Shipping Lords and Coolie Stokers: Class, Race, and Maritime Capitalism in the Early Twentieth Century

by Ravi Ahuja

Overview

A TRAGIC SHIPPING ACCIDENT OPENS A WINDOW ON RACIALIZED LABOUR MANAGEMENT IN AN AGE OF IMPERIALISM

When eighty-seven passengers and crew died in the shipwreck of the Royal Mail ship Egypt in 1922, the accident gave rise to a racist international press campaign against the employment of Indian seafarers, such as those who made up most of the ship’s crew. This was not unusual at a time when a fifth of the British mercantile marine’s workforce was recruited from the subcontinent. Ravi Ahuja explains the business logic behind a labour regime steeped in racist irrationalism and examines the scope for solidarity among a divided workforce in an age of imperialism – an issue that is no less relevant in our own time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781804293515
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	12/17/2024
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ravi Ahuja is Professor of Modern Indian History at the University of Göttingen and has previously taught at SOAS in London and in Heidelberg. He is a social historian of South Asia in the 18th through 20th centuries. He has extensively published on the history of labour, of war, and of infrastructure. His books include Pathways of Empire: Circulation, ‘Public Works’ and Social Space in Colonial Orissaand Working Lives and Worker Militancy: The Politics of Labour in Colonial India. He co-edited the path-breaking collection The World in World Wars. Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from the South.

Table of Contents

Introduction: ‘Lascar’ Seamen and ‘Racial Management’ under Steamship Capitalism

1. Collision Course: British Merchant Shipping and the Loss of a Mail Steamer
2. Good Copy: The Savagery of Panic-Stricken ‘Natives’
3. Spelling Disaster: Class and Race When a Ship Goes Down
4. Indian Outrage: Who Speaks for the ‘Lascar’?
5. Lines of Defence: ‘Natives, Properly Led’
6. Discomforting Testimonies: Eight ‘Native Seamen’ in Court
7. Communication Collapse: The Steamship and ‘Naval Hindustani’
8. Fireroom Hierarchy: Stoking, Skill, and Status
9. Stoker’s Stigma: The Two Lives of the ‘Hairy Ape’
10. Gains of ‘Racial Management’: Manning Scales and Liner Schedules
11. The Break-Up: Findings, Rulings, and the Limits of ‘Racial Management’
12. Course Adjustment: The Names of the ‘Native’

Acknowledgements
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Broadly learned, strikingly unsentimental, and deeply researched, this sensational story of disaster succeeds as a drama of class struggles fought out within tragic racial predicaments. It features riveting analysis of the languages of race and class, reflects maturely on trade unionism within imperialism, and above all, demonstrates what a focus on the labour process offers to the writing of history."
—David Roediger (American Studies at University of Kansas) is the author of Class, Race, and Marxism.

"This gem of a book the delivers micro-history at its best. It is a genuine page-turner, a riveting read, which challenges widely-held notions of 'agency'."
—Joya Chatterji, author of Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century

"A cluster of fascinating "nano histories" nest within this important and unusual story of an early 20th century shipwreck. The figure of the South Asian lascar aboard a British ship leads us to, and deftly connect, multiple unfamiliar horizons : labour and race relations, work processes, capital deployment, maritime technology, the shipping business as well as imperial narrative conventions in texts on oceanic travels. A superb work in the best tradition of microhistoria which remains fully alive to the larger historical frames, Ahuja's monograph combines massive research, incisive analysis and a superbly crafted narrative which is a pleasure to read."
—Tanika Sarkar, author of Hindu Nationalism in India

"Taking off from the catastrophic loss of life in the shipwreck of a Royal Mail vessel in 1922, Ravi Ahuja weaves an insightful account of race and class in the context of British imperialism and corporate control of shipping. At the center of his account are Indians stoking coal in the ship's engine room. This book is both a thought-provoking analysis of a socially divided labor regime and a fascinating story well told."
—Frederick Cooper, co-author of Post-Imperial Possibilities: Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia

From the Publisher