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Book Review: Religion in the British Navy 1815–1879: Piety and Professionalism

The allocation of EEZs to nation states is described by Lisa Ford in her excellent account of legal regimes. She is not quite correct in saying ‘virtually all of the South Pacific Ocean falls within the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of island states’ (p. 229). There are swaths of High Seas interspersed between island EEZs. Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMO) were set up to deal with the many problems resulting from this which have only been partly successful. When it comes to conservation, Damon Sala, amongst his profound analysis of the Pacific indigenous people, describes impressive knowledge of the sea environment. Ryan Tucker Jones recalls the way fishers in the past have regulated their relationships with the sea through knowledge and taboos. They knew what species they could safely target. Sujit Sivasundaram explores in an interesting way the science values of Pacific people and problems of impacts. Joyce E. Chaplin, in her masterly account of so many aspects of the period 1500–1800, also emphasizes non-European contributions to the history of science. There are several references to tsunamis and their dangers, but Robert Aldrich, in his chapter ‘Politics’, points up the dangers of the complex boundary divisions of the South China Sea, demarcating areas claimed simultaneously by China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, and separately between China and Japan. There have been many attacks, sinkings and killings. It is worth recalling the fishers’ dilemma. Each state encourages, coerces, subsidizes their fishers to work in disputed zones to confirm their claims, each state also arrests all other fishers for not to do so would concede rights to fish. Prisons are holding hundreds of innocent fishermen. There are other political hazards which arise from religious-based differences. Bronwen Douglas, in what is a little classic (Chapter 9), deals with the origins of this as far back as the arrival of Islam in the thirteenth century in Sumatra. She gives the added bonus of allowing appreciation of the secessionist movements. These have the characteristics of the many piratical activities in Asian seas from the big syndicates and small samones (sea thugs) who steal vessels, cargoes, catches and take hostages for financial gain. The Islamic groups do much the same for political and military funding. Fishers have to purchase a permit to operate from them if they wish to keep their boats or their lives. Piracy has not been discussed in the book. It is now much less common in the South China Sea, having been reduced to about 100 attacks per year, surprisingly though these have increased in the well-guarded Malacca Strait from 22 in 2011 to 24 in 2012. Transnational movements and trade have been detailed by Adam McKeown indicating flows over time. This is brought up to date by Kaoru Sugihara, who produces very useful data in transport and trade, although does not enter the problems of the feeder services of small distant islands. Overall, this is an excellent book, but with one caveat: there is not quite enough attention to what Eric Hobsbawm called ‘Grassroots History’, and we do not always hear the voices of the people.