Subversive Seas Anticolonial Networks across the Twentieth-Century Dutch Empire

This revealing portrait of the Dutch Empire repositions our understanding of modern empires from the terrestrial to the oceanic. It highlights the importance of shipping, port cities, and maritime culture to the political struggles of the 1920s and 30s. Port cities such as Jeddah, Shanghai, and Batavia were hotbeds for the spread of nationalism, communism, pan-Islamism, and pan-Asianism, and became important centers of opposition to Dutch imperialism through the circulation of passengers, laborers, and religious pilgrims. In response to growing maritime threats, the Dutch government and shipping companies attempted to secure oceanic spaces and maintain hegemony abroad through a web of control. Techniques included maritime policing networks, close collaboration with British and French surveillance entities ashore, and maintaining segregation on ships, which was meant to 'teach' those on board their position within imperial hierarchies. This innovative study exposes how anti-colonialism was shaped not only within the terrestrial confines of metropole and colony, but across the transoceanic spaces in between.

Introduction: transoceanic mobility and modern imperialism; Part I. At Sea: 1. Kongsi Tiga: security and insecurity on Hajj ships; 2. Java-China-Japan Lijn: Asian shipping and imperial representation; 3. The Dutch mails: passenger liners as colonial classrooms; Part II. In Port: 4. Pan-Islamism abroad: regulation and resistance in the Middle East; 5. Policing communism: ships, seamen, and political networks in Asia; 6. Japanese penetration: imperial upheavals in the 1930s; Conclusion: oceanic decolonization and cultural amnesia in the twenty-first century.

Kris Alexanderson is Assistant Professor of History at the University of the Pacific, California.