Philip M Allen - Security and Nationalism in the Indian Ocean: Lessons From the Latin Quarter Islands

The five island societies of the Western Indian OceanMadagascar, Mauritius, the Seychelles, the Comoros, and the French Overseas Department of Runionhave retained distinctive national characters while cultivating regional cohesion and the establishment of a Zone of Peace, In this study, Dr. Allen places the nations of the maritime Latin Quarter in several contexts: He discusses the historical legacies of British power and French cultural tradition, the influence of twentieth-century nationalism in Asia and Africa, the islands' vulnerability to the vicissitudes of international markets, and the competition in the region between major security systems. After sketching a millennium of Indian Ocean history, the author profiles each island, emphasizing its unique responses to the pressures of underdevelopment, dependence, and national self-determination. Arguing that the conflicting dynamics between nationalism and international dependence represent a startling irony, Dr. Allen shows that external intervention is welcomed for the sake of security but that the outside powers' pursuit of their own economic and strategic interests constrains national aspirations of the island countries and frustrates the emergence of national autonomy and regional cooperation.

Philip M. Allen was a Foreign Service officer from 1956 to 1966 and has lived and worked in the Indian Ocean area periodically since 1962. He is professor and chairman of humanities at Johnson State College and the author of Madagascar (Westview, forthcoming).

Lessons from the Latin Quarter Islands

Philip M. Allen

First published 1987 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Allen, Philip M.
Security and nationalism in the Indian Ocean.
(Westview special studies in international relations)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Indian Ocean RegionStrategic aspects. I. Title.
II. Series.
UA830.A45 1987 355'.0330182'4 86-9217

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28691-0 (hbk)

I thank Peter Duignan for suggesting that the book be done and The Hoover Institution on War, Peace, and Revolution for a grant that facilitated the early stages of research. Other grant funds were generously provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by Johnson State College, which also allowed me to run off with the stipend on academic leave. I obtained invaluable advice and access to special resources at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches des Pays de l'Ocan Indien (CERSOI) at the Universit d'Aix-Marseille in Aix-en-Provence and at the Centre de Documentation et de Recherches sur l'Asie du Sud-Est et le Monde Insulindien (CeDRASEMI) in Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne, France; particular thanks go to President Louis Favoreu, Professor Jean Benoist, Marc Besson and Mme. Besson at Aix. Similar courtesies were extended by Mme. Lauret at the Centre de Documentation de l'Ocan Indien at St. Denis in La Reunion and by archivists and librarians in all of the islands, France, the United States, and Montreal. Thanks go to Paul Gallagher and to Linda Kramer of the Johnson State College Library for finding and smoothing paths.

I'm especially appreciative of comments and encouragement from Sohrab Kheradi, secretary of the UN's ad hoc committee; Robert LeBlond, lately of Canada's International Development Research Centre; Ram Mannick of the University of London; Colin Legum, editor of Africa Contemporary Record; Guy Lionnet, of the Seychelles Ministry of Education; and my veteran collaborators, Aaron Segal and John M. Ostheimer. Larry W. Bowman opened the door for me to Westview Press, where Barbara Ellington and Bruce Kellison urged the project onward with both passion and patience. Jenney Campbell and Audrey Miller deciphered my scribbles to produce publishable scripts. Sally Searles and Roberta Heath valiantly helped unscramble the processing of words. I am thankful for the inquiring minds of students on three continents, never intimidated by claims of expertise or readily satisfied by its answers, and to Susan, who understands both the ideas and the person who strove to express them.

Philip M. Allen
Johnson, Vermont, and
Constantine, Algeria

To understand oceans, most of us have to turn continents inside out. The wastes of water tend to reflect cities and landscapes, people and politics, the typical imagery of their nearer shores. Sea bottoms mirror anthropomorphic mysteries, fish collect in "schools" and "banks," Atlantis becomes a Shangri-La or Paris of the deep. These great basins filled with the source and the silence of life are nothing to us if not foyers of terrestrial sociability.

Dimly perceived in our cultural imagination, the Pacific, Atlantic, and Mediterranean have distinct reputations to protect. Recall the two-dimensional characters given them by classroom maps: the Atlantic a doglegged chasm where the Americas and Africa used to fit; we see it bridged by stripes of maritime activity, the connective tissue of a coherent universe, our West. Two distinct Pacifics spill off those mapsthe eastern and western margins of the worldpeopled, if at all, by exotics until the water reaches California or japan, and society begins again. The Mediterranean is an island surrounded by land, impaled on the glorious foot that had been Rome. Our archetypal memory fills all the inner seas, especially the Mediterranean, with floods of cultural force, the myths of who we are, the original structures of civilization germinating in the realm of the sun. At the antipodes of our map lie, for good measure, two hidden oceans of icebarren, excluded from human historyat the top and bottom of life.

But consult your schoolday imagery for the Indian Ocean and you see everything jumbled together, or nothing at all. Perhaps only a mirror for the ill-conceived "third world," reflecting the smiles and grimaces of three continents disciplined by a fourthEurope. More accurately, a great public yard at the rear of high mansions called Asia, Africa, Australia, Arabia, a place where the Orient meets for business, and Europe visits to stay.