The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [223]
Some years later, in 1984, an Indian Ocean Commission was set up. The founding members were Mauritius, Madagascar and the Seychelles. Later France, on behalf of Reunion, and the Comoros, joined.104 In the last five years of the twentieth century a flurry of activity produced IOR-ARC: the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation. Founded in Mauritius in March 1997, by the end of 1999 it had nineteen members and two levels of activity. One level is inter-governmental relations, and the other involves academics and business people. The aim was to promote economic cooperation between the member states, which included Australia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Yemen, and Bangladesh, Iran, Seychelles, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. Pakistan was required to change some discriminatory trade policies before it could join. Dialogue partners included Egypt, the United Kingdom, Japan and China.105
The context for this initiative was the fall of the Soviet Union and so the end of the Cold War, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the trend towards globalisation which we described earlier. It is believed that there is now less ideological conflict in the world, with only the capitalist paradigm retaining any credibility. Be that as it may, the member states have very different interests, economies and political systems, and it difficult to see such a disparate grouping making any real progress towards regional cooperation and integration. Many of its members also belong to other, possibly conflicting, associations, such as SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and APEC (Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation). Furthermore, much economic activity in the whole region is oriented to the outside. In contrast with the close economic association of states around the Northern Atlantic, intra-Indian Ocean trade makes up less than one-quarter of total trade; the global dimension reduces the possibility of effective economic cooperation around the ocean. One's confidence is not enhanced by one of the actions of the meeting in January 2000, when it was agreed to set up a 'duty-free commissary for the sale of limited quantities of certain articles for personal use or consumption by members.'106
We can conclude by considering whether these halting attempts at unity or at least some form of cooperation can be seen as a paradigm which reflects a general lack of unity in other aspects of the life of the Indian Ocean. Is there something called 'the Indian Ocean', which we can treat as a viable category for analysis and study, as valid as the more usual objects of historical study such as classes or states? We are here coming back again to the distinction between the history of the ocean, an internal one, and history in the ocean, where it is to be seen as profoundly influenced by wider matters coming from outside its geographical boundaries. In short, if the latter is most important serious doubt must be cast on the notion of writing a history of the ocean. My conclusion is that for much of the long timeframe of this book we can indeed write of the ocean. Indeed, given my scepticism about the degree of influence of the early Europeans, one could somewhat arbitrarily say that the Indian Ocean remains relatively discrete, something which can be studied in and of itself, until roughly the end of the eighteenth century. As I have tried to make clear in these last two chapters, it is only since around 1800 that forces from outside had any very profound influence: crudely put, first industrialised Britain, and now globalisation.
Two interlocking matters are significant here. On the one hand, although nearly half the world's population lives within 80 km of the sea, maritime matters have little influence today. Certainly the mystique of the sea is gone. Most people fly over the ocean, rather than