The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [150]
On the other coast, in Gujarat, the advance of the British was slowed for a time by opposition from the Marathas, but once this ended in 1818 the result for merchants and weavers here was similar to what had occurred earlier on the east coast and interior.8 More generally, India as a colony was unable to protect its nascent industries. The contrast with the United States is revealing. Being independent, they were able to use government policy to get industries established to challenge the British. The American tariff on English woollen textiles was 35 per cent in 1828, and 50 per cent in 1832; and on some goods in 1842 it was 100 per cent ad valorem.9 Colonial India had no such option.
Maritime matters are our main concern. Before going into detail, a brief overview of the main themes which we will deal with in this chapter will help to set the scene. In the broadest terms what we are seeing is the creation of a world economy, and a consequent huge growth in transnational trade in the second half of the nineteenth century. International trade grew seven times faster in this fifty years as compared with the first half of the century. In 1850 the world's merchant fleet had about 9 million tons of carrying capacity, by 1910 it had 34.5 million. In terms of volume per capita, international trade grew twenty-five times between 1850 and 1914.10 People from around the Indian Ocean participated in this world economy, but were subject much more than before to its vagaries. As one example, around 1850 India supplied about 20 per cent of England's raw cotton imports, much less than the United States. During the American Civil War India's exports boomed, and there was a speculative frenzy in Mumbai. The Civil War ended, the United States again exported cotton, and a series of major projects in Mumbai collapsed.11
The context of European dominance in the Indian Ocean was very different from what applied in the Atlantic and Pacific. These two oceans were more or less created by Europeans. As we have noted so often, this was very much not the case in our ocean. Rather there was a very old and elaborate existing system which had to be undercut and replaced. This was achieved. As just one example, in 1913–14 of the tonnage of India's overseas trade 72 per cent was British, and 64 per cent of India's exports came to Britain.12
Frank Broeze provided a very neat overview of the general impact of the west on the Indian Ocean:
the nature of the European intrusion [was] intensified by changes in maritime technology. Important aspects of this intensification were the use of larger iron vessels and steam power, the greatly increased volume of trade, the development of new forms of trade to meet the import and export requirements of industrialising Europe, and the unprecedented increase in the volume of passenger traffic both within the region and through it.13
Three broad periods can be distinguished. The first is the era of the sailing ship, from 1750 to 1850, where locals still had a role, albeit a decreasing one and only in intra-oceanic trade; they had no role in connecting the Indian Ocean with other parts of the globe. In the next, from 1850 to 1945, the era of the steam and then the motorship, locals were slowly replaced and denied meaningful participation. A very marked hierarchy appeared, and the locals were left with only niche, small-scale, areas of operation. Many were reduced to menial employment on European ships. The period from 1945, to be covered in the next chapter, sees the arrival of the specialised bulk carrier and container ship. In this period people from around the ocean come back to dominance.