Jumping Ship: Indians, Aborigines and Australians Across the Indian Ocean

Abstract

Relationships between South Asians and Australians during the colonial period have been little investigated. Closer attention to the dramatically expanded sea trade after 1850 and the relatively uncontrolled movement of people, ideas and goods which occurred on them, despite claims of imperial regulation, suggests that significant numbers of Indians among others entered Australia outside the immigration restrictions of empire or settlers. Given that many of them entered or remained in Australia without official sanction, their histories will not be found in the official immigration records, but rather in the memories and momentos of the communities into which they might have moved. Exploring the histories of Aboriginal communities and of maritime working class networks does allow a previously unwritten history to emerge: not only of Indian individuals with complex personal and working histories, but often as activists in the campaigns against racial discrimination and in support of decolonization. Yet their heritage has been obscured. The polarizing conflict between settlers and Aboriginal Australians has invariably meant that Aboriginal people of mixed background had to 'choose sides' to be counted simplistically as either 'black' or 'white'. The need to defend the community's rights has meant that Aboriginal people had to be unequivocal in their identification and this simplification has had to take precedence over the assertion of a diverse heritage. In working class histories, the mobilization of selective ethnic stereotyping has meant that the history of Indians as workers, as unionists and as activists has been distorted and ignored. I. Behind the back of EmpireAlthough invariably opening with an account of British maritime exploration, the major histories of colonialism in Australia rapidly move on to focus on land-based exploration within the continent and on the landed societies of the metropole and its other colonies.

Bordering seafarers at sea and onshore

“…Successive laws have created and policed borders that sought to maintain a global racialized order established by colonization. Empire-authored records were part of an ideology of containment that sought to convey that imperial control was effective in imposing racialized order onto a chaotic and transient situation (Goodall et al, 2008 ). Bordering discourses work in similar ways in the context of globalization, presenting an image of order being maintained in national imaginaries.…”

“…In the case of Indian seafarers, the shipping companies wanted to avoid aggravating white seafarer's unions in both the UK and Australia where at a different time the unions had taken P&O to court over employing “colored” seamen. Whether constructing Indian seafarers as threats or victims, the actions of the white unions supported their respective governments' efforts to stop working-class Indian men from coming ashore and settling in the growing cosmopolitan dockside communities (Goodall et al, 2008 , pp. 56–57).…”

Uncharted Waters? Cultures of Sea Transport and Mobility in New Zealand Colonial History

“…They were often 'archives of mechanisms for control rather than proof that the controls worked'. 60 Yoking 'race' too tightly to 'subversion' also risks sweeping over the ways in which the mobilities of 'minorities' could also be unremarkable, mundane or mainstream. Accessing histories of the routine is a more challenging endeavour.…”

Bodies at Borders: Analyzing the Objectification and Containment of Migrants at Border Crossing

“…Successive laws have created and policed borders that sought to maintain a global racialized order established by colonization. Empire-authored records were part of an ideology of containment that sought to convey that imperial control was effective in imposing racialized order onto a chaotic and transient situation (Goodall et al, 2008). Bordering discourses work in similar ways in the context of globalization, presenting an image of order being maintained in national imaginaries.…”