In the last third of the nineteenth century, the seas radically changed. From the end of the 1870s onwards, Western-controlled steam and later diesel shipping established its global hegemony as the driving force of maritime mobility. Ironclad and motorized ships liberated shipping from the vagaries of the currents and monsoon winds. For the first time, they enabled precise schedules and furthermore massively increased transport capacities and speeds.1 This also produced unintended consequences. Lower Hajj costs led to a surge in pilgrim numbers and heightened the risk of global epidemics, such as cholera. Expanded capacities likewise intensified the movement of goods deemed dangerous by European empires, such as firearms to the East African coast.2 The combined effect was a broad devaluation of existing expertise, while rapid advances in mobility and communication reshaped expectations of maritime regulation. In short, European empires had to relearn how to read, identify, and secure ships, coastlines, and maritime mobility.
One of my three case studies examines how a new form of maritime violence in the waters around Hong Kong challenged European empires from 1900 onwards. My GHIL scholarship allowed me to visit British archives that hold a plethora of valuable documents on this under-researched story. This form of violence forced the British Empire in particular to rethink a centuries-old imperial bogeyman: the pirate.
Continue reading The Pirate, the Sovereign, and the Subject: Old Enemies and New Problems in the Face of Maritime Modernity (1890–1939)- Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 2020), 404–9. [↩]
- Eric Tagliacozzo, ‘Hajj in the Time of Cholera: Pilgrim Ships and Contagion from Southeast Asia to the Red Sea’, in James L. Gelvin and Nile Green (eds.), Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print (Berkeley, 2013), 103–20; Felix Brahm, Merchandise of Power: Der Waffenhandel zwischen Europa und Ostafrika (1850–1919) (Frankfurt am Main, 2022). [↩]
