Teresita Cruz-del Rosario

Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea

This book is at once a strong transnational history of the Arabian Sea littoral and the distinct communities that have remained largely unnoticed and unrecognized in the written record, but that are now, through Mathew’s work, made visible. In the tradition of Lincoln Paine’s The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2015), Mathew’s book promotes scholarship that “takes to the water,” and, in so doing, offers and uncovers unique insights into global history and into human affairs. Early on, Mathew deploys the term “framing out” the market (p. 8), which he defines as an expulsion of certain trades, a pushing out, a division, elision, and suppression through repetition and reiteration. What emerges is arbitrage—the practice of performative and improvisational capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Arabian Sea. From this conceptual starting point, Mathew takes us on a wild academic journey across the Arabian Sea, and this results in a shift in our intellectual gaze in several ways. One shift in historical studies is a refocusing from land to water, “by paying attention to the blues that shade 70% of the image in the map, and letting the earth tones fade”. This shift makes many trends and patterns of world history stand out in ways they simply cannot otherwise. Through this thematic shift, Mathew upends the conventional notions of capitalism and the components that constitute it, namely, land, labor and capital. The author refers to these as terrestrial capitalism (p. 6), but through the infusion of a maritime perspective, inverts it. Instead of land, labor, and capital, we have sea, piracy, trafficking, and networks. The Arabian Sea, he writes, is an immense, fierce, opaque space that was difficult if not impossible to control. At the same time, it was a site of regular and sustained trade and exchange. But this uncontrollable site yielded differences between markets, and mercantile networks exploited these differences that gave them unique advantages for profit-making. Regulation, documentation, statistics, and economic calculation were all part of the colonial administration’s repertoire to modernize trade in the Arabian Sea. The mercantile networks used these to perform compliance while simultaneously engaging in reinterpretation, improvisation, and, sometimes, subversion. The book treats us to capitalism’s underbelly— the traffickers, the slave traders, the currency counterfeiters, the gun runners, the arbitrageurs. Yet they are as much constitutive of, and have reshaped the contours of capitalism-at-sea. Even while they operated supposedly at the margins, they are very much an intrinsic part of capitalist formations. This shift from land to water is a highly nuanced political economy set within a colonial historical framework. The author contributes to an intellectual space that continues to spur new scholarship and redefines the field of historical studies further. So, how else might the book be further nuanced? Here are two areas to consider. A Deeper Analysis of Colonial Governance: The British Empire was so vast and massive that a coherent and comprehensive governance system would have rendered it quite impossible. Karen Barkey’s Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (2014) is instructive here. When huge portions of the world are controlled or governed from a remote and distant political center (as in the case of the Ottoman Empire), Barkey argues that inevitably, the empire

Nascent and Latent: Differential Roles of Civil Society in Southeast Asia and the MENA Region

Well before the Arab Spring, a number of Southeast Asian countries experienced their own political upheavals. In all of them, grievances were channeled via organized efforts of civil society organizations. The growth of civil society and social movements nurtured over the past twenty decades signifies a much wider “political opportunity structure” than most countries in the MENA region. In contrast, civil society formation in the MENA region remains problematic. Populist authoritarian states up until the Arab Spring in late 2010 have been the norm. The massive oil wealth, particularly of the Gulf countries, provided the engine for state-sponsored welfare schemes, and this largesse has kept their populations relatively quiescent with the free provision of public services and utilities. Despite these circumstances, there are possibilities for reconstructing an autonomous public sphere for citizens’ participation in the MENA region.

Superpowers, Regional Hegemons, Ethno-Nations, and Sectarian States: Identity Politics in Transition Regimes

Today, most of the Middle East is embroiled in a very intense cross-border sectarian war. These conflicts are fuelled by regional superpower rivalry, particularly Saudi Arabia and Iran, both countries exerting influence within countries that have sharp divisions between Sunnis and Shias. In contrast, other Southeast Asian countries, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, continue to manage their relations with relative success with ethnic groups despite their diversity. This chapter analyzes the severity of ethnic identities during transition periods, and argues that unless countries resolve their identity challenges, political transition will remain difficult, if not impossible.

Conclusion: Transition(ing) to What?

The concluding chapter synthesizes the major arguments of this research, reiterates the value of cross-regional research and its contribution to the broad area of political transitions, and provides lessons, however cautiously, from Southeast Asia to the transitions in the MENA region. Among the more significant lessons are the necessity of building a political constituency for democracy; institution-building after regime change; pragmatic accommodation and compromise; and taking power seriously. Further additional research worthy of investigation is identified to include, for example, comparative economic development; comparative reforms for the military; political reforms that include party formation, legislative measures, constitutional bodies, bureaucratic reform; and strengthening of, as well as regulating civil society.

Interrupted Histories: Arab Migrations to Pre-colonial Philippines

Philippine migration studies have tended to emphasize the drawing power of the global labor market and the Philippine response to these labor demands. While these studies have obvious value to systematic investigations of global processes, there is a definite merit to explore migration within the context of an “earlier globalization ” which occured roughly in the late thirteenth century until the arrival of the Spanish colonial powers toward the latter half of the sixteenth century. What emerges is a movement of migrants from the Arabian Peninsula toward many parts of Southeast Asia including the Philippines, establishing settlements and laying the foundation for institutions that have been entrenched and sustained even during the colonial period. Drawing from secondary sources as well as archival research, this paper seeks to investigate more deeply the waves of Arab (and other Middle Eastern) migrations to pre-colonial Philippines . A historical approach to the study of migration is an effort to offer a counter-narrative to the more dominant Spanish-Christian-American account of Philippine history . It also attempts to reveal the forces that have shaped a pluralistic Philippine culture despite the insistence of Christian hegemony . Finally, the paper promotes a historical perspective to migration studies that foreground transnational connections through local and regional connections, which, in the Philippine case, illustrates the enduring transnational connections between the Hadramawt region in Yemen and the southern sultanates in the Philippine archipelago .

To Shoot or Not to Shoot: The Military in Political Transitions

In Southeast Asia, the military’s role in transition has been prominent, particularly in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar. In coalition with civilian opposition groups, reformist factions within the military helped usher a period of transition. In contrast, autocratic rulers in the MENA region were able to employ brutal force in attempts to crush revolts because rather than sidelining the military, they had ensured that key units were commanded by members of the ruling family, tribe, or sect. This gave those well-trained and well-armed units a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and effectively neutralized the risk and/or fallout of potential defections in times of crisis. It also cemented the family, tribe, or sect’s grip on power. The sharp contrasts in the role of the military during transition periods and the different outcomes for individual countries is the highlight of this chapter.