27 – Navigating Agreement and Negotiating Coercion in the Indian Ocean Explorations on Seafaring Labour, 1700-1950
Maritime worlds of the Indian Ocean comprised spaces of contact, cohabitation, and collaboration that frequently involved regimes of coercion, yet relied on the co-production of social space and thus the (limited) exercise of agreement. The panel explores coercive ambiguities in arenas of close, endured or even enforced socio-spatial proximity characterizing important nodal points in maritime networks – particularly ships and ports.
Ships and ports in the Indian Ocean of the 17th to 19th centuries were marked by the navigation of social spaces characterized by heightened proximity, requiring the endurance of strong
hierarchies and high levels of diversity in social practice. In turn, the arising social practices frequently needed to be enforced as tightly as they needed to be observed, thus producing strong ambiguities and fluid contextual adjustments in the exercise of coercion and agreement. Tightly compartmentalized social spaces of agreement and coercion produced a kaleidoscope of responses to the necessities of blending coercion and agreement fluidly – facilitating the emergence of liminal spaces, concepts, and practices. We consider a kaleidoscope of liminalities – including the spatial removal from mainstream practices like pirate ships and havens; the production of intermediate roles in coercive regimes that combine the exercise of enforcement with co-habitation, such as foremen in maritime labour regimes or sardars in the passage stage of indenture; and temporal liminalities in the practice of coercion and agreement such as impressment, or the temporal application of accentuated penal powers over otherwise much freer people even in contexts of licit shipping.