Colonial Chaos in the Southern Red Sea: A History of Violence from 1830 to the Twentieth Century, by Nicholas W. Stephenson Smith

Abstract

Today, the Southern Red Sea comes to our attention mainly as a result of chaotic news stories, such as piracy or terrorism. Nicholas W. Stephenson Smith traces the roots of this news back to the middle of the nineteenth century. Following the British East India Company (BEIC)’s conquest of Aden in 1839 and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, competitor imperial superpowers—and an array of small-scale actors—flowed into the region searching for opportunities to enhance their influence or personal interests amid this changing world. As we follow their stories, intermingling triumph and tragedy, we witness how political changes brought by Europeans gave rise to colonial chaos and shaped the fate of the region for the coming decades. As Smith aptly summarises, ‘chaos was a colonial creation’ (p. 162). Although international politics is usually studied through alliances and other co-operative arrangements between nation states, most international politics takes place on a different scale. This book is a history of sub-imperial actors who ‘played an equally important role in international relations as did the British, French and Italian governments in shaping and advancing the culture of colonial chaos, the new style of international relations’ (p. 11).