M. N. Pearson

“Tremendous Damage” or “Mere Pinpricks”: The Costs of Piracy

Abstract In the voluminous literature on historical piracy there is no convincing analysis of the actual impact of piracy on sea trade. This article attempts, in a preliminary way, such an analysis. Fragmentary data from the early modern Indian Ocean suggests that the cost of piracy was a minor imposition as compared with many other charges and dangers, some of them predictable, others not.

Book Review: Pirates in Paradise: A Modern History of Southeast Asia's Maritime Marauders

bottoms. Yet gypsum occasioned much smuggling, as hundreds of small craft were engaged annually in its shipment to Maine by traders both from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Smuggling often occurred when the cargo was shifted from a colonial vessel to an American one, while still off-shore and in disputed waters. As US customs officials were as open to bribery as those in New Brunswick, much gypsum was deposited directly onto American wharves. In return, colonial traders and merchants loaded up with dutiable imports of American, British and foreign manufacture, and sailed back to the Bay of Fundy ports only again to avoid paying British or colonial customs duties. Even in the hands of a few energetic officials, prosecutions were hard won, even when the evidence of smuggling seemed overwhelming. In conclusion, no study has made a more useful contribution to our understanding of the realities of seaborne commerce across the Maine-New Brunswick frontier than Smiths splendid book. It might signal the beginning of a dialogue between Canadian and American historians in spheres of overlapping interest. This would be remarkable as the two groups continue to labour largely without reference to each others historiography as they relate to cross-border migration and smuggling, not only on the Maine-New Brunswick frontier but also across the Quebec-Verrnont-New York and the Ontario-New York-Ohio-Michigan frontiers.

The Sea, Identity and History: From the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea, by Satish Chandra and Himanshu Prabha Ray

However India views this move as an attempt by Beijing to put military pressure on India. Rajshree Jetly traces China’s strategic investment in naval power in the Indian Ocean and its partnership with Pakistan. In response India is trying to break out of this strategic encirclement by establishing political, diplomatic and military ties with Southeast Asian countries. S.D. Muni’s essay notes that there is scope for India to establish and expand cultural ties with the Mekong Basin countries and also with Indonesia. P.L. Dash points out that despite globalisation and a hyped US–India strategic partnership, defence collaboration with Russia is still expanding. The non-traditional security approach has arisen in reaction to the dominance of traditional realist security studies within the discipline of International Relations. There is a danger that the traditional and this new non-traditional position will remain separate. While traditional security approaches neglect people and non-state actors, by privileging non-state actors the new security approaches reduce the polity to an almost inert component. I would argue that both traditional and non-traditional security threats are interrelated. Despite globalisation and the rise of NGOs and MNCs, the polity/state remains the dominant player in the international system. NGOs—especially if they do not depend on government funding—can influence people’s attitudes and exert public pressure. However governments have lots of mechanisms to influence non-state organs operating within their territories and to reshape public perceptions of government action. We require an analysis of the action–reaction dialectic between NGOs, people and polity (Clausewitz’s trinity overturned) to better understand the contemporary dynamics. To give an example, shifts in climate patterns will generate a resource crunch in many Asian countries. This might result in warfare. Disputes regarding water-sharing of the Indus and Brahmaputra rivers could spark a war between India and Pakistan or China and India. To engage in a fruitful dialogue between the two sub-disciplines of International Relations and Political Science is of crucial importance if we wish to understand and address future security concerns. And these two books make us aware of the diverse and multiple traditional and non-traditional security threats which haunt South Asia.

Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era . By Michael N. Pearson. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. x, 202 pp.

In Port Cities and Intruders, historian Michael Pearson explores the role of port cities and their orientation, relations between the coast and the interior, the place of the coast in the world economy, and the impact of the Portuguese in the early modern period.

35.95 (cloth).

Vasco da Gamas arrival near Calicut on 20 May 1498 was the culmination of a continuous, though spasmodic, Portuguese thrust into the Atlantic, south to the Cape of Good Hope, and on to India. This chapter delineates who were the affected Indians, and how they responded to the arrival of the Portuguese. It first describes the political-economic situation in littoral western India at the time of the Portuguese arrival. Then, the chapter examines how the Portuguese attempted to change this situation to their own advantage. During the tenure of Afonso de Albuquerque, forts were established in India to enable the Portuguese to control the trade of the Indian Ocean. The object of forts in Goa and their captains was to enable the Portuguese to achieve several economic aims. One of these was a monopoly.