Ocean space in non modern societies

Beyond “freedom” vs” enclosure”

D.P.O’Connell begins his history of the law of the sea with a paragraph typical of many works summarizing the politics of competing ocean governance systems:

The history of the law of sea has been dominated by a central and persistent theme: the competition between the exercise of governmental authority over the sea and the idea of the freedom of the seas …when one or two great commercial powers have been dominant or have achieved parity of power, the emphasis in practice has lain upon the liberty of navigation and the immunity of shipping from local control … when ,on the other hand ,great powers have been in decline or have been unable to impose their wills upon smaller states, or when an equilibrium of power has been attained between a multiplicity of states, the emphasis has lain upon the protection and reservation of maritime resources, and consequently upon the assertion of local authority over the sea. (O’Connell1982:1)

O’Connell portrays the modern history of ocean governance as a see-saw between the concepts of free seas (Grotius’system of mare liberum)and enclosed seas(selden’s system of mare clausum ),When there is a strong hegemon ,a free seas regime prevails; when there competition in the world polity, each state attempts to seize as much of the ocean as possible for itself. The two constrctions of the sea are presentd as polar opposites,the independent variable(relative strength of hegemom)determines which pole is dominant in a givenera’s ocean governance system..

O’Connell’s characterization is factually accurate, but, like the coastal sea-deep sea and private law-public law distinctions discussed in the previous chapter, O’Connell’s binary classification depends upon an ahistoric staticization of legal principles and ocean management strategies that obscures what actually has been a fluid and dynamic history .O’Connell’s ahistoricism is exemplified in the final sentence of his opening paragraph:

In the context of history, the absolute freedom of the seas was relatively short-lived, and coexistent with the naval supremacy of Great Britain. it was not formally estabilished until the era of the suppression of the slave trade. (O’Connell1982:1)

The event that O’Connell identifies as herding the institutionalization of a “free” seas regine-the suppression of the slave trade-was in fact an instance of Britain imposing its domestic legislation upon all other parties, It was a certain, historically specific ”freedom of the seas” that Britain sought to institute in the nineteenth century, one that was favored only because of a number of historical, contextual aspects of nineteenth-century social organization and uses of the sea. Indeed, as cafruny(1987)has demonstrated, Britain exercised its nineteenth-century maritime hegemony in a manner very different from that exercised by the United States in the twentieth century.

This example suggests that the binary categories of “freedom” and “inclosure” employed by most historians of modern maritime governance might not be as absolute as they first appear. It also suggests that the constrction of a “freedom-enclosure” dichotomy itself may lie within a specifically Western organization of space and society. To place the progression of Western ocean-space constrction in context this history must be compared with examples from other societies, for it is only by appreciating non-Western ocean-space construction that one may understand both the historical context and the inherent limits of the modern construction as it has developed over time.

To this end, this chapter first presents two historical examples of non-modern ocean-space constructions, both of which differ greatly from each other and from the modern regine that followed. The construction prevailing in the Indian Ocean from aooroximately 500 B.C.toA.D.1500 is discussed as an example of one in which the deep sea was a non-territory located entirely outside society. By contrast, the construction traditionally governing the waters of Micronesia is discussed as an instance wherein ocean-space was akin to land-space and thus subject to a high degree of social incorporation and territorial control. Following these examples, the Mediterranean construction of Greek and Roman times is used to ikkustrate an instance in which a limited degree of territoriality was mobilized to (re)produce hierarchy, domination, and uneven social power. This Mediterranean construction established a norm of marine stewardship that lies somewhere between the Indian Ocean and Micronesian constrctions, and which has served as a foundation for modern ocean-space constructions through the present (Table4).

The Indian Ocean : the ocean as distance

Of the three historical regions considered in this chapter, the Indian Ocean is the most diverse and least amenable to generalization. In the time period considered-roughly 500B.C.to A.D.1500-and the geographical area considered – the east coast of Africa to the islands of Indonesia to the southern coast of China- there existed a broad range of societal forms. These ranged from land-based empires(e.g. China),to island- spanning empires(e.g. the Malacca Strait-based Sri Vilaya empire, from the seventh to the twelfth centuries A.D.),to numerous independent and semi-independent sultanates and city-states. This variety among Indian Ocean societies notwithstanding, there is ample evidence of a coherent ocean-space construction that governed the region until disrupted by the Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century.

The extent of trans-Indian Ocean trade and communication

Historians have determined that the entire Indian Ocean region had extensive sea links for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Vasco da Gama in 1498.This high level of trans-Indian Ocean trade was due in part to fortuitous geography:

Appendix:1,There is no consensus as to the geographical extent of the Indian Ocean, particularly its eastern limits. While the definition proposed here is mort, inclusive than many, the actual delineation of the boundaries of the Indian Ocean has little effect on the discussion below. 2 Many Indian Ocean historians would extend the "pre-European" (or "pre-capitalist") era in the Indian Ocean to the early nineteenth century, arguing that during the first three centuries of European mercantilist activity the Europeans simply were the latest strong player in Indian Ocean trade, but that they were not disruptive of the overall system. Other historians, however, disagree with this assessment. For contributions to this debate-which, in turn, is linked with a number of debates concerning the origin of capitalism, the nature of mercantilism, and the role of trade in the capitalist world-system - see chapters in Bose (1990) and Chandra (1987a). To steer clear of this debate, the examples presented in this section all pre-date the arrival of state-supported European conquerors and traders, the first of whom was the Portuguese Vasco da Gama in 1498.

We are talking here of the tropical region where visibility is good, fogs do not exist, currents are not too strong, and the direction of the winds is regular in its alternate direction. This permits navigation by more fragile vessels in comparison to those which are essential for the Pacific or the Alatlantic….Thanks to the clear skies of this region, the fishermen and the boatmen have known the regular movement of the stars, the direction of the winds, the changes of seasons. (Verlinden1987:42)

As early as 3000B.C.there was long-distance trade of heavy goods across the western Indian Ocean, between Egypt, Arabia, and the west coast of Indian. Most of this commence apparently was conducted by Indian Ocean traders (Nambiar1975; Verlinden1987). By around 300 B.C. Buddhist missionaries were traveling on merchant ships that regularly plied between Indian and the Far East, some large enough to carry 800 passengers. By the fifth or sixth century A.D., Indian sailors had estabilished colonies in places as distance as Manila and possibly even the west coast of South America. Other peoples of the Indian Ocean also were highly involved in maritime trade. Indonesian mariners were traveling through out the eastern Indian Ocean before 1000B.C.,and were regularly traveling to the east coast of Africa by 200B.C..Rome,too,entered the Indian Ocean trade, being one of the main players there from about 200B.C.toA.D.200.latecomers to the Indian Ocean included the Arabs and Persians in the west and the Chinese in the east. Both groups of traders become heavily involved in Indian Ocean trade around the sixth or seventh centuries A.D. By the ninth century, Arab traders had traveled as far as Korea and Japan. From the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, trade in the eastern Indian Ocean was dominated by the Chinese(for the first few centuries of that era in cooperation with the Indonesian-Malaysian-based Sri Vijaya Empire),while trade in the western Indian Ocean during this later era was dominated by the Arabs(with the cooperation of merchants from Gujarat and Calicut on the west coast of Indian ).Thus, when Vasco d agama sailed into the Indian Ocean in 1498 he was entering an integrated commercial arena that had been in existence for some 1500 to 2000 years(Anand1983;Hourni1963;Nambiar1975;Pineo1985)

Before turning to a description and analysis of the Indian Ocean’s social construction, the relative insignificance of the deep sea for the societies of the region must be stressed. On the one hand, Chaudhuri(1985)argues that the Indian Ocean provided the binding thread for a long-standing and well-integrated pre-capitalist civilization, much as Braudel(1972) argues for the Mediterranean in sixteenth-century Europe. Yet it also must be noted that the Indian Ocean played a relatively minor role in the daily workings of the majority of its social system, making only small contributions to the organization of political or economic power within these societies,. Paradoxically, some of the same physical geographic features that encouraged highly extensive trade among the Indian Ocean societies also served to discourage the intensification of that trade: The area.., from the east coast of Africa to the Strait of Malacca was restricted by the annual rhythm of the monsoons. Naval domination over long distances was exceedingly difficult to maintain, as the Portuguese were to discover, and the practical impossibility o[ making more than

one round trip a year on any long-distance sailing-route was a major obstacle to regular trade in bulk commodities... There can be no doubt about the seaworthiness of Indian Ocean shipping, the technical capability of the seafarers and the sophistication of the merchants of the Indian Ocean before the arrival of the Portuguese. The point 1 want to make is that long -distance trade still remained marginal to the economies and empires round the Indian Ocean at the opening of the early modern period. The true concentrations of wealth and power lay not by the sea, but in the inland, by the rivers, and in those areas where a large agricultural surplus was easily available, and therefore, made possible a concentration of population and corresponding division of labor. (Steensgaard 1987:127-129)

While the sea was a presence in Indian Ocean social life, it was constructed as a special space of trade, external to society and social process.

Danger and distance: the construction of Ocean space as non-territory

Societies of the Indian Ocean viewed the sea as a source of imported goods, but the sea itself was perceived as a space apart from society, an untamable mystery. This paradoxical perspective is exemplified in the portrayal of Vishnu in Hindu folklore. Rising from the ocean, Vishnu brings forth nectar and other precious articles, but in the ocean he is a source of turmoil and strife (Chandra 1987b).

In some cases, this perspective resulted in outright fear of the sea. As the seventh-century Arabian caliph “ Umaribn al-Khattab” instructed:

The sea is a boundless expanse, whereon great ships look tiny specks; nought but the heavens above and waters beneath; when calm, the sailor's heart is broken; when tempestuous, his senses reel. Trust it little, fear it much. Man at sea is an insect on a splinter, now engulfed, now scared to death... How should I trust my people on its accursed bosom? Remember al-'Ala'. Nay, my friend, the safety of my people is dearer to me than all the treasures of Greece.

(cited in Hourani 1963: 54-55)

At about the same time, talmudic scholars in Babylonia (Iraq) expressed a similar fear of the sea when they identified four instances in which one is required to soy a prayer of thanksgiving after surviving an inordinately stressful ordeal:

There are four [ classes of people]who have to offer thanksgiving: those who have crossed the sea, those who have traversed the wilderness, one who has recovered from an illness, and a prisoner who has been set free. (Epstein 1948: Berakoth 54b)

These reservations notwithstanding, most Indian Ocean societies, did engage the sea, but as a space to be crossed as quickly as possible so that goods could circulate. The ocean was viewed as non-territory, a space not suitable for control or even influence, but rather one that existed solely as a transport surface. The sea was a source of diversionary consumer goods, but not a source of social power (Chaudhuri 1985; Nambiar 1975). It follows front this perspective that the sea should be rendered as invisible as possible, since any feature - political or physical - on its vast expanse would serve only to impede the free flow of goods. The sea was perceived not as territory but as a space of distance, and the duty of the merchant sailor was to annihilate that distance to the best of his3 abilities.

If Indian Ocean merchants were to identify the space of trade, they probably would identify not the ocean but rather the bustling ports. Ports were especially large and busy around the Indian Ocean because the seasonal monsoons necessitated frequent stayovers, and this led to the emergence of ports as important transshipment, resupply, and market centers. Tariffs generally were low, and many Asian ports had strict rules guaranteeing equal treatment for all traders, even if they came from a country with which the host country was at war. Host countries often provided infrastructural support as well as standardized systems of weights and measures, while expatriate trading communities were permitted to establish semi-autonomous governments with authority to adjudicate disputes so long as they did not impinge on the port state's .national internet. Although some states, most notably China, went to great effort to ensure that all goods were purchased at the port by a state-sponsored monopoly, none attempted to control inter-state trade before goods came into port (Alexandrowicz 1967;Anand 1983;Chaudhuri 1985;hourani 1963).Trade was an activity of the ports, and political and economic power was garnered through landward expansion and domination. The sea was merely the space across which goods came.

[Appendix:3 In all three of the social systems discussed in this chapter the sea was almost exclusively the preserve of men. Hence, the male pronoun is used when referring to mariners. This is not to say that the sea - as a particularly all-male space - was not the site of intense and complex gender construction (see Chapter 6).]

The aversion to sea power or possession of the sea