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By Root 700 0

of the empire in East Africa as were the political and military leaders. He was a dominant figure not only in BI but also in the colony-promoting Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC). His groups had 108 ships in 1882. He was intricately involved with the career of Sir Bartle Frere. Frere, first as a member of the viceroy's council, and then as Governor of Mumbai in the 1860s, provided crucial support as BI established itself in the Arabian Sea, and, in a quite modern way, Frere and his family and friends also invested in BI. He also had close ties with J.W. Kaye, the Secretary of the Political and Secret Department at the India Office. On one occasion Kaye got a box of grouse and a chest of tea from Mackinnon. He visited the magnate's Scottish estate, and Mackinnon acted as co-security on a loan for Kaye. In return Kaye helped Mackinnon and his various companies win government contracts and receive other government favours. Another client, Euan-Smith, was a member of the Frere mission of 1872–73. He advised Mackinnon and was lent money in return. An English consul in Zanzibar, John Kirk, retired from the Foreign Office in 1887 and became a director of IBEAC. BI was also successful in getting mail contracts from the Portuguese to link the remnants of their empire. However, by the 1880s BI was faced with competition from German lines in East Africa, and also from the French Messageries Maritimes, which got a subsidy of about £60,000 a year to compete with BI on the Aden–Zanzibar route, and also on that going Aden–Karachi–Mumbai.45

If it was hard for other Europeans to compete with these British lines, it was nigh impossible for local financiers. We noted that two Indian firms tendered unsuccessfully to take mail to the Gulf. In all cases, local people did not have access to the higher echelons of government which people like Mackinnon had and used so ruthlessly. From the 1880s Japan imitated the west and established a similarly close nexus between government and industry: this was not possible for European colonies. The career of the Bombay and Persia Steam Navigation Company, founded by a group of Mumbai Muslims in 1877 to service the hajj trade, is instructive here. One consequence was that the traditional sailing ships lost this route too, the only long-distance one left to them. This line was later renamed the Mogul Line, and in 1913 came under British ownership and effectively was controlled by BI. So also later, when the Scindia Line in India, well financed and run, was, thanks to pressure from BI, restricted to coastal trade.46 The dominance of the established lines, especially the British ones, was further reinforced by the Conference system, essentially a cartel which was prepared to cut rates mercilessly to send any outsider bankrupt. An example was a firm established in 1884 in Western Australia to challenge the two dominant lines sailing to this new colony.

A freight war ensued, with rates per ton going from 40/- down to 10/-. Finally the upstart caved in and joined the conference: predictably, rates then went up again. Assam tea planters at about this time similarly failed to challenge the conference system.47

Government help, then, was one reason for the triumph of steam in the second half of the nineteenth century. The other one was important technological innovations, which made steam ships much more efficient. From 1838 the screw propeller began to supersede paddle wheels and after 1850 iron replaced wood in the construction of the ships. The most important breakthrough was the development of the compound steam engine in the 1860s, which used the same steam twice, thus cutting down on the amount of coal needed. These engines also could sustain much higher pounds per square inch pressure. Innovation continued: steel began to replace iron in the late 1870s, and by the 1890s the triple expansion engine, which worked at 200 p.s.i., was being used. Early in the next century steam turbine engines and diesel engines appeared, making another important break. The size of the steamers consequently rose: