Reviewed by: Yankees in the Indian Ocean: American Commerce and Whaling, 1786–1860 by Jane Hooper Nancy Shoemaker (bio) Keywords Whaling, Maritime history, Indian Ocean, Commerce, Trade Yankees in the Indian Ocean: American Commerce and Whaling, 1786–1860. By Jane Hooper. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2022. Pp. 247. Cloth, $90.00.) In Yankees in the Indian Ocean, Jane Hooper explores the Indian Ocean from the vantage point of American merchants, sea captains, sailors, and whalemen. This is a timely addition to the historiography since the last [End Page 344] decade has seen rising interest in the topic of the early republic United States in a global context, and as Hooper observes, American activities in the Indian Ocean have not received the same amount of attention as they have in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Using mainly mariners' memoirs, journals, and logbooks along with U.S. consul records and newspapers, Hooper tackles a variety of topics in her six chapters: the earliest American whaling voyages to the Indian Ocean in the 1790s; Salem merchants' trade in hides, tallow, dried beef, gum copal, tortoise shell, and ivory in exchange for cotton cloth in the 1820s and 1830s; the several hundred American whaleships frequenting Saint Augustin Bay in the 1830s and 1840s, which includes a lengthy discussion of the sex trade; how maritime work allowed for the development of tourism centered on exotic landscapes; the environmental consequences of extractive industries and mariners' demands for food, water, and fuel; and how, as in the Atlantic, Americans in the mid-century Indian Ocean made no declamations against the slave trade amid British efforts to extinguish it. One of the book's strengths is its coverage of both whaling and commerce. Hooper incisively illuminates how American mariners conducted these businesses in different ways. Salem's merchant vessels operated out of larger ports, used money as their form of exchange, and developed networks that relied on an ethnically diverse trade diaspora of Arabs, Indians (South Asian Indians), and resident Americans who acted as middlemen. These middlemen accumulated trade goods from the African interior and, in the case of one Salem merchant, even ran a slaughterhouse to stockpile cargos of hides and tallow. In contrast, whaling ships acted more like hit-and-run vehicles, stopping at thinly populated islands and coasts to barter for food, water, firewood, and sex with bits of manufactured cloth, iron hoops, and trinkets. The same vessel or captain might return months or years later, but whalemen did not have to develop relationships to get what they wanted. Consequently, they also sparked more incidents of violence than did the more fixed commercial outposts favored by Salem merchants. Since most historians seem to specialize within the maritime trades—some focusing on whaling, some on commerce, others on fishing or the Navy—Hooper's consideration of two industries and their overlapping yet varying routes and practices illustrates the value of such comparative treatments. Another thought-provoking observation is Hooper's distinction between the environmental impacts of formal European colonialism and the [End Page 345] informal, or purely economic, colonialism practiced by Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century. Pointing to botanic gardens in French and British colonies, where these empires grew merchandisable plants such as coffee and cinnamon, Hooper casts informal colonialism as more damaging to the environment since whaling, fishing, cutting wood for firewood, and demanding food provisions from local communities had no undergirding of a conservation, or sustainable use, ethic. Hooper's intention to spotlight this one corner of the world is thus a worthy endeavor but proves to be not as enlightening as one might expect—for two reasons. First, anyone who has read Brian Rouleau's With Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire (Ithaca, NY, 2014) or is otherwise acquainted with whaling history and maritime trade in the 1790–1860 period will wonder what we gain by Hooper's focus on the Indian Ocean. Her rationale is that this is her area of specialization. She does not claim that the Indian Ocean offers an analytical lens revealing new insights into U.S. history. Indeed, her description of American mariners in the Indian...
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Oct 18, 2024
Muhammad Shakir + 1
Open Access
