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

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.

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.

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