The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [147]
Water was provided for all, stored in big cisterns, but the wealthy brought their own too. Being a Muslim ship, this was not a matter of Hindu pollution problems but simply of accessibility and purity. A variety of food was brought on board. Common items were rice, ghee, dal, salt fish and butter, also smoked fish, breads, fruits and so on. Some better-off people took goats and fowls on board, which were slaughtered as needed. Eggs were preserved by being kept in finely ground salt. There is no mention of liquids like coffee, and nor of course of wine, but Qazvini does recommend tobacco smoking.
He also had some suggestions concerning health. He recommended that ships carry a doctor and a blood-letter. Apart from this he suggests some remedies, such as fruits and juice for those with a bilious humour from sea sickness, and for phlegmatics sweet things like honey and sugar. He does not mention scurvy, but we can assume that this was less of a problem on Indian ships because the voyages were shorter, and there were numerous stops where fresh provisions could be obtained. Life was quite pleasant on board. People studied, and held discussions on devotional and didactic matters. There were poetry recitals and music sessions, while some just relaxed in their harems, or gambled.72
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Chapter 7
Britain and the ocean
These final chapters of my book cover the history of the ocean over the last 250 years. The treatment is sometimes topical, sometimes chronological. Most of this chapter is concerned with the nineteenth century, but some subjects will be dealt with well into the next century. Similarly, the last chapter is mostly about events in the twentieth century, but on occasion I have looked back to earlier times. Ideally these two chapters should be read as a single unit.
From around the middle of the eighteenth century a long process began which led over the next hundred years to a very dramatic change in the history of the ocean and its peoples. Over this comparatively short stretch of time people from outside the ocean took over most of the lands around the ocean, while the ocean itself became dominated by one naval power. Government policy and technological advances combined to undercut millennia-old indigenous maritime activities, with naval force always available as a back-up.
The foreign power in question is of course Britain (not 'England', for Scots were important participants). From being a relatively minor participant in Indian Ocean affairs even at 1700, the English East India Company (EIC) advanced dramatically and increasingly was backed by, and an arm of, the state. This was a state which guided, and benefited from, seismic changes in the home economy, the process which historians still refer to as the Industrial Revolution. Qualitative changes in productive techniques opened up, for the first time in world history, a pronounced gap between industrialised Europe, led at first by Britain, and the rest of the world. Au fond it was these immense advances in economic and technological matters which enabled Britain to establish an unprecedented control over the Indian Ocean.
There had been other European players in the Indian Ocean. Indeed, we noted that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) for a century or so did much better than the English. The French made a charge in the eighteenth century, and fought a series of wars