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A Sea of Debt: Histories of Commerce and Obligation in the Indian Ocean, c. 1850-1940 by Fahad Ahmad Bishara Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Edward J. Balleisen, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Engseng Ho, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Janet J. Ewald ___________________________ Timur Kuran ___________________________ Bruce S. Hall ___________________________ Jonathan K. Ocko Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 i v ABSTRACT A Sea of Debt: Histories of Commerce and Obligation in the Indian Ocean, c. 1850-1940 by Fahad Ahmad Bishara Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Edward J. Balleisen, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Engseng Ho, Co-supervisor ___________________________ Janet J. Ewald ___________________________ Timur Kuran ___________________________ Bruce S. Hall ___________________________ Jonathan K. Ocko An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Copyright by Fahad Ahmad Bishara 2012 ABSTRACT This dissertation is a legal history of debt and economic life in the Indian Ocean during the nineteenth and early-twentieth century. It draws on materials from Bahrain, Muscat, Bombay, Zanzibar and London to examine how members of an ocean-wide commercial society constructed relationships of economic mutualism with one another by mobilizing debt and credit. It further explores how they expressed their debt relationships through legal idioms, and how they mobilized commercial and legal instruments to adapt to the emergence of modern capitalism in the region. At the same time, it looks at the concomitant development of an Indian Ocean- wide empire of law centered at Bombay, and explores how this Indian Ocean contractual culture encountered an Anglo-Indian legal regime that conceived of legal documents in a radically different way. By mobilizing written deeds in imaginative ways, and by strategically accessing British courts, Indian Ocean merchants were able to shape the contours of this growing legal regime. Most broadly, the dissertation argues that law and courts became increasingly central to economic life in the Indian Ocean, and that economic actors in the region employed a wide range of different legal strategies in adapting to a changing world of commerce. In the Indian Ocean, as elsewhere, the histories of commerce and law were inextricably intertwined. iv Contents ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. ix List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. xi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 Imagining the Indian Ocean: Nature and Networks .................................................................. 6 Tracing Obligation: a Research Anecdote ............................................................................... 20 Imagining an Ocean of Law .................................................................................................... 25 Understanding Obligation ....................................................................................................... 34 Commerce, Law and Empire in the Western Indian Ocean .................................................... 39 CHAPTER 1: LIFE AND DEBT ................................................................................................... 46 Commerce and Obligation in Islamic Jurisprudence ............................................................... 51 The Indian Ocean and the World Economy in the Nineteenth Century .................................. 59 Seths and Shopkeepers: the Moneylenders of the Indian Ocean ............................................. 67 Pearls and Porters: Obligation and Production in the Indian Ocean ....................................... 79 Credit debt and economic organization in the Persian Gulf pearl dive ................................ 80 Ships of the jungle: labor on the move in East Africa ........................................................... 92 Banias and Brokers: Commerce and the Geography of Obligation ...................................... 103 Credit, Debt and Public Revenue .......................................................................................... 111 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 117 v CHAPTER 2: INSCRIBING OBLIGATION .............................................................................. 120 Reading and Writing the Waraqa .......................................................................................... 124 Inscribing Genealogies .......................................................................................................... 130 Inscribing Transactions ......................................................................................................... 139 Commerce at the Periphery of the Law ................................................................................. 148 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 163 CHAPTER 3: THE GEOGRAPHY OF OBLIGATION ............................................................. 165 Property and Obligation in Islamic Jurisprudence ................................................................ 169 Where the Land Met the Sea ................................................................................................. 176 Inscribing Landscapes ........................................................................................................... 179 Land Across the Water .......................................................................................................... 183 Fractional Property ................................................................................................................ 193 Paper Trails............................................................................................................................ 201 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 211 CHAPTER 4: SLIPPERY SUBJECTHOOD .............................................................................. 214 Politics and Jurisdiction in the Nineteenth-Century Western Indian Ocean ......................... 219 Law and Order in a World of Commercial and Political Turmoil ......................................... 234 Constructing British Extraterritoriality in the Western Indian Ocean, c. 1850-1870 ............ 247 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 271 CHAPTER 5: MAKING MUSLIM MORTGAGES ................................................................... 277 Reading Commercial Writing ............................................................................................... 284 vi Lawyers, Law and Procedure in the East African Courts...................................................... 291 Legal Bureaucracy in East Africa, 1890-1930 ...................................................................... 297 The Waraqa in a Shifting Sea of Qāḍis, c. 1880-1897 .......................................................... 305 The Shari„a and Commercial Society in East African Courts ............................................... 310 Semantics and Sales .............................................................................................................. 314 Instrumental Fictions ............................................................................................................. 323 Reconstructing Possession .................................................................................................. 326 Fictionalizing Rent .............................................................................................................. 329 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 338 CHAPTER 6: THE SHORT ARM OF THE LAW ..................................................................... 342 Mapping Law in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf ..................................................................... 348 Obligations on the Run in the Southern Gulf, c. 1868-1880 ................................................. 362 The Short Arm of the Law in Twentieth-Century Bahrain ................................................... 378 Mobile Manumittees and the British Court in Bahrain, c. 1925-1935 .................................. 387 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................