Shipping Lords and Coolie Stokers (Paperback)

Ravi Ahuja

ISBN 10: 1804293512 / ISBN 13: 9781804293515

Published by Verso Books, London, 2024

About this Item

Paperback. 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 who had been the majority of the ships crew. This was not unusual at a time when a fifth of the British mercantile marines workforce was recruited from the subcontinent. The book combines the extensive press coverage and judicial records of this accident with a plethora of archival, literary, technical, and linguistic sources to reveal the pervasiveness of a genteel racism in the board rooms of British shipping imperialism. It explains the business logic driving the pervasive use of irrational racist ideology for structuring the maritime labour market and for implementing racialized modalities of labour management on the worlds most glamorous steamship liners. It also discusses the scope for agency of maritime workers under a racialized labour regime in an age of imperialismissues that are no less relevant in our own time of postcolonial capitalism. A TRAGIC SHIPPING ACCIDENT OPENS A WINDOW ON RACIALIZED LABOUR MANAGEMENT IN AN AGE OF IMPERIALISM Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781804293515

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Shipping Lords and Coolie Stokers (Paperback)
• Publisher: Verso Books, London
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1804293512
• ISBN 13: 9781804293515
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.