The mixture of religions in Reunion is both complex and interesting. The Tamil labourers were mostly low caste, and in the nineteenth century the French authorities actively encouraged conversion. As coercion eased in the twentieth century an interesting mix of Catholic and Hindu practice became evident on such occasions as baptisms and marriages. One example of a tolerant folk religious practice on the
island where all the different communities could sometimes embrace the same cult figure is St Expédit, whose career was sketched earlier (see pages 244–5). But as regards the Hindu population, over the last few decades this rather tolerant situation has changed, as Tamil Brahmins have come in and actively sought to purify Hindu practice on the island. Over just a few years they have been more successful in eradicating folk Hinduism than were the Catholic authorities over a period of more than a century. As an example, in the old syncretic time most Tamil families gave their children a western first name, often John or Mary. However, the first letter of the second name was chosen according to Hindu astrology to give the child an auspicious name. Today young Indian parents choose an Indian first name for their child (rejecting the Christian influence once in force) and without taking account of the first letter of the name according to the date of birth (rejecting previous folk Hinduism).
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We need to say little about the last of the Mascarenes, the Seychelles, for their history is analogous to the other two areas. Again there were slaves and sugar and then indentured labour. However, many of them returned home at the end of their indenture, and those who remained seem to have integrated much more than occurred in Mauritius. This however does not apply to the free Indian migrants after the end of indenture, who dominate business, and unlike the small Chinese population have not converted or intermarried. These people seem to stand apart from the rest of the population of the island, who can be considered to be, before any ethnic or religious denominator, primarily Seychellois. The islands became independent in 1976, and since then have relied mostly on tourism.
The Maldives, much further north and east, have a very different history. They make up an archipelago consisting of some 1,200 islands, of which less than 200 are permanently inhabited. They have been inhabited since perhaps 500 BCE, and have never really been colonised. Ibn Battuta, it will be remembered, had an interesting time there (see pages 97, 112). They have their own language and script. The population is again heterogeneous, with a mixture of Sri Lankan, Indian, Arabic, and bits of African and Indonesian influences and origins, yet today they are all Muslim and there is little sign of ethnic tensions. Islam is the official religion, and indeed the practice of any other faith is prohibited. The economy is booming, based on tourism.
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And finally we can briefly list the Chagos Archipelago, and especially Diego Garcia, about which we will say more when we consider strategy in the ocean (see pages 281–5), and Christmas Island. The latter was uninhabited until the late nineteenth century, and then was a feifdom of the Clunies-Ross family, who imported Malay labour to exploit the island's phosphate deposits. Since 1948 the island has been administered by Australia, and recently it has played a prominent role in Australia's sorry attempts to stop asylum seekers getting from Indonesia to Australia.
We wrote extensively about the impact of technological changes on the ocean in the nineteenth century, stressing the role of steam ships. Since World War II new technology has continued to have a major significance, especially in the rise and fall of ports in the ocean, and in the sizes of the ships which ply it. We will look at changes in shipping and its ownership first.
There were dramatic changes in shipping after World War II. The old tramp steamers were often replaced by container ships and bulk ore and oil tankers. With the rise of flags of convenience from places like Panama and Liberia shipping became less tied to the flags of the traditional maritime powers. Between 1977 and 1987 the registered tonnage of ships belonging to European Union countries fell from 30 per cent to 17 per cent of the world total. Once Britain had 22 per cent of the world's tonnage, now it has only 2 per cent, while the United States went from 33 per cent to 5 per cent. If one classifies ships according to the flags they fly, the first three countries are Liberia, Panama and Japan.
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Broadly speaking, in the first world passenger traffic ended in the 1960s, to be replaced by air travel. As regards the Atlantic, in 1957 passenger traffic was evenly split between air and sea, but by 1967 the sea had only 7.5 per cent, and by 1973 only 1 per cent.
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Container ships first came on line for traffic between the USA and the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, and spread to the North Atlantic in the early 1960s. By 1984 around 75 per cent of liner trade linking developed countries was containerised, and by the early 1990s almost all liner trade worldwide was. Their sizes are given in 'TEU', that is Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit, as the standard container is 20 × 8 × 8 feet, though some are now 40 × 8 × 8 feet. The container ships are getting bigger and bigger: the first generation, 1964–67, were 1,000 TEU, now new ones are 6,000 TEU and more. In other terms, the largest container ships now carry the equivalent of 72,000 dwt.
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There are obvious advantages in terms of efficiency. Centuries ago on many coasts, such as Coromandel, ships stood off and their cargoes and passengers were landed in smaller boats. Then better ports were developed, so that even large ships could tie up at berths. However, cargo handling remained extremely labour intensive. The cargo arrived at the port in a variety of packages: boxes, drums and so on. These were all lifted on board and manually stowed. Now all cargo arrives in containers and is hoisted aboard by one man using a giant crane. This is the 'ro-ro' method: roll on/roll off. Consequently these ships spend very little time in port. They can go right around the world, loading and discharging cargo, in seventy days.
The implications of this revolution are profound. Ports around the Indian Ocean rose and fell according to how quickly they provided the facilities needed for container traffic. Colombo was very fast off the mark, and became the hub for all of South Asia in the 1980s. Over the last decade or so Mumbai has built a whole new container port, and Colombo has suffered from this competition. In East Africa Mombasa assumed the same role, handling 1,300 containers in 1975, and no less than 80,100 in 1983. Some totally new ports have appeared. One example is Marmagao, developed to export unprocessed iron ore. In the 1950s it was not a major port at all, but in the 1960s it was ranked third in India in terms of volume of traffic, and second in the 1970s and 1980s, behind only Mumbai.
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In southern Arabia proximity to oil has dictated success. Aden was reduced to very minor significance, and Dubai/Jebel Ali, closer to the oil money, took off.
Southeast Asia provides an excellent case study of the implications of this revolution. Before containers Singapore was far and away the greatest port in the region.
The colonial capitals, such as Jakarta, played a regional role. They had connections with the metropole, and were also centres for a dense local traffic handled by smaller steam ships, some owned by Dutch interests and some by migrant Chinese. Traditional craft retained a minor role feeding in to the larger circuits. The situation overall was not positive. Bangkok, for example, was located 30 km up-river, and the bar at the mouth downstream from the city meant only ships with a maximum draft of 16 feet could enter. Dredging in the 1960s increased this to 28 feet, still nowhere near deep enough for the new generation of monster ships. Bangkok was an inefficient port: in 1965 they unloaded 400 tonnes in every 24 hours, while a more competitive rate was about 750 tonnes in eight hours.
The arrival of containers produced major changes, essentially imposed from Europe and the United States, for southeast Asian ports which could not provide the facilities the rich world insisted on were simply bypassed and left to wither. The need was not only for new docks, but more generally intermodal ports which linked road, rail, and ship in one operation. Singapore moved very quickly, and by the 1970s was 'on line'. By 1983 over one-half of Singapore's liner cargo was containerised. Today it is the biggest container port in the world. Other southeast Asian ports followed, and the number of containers loaded and unloaded in ASEAN ports rose from 200,000 TEU in 1972 to 1.1 million in 1978, and 2.5 million in 1983. Singapore acts as a regional hub, along with Colombo, Mumbai, and Hong Kong; about 70 per cent of containers landed in Singapore are trans-shipped. Increasing size means that all these ports have to constantly expand, running fast to stand still just as was the case in the race between engineers a century ago (see pages 211–12). The big container ships today, 6,000 TEU or more, are called post-Panamax, meaning they are too big to go through the Panama Canal, which can only take up to about 3,800 TEU; but economies of scale mean that they are still viable, even though they have to go around Cape Horn.
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The end result is that the 'traditional' Indian Ocean port city, which we have described at different historical times, has begun to disappear. In particular, there are now very few remnants of what used to be the norm, that is port cities which are primarily ports. Today there are places where ships call to be sure – Mumbai, Kolkata, Basra, Kuwait, Mombasa, Bangkok and so on – but these are no longer dominated by their port function: they are really cities, part of whose function is to have a port attached. The port is no longer the
raison d'être
.
The other major, and analogous, change was the arrival of specialised ships which are purpose built to carry only one cargo. First were oil tankers, which in the 1930s carried oil from Abadan. These are real monsters. The biggest today is apparently the
Jahre Viking
, which is 458 metres long, weighs 565,000 dwt, has a beam of 68 metres, and a draught of 24 metres. So vast is the deck space that the crew get around on motorbikes. Other purpose-built single-cargo monsters carry dry cargo, such as iron ore, bauxite, coal and phosphate. Another variant are the unsightly car carriers operating from Japan and South Korea to all parts of the globe, which essentially are floating car park buildings. My local newspaper recently described one entering Sydney harbour. 'She's pig ugly – a charmless, grey, round-fronted flat-backed 50,000
tonne brick with off-white funnels slapped drunkenly around the deck.' But they are efficient. This one carried 3,300 Japanese cars to five ports around the Australian coast. The round-trip was to take only 35 days. The master and engineer were Japanese, the crew Indian and Filipino, the registration Panamanian.
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These mono-cargo ships need new jetties specialising in the rapid loading of one specific commodity. Examples are Kharg Island for oil, Paradeep, Dampier and Marmagao for iron ore, or Aqaba for rock phosphate. These loading places are very different from traditional ports. Dampier, in northern Western Australia, will stand as a case study of this new phenomenon. In 1966 Hamersley Iron, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, began to develop iron ore mines in sites 300 km inland from the coast. Six are operating today, with a seventh due to come on stream soon. The statistics are impressive. Ore is carried to the wharves at Dampier in trains 2.5 km long, consisting of 226 wagons, each of which carries 105 tonnes of ore. Nine trains a day make the journey. At the port, in Dampier Sound, two wharves are used, one 295 metres long, the other 325 metres, which respectively can handle ships of 180,000 dwt and 250,000 dwt. Two wagons, carrying 210 tonnes of ore, are emptied on the manual wharf, the smaller one, in 130 seconds. On the automated bigger wharf it takes only 90 seconds. Up to 500 ships call at Dampier each year, the largest being dependent on tides, as the departure channel is only 15.5 metres deep. Every year no less than 55 million tonnes of ore are exported to destinations all around the world.
All this is impressive enough. However, what is most interesting is that Dampier, like the oil terminals in the Gulf, is hardly a port at all, at least not in the way we have described Indian Ocean ports in earlier periods. The process of loading is very highly mechanised, especially on the newer, longer, wharf. A minimum number of skilled workers drive the machines. None of them normally board the bulk carriers. All this contrasts strongly with earlier times, when stevedores linked wharf and ship. Similarly, ports used to be distinguished from inland towns by their cosmopolitan nature and heterogeneous population. This no longer applies. These huge ships are fully loaded in 24 to 30 hours, and their maximum turn-around time is 36 hours. Few of the crew have time to land. The crews are almost entirely non-Australian, so that visa requirements also hinder going ashore. There is a complete dichotomy between the crews and the wharf workers: the former never go ashore, the latter are only very remotely connected with the sea in any way at all. Even the bulk carriers in a way seem to deny the sea. They are ugly, but efficient, monsters whose sailing is in no way constrained by deep structure matters: the sea has been defeated.
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The social changes which have resulted are also dramatic. Most obviously, the workforce on the docks has declined very rapidly. This has meant the end, at least in the first world countries around the ocean, of a wharf workforce which traditionally was among the most militant of trade unionists. They have been replaced by a handful of skilled workers, highly paid and often not unionised at all. In third world ports a mass of 'coolie' labour has also been dispensed with. So also on board ship, where the transition has been to the employment of largely unskilled, and very low paid, third world crews.