Connectivity across the Bay of Bengal in the 19th and 20th Centuries (2024)

The Bay as a Dynamic Theater of Interactions

At the beginning of the 19th century, Asian history was being shaped by the colonial footprints of European powers like the Portuguese, Dutch, Spaniards, Danes, French, and British.1 The British started on a weaker note in the big power game in comparison to the Portuguese in the 16th and the Dutch in the 17th centuries, but by mid-19th century they had become more dominant than the rest of the contenders. Political and financial control of the important areas of the Indian subcontinent from the decaying Mughal emperor seated in Delhi was a big boost to their imperial acquisitions. British conquests continued well into the 19th century, leading to consolidation of their administration and a more centralized system. Thus, Asian history during this period was as much shaped by the power struggle and political acquisitions between European powers as it was by contestations between indigenous and colonial entities. The tussle for political and economic domination was much accelerated by the European industrial and technological revolution in different paradigms of trade and commerce, transport and communication, and arms and ammunitions. While the 19th century was characterized by major transformations in political, cultural, economic, and technological institution and experiences, the 20th century witnessed a different and defining course of political and economic developments. The world wars, the economic depression of the 1930s, and rising nationalism in the colonies led to new dynamics of accommodation and negotiation in the circulation and control of migration trends, capital flows, and governance laws. This was also a century of the rise of maritime power, largely through political and military maneuvers and mostly in a geopolitical context.2 The narrative of Asia was thus reconstructed not only in terms of colonial hegemonic control, increased mobility of goods and people, and sociocultural imports from the West, but also in terms of drawing up new boundaries between places, people, and culture. The transition had a direct effect on the formation and identity of port cities, littorals, and hinterlands across the fluid space of the Bay that have had a long-lasting legacy in inter-Asian cross-cultural encounters.

The maritime space of Bay of Bengal emerged as an important pivot in the theater of activities in the Indian Ocean. European mercantilism and its transformation into free trade policies and integration of the Asian market with the global economy led to an emergence of spatial architecture dotted with new port cities like Calcutta, Colombo, Penang, and Singapore. It was also characterized by the bulk movement of commodities (Bengal jute, Ceylonese coffee, Burmese rice, Malayan rubber, Javanese sugar, and coffee) and the unprecedented movement of people across this space. Between 1840 and 1940, about 8 million people traveled from India to Ceylon, and about 4 million to Malaya and 12 to 15 million to Burma, with approximately half of them returning within three to seven years.3 The maritime space of the Bay was interspersed with two different kinds of circuits of trade and commerce—inter-Asian trade around the rims of the Bay and the Euro-Asian trade lanes stretching out both to East Asia and then in the West to Africa and Europe. However, academic discourse on this maritime space in the colonial period has often been marginalized in the scholarship of the much broader scope of Indian Ocean studies that has gained significant momentum, particularly in the past three decades. There have been numerous academic publications on different paradigms of port cities, maritime routes, water history, globalized networks of communities and commodities, and also contemporary geopolitical trajectories (which are not discussed here). For example, Broeze builds a heuristic concept of port cities both geographically and historically and brings our attention to the multifunctionality of port cities.4 Mukherjee, on the other hand, studies the port cities under the “network model” or discusses the region under the framework of water history.5 Other prominent scholars have also been working on the Indian Ocean (e.g., M. N. Pearson, Philip Curtin, and Om Prakash and Denys Lombard to mention only a few6). However, when there is focused attention on the scholarship on the Bay, we find that most of the research is based on ancient periods until the beginning of 19th century (e.g., research work by Das Gupta and Pearson, Mukherjee, Om Prakash, Chaudhuri, McPherson, Chandra and Ray, and many others7). According to this perspective, this article makes an important contribution to the scholarship on the exchanges between colonial and the indigenous forces in the 19th and 20th centuries. What has also been least discussed in research are the different dynamics of interactions in northern and southern part of the Bay. The northern region is more intricately connected to the fluvial networks of maritime, overland, and riverine with fluid accessibility to the hinterland (modern West Bengal, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, northwestern Thailand).8 The southern region does not enjoy similar geographical morphology but has immediate access to the global transit points and maritime routes. This calls for separate research altogether. The seascape, in this article, instead of acting as a divider (as has been conventionally comprehended), has been highlighted as a connector of waterscapes and landscapes, integration of markets, and mobility of human capital and knowledge.

In the “spatial network of trading and shipping emporia” created with new identities under the British regional hegemony, this maritime space may be studied through the lens of circulation.9 Scholars like Bose, Pranjapra, and Amrith have already proposed the idea in recent years.10 Instead of characterizing empires with inflexible categories and hom*ogenous hierarchical power structures, as is often understood, recent scholarship recognizes empires as “spaces of flows, structures within which individuals maintain complex allegiances and sense of belonging.”11 The pluralistic nature of the empires and their transnational connections and power structures, which in turn mobilized diasporic movements, is reflected in recent works of many scholars like Bose and Amrith (already mentioned), Metcalfe, Ho, and Lees, among others.12 However, the fluid nature of a framework of circulation presents both opportunities and challenges. While it offers scope of different dimensions of multidisciplinary research, fitting it within the frames of a neatly structured analysis may be arduous. For example, different merchant groups acted as sponsors of religious networks and at the same time, components of trade were determinant of interactions between regions and communities irrespective of religious affiliations or political governance. Markovits, both in his extensive research on the Sindhi communities as well as on the other Asian merchant networks, also highlights the dynamic circulatory flows of credit, capital, goods and men, which existed in precolonial period, got reshaped in the colonial centuries, and found resonance in postcolonial period as well.13 Markovits explained: “While goods may also circulate outside the network (otherwise there would not be any exchange), men, credit and information circulate almost exclusively within it. Most crucial is probably the circulation of information.”14 In this article several circuits then emerge in the bigger Venn diagram of the Bay with several convergences and interjections at different nodes. Four subthemes have been discussed to illustrate various aspects of economic and cultural encounters, resilience, and accommodations between both external and indigenous players across the maritime space of the Bay drawing on several points of similarities between diverse geographies, networks, and communities surrounding the Bay.

A macro-view of the circulation will be as important as detailed research on the different strands that form a part of it proposing alignment between port cities, littorals, and hinterland.15 Land-related activities have usually followed outbound directions of flow through the ports and the coasts into the sea. However, the vision from the sea toward the land, as Frost suggests, can then be very different.16 Another distinct approach can be from the sea toward different lands. Colombo then can be compared with Calcutta and Singapore. The Bay thus emerges as a space that joins communities, cultures, and economies, not one that separates them, as it has been traditionally conceptualized. However, the focus in this article will be mostly on Indian dispersion and connections among the indigenous communities across the Bay. It is motivated by the fact that the Indians and Indian cultural familiarities were strikingly visible around the rim of the Bay in mostly an eastward direction of flow rather than otherwise, with few exceptions.17 The circulation was then carried on by the same category of people in a kind of a relay activity through different generations and destinations.

In the period of transition from mercantilist trends (16th–18th centuries) to laissez-faire economy (from 1840s onward to the beginning of the World War I in 1914), it is important to recount the development of merchant networks and institutions through the transition. In Braudel’s interpretation, a commercial network comprised of different agents or individuals located at different points in a circuit who were communicating and interacting with each other to facilitate trade transactions.18 In studying the changes in structure and agency of Asian commerce, Markovits highlights the problems of “survival” of Asian merchants in the emerging narrative of “decline and subordination” under colonial supremacy.19 Weber, on the other hand, assumed that the rise of Western capitalism led to the separation of household with business activities (e.g., the joint stock companies) and undermined the role of kinship and family ties. The rationalism of the modern West brought about the establishment of new institutions and legal corpus. Scholars who have studied the transition in the Western operational techniques and institutions have critiqued Weber’s ideas on different grounds.20 However, it is also important to comprehend how the institutional frameworks and modus operandi of Western banks, agency houses, chambers of commerce, and joint stock companies reframed the working of the Asian economy along with constitutional laws, property rights, and revenue settlements. Yet, as has been seen in the case of Indian merchant and trading communities, the indigenous structures of kinship, marriage alliances, linguistic affinities, and indigenous credit systems sustaining the regional networks flourished with new centers of commerce and different components of trade. An important example can be that of the Chettiars, a caste-based community from Tamil Nadu whose members spread their wings to Burma, Ceylon, Malayan peninsula, Mauritius, and South Africa.21 Another example of dynamic intra-ethnic interactions, particularly from 1860s onward, was the Sindhi community from the Sindh province, presently in Pakistan.22 We also come across local individual attempts to establish enterprises based on the European model of agency houses, banks, or insurance companies, which were profitable in the initial years (e.g., Bengal in the inter-war period), but in most cases, did not survive as long-term profit-making ventures. The total number of registered joint stock companies in Bengal was 17,022 in 1932, but only 7997 were functioning.23 The economic discourse on indigenous communities has often been submerged under the dominant narrative of the “drain of wealth” as propounded by nationalist economists on the one hand and European historians like Van Leur on the other, who theorized “dual” and hierarchical economies for Asian colonies—upper level dominated by European capitalists and lower level by small Asian firms.24 Markovits rightly point out the limitations of both the perspectives and strongly argues the powerful networks and agencies of Indian communities that flourished during the colonial period.25 Arguments on the Asian “bazaar” as put forward by Bayly and Ray bring forth the connective chain of local markets, finance and commodities in the bigger economic project of colonial domination.26

The dawn of the 19th century heralded with the effects of the industrial revolution that gripped more fervently on the Bay and the British finally pushed the Dutch to the Indonesian archipelago to secure dominance over the region. The turnaround for the British came with the acquisition of the Diwani (revenue rights and administration of civil justice) and political rights from the Nawab of Bengal by 1765 that followed with the victory in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. It has been considered a turning point in the East India Company’s fortunes in Bengal and India. Bengal, one of the richest provinces of India of the time, was sustaining the last years of the Mughal rule with required finances. Making a strong footprint in Bengal paved the way to further British victories in the subcontinent, to further their trading interests, and also to pay their company servants besides meeting other expenses. The British had already started fortification of Calcutta in 1696, which was in close proximity to Plassey, acquired villages for furthering settlements around the periphery of the fort, and also started establishing factories in the area. Calcutta thus emerged as the most important center of British administrative and political control in the Indian subcontinent, extending its administrative influence in the east as far as the Malayan peninsula (before the Straits Settlements). It was an equally important hub for trade and commerce in the Bay of Bengal connecting the Malacca Straits in the east to the African continent and the Mediterranean Sea, and thus, to Europe in the west. The political, commercial, and strategic significance of Calcutta soon earned its popularity as “London of the East.” Thus, by the end of the 18th century, the Bay had been transformed into a British lake.27 The 19th century witnessed consolidation of British commerce and political authority further with transfer of the colonies from the East India Company (EIC or the Company) to directly under the British crown from 1858, the introduction of steamships, and opening up of the Suez Canal in 1867, thus the British economic trajectory transiting from mercantilism to free trade.

Acquisition and Development of Port Cities

Port cities have been studied extensively from different perspectives by numerous scholars, and they contribute immensely to the historiography of Indian Ocean studies. As a subtheme in this article, the treatment here is that of a broader understanding of the changes in the infrastructure and identity of the port cities around the rim of the Bay in the given time period. It also shows the similarities of architectural spaces, communities, and governance between different colonial ports, thus drawing up a circuit of networks and connections and uneven sharing of power between different groups of people.

Acquiring, annexing, and building up new port cities and entrepots to consolidate power in and around the Bay of Bengal required a significant investment of time and attention during most of the 19th and the early parts of the 20th centuries. Thus, Colombo, Madras, Calcutta, Rangoon, Penang, and, later, Singapore remained connected through familiar circulation of engineering skills, economic networks, political and legal institutions, shipping lines, and the overall spatial architecture. The institutions and the architecture were also connected through similarities of British portrayal of power and assertiveness. Thus, factories, defense systems and fortifications, churches, hospitals, botanical gardens, town halls, and other public buildings dotted the spatial visuals of each of these port cities. The white settlements usually occupied the seafront with natives residing in the interior.28 As new nodes of littoral power, coastal cities provided tremendous possibilities of extending their influence in hinterlands for sourcing and distribution networks, and created the direction of human flows from the rural to the urban. The introduction of railways and telegraph created a seamless connection between land, river, and maritime networks, the like of which Asia had not witnessed before. The introduction of steamships from 1815 onward and using iron and steel for ship construction instead of timber was another giant step in increasing tonnage and modernizing shipping. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1867 added the real feather in the cap by reducing shipping time and freight costs drastically, thus boosting up the volumes in trade and the necessary infrastructure for trade. In 1871, almost all textile exports to Bombay and about 20 percent of bulkier and cheaper exports from Calcutta passed through the Canal.29 Advancement of navigational techniques and hydrography of the Indian Ocean added to the revolutionary changes. However, the country boats like the Indian katias and Arab dhows and baggalas as well as the Chinese junks still survived, most obviously for intra-regional trade and distributive networks.30 Britain’s tonnage of mercantile marines increased from 2.5 million tons in the years following the Napoleonic wars to 9.3 million tons in 1900. Income from shipping services stood at $9 million to $10 million a year and helped reduce its deficit on the balance of trade ($8–$9 million per annum) covering more than half of the deficit between the years 1825 and 1850.31

Merchants, “Banians,” and Capitalists

The term “merchants” was very loosely used and incorporated a broad range of occupations in the 18th century, from retail shopkeepers to bankers and financiers. As Marshall points out: “Men connected with the East India Company (EIC) were among the most socially aspiring of merchants.”44 In the early years, the EIC, which had also been recognized as the “world’s most powerful corporation,” would have chosen only experienced merchants as “factors” in Asia.45 However, from 1706, the format of appointment changed.46 Most of the Senior Merchants became members of the Bengal Council directing EIC’s affairs until 1740 and some would also end up being Governors.47 This came as no surprise as EIC began to assume political and administrative control and was involved in direct interactions with political decisions and maneuvers from London. To protect its monopoly rights over Asian trade, the EIC, since the late 17th century, had not allowed private participation in Euro-Asian trade but allowed the Company’s servants a much greater freedom of trade in Asia. The interdependence of political power and business rights proved to be very lucrative for the Company’s servants. They benefitted individually and also accommodated the larger interests of the EIC. The Company’s servants were “permitted to trade in Asia in all commodities except calicoes and pepper, the twin staples of the Company’s own trade.”48 Fifty-nine of these “Free Merchants” as they were called, went to Bengal between 1736 and 1756.49 However, many unlicensed merchants were also to be found all over the country. By 1800, Europeans in Bengal who were not employed by EIC numbered under 1000. The changes became more dramatic with the transfer of power to the British Crown in 1858.

An important agency in the European trading networks were the country traders, who played a significant part either individually or collectively through their syndicates in promoting European commercial interests and, in turn, the traders were also benefited by them. Francis Light, the founder of Penang, was an illustrious example of a unique link that existed between private and Company political and economic ambitions. Light had joined the Royal Navy initially, but he later chose a career with one of the most influential firms of country traders, Jourdain, Sullivan and De Souza, upon reaching Madras in 1765. He traveled widely between Burma, Thailand, and phu*ket (Junk Ceylon) and also stayed in Aceh. He liaised with a large range of people—from Sultan of Kedah and Company’s servants to local merchants traversing between formal bureaucratic orders to informal local networks. “For a former Royal Navy Officer,” as Barber points out, “working for an established country trader whose operations meshed closely with the East India Company, the distinctions often blurred.”50 Barber has well described the important status of the merchants and businessmen in the British society in Penang.

A cadre of salaried company officials stood at the apex of the British community, and considered itself a distinct elite, marked by uniforms, co*cked-hats and much self-importance . . . when there were disputes between the official community and the merchant, such as over taxes and import duties, it was invariably the merchant community that came out on top. A number of Penang’s “pioneer” families intermarried, the Scotts, Browns and Lights were tied commercially, politically and through marriage, which helped tighten commercial bonds further.51

The European merchants could not possibly carry out their trade without relations with their indigenous counterparts at different levels of business operations. They were helpful in sourcing different goods, and also often supplied the necessary capital. Relations between the English merchants and their local counterparts differed in different time periods depending on the political grasp of the European power. In the case of India, for the 17th and 18th centuries, dealing with the European merchant community was only a small part of the activities of the indigenous merchant communities. The House of Jagat Seths in Bengal and Malay Chetti, Kasi Viranna, and Sunca Rama Chetti in the Coromandel Coast were important names to reckon with. Merchants and bankers had acquired significant positions of power and influence with the downfall of the Mughal Empire when they became indispensible to the new regimes in different parts of the subcontinent. However, with an increasing inflow of foreign merchants and extension of British power toward the East in Burma and Malaya, the equations changed by the end of the 19th century. The dependence on native merchants declined with the modern postal network as a better alternative to hundi system, and the Company’s silver rupee declared as the legal tender crippled the money-changing business. The British agency houses then took over. Calcutta had about fifteen such firms by 1790.52 One of these firms in Calcutta, Palmer & Co. (established in 1810), diversified into shipping, insurance, general trading, and also publishing, bringing out the Calcutta Journal. The firm reaped huge gains in the China trade and the coastal trade and was called the “opium king” and the “indigo king.” Palmer & Co. also established the Calcutta Bank. In Madras, on the other hand, the earliest of the names was Chase and Perry (1789), which later became Parry & Co. Parry also established a tannery in Madras, sourcing raw materials from Penang, Colombo, and the Cape of Good Hope and supplying leather goods to the army. Scotsmen John Binny and George Arbuthnot also founded similar firms, John Binny & Co. (1799) and Arbuthnot & Co. (1809), respectively.53 Thus, the European agency houses in the 19th century disrupted and displaced the Indians and the Arabs in the coastal trade in the Indian Ocean.

However, the unfamiliarity of land, language, and culture necessitated dependence on a certain group of native agents who became indispensible and responsible for sourcing, purchase, shipment, quality control, and so on, for the agency houses. The banian class that was created had a convenient but hierarchical relationship between the European “masters” and the natives. Tripathi and Jumani suggested that the banian was the “lynchpin of the entire operation.”54 This was a new category that was different from the established genres of merchants and traders. There was possible fluidity of occupation between dobash/interpreter, Company clerks, and banians. When Raffles landed in Singapore, he was accompanied by Narayana Pillai, an interpreter and clerk from Penang, who later became one of the founding merchants and entrepreneurs in building up the island city.55 In Bengal, many of the banians flourished and went on to establish lucrative agency houses as well. Some of these firms were set up in collaboration with European capital like Carr, Tagore & Co., Oswald, Seal & Co., and Rustomji, Turner & Co. Motilal Seal and Dwarkanath Tagore were among the most promising native entrepreneurs during the early 19th century; however, the commercial crisis of the late 1840s and too much risky exposure in business brought about their downfall. Names like Ashutosh Dey & Co. and Ram Gopal Ghosh & Co. continued until the 1850s.56

Besides the new group of indigenous businessmen, there were traditional Indian business communities that restructured their trading interests and fitted themselves advantageously within the trajectory of British mercantile interests. The Chettiars, Chulia Muslims, Gujaratis, Sindhis, Parsis, and, much later, the Punjabis were the most prominent among these communities. The discourse on intra-ethnic circulation of the Chettiar moneylenders and financiers in Ceylon, Burma, and the Malayan peninsula has been well studied. The Sindhis, on the other hand, as Markovits has shown in his extensive research, catered to European clientele in luxury items like silk, curios, and handicrafts of China and India.57 The Gujaratis, who had been textile and spice traders in the region since precolonial times, continued with substantial presence in the region.58 The Parsis had been very active participants in the colonial China trade. George Leith mentions some groups of Indian traders in early 19th century: “the greatest portion of Chooliah reside on the island only for a few months. . . . The Parsees come from Bombay and Surat, some of them are great merchants, the lower orders are chiefly shipwrights and are esteemed excellent workmen.”59

Each of these Indian merchant communities maintained individual circuits of intra-ethnic linguistic and kinship networks, hundi exchanges, human resource links, and marriage alliances. Besides sociocultural differentiations of religion, caste, and language, there were also distinct business models and accounting methods and/or apprenticeship practices. The communities were close-knit and inward looking in their sociocultural interactions, although they had market interactions at times, for example, when discounting bills of exchange, or later forming the Indian Chamber of Commerce to voice their grievances and make petitions in unity to the colonial government.60

People on the Move

That migration formed the central theme of Asian history since the mid-19th century is little debated and several studies have been conducted on different aspects of the migratory flows in Asia.61 Furnivall’s observation of “plural” societies with “medley of people” where the different groups (European, Chinese, Indian) “mix but do not combine” in Southeast Asia is well recognized by scholars on migration.62 Colonial migration had assumed different contours and dimensions based on governance and border controls. It was driven by capitalism, growth of industrialization, technological developments, and commodification of human labor. It was directly linked to the global economic shifts as well as the political turn of events. Thus, the major flows of voluntary migration of precolonial times had turned around to be dominated by structured involuntary labor migration flows during the colonial period catering to the growing needs of the plantation crops in Ceylon and Malaya and rice cultivation in Burma. “Free migrants” traveled overseas for a better economic life, but they were mostly by debt to the labor recruiters. The others, merchants and capitalists, professionals, and service providers, numbered around 6000 annually in the 1890s and increased to about 16,000 in 1920s.63 This was only a very tiny part of the human flow that took place during the mentioned period.

The statistical information through Census documentation in different categorizations of ethnicity, race, religion, and caste gives us a fair view of the migration trends in and around the Bay from the latter half of the 19th century. The existing routes, reinforced with steamship navigation and bigger vessels, facilitated the mobilization of people. Around 30 million people traveled from India to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma, and the Malayan peninsula and 19 million people from China to Southeast Asia between 1850 and 1930.64 From the decade of 1930s, there were periodical reverse flows. It was also a cyclical migration to a considerable extent; only 6 million Indians and 7 million Chinese settled in Southeast Asia. Indian migration remained largely one of sojourners, both for indentured laborers under contractual obligation and other migrants, who chose to return to their homeland every two to three years. This was also a reason why Indian migration was mostly male dominated, although gender ratios differed in different geographies. Whereas it was about 45 percent in Sri Lanka, the figures were much less in the Malaya region.65

The documentation of migration experiences through ethnographic research and oral history records enhances our understanding of the diasporic communities in different locations (their intra-ethnic networks homeland ties, intercommunity interactions), which may be different from an understanding of trends of migration based on numbers. An important case in point is that of the Indian merchant and trading communities in Singapore. Though a minority among a minority in demographic status, they had remarkable footprints in business and lived spaces in the landscape of colonial and postcolonial (immediate years) Singapore.66 On the other hand, the Tamil Muslim migrants to Malaya were marrying local Malay women and their integration through matrimonial alliances with a different racial group based on religious affiliations often blurs the diasporic identity. It also problematizes demographic patterns of migration. Similar issues may also arise while incorporating the Peranakan communities within the framework of migration research. Colonial perceptions of different communities also led to stereotypical assumptions of their culture and religion. Chinese “secret societies” were almost invariably held responsible for any violent outbreaks among the communities. Governor Blundell described them as “turbulent and self-willed” and “dangerous to the lives and property of all persons.”67 It is no wonder that they were not preferred as policemen. On the other hand, religious processions like Thaipusam (Hindu) and Muharram (Muslim) of the local communities were viewed as a confrontation to the Christian religion, and some Europeans began to demand an end to the public celebration of the festivals.68

Two most important ports of departure from the Indian subcontinent, Madras and Calcutta, witnessed different dimensions of migration. There were the Tamil-speaking migrants from Madras, catering mostly to the cheap labor demand in Malaya, other free migrants (working in dockyards, petty traders, etc.), those who worked in bureaucracy (lawyers, teachers, administrators), and commercial merchants and trading communities (Chulia Muslims, Chettiars). The port of Calcutta witnessed not only an outflow of Bengali-speaking communities but also many non-Bengalis who were part of the city’s cosmopolitan culture (Armenians, Jews, Parsis, also some Chettiars) and others who came from different parts of North Indian belt. Bengalis, who mostly worked for British bureaucracy and administration, opted for the culturally more familiar Burma as a foreign locational option that was nearer home and could be reached by both land and sea. As a part of the colonial policy, the cheap labor supply from this port was directed mostly to different destinations beyond Southeast Asia. Thus, “Bangali” identity in Malaya was nurtured with the general perception of all those who departed from Calcutta including the British auxiliaries from the Bengal Regiment. There are interesting opportunities for further research on the non-Tamil migration in the Bay.

Thus China Towns and Little Indias grew up in different locations bearing the familiarity of landscapes and lived spaces in different destinations, mostly in Southeast Asia. While Indian migration dominated the Bay in numbers and complexity, there was also an example of migration from Southeast Asia and China, though mostly for short-term periods. One important exception was the growth and development of the China Town in Calcutta, which is also one of the least researched of the immigrant communities in the region. A number of Chinese immigrated to Calcutta as a result of political unrest and turmoil in China in 1920s and 1930s, and then again in post-World War II period.69 Cantonese carpenters, Hakka shoemakers, and tanners and dentists from Hubei provinces in China were some of the major occupations connected with regional ethnicity. There were also other businesses like laundry, restaurants, and beauty parlors associated with the communities.70 They had specific locations of residence in Calcutta. Things changed with the later developments of Sino-Indian relations, with a majority relocating outside India.

Ideas in Circulation

From the end of the 19th century, colonial cities that developed around the rim of the Bay became thriving centers of intellectual debate, cultural interaction, and rising nationalist sentiment. English education and the European spirit of rationalism brought about new concepts of political rights and social justice. The print technology and its rising popularity and readership ushered in print capitalism. In Calcutta, bhadralok culture, “made books and literature central to modern Bengali identity.”71 Calcutta, Colombo, Rangoon, Penang, and Singapore became significant centers of these intellectual dialogues that traveled across the shores to create new age consciousness about politics, religion, society, and economy. As nodal points in the “imperial highway,” these cities transmitted goods, capital, and human flow as much as they did knowledge and information.

The often bilingual, Western-educated urban intelligentsia across the Indian Ocean resembled each other in lifestyles and mannerisms, and provided fertile breeding grounds for ideas on nationalism. While the educated class mostly reflected a progressive image influenced by Western notions, they also developed a unique reformative approach rooted in their respective heritage and culture in different geographies. Thus, the Straits Chinese and the Bengali intelligentsia were similar in manifestations of colonial modernity, yet they developed and expressed their identity quite differently. While Indian literary imagination, whether in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, expressed itself in both English and vernacular languages, the Straits Chinese, mostly traders with strong commercial links, published in English (the Straits Chinese Magazine (1897–1907)) but remained rooted to their Hokkien and Peranakan culture.72

Occasionally celebrated but less researched and studied were the visits and influence of important Chinese personalities in India with strong links in the Malayan peninsula. Kang Youwei, scholar, political thinker, and reformer in the late Qing period, fled overseas to Singapore in 1900 and also went to Darjeeling (India) in 1902.73 In his writings, he expressed the negative impact of India’s colonial servitude on China. Chiang Kai-Shek’s visit to India in 1942, on the other hand, witnessed an appeal to the British to grant freedom to India.74 Sun Yat Sen, who was revered by many Indian political activists, had a strong political base in Southeast Asia. He hailed Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and had been empathetic toward India’s freedom struggle. Nehru was much impressed by the Chinese leaders who may have influenced his foreign policy later on. He maintained personal relations with Chiang and his wife and also hosted Sun Yat Sen’s wife in India (1955). Another Chinese teacher and scholar, Tan Yun Shan, who had spent time in Johor, Kuala Lumpur, and other places in Southeast Asia since 1925, met Tagore in Singapore in 1927. He later joined Visva Bharati as a professor of Chinese studies.75

An important link of Asian religious, political, and social consciousness emanated from Colombo in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). It was a cosmopolitan city with reflections of similar colonial progressiveness through English medium schools, law and medical colleges, and the growth of political institutions. There were two main dimensions of revivalist consciousness: the revival of Buddhism in response to aggressive proselytization of Christian missionaries and the rise of social reform movements. The theosophist involvement in the Buddhist revival led to close interactions with Madras and the establishment of the Buddhist Theosophical Society in Colombo, which later consolidated in a more transnational Buddhist identity by Dharmapala.76 Dharmapala’s Maha Bodhi Society was established in Madras, Rangoon, and Calcutta, among other places. Also, the Colombo Young Men’s Buddhist Association had “sister” organizations in Calcutta, Rangoon, Tokyo, and San Francisco.77 On the other hand, Western-educated literati like D. B. Jayatilake and W. A. De Silva and others took up the cause of “Ceylonese” nationalism and voiced themselves through different journals and periodicals. Buddhist elites in Colombo maintained close networks with their counterparts in Burma. Frost has discussed these networks in his article:

Buddhist English-language journals in Rangoon . . . kept their readership regularly informed of the progress of educational reform in Sri Lanka and of the methods employed by the capital’s temperance campaigners. In turn Colombo elite monitored developments in Burma by means of English papers such as the Burman and The Sun.78

Apart from religious revival, ideas of social reforms traveled across the Bay. Vernacular newspapers and periodicals, along with Tamil films and songs from Madras, traveled to the eastern rim of the Bay and were in circulation by the 1930s.79 In 1929, the founder of the Self-Respect movement and an anti-Brahmin activist in South India, “Periyar” E. V. Ramasamy, went to Penang. He toured the plantations and different urban settlements in Penang, Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore, arousing unprecedented political enthusiasm among the people.80 Singapore witnessed a blooming Tamil press as an after-effect. G. Sarangapani established the Tamil Murasu in 1935 and the English-language monthly, Reform, soon after.81 Arguably, Periyar’s reform and social consciousness also laid the foundation for Subhas Chandra Bose’s clarion call for anti-British protests and liberation movement in Southeast Asia launched in Singapore.82 Though Bose’s alliance with the Japanese in his campaign against the British failed, he motivated and mobilized diverse groups of people to a common cause for homeland, creating consciousness of self and identity among the subjugated and the suppressed that had long-lasting effects in the Malayan region. Recent revisionist discourses on Bose point to his much greater role in British withdrawal than previously acknowledged.

Another extraordinary Indian personality was Rabindranath Tagore—poet, novelist, lyricist, musician, philosopher, the first Asian Nobel Laureate, and also a universalist. His ideas on love, freedom, unity, and brotherhood rose above boundaries of nationalism. It reverberated with inspirations of the idea of “One-Asia” through poets, philosophers, and painters like Jose Rizal, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Okakura Tensin at a crucial phase in the crossroads of Asian history. By invoking historical connections and linking Buddhist ideals of peace and brotherhood, Tagore made connections with ancient Indian civilization and captivated thousands of minds through speeches and interactions in his voyages in Southeast Asia, China, and Japan.83 Though also severely criticized in the media as a bourgeoisie intellectual, or representative of a “defeated” country, his thoughts remained much ahead of his times and resonated recent intellectual currents of intra-Asian interactions.

Reflections

The above narrative guides us in locating some of the transregional circuits that have existed and developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, and each of the subthemes separately merits detailed research as sites and sources for further scholarship. The retreat of colonialism from Asia did not end the discursive dominance of the West in knowledge production. Postcolonial thought was immersed in defining and strengthening the nation state boundaries. The Cold War that followed soon after the retreat of the colonial powers drew boundaries of fear, apprehension, and economic turmoil, again imposed by Western narratives. It was subjected to strong and strict area demarcations in political and academic discourses. Thus, the fluid circuits and networks maintained undercurrents of significant circulatory movements in the region. However, it was never recognized as a part of dominant discourse, and remained marginalized only to be revitalized years later in interdisciplinary studies like Indian Ocean studies, intra-Asian studies, diaspora studies, borderland networks, and so on.

It is interesting to see that the circuits of religious and ideological networks around the Bay resonated a consciousness that not only aimed at revivalist trends but also emulated and incorporated Western methods and principles in the thought process. The commercial webs, on the other hand, were restructured to cater to a colonial mode of production networks, yet, at the same time, maintained their indigenous links. The colonial narratives of domination have gradually given way to revisionist history in contemporary academic discourses, yet encounters with the colonial remain a substantial part of the theoretical-methodological understanding. Attempts are continuously being made to explore different sources of information beyond colonial archives. Different Asianists have begun to interpret the idea of “modernity” differently.84 Moreover, significant opportunities for research have emerged in different aspects of circulation, inter-ethnic connections, and lived spaces,85 and also interaction between the indigenous and the colonial with fresh interpretations of the “margins.”

Discussion of the Literature

The research makes use of the trope of circulatory interactions under structural economic changes and hegemonic domination of British colonialism and argues that exchanges between external and indigenous forces existed at different levels with unbalanced power ratio between them. In spite of numerous examples of scholarship on the Indian Ocean studies and the Bay (as has been elaborated within this article), such interactions during the height of British colonial rule have not been rendered significantly. This research work thus makes an effort to draw different circuits of interactions across the rims of the Bay, which have been interconnected in the larger Venn diagram of the region. Details of literature review have been incorporated within the text. Each of the subthemes discussed can be taken up as a separate research theme with a lot of opportunities for additional research and scholarship. In this respect, the research framework is just an initial step to further exploration of connections and circulation across the Bay of Bengal. This literature then may be particularly significant in understanding the resonances and legacies in the postcolonial period and contemporary geopolitical trajectories.