Kanya Kumari (Cape Comorin) to take prizes. He left in February, but was carried by a very strong current and winds from the northeast and east, towards the north and west, and ended up near Socotra. Then the wind went to northwest and they got around Ceylon in May 1592, just in time to avoid the monsoon from the southwest.42 If one ignored the wind/current combination things could go badly astray. In March 1604 Pedro Teixeira left Hurmuz to sail north to Basra. His ship was foiled by inclement weather, lack of provisions, strong currents, and (predictable for this time of year) contrary winds. After five weeks spent being battered in the Gulf, they returned to Hurmuz.43

  Two final deep structure geographical matters could also affect how and when one travelled. Tides can be an extreme hazard in narrow waterways like the Red Sea and Gulf. The effects of the tides in the latter can be felt 100 miles up the Shatt al Arab and into the actual Tigris river.44 In estuaries and deltas this problem is exaggerated. In the Gulf of Cambay the tide purportedly travelled as fast as a man on horseback, and this, combined with silting, led to the decline of the port of Cambay at the head of this gulf. The approach to Kolkata up the Hugli has always presented a daunting challenge to mariners. In northwest Australia the tidal flow is ten metres or more, a hazard for ignorant seafarers and unwary picnickers.

  Finally waves. We have described some huge ones in the far south, though some of these may have been exaggerated by excited sailors. Waves higher than 25 feet from trough to crest are
rare in any ocean, but storm waves may be twice as high, or even more. Kay Cottee and other voyagers in the Great Southern Ocean experienced these.

  Waves beating on a lee shore can make difficult approaches to poor harbours, or coasts where there are no harbours. We pointed out that the west coasts of India and of Malaya, when they are lee shores, are almost unapproachable in a sailing boat. Off the East African coast this is less of a problem, as small ships can go through gaps in the coral reefs which line the coast as far south as Maputo and then approach the land in calm waters. The east coast of India, the Coromandel coast, has a perilous combination of more or less constant high surf and no harbours of any merit. Mrs Kindersley in Chennai wrote to a friend in June 1765, 'I am detained here by the tremendous surf, which for these two days has been mountains high: and it is extraordinary, that on this coast, even with very little wind, the surf is often so high that no boat dares venture through it; indeed it is always high enough to be frightful.'45

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  Chapter 2

  Humans and the sea

  The structural elements of the ocean both facilitated and constrained the circulation of people, who carried with them goods and ideas. When we introduce people it becomes much more difficult to set boundaries. Yet this is essential, for it is people, not water, that created unity and a recognisable Indian Ocean that historians can study. As Braudel wrote of the Mediterranean: 'The different regions of the Mediterranean are connected not by the water, but by the peoples of the sea.'1 I am concerned now with people around the ocean, especially those in port cities and those strung along the coast outside the cities, with their attitudes to the sea, its role in their lives. There is also the related matter of the land boundaries of the ocean, that is connections not across and beyond the ocean, but inland: a maritime historian has to face the question of how far inland must we go before we can say that the ocean no longer has any influence? We must try to identify people whose social life is importantly tied in to the ocean, that is people of the sea, not just on it: for the latter the sea is optional, non-essential, for the former it is life.2 In all that follows it is important to realise that I am trying to sketch some constant, invariant aspects of the lives of people around and on the sea. But very emphatically this is not a matter of an unchanging East. I have chosen to draw out and examine certain structural elements; the rest of this book will be, I hope, suitably diachronic.

  How have historians approached the central matter of the human frontiers of the ocean, with regard to the extent to which one must leave the margin of land and sea and go inland? K.N. Chaudhuri recognises the problem: 'How far the Indian Ocean made its influence felt in the vast sweep of land in the north and the south west, in the direction of Asia and Africa, is a fascinating question'3 and one he does little to resolve. Matvejevic has addressed this matter of land and sea connections, albeit somewhat opaquely. 'The city where I was born is located fifty kilometres from the Adriatic. Thanks to its location and the river that runs through it, it has taken on certain Mediterranean traits. Slightly further upstream, the Mediterranean traits disperse and the mainland takes over.' He then notes how hard it is to find boundaries. In some areas a mountain cuts off the sea area definitively, but in others it does not, despite analogous obstacles.4

  The general problem is to be more precise about the frontiers of the sea. Years ago Braudel wrote poetically about this: 'The circulation of men and of goods, both material and intangible, formed concentric circles round the Mediterranean. We should imagine a hundred frontiers, not one, some political, some economic, and some cultural.' The Mediterranean is a very wide zone: 'We might compare it to an electric or magnetic field, or more simply to a radiant centre whose light grows less as one moves away from it, without one's being able to define the exact boundary between light and shade.'5

  None of this is very precise. Yet in fact a certain fuzziness is in order; rather than try to lay down rigid borders where land takes over and the sea disappears, we should accept, and even celebrate, complexity and heterogeneity. We should proceed case by case, asking on each occasion what is the question or problem that concerns us at present, and then extending the range of the data to take account of all the material needed to answer this particular question. If I am looking at a coastal fisher catching for his local community I do not have to go far at all; if I am looking at factory prawn production in Bangladesh for the American market then I must go far and wide; if I want to write about the horses which mounted the Indian Army in the nineteenth century I have to go to New South Wales; if I want to write about where the Indian railways got their sleepers from, I have to go to Australia and also to the Baltic.

  To cases, and some examples of very close and intricate connections between land and sea in the Indian Ocean. A young Portuguese scholar recently published an excellent book on the 'Mar de Ceilão,' that is the Gulf of Mannar.6 In the first part of his book, before the Portuguese arrived, he finds that this defined maritime area made up a 'world'. This world contained interaction in both deep structural and human terms. There were connections made by the sea itself, the coasts of both southeast India and northern Sri Lanka, and the intricate wind and current patterns of this sea, where two systems met. He also discusses the ports on these coasts, and all the people involved in this sea: maritime people like fishers, pearl divers, traders, sailors, these perhaps being people of the sea, and people on the shore, on the sea, who seldom went to sea but were intricately connected to it. He deals with the states on the shores, and their efforts, usually futile, to control the sea and its shores and its travellers. Echoing Braudel, this small sea or strait certainly divided the two countries from each other, yet it also connected them and created intricate links between them.

  One useful way to conceptualise land/sea relation and connections is Jean-Claude Penrad's useful notion of ressac, the three-fold violent movement of the waves, turning back on themselves as they crash against the shore. He uses this image to elucidate the way in which the to-and-fro movements of the Indian Ocean mirror coastal and inland influences which keep coming back at each other just as do waves.7

  What we find on most of the shores of the Indian Ocean for most of history is a peasant agricultural economy inland interacting and connecting with a fishing and trading economy on the coast, yet it is the inland which is economically and socially dominant. Indeed, it could be argued that sea travel is unnatural for our species. Once early life came ashore and became land based, walking became the 'natural' means of getting about, not travelling over water. Over time people developed an extensive network of land communication in Eurasia; these were the essence of communication, but at certain places they intersected with the sea, and land routes were extended or duplicated by sea passages. There were intricate connections between land caravans and sea trade, or today between railways and container ships: indeed the containers are merely moved from a sea form of locomotion to a land one. Also today, sea and air sometimes intersect, so that travellers going on a cruise will often fly to meet their liner in some convenient port. Over all of history land transport and sea transport were often reciprocal, sometimes competing, and sometimes alternatives.

  Sea travel has both advantages and problems. It was recognisably more dangerous, both for cargo and people, than land travel, as reflected in insurance rates, which were several times higher for sea travel than for land. Yet before steam as a general rule sea traffic was far more cost effective than that overland. Chittick claimed that one needs, roughly, the same energy to move 250 kg on wheels on a road, 2,500 on rails, and 25,000 on water.8 Similarly, it has been calculated that a dhow can travel the same distance as a camel caravan in one-third the time; each boat could carry the equivalent of 1,000 camel loads, and only one dhow crew member was needed for several cargo tons, as compared with two or more men for each ton in a camel caravan.9 So far so good, yet this refers only to technological factors. There are many others, such as politics, piracy, and the nature of the land terrain as comp
ared with the hazards of the voyage. 'The "lubricant" required to ease as much as possible the "friction" of passage by land is as much a matter of social engineering as of communications technology.' Certainly travel by sea

  was 'cheaper' in human terms, and developed much sooner, not just because of energy requirements, but because at sea the incidental hazards of negotiation, protection-money, wilful obstruction and downright violence were so much rarer than in the carrying of goods across region and region, through settlement after settlement, by land.10

  Horden and Purcell note that the relativities vary from place to place. Arguably, because of the land terrain, it is easier to move goods by sea in the Mediterranean area than by land,11 but this would not necessarily apply in other seas.

  Land and sea routes are often reciprocal, but they can also compete, or act as alternatives. When pipe lines are blocked or destroyed today the oil must go by sea. In the sixteenth century the Portuguese made the sea traffic in spices difficult; where it was possible, land routes were used instead. In the early seventeenth century it was cheaper to take goods from northern India to Iran by land, going Agra, Lahore, Kandahar and Isfahan, as compared with the sea/land route of Agra, Surat, Bandar Abbas and Isfahan. Similarly, Agra to Constantinople overland was cheaper than the sea equivalent of either Agra, Surat, Mocha, Constantinople or Agra, Surat, Basra, Constantinople.12 Clearly the sea/land route was more complicated, and involved much more breaking and repacking of cargo than the land route, but this does not apply to a voyage from, say, Aceh to Surat.

  It may also be the case that at least on some routes land travel was faster than that by sea, for example where a powerful state had set up secure roads and a courier system and so less lubrication was needed. Where these were available, mails, commercial advice, and low bulk preciosities would go by land. Finally, we noted that much local traffic in the enclosed Mediterranean sea was chaffering from one shore or port to the next. In the much more expansive Indian Ocean this was also the case, but the peddler had much longer times at sea.