PEARLS, PEOPLE, AND POWER
Indian Ocean Studies Series
Richard B. Allen, series editor
Richard B. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 15001850
Erin E. Stiles and Katrina Daly Thompson, eds., Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean: Islam, Marriage, and Sexuality on the Swahili Coast
Jane Hooper, Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 16001800
Krish Seetah, ed., Connecting Continents: Archaeology and History in the Indian Ocean World
Pedro Machado, Steve Mullins, and Joseph Christensen, Pearls, People, and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds
ADVISORY BOARD
Edward A. Alpers
University of California, Los Angeles, Emeritus
Clare Anderson
University of Leicester
Sugata Bose
Harvard University
Ulbe Bosma
International Institute of Social History, Leiden
Janet Ewald
Duke University
Devleena Ghosh
University of Technology Sydney
Engseng Ho
Duke University
Isabel Hofmeyr
University of the Witwatersrand
Pier M. Larson
Johns Hopkins University
Om Prakash
University of Delhi (emeritus)
Himanshu Prabha Ray
National Monuments Authority, India
Kerry Ward
Rice University
Nigel Worden
University of Cape Town
Markus Vink
SUNY at Fredonia
Pearls, People, and Power
Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds
EDITED BY
Pedro Machado, Steve Mullins, and Joseph Christensen
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS, OHIO
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701 ohioswallow.com
2019 by Ohio University Press
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Machado, Pedro, 1970- editor. | Mullins, Steve, 1952- editor. | Christensen, Joseph (Postdoctoral Fellow), editor.
Title: Pearls, people, and power : pearling and Indian Ocean worlds / edited by Pedro Machado, Steve Mullins, and Joseph Christensen.
Description: Athens : Ohio University Press, 2019. | Series: Indian Ocean studies series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019040671 | ISBN 9780821424025 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780821446935 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Pearl industry and trade--Indian Ocean Region--History.
Classification: LCC HD9678.P42 I536 2019 | DDC 338.3/724091824--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040671
Contents
PEDRO MACHADO
WILLIAM G. CLARENCE-SMITH
JAMES FRANCIS WARREN
SAMUEL M. OSTROFF
JOSEPH CHRISTENSEN
MICHAEL MCCARTHY
PEDRO MACHADO
ROBERT CARTER
MATTHEW S. HOPER
STEVE MULLINS
JONATHAN MIRAN
JULIA T. MARTNEZ
KARL NEUENFELDT
Acknowledgments
A collective endeavor of multisited research and writing, this book has its seeds in an Australian Research Council grant that brought several specialistsestablished and emerging scholarstogether to consider the place of pearling in the histories of the Indian Ocean. We would therefore like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council for the award of Discovery Project DP150103124, and acknowledge and thank the projects lead chief investigator, Professor James Francis Warren, for his oversight and leadership of this multifaceted international collaboration. Project members and collaborators also benefited from the support of the organizers of the Seventh International Congress of Maritime History held at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, in mid-2016, where the papers upon which this volume is based were first presented. Questions from audience members at all of the pearling sessions helped sharpen analyses and were useful in thinking through the larger publication project. The detailed and generous critical engagement with the manuscript by Ohio University Presss anonymous readers contributed significantly to its quality as the project moved through the stages of becoming a book. The editors would also like to thank all of the organizations and individuals who contributed images and/or gave permission for the reproduction of copyrighted material, as well as Theresa Quill, Alexander Brown, and Julian Tyne for their invaluable help in producing the maps that will orientate the reader in locating the pearling sites discussed in the following pages.
For his steadfast belief in the project from its earliest inception and guidance in shepherding an ambitious proposal through various phases of the publication process, the editors and contributors collectively express their thanks to Richard Allen, editor of the Indian Ocean Studies Series at Ohio University Press and longtime friend. Richard has been a proponent of Indian Ocean scholarship for over two decades now and it is testament to his generosity of spirit and fierce intellectual inquiry that the press established a new series with him at the helm. Others at Ohio University Press, from its recently retired director, Gillian Berchowitz, who shared Richards enthusiasm for the project, to Rick Huard and Sally Welch, are deserving of our sincerest thanks for bringing the project to fruition. Under their leadership, the series no doubt will continue to thrive as a home for Indian Ocean scholarship.
Map I.1. Pearling sites across the Indian Ocean discussed in the book. Map by Theresa Quill.
Map I.2. Arabian and Red Seas. Map by Theresa Quill.
Map I.3. Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia. Map by Theresa Quill.
Map I.4. Insular Southeast Asia and Australia. Map by Theresa Quill.
INTRODUCTION
Indian Ocean Pearling Worlds
PEDRO MACHADO
PEARLS HAVE long held a fascination in the imaginations and lives of people across much of the world. Since their earliest uses, pearlsand pearl shell from the bivalve molluscs that produce themboth reflected and shaped sociocultural and adornment practices defining aesthetic contours of taste and bodily practice, and in so doing reinforced, challenged, or expanded the possibilities for self-fashioning for a range of people and groups. From spiritual appreciation and worship of pearls in the Americas, to Aboriginal collection of shell along Australias vast northwest coast and Moken pearlers of the Mergui archipelago in the far south of coastal Burma, Mughal emperors of north India, Ming Chinese merchants, and American and European women and men on the streets of London, Paris, Amsterdam, New York, and Florence, pearls and mother-of-pearl (the commodity derived from pearl shell) have fulfilled desires and satisfied spiritual, bodily, and other needs.
