Session Name: Uncovering the Histories of Bugis-Makassar Maritime Trade: Ammana Gappa (the Law of the Sea), the Trader Prince Daeng Padupa, and Colonial Ethnography
3 - The Pirate Wind and Model Ships: Crafting Knowledge of Maritime Asia
Monday, July 29, 2024
11:15 - 13:00 (GMT+7)
Presentation Abstract
What are the intersections between studies of maritime ethnography in the Indian Ocean, popular accounts of piratical peoples of Southeast Asia, and a collection of Chinese model junks donated to the Science Museum, London? This presentation explores the creation and circulation of knowledge about the Asian maritime realm via case studies of works created by colonial experts and shipping enthusiasts in the early twentieth century. This paper is an exploration of the ways in which maritime institutions and colonial employees had an influential role in shaping knowledge, and sometimes a Western nostalgia, for Asian maritime traditions. Colonial-era figures such as James Hornell, Owen Rutter and Frederick Maze all had careers in Asia and made a name for themselves because of their maritime knowledge; and it is their works which form case studies. We can consider how knowledge of Asian maritime communities and their practices was documented and then circulated within imperial networks of information. For instance, by the 1930s premier maritime history publications such as the Mariner’s Mirror regularly featured works on Asia, and the London Science Museum was the recipient of a collection of Chinese model junks. In addition, Owen Rutter’s popular history, The Pirate Wind: Tales of the Sea Robbers of Malaya (1930) offered readers a pacy and gripping account of ‘piratical peoples’ of Southeast Asia in the 19th century. Arguably, by examining the influence and profile of these scholarly and popular works, we can begin to re-assess the contributions made by (and legacies of) colonial maritime ethnographies.
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