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Early Modern Expansion and the Politicization of Oceanic Space Author(s): Elizabeth Mancke Reviewed work(s): Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, Connect (Apr., 1999), pp. 225-236 Published by: American Geographical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/216088 . Accessed: 12/01/2012 19:12

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http://www.jstor.org EARLYMODERN EXPANSION AND THE POLITICIZATION OF OCEANIC SPACE*

ELIZABETH MANCKE

ABSTRACT. The definition of oceans as internationalpoliticized space is an integralbut little analyzedaspect of earlymodern Europeanexpansion, which took place between about 1450 and 1800.In this essayI explore the implicationsof thinking about the developmentof Euro- pean imperialism and global dominance in oceanic terms. I argue that oceanic, ratherthan terrestrial,dominance characterizedearly modern Europeanempires, particularlyin rela- tion to Africaand ,where indigenous political and economic control prevailed.The long apprenticeshipin mastering oceanic space contributed to the ability of Europeansto build land-based empires in Asia and in the nineteenth century.As well, the international relationshipsworked out by Europeansin the nonstate but militarizedarena of the high contributed to an emergent global order.Keywords: colonialism, European expansion, impe- rialism, internationalrelations.

,Iccording to the United Nations, sixteencolonies remainin the world.Great Brit- ain has ten; the ,three; and France,,and ,one each.' In addition, these countries,as well as the Netherlandsand ,have overseas dependenciesthat arenot technically"colonies," a term of contestedmeanings.2 Not incidentally,almost all of these dependenciesare islandsor islandlikeenclaves, such as Gibraltar,Ceuta, and Melilla.Individually and in total,they representthe firstand last outposts of modern Europeanimperialism, territorial manifestations of the poli- ticizationof oceanic space.As well, theysuggest that controlof the world'soceans was a fundamentalpart of Europeanempire building and remainsa criticalcomponent of continued Europeanand neo-Europeandominance in the postcolonialworld. Drawing on the rich historicalliterature that describesaspects of earlymodern expansion, I explore three broad implications of the oceanic dimensions of Euro- pean imperialism. First,it engenderedan expansivedynamic distinct from the dy- namics of other seafaringpeoples, wherebyEuropeans constructed a new kind of empire that differed significantlyfrom land-based ones. Second, the centralityof oceanic control and the tenuousness of territorialcontrol outside Europeforces us to reassessthe agency of Asian,African, and Americanpeoples in the history of the early modern world. Third, oceanic expansion reconfiguredinternational rela- tions, obliging expansionist powers to define the legal and diplomatic implications of interstateconflict in the extraterritorialarena of the high seas. This in turn ele- vated interstate relations in from a regional system to a global one, which would come to define contemporaryinternational relations.

* This essay benefited from the comments of the participantsat the Oceans Connect workshop at Duke Univer- sity and from the assessments of two anonymous reviewers.The John CarterBrown Library,where I was a fellow, provided a collegial environment for completing the revisions. D$ DR. MANCKE is an associate professor of history at the University of Akron, Akron, Ohio, 44325-1902.

The Geographical Review 89 (2): 225-236, April 1999 Copyright 0 2000 by the American GeographicalSociety of New York 226 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

THE NOVELTY OF OCEANIC EMPIRES The politicization and militarizationof oceanic space,as much as its globalization, distinguished European oceanic expansion from that of other seafaringpeoples. Austronesianshad settledislands stretching from RapaNui (EasterIsland) to Mada- gascarbut did not maintainthe politicalties with theirhearth societies necessary for empire building (Finney 1994).Muslim tradersused maritimeroutes to carrytrade goods and Islam as as the South China ,and emporia from Japanto allowed merchantsto establishdense tradingnetworks spanning thousands of kilometers. Politically,though, the Indian Basin continued to comprise dozens of autonomous polities, from largeempires to small principalitiesto tribal- based societies, and political control stopped,in most instances,at the water'sedge. Fifteenth-centuryChina demonstratedthe ability,if not the intention, to establish an empire throughlong-distance oceanic expansion, until the governmentdisman- tled the navy and curtailedseaborne trade (Das Guptaand Pearson1987; Ptak and Rothermund 1991;Pearson 1998). Thus when Europeans began their long-distance maritime ventures, trade and colonization were old processes in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. But Europeans'transoceanic political claims and their attemptsto control and regulateaccess to the high seas were new phenomena. The "extendedpolities" these maritimeventures engendered differed from the major land-based empires,whether ancient and medievalempires or the contem- porary Ottoman, Safavid,Mughal, Ming, and RussianEmpires (Greene 1986; Pag- den 1995). Land-basedempires grew by pressing into strategicallyimportant or weak areas on their frontiersor across narrowbodies of water,annexing territory and people. Ottoman encroachmentsinto southeasternEurope provided part of the impetus for Iberian forays into the . The fifteenth-centuryPortu- guese court was dividedover whether to spendmoney to confrontMuslims in North Africaor to develop the Atlanticroute aroundAfrica to avoid them;the latterstrat- egy ultimately prevailed (Boxer 1969). Between about 1450 and 1700, oceanic expan- sion did not inherently represent superior strength and at times represented preciselythe opposite. Englandostensibly stayed out of the ThirtyYears' War (1619- 1648)and profitedby actingas a neutralshipper. waters, however, had not yet been incorporatedinto the Europeaninternational order, allowing Englishpi- rates-despite England'sneutrality-to undermineSpain's war effort by preyingon ships carryingthe silverand necessaryto financeits armies(Andrews 1991). The land-poor Dutch shrewdlyrecognized the potential for power through expertisein maritime trade and shipping (Boxer1965). Thus oceanic expansion opened up new opportunitiesfor weakerpolities to realignthe balanceof powerwithin Europeand with its Muslim neighbors,achieved as much throughcontrol of the maritimeenvi- ronment as with territorialacquisitions in Africa,Asia, and the (Symcox 1976; Chaudhuri 1985; Pearson 1987). Spatiallythese new "seaborne"empires bore little resemblanceto land-based empires,with their territoriallycontiguous provinces(Boxer 1965). The colonies of these new far-flungempires were separatedfrom their metropoles,and often from POLITICIZATION OF OCEANIC SPACE 227 other colonies, by thousands of kilometersof water.Emerging in a volatile and in- creasinglyglobal environment, these overseasoutposts of Europewere vulnerable to seaborne attacksby rival interests.The multiple nations vying for colonies, the ambiguity of internationallaw for these new oceanic frontiers,and the difficulties monarchs faced in controllingtheir distant subjectsforced Europeansgradually to define a new internationalorder that could accommodatethese new empires (Pag- den 1995).

LAND-POOR EMPIRES

When we think about the expansionof Europewe often conflatean oceanicpresence -or abounded presenceon an islandor littoral-with continentalterritorial control. We ignore, forget,or do not realizethat earlymodern Europeanscontrolled very lit- tle in the way ofland, trade,people, or governmentsin the Americas,Africa, and Asia. Most European-occupiedterritory was littoral or within easy reach of a saltwater port. Papalbulls and treatiesdividing up the non-Europeanworld could not elimi- nate the practicalreality that African,American, and Asian peoples dominated ter- restrialspace, even in the Americas,where introduced diseases raced ahead of the Europeanpresence and decimatedlocal populations. The three areasof the Americasin which Europeansdid makesignificant territo- rialinroads before the eighteenthcenturywere directly connected to the conquestof large pre-Columbian political or economic systems. The Spanish capitalized on their conquest of the and the Incas to settle CentralMexico and ,while smaller groups of natives throughout America resisted submission to Spanish authority and constrainedcolonization. The Frenchpenetrated the Great Lakesregion of North Americaafter the mid-seventeenth-centurydisruption of the Huron-Algonquintrading system, although they neverestablished an inland settler presence that seriously displacednatives in the way that English settlers did along the AtlanticSeaboard (White 1991;Hinderaker 1997). Not until the discoveryof gold in the Brazilianinterior in the 169os did the Portugueseestablish settlements beyond easy reach of the Atlantic Ocean (Boxer1969). Over more than 300 years and with greateffort Europeanssolidified the territorialclaims in the Americasthat ministers and diplomats asserted at distant negotiating tables. So limited was European knowledge of the Americanlandscape-and so expansivetheir hubris-that at times they failed to recognizehow cluelessthey were.The belief of MeriwetherLewis and William Clark that their expedition (1804-1806) could portage the Rocky Moun- tains in a day or two is testimonyto just how slowlyEuropeans garnered geographi- cal knowledge, not to mention political control, of the Americas (Jackson1978; Marshall and Williams 1982). Europeaninroads in Africaand Asia were even more limited than they were in the Americas,consisting at first almost exclusivelyof a few cities and fortifiedtrad- ing posts. Afterinitial militaryconfrontations the Portuguesesettled into negotiated tradingrelations with WestAfricans, establishing forts on offshoreislands and litto- ral areasaccessible by oceangoingvessels (Thornton1998). In EastAfrica they seized 228 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW control of the port towns of Sofalaand Kilwaand attemptedto monopolize their trade.The Portuguesefounded inlandsettlements in Angolaand Mozambique;only in the formerwere they marginallysuccessful, and therethey only penetratedabout 300 kilometers into the interior (Birmingham 1965;Newitt 1995;Pearson 1998). The late-nineteenth-centuryscramble for Africa and the ensuingbloody warsto enforce colonial submission only make sense if we recognizethat during the previous four centuries of internationalcommerce Africans controlled the production and mar- keting of goods (includingslaves), to which Europeansgained access at a few impor- tant trading centers (Pakenham 1991). In Asia the Portuguese,followed by the Dutch, the English,and the French,con- trolled tradingports, some takenby force,many occupied at the sufferanceof local authorities and a few, such as Calcutta,created by Europeans(Murphey 1977). Al- though important to Europeantrade and economies, the overall impact of these emporia on Asian economies remainedlimited for most of 300 years.Not until the conquest of by the British East India Company (EIC) in the 1750S and 176os did Europeansmake their first major territorialacquisition in Asia, an event that scholarsof earlymodern Asiaincreasingly use to datethe onset of Europeanimperi- alism there.Vasco da Gama's1498 voyage to India is a more importantevent in the history of Europe than it is in the history of Asia (Leur 1955;Chaudhuri 1985; Das Gupta and Pearson 1987; Marshall 1993; Subrahmanyam 1993). Only in the nineteenth centurydid Europeansmake the territorialinroads into the ,, SoutheastAsia, and Africathat we associatewith the height of imperialism (Bayly 1989;Pakenham 1991).The long ascent of Europeans to world dominance overthe last half-millenniumshould not be confusedwith the ac- tual achievement of global ascendancyless than two centuriesago. Although they derivedconsiderable wealth from transoceanictrade, they remaineddependent on commercial,financial, and productionnetworks controlled by Asians,Africans, and nativeAmericans and vulnerableto indigenouspolitical leaders who could and did deprive them of access.

TRANSFORMING INTERNATIONAL POWER At the time of BartolomeuDias's, ChristopherColumbus's, and Vasco da Gama's voyagesthe open oceans were not politicizedspace. The seas,which had been navi- gated for thousands of years,were another matter.By venturing into the Atlantic Ocean,western Europeanscould avoid the Islamicpowers that controlledmuch of the Mediterranean,the RedSea, the PersianGulf, and the BlackSea. When they sailed south and west, the challengesthey met werenot the armedfleets of rivalpowers but their own ignoranceand fear,which in the short run they suppressedwith hopes of economic gain and in the long run they masteredwith islandfootholds, with a grow- ing body of knowledgeabout winds and currents,and with the adoptionand adapta- tion of new technologies (Fonseca1995). To resolvethe question of sovereigntythat had arisen with the success of these new maritime ventures, the Portugueseand Spanish agreed to the 1494Treaty of Tordesillas,which divided the non-Christian POLITICIZATION OF OCEANIC SPACE 229 world between themselves along a north-south line 370 leagues west of the Cape VerdeIslands (Davenport 1967). This treaty,however, did not providea solution that other Europeanswould accept.Indeed, it would takemost of three centuriesto sort out the radicallynew internationalorder that oceanic expansion created. When the Portugueserounded the Cape of Good Hope into the , they entered waters that had been known and traversedby sailors for centuries. These waters were largelyunmilitarized zones. The land-basedempires bordering the Indian Ocean or the neighboringseas-in particularthe Safavidand the Mughal Empires-did not have navies. Thus, when the Portugueseused their armedvessels to wrest control of islandsand ports from local rulers,they met with relativelylittle resistance(Subrahmanyam 1993). They claimed sovereigntyover the Indian Ocean and the South ChinaSea and set as theirobjective the licensingof travelon the mari- time trade routes, a politicization of oceanic space that had no equivalentin Asian practice (Chaudhuri1985; Pearson 1987). Insufficient resources to coercethousands of mariners,as well as Asian resistance,blunted the impact of this Portugueseclaim of sovereignty.Rather than pay protection costs that licenses provided,many mer- chants simply relocatedto ports not controlledby the Portuguese.Asian rulersem- ployed various strategiesto curb these newcomers'aggrandizement of power.The Ming prohibited them from trading on the Chinese shore in the 152os. The Otto- mans expanded their naval fleet to keep open the route to the Levantafter the Portugueseblocked it and to limit Portugueseinfluence in the PersianGulf. The Acehnesesultanate, founded in northernSumatra in the earlysixteenth century, or- ganized a tradingnetwork between the Indonesianarchipelago and that challengedPortuguese dominance in the intra-Asiantrades. In the long run, peace- ful accommodation was more profitablethan coercion,and the Portuguesebecame just another playerin the Asian trades(Hess 1970;Lane 1973; Chaudhuri 1985; Pear- son 1987;Souza 1987;Subrahmanyam 1993). This interim solution was short-lived, however.In the late sixteenth century, Dutch and Englishmerchants penetrated the Asian markets,providing a European challengeto Portugal'scaim to sovereigntyover the IndianOcean and reinvigorat- ing the contest for oceanic control. Significantly,events in Europedirectly affected the timing of this new merchantpresence, and it would be neitherthe firsttime nor the last that Europeansquite literallycircumnavigated problems at home through oceanic expansion. In 1585Philip II of Spain had dosed the Lisbon spice marketto merchantsfrom the Netherlandsand England,largely in reactionto the civil war he was waging against English-supportedDutch Protestants.Initially, English mer- chants who were interested in the Asian trades tried to avoid the Portugueseand Spanishaltogether by searchingfor a northernoceanic routeto Indiaand by trading with Asians through the Russian Company and the Company (Andrews 1984;Lawson 1993).Finding neither solution viable, they took the South Atlantic route to India, passing through Spanish- and Portuguese-dominatedwaters. Once in the Indian Ocean, the EIC,chartered in 1600 with limited capitalization,tried to avoid confronting the Portugueseand the Dutch directly,but within a decade com- 230 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW pany officialsin Asia had informedthe Boardof Directorsin Londonnot to "expect any quiet trade" (Furber 1976, 40). At Surat, Portuguese influence kept the Mughal emperorfrom grantingthe EICtrading privileges in the city.In retaliation,the Eng- lish attackedIndian ships and engagedthe Portuguesein a navalbattle near Surat's harbor.In 1613the emperor granted the English trading rights in Surat,partly to checkthe Portuguese,whom he subsequentlyexpelled from the city in 1632. In Persia the EICprovided Shah Abbas the necessarynaval support to oust the Portuguese from Hormuz in 1622 (Furber 1976; Chaudhuri 1985; Subrahmanyam 1993). The Dutch EastIndia Company(voc), charteredin 1602 and more heavilycapi- talized than the EIC,began to trade in the Indian Ocean with the clear intention of militarilyand commerciallychallenging the Portugueseand the newly arrivedEng- lish (Boxer 1965; Furber 1976). The Dutch capture of a Portuguese galleon in 1604 prompted the Iberiansto claim the Indian Ocean as exclusivelyPortuguese waters under the terms of the Treatyof Tordesillas.The voc hired the legal theorist Hugo Grotiusto preparethe legalbrief, and his treatise,Mare Liberum, became important in articulatingthe internationallaw on freedomof the seas.The Dutch subsequently used Grotius'sarguments against the Englishattempt to exclude other Europeans from fishing in the and whaling in the North Atlantic waters around Spitzbergen (Butler 1992; Roelofsen 1992). For most of the seventeenth century the Dutch were the ascendantEuropean influence in Asian waters,with the Englishan increasinglystrong competitor and the Portuguesein decline. Followingthe Portugueseprecedent of controllingheav- ily traveledsea-lanes, the Dutch set their sights on monopolizing the spice trade of the Indonesian archipelago.They establishedBatavia (now Jakarta)in 1619as the heavily fortified commercial center of their Asian interests.Asian rulers enlisted their assistancein rebuffingthe Portuguese.The Japanesedecision in 1634to expel the Portuguesefrom Nagasakiand transfertheir tradingprivileges to the Dutch had severe economic repercussions,because Japanesesilver had provided much of the bullion the Portugueseused in Asian trade (Furber1976). Meanwhile,within Asian societies, emergentpowers weakened the cohesion of the Mughal, Safavid,and Ottoman Empires(Bayly 1989). Emblematic of this shift was the rise of Oman as an autonomous state organizedaround maritime com- merce and naval strength in the western Indian Ocean. CapturingMombasa from the Portuguesein 1698,the Omanis extended their political control over much of EastAfrica. On the high seasthey provideda potent challengeto Europeans'military dominance. What neither the Omanis nor other Asians did was to enter the inter- oceanic tradesthat linked the IndianOcean and AtlanticOcean markets.As well, in the eighteenth century Europeanstate navies, not just armed merchantships, ap- peared more frequentlyin Asian waters,and in the nineteenth century the British state would challenge the Omanis through the EIC(Risso 1986). The presenceof the BritishNavy in the IndianOcean createda functionalsepa- ration of militaryand commercialpower and markeda new stage in the politiciza- tion of Asian ocean space. Militaryexpenses no longer had to be derived directly POLITICIZATION OF OCEANIC SPACE 231 from and balanced with commercial revenues, a shift in costs that was probably criticalfor the territorialexpansion of the BritishEmpire in Asia.In contrast,Dutch global influence had declined overthe eighteenthcentury, in partbecause the States General of the Netherlands expected the provinces of Zeeland and Holland, the most directbeneficiaries of Asiancommerce, to fund the navyout of maritimecom- mercial revenues (Boxer1965). Successfuland regularcrossing of the Atlantic Ocean, unlike the centuries-old navigation of the Indian Ocean, was a Europeanachievement. As a result, the dy- namic here was primarily one of intra-Europeanconflict. Geographically,three transatlanticcircuits were charted within a fewyears of each other.The first,and his- toricallythe most prominent, was the mid-Atlanticcircuit connecting Europeand the Caribbean.But the Portuguesepioneered a second, South Atlantic, route be- tween and Brazil;and a third route, across the North Atlantic, soon opened the fishery to Europeans (Meinig 1986). During the six- teenth century the three remained separatearenas of competition, with growing commercial and military integrationover the next two centuries. In developing their Atlantic circuits,the Spanishand Portugueseinitially faced little competition, except in littoral waters. In West Africa,local powers ably de- fended themselvesagainst Portuguese depredations (Thornton 1998).Resistance by the Caribs and the Arawaksin the LesserAntilles kept the Spanish from settling these islands (Boucher 1992). But, as knowledge of Atlantic navigation spread throughout the ports of ,the Iberiansfound that their greatestad- versarieswere not indigenous peoples but roving Frenchand English pirateswho dogged their galleons and foreign merchantswho interlopedin Africanand Ameri- can markets.Spain responded first by armingmerchant ships and then by providing naval escorts for the annual fleet that left the Gulf Coastladen with bullion. Never- theless, aggressiverivals persisted in their encroachmentson Iberianinterests. The Dutch, to compensatefor the loss of salt suppliesfrom southern Europeafter Spain cut off trade during the revolt in the Netherlands,began to produce salt on Carib- bean islands. English harassment of Spanish and Portuguesefishermen in New- foundland, especially after 1585,effectively drove the Iberians out of the fishery, leaving the Englishto compete with the Frenchfor supremacyin the North Atlantic (Lounsbury1934; Andrews 1984;Boucher 1989). By the end of the sixteenth century,decades of Atlantic maritime conflict and European wars had so weakened Spain'spower that, in treaty negotiations with Franceand Englandin 1598and 1604,respectively, the Frenchand Englishasserted their right to establish colonies in areasnot occupied by the Spanish (Quinn 1974; Appleby 1996). The Frenchand English,as well as the Dutch, establishedcolonies under the auspices of charteredcompanies or proprietors,to whom their Crowns gave the right to wage war againstEuropean rivals and indigenous peoples. Armed conflict among Europeans,most of it seaborne,became endemic in the seventeenth- century Atlantic world. Virginia sent armed ships to attack . The English Kirkefamily attackedand took Canadafrom the French.English and Frenchpirates 232 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW continued to prey on Spanishshipping. A settlementof Scotson CapeBreton lasted only a few months before it was destroyedby the French.The Spanishdestroyed the Puritancolony on ProvidenceIsland in the Caribbean.The Dutch drovethe Portu- guese out of the slave trade, as well as their settlementsin Brazil(Boxer 1965, 1969; Andrews 1984; Boucher 1989; Appleby 1996). These armed engagements, to name but a few, dispersed struggling settlements, established competing claims, and forced the interventionof Europeanstates. In short, transoceanictrade and colonization createdsignificant new interna- tional conflicts and constellationsof power outside existing arrangements.The in- sistence by the Netherlands, England, and Francethat Spain and Portugal could not claim sovereignty over the oceans necessitated state-to-state negotiations about the terms of interaction in this nonstate arena.The internationalcommu- nity needed some consensus about where sovereign, territorialwaters ended and the international zone began. Likewise,the control of subjects on the high seas, particularlypirates, required new laws and agreements, and the need to police trade and to suppress piracy demanded state-supportednavies. Government ex- penditures in Englandaccordingly rose duringthe seventeenthcentury, with naval expendituresaccounting for a largeportion of the increase(Braddick 1996). Mean- while, a new range of trade laws, such as the NavigationActs passedby the English Parliamentbeginning in the mid-seventeenth century,sought to guaranteethat the profits of the new carryingtrades would accrue to the home country. By the mid-eighteenth centurythe managementof nationaleconomies, with a particular focus on overseas trade, had become a central function of governments (Pagden 1995). Gradually,over the courseof the seventeenthcentury, western European powers provisionallyworked out manyof these issuesin treatynegotiations. For example, as part of the 1670treaty between Spainand Englandconceding the latter'sconquest of Jamaica,the Englishgovernment agreed to restrainits pirates.The crackdownin the Atlantic Ocean encouragedpirates to move into the Indian Ocean, where a large group planted itself on Madagascarand preyed on European shipping. These English-speakingpirates evinced such little regardfor national ties that they cap- tured English vessels, prompting the EIC to insist that the government control its own nationals (Thomson 1994). The Nine Years'War (1689-1697)inaugurated another long century of conflict that would not end until the Congressof Viennain 1815.Over the courseof that cen- tury the spread of Europeanwars into overseastheaters made the world's oceans highly contestedspaces. From Hudson Bayto Madrasand the Capeof Good Hope to Nootka Sound, warring Europeansattacked their enemies' forts and settlements, and diplomats negotiatedthe futuresof WestIndian islands, Newfoundland fishing stations, fur-trade outposts, Asian emporia, and African slave-tradingforts. Al- though the expenses of war drainedthe coffersof Europeanstates, the prospect of acquiringlucrative overseas colonies to offsetthe militarycosts figuredin the calcu- lations of how long to prosecutea war. POLITICIZATION OF OCEANIC SPACE 233

Throughout this era the edifice of Europeanstatecraft relied, in part,on the abil- ity to compete in the transoceanicarenas. In the mid-eighteenth centurythe British and Frenchstates funded explorationin the PacificOcean, often through naval ap- propriations,rather than leaving it solely to privateinterests, as had happened for most of the seventeenth century (Williams1998). Both states claimed the (IslasMalvinas) off the east coast of (as did Spain), intended as a last provisioning station beforeheading westward into the PacificOcean. Mau- ritius in the IndianOcean, Saint Helena in the SouthAtlantic Ocean, and the Hawai- ian Islands in the middle of the were similarly important island holdings as Europeanstates positioned themselves in increasinglypoliticized and militarized oceanic space (Gough 1980). So critical were these islands in oceanic strategiesand so vulnerablewere they to environmentaldegradation that imperial states supported scientific researchinto managingthem as sustainableecosystems (Grove 1995).Overseas possessions also became integratedinto state strategiesfor solving domestic problems,from the creationof Australia,Van Diemen's Land (Tas- mania), and Norfolk Island as Britishpenal colonies to the incarcerationof Napo- leon on Saint Helena (Hughes 1986). As these examples demonstrate,the control of oceanic space had become not just a commercial question but part of the construction of power in the European state system.Russia's attempts to gain greateraccess to the world'soceans beginning during the reign of Peterthe Greatis evidence of the shift takingplace between em- pires defined by continental control-whether Russian,Hapsburg, Ottoman, Sa- favid, Mughal, or Ching-and the empires defined by oceanic control-the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese,and Dutch. After 1783the United States successfully enteredthe competition for oceanic control,though maintaininga continentallyfo- cused and isolationist foreign policy.

THE LEGACY OF OCEANIC EMPIRES The ascendancyof oceaniccontrol as a definingcharacteristic of poweramong Euro- pean statesand then throughoutthe worldwas more thanthree centuries in develop- ing. In the nineteenth century, continentally focused imperial powers found themselvesbeing outflanked,if not conquered,by aggressiveEuropean powers that used oceanic accessto forceterritorial submission in Asiaand Africa. In a broadover- view of history, however,European territorial control in Africaand Asia was rela- tivelybrief. In many places it lasteda centuryor less, testimonyto our need to see the political ascendancyof Europein the world as an oceanic phenomenon. With the rise of new powersin the late nineteenthcentury, particularly Germany and Japan,access to oceanic trade, the creation of new empires, and an arms race with naval capacityas a centerpiececontinued to define relationsamong the great powers. As Germanyaggressively acquired colonies, GreatBritain reacted by creat- ing new protectorates(such as the Cook Islandsin 1888)in order to curb German imperial expansion (Porter1996). In the earlytwentieth century,international ten- sions over control of the world'soceans figuredin the controversiesthat led to the 234 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW two world wars. At the end of World War II reform of world trade helped diffuse some of the tension. The contest for control of oceanic space has not disappeared, nor has the Euro- pean and neo-European dominance of the oceans ended. Many of the remaining is- land dependencies continue to serve the strategic interests of distant metropolitan states. and American provide the United States with military foot- holds in the Pacific Ocean. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon maintain France's territorial claim to the western Atlantic fishery. Island territories without permanent popula- tions are used for military or scientific purposes. The British lease their Indian Ocean Territory to the United States for military facilities; the territories of Australia, Great Britain, France, and New Zealand all have permanent research sta- tions. Thus, in the twilight of oceanic empires, the colonial map is essentially one of far-flung island holdings. This fact should remind us that in the last five centuries oceanic space has been a central arena of imperial struggle.

NOTES

1. The sixteen are Anguilla, Bermuda,British ,Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Gibraltar,Montserrat, Pitcairn Island, Saint Helena, Turksand Caicos Islands,U.S. Virgin Islands,Guam, , ,, and WesternSahara. Spain notified the United Nations on 26 February1976 that it had ceased its participationin the temporarygovern- ment of the Western Saharaand thus its internationalresponsibility for the territory (Aldrich and Connell 1998). On 25 October 1999the SecurityCouncil establishedthe United Nations Transitional Administration for East ,which until then had been categorizedas a colony of Portugal. 2. Francehas departementset territoiresd'outre mer (FrenchGuiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion, French , Wallis and Futuna Islands, Saint-Pierreand Miquelon, and Mayotte), most of which have representationin the metropolitan French government. and the northern MarianaIslands are commonwealths of the United States.Australia designated Christmas Island, the Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island as territories.Aruba and the NetherlandsAntilles are autonomous parts of the kingdom of the Netherlands.The Cook Islandsare free associationsof New Zealand,and is a dependency.Spain retainsCeuta and Melillaon the coast of North Africaand the CanaryIslands off the coast of Africa.The Azores and the Madeirasare part of Portugal.As well, Australia,New Zealand,Great Britain, France, and the United Statesclaim a number of island groups without permanent residents (Aldrich and Connell 1998).

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