The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [169]
As the century advanced Indian shipping declined, thanks again to political factors as much as technological: after all, Indians could have hired expertise if they lacked it themselves. However, the education the British provided in India was oriented to produce clerks, not engineers. We have already described in detail the subsidies and other patronage which P&O and BI enjoyed, which was not available to Indian competitors. If an Indian rival did appear, they would be subjected to a fierce rate war until they gave in. Similarly, the conference system, which regulated competition, and discouraged the entry of newcomers, was not available to India as it was not an independent country.
The decline is clear to see. In 1857 a comparison of British and Indian ships entering Indian ports shows there was a pronounced gap even this early. Over 35,000 of them, with a tonnage of 1.2 million, were owned by Indians, 59,000 of 2.4 million tons by English interests. The average tonnages were respectively 35.6 and 41.6. By the end of the century things had changed dramatically. Those Indian owned were just over 2,000, with a tonnage of 133,000 for an average size of 57.8 tonnes, while British owned totalled over 6,000, tonnage 7.6 million, and an average size of 1,235 tonnes.92
Local people then had to work in the gaps and interstices of the imperial structure. This applied to the local Portuguese as much as to Indians and other Asians. The Portuguese and Indians operating under their auspices were able to function in the cracks of the now dominant British system in India. The best earner was opium. Malwa opium was smuggled to Portuguese ports on the west coast of India, and from there to their Chinese colony of Macao. As a measure of the success of this trade, around 1830 the British were importing over 7,500 chests of opium a year to Guangzhou, but at the same time Portuguese subjects were sending via Daman over 1,800 chests. The Portuguese state also collected much revenue from this trade, though much more was done illegally. Indeed, most of the buildings in the new capital of Panaji were built from profits from opium.
Yet being a part of the empire, even as a subject, could have advantages. Several distinct Indian groups played large roles in the economies of other British colonies in the nineteenth century. These groups controlled vast amounts of capital. Surat's trade declined in the second half of the eighteenth century to be sure, yet until the end of the century Surat 'was still the financial centre of western India, and Mumbai, though politically its master, was still its financial client.'93 Philip Curtin wrote an important book about 'trade diasporas', but to the extent that these Indian groups retained strong ties with their homes and went back and forth to them this concept seems invalid for our period. The Chettiar firms of Tamilnadu were headquartered in Chennai, but had branch offices in South Africa, Mauritius, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, South Vietnam and Indonesia. They operated under the British umbrella to bring these areas, notably Burma, into a modern cash economy, but at a high price for the people concerned,