The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [170]
Indian traders and merchants and officials played a large role on the East African coast. Zanzibar was a main centre: in 1886–87 forty-four per cent of the island's exports went to India, and 40 per cent of its imports came from there, handled mostly by Indian firms.95 The longer distance intercontinental trade was done by European and American firms. In 1857 there were six European and three American firms represented in Zanzibar, but they used local Indian agents to sell their imports and collect their exports. Richard Burton in this same year noted that
Ladha Bamha farms the customs at Zanzibar; at Pembe Island his nephew Peru has the same charge; Mombasa is in the hands of Lakhmid and some of his co-religionists; Pangani is directed by Tulsidas... even S'aadani has its Banyan; Ramji, an active and intelligent Banyan, presides at Bagamoyo and the customs at Kilwa are collected by Kishandas. I need hardly say that almost all of them are connected in blood as well as trade.96
While Indian shipping certainly declined, the British pax over the ocean did facilitate Indian finance, albeit that the cost of the pax was borne by Indian taxpayers. Indian financial houses, often Gujaratis, as Burton also noted, backed Indian traders and money lenders, often kin members or at least community members, all around the littoral of the western ocean. Sir Bartle Frere in 1873 described all this: 'Hardly a loan can be negotiated, a mortgage effected, or a bill cashed without Indian agency.' And:
Everywhere, wherever there is any foreign trade, it passes through the hands of some Indian trader; no produce can be collected for the European, American or Indian market, but through him, no imports can be distributed to the natives of the country, but through his agency... it is difficult to convey to those at a distance an adequate idea of the extent or completeness of the monopoly.97
Indians also settled in the Aden colony, where they ran businesses that dealt with Somalia and Ethiopia as well as working as an administrative class for the British. The Cowsaji Dinshaw firm, based in Aden with branches in Zanzibar and Mumbai, even ran a steamer service between Aden and East Africa. They also helped pay for the construction of a Zoroastrian fire temple in Aden, which is in itself a good example of the types of encounters with the alien that occurred during this period. There had not been a Zoroastrian presence in South Arabia since the Sassanian conquest, but a new one was created both there and in Zanzibar as a consequence of British influence. The pop star Freddy Mercury was one such Parsi, from Zanzibar, and in typical fashion he was educated in India and found fame and fortune in the West.
The other people who operated in this way were the Chinese in southeast Asia, who especially in Malaya and Indonesia controlled most of the retail sector, and important parts of the import and export trades. Tin mining in Malaya, and rubber cultivation in Indonesia, were both largely dominated by Chinese.
In other areas also Europe was not totally in control. In Mauritius and Madagascar the colonial powers had to learn from indigenous people how to engage successfully in agriculture. Many local trades continued: the Chinese junk trade to Thailand, dhow trade all around the shores of the eastern ocean, peddling all through the ocean. Earl noted in Bangkok in 1833 that 'The brig we found at Bankok belonged to natives of the Coromandel coast; and many of the Kling seamen had goods of their own, which they hawked about the towns further in the interior, exchanging them for sugar, ivory, gamboge etc, and their vessels consequently remain several months in the river.'98
Nor were all Europeans in the ocean lords of all they surveyed.