So Few

It was about halfway through Simon Winchester's Atlantic: A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories that I realised why there are millions of stories about the Atlantic but scant hundreds of stories about the Indian. Indeed, we can call the Atlantic Ocean 'the Atlantic', but to call the Indian Ocean 'the Indian' seems odd.

The Atlantic is of course the cradle of imaginary civilisations, all the more imposing and fearsome and aweful for their imaginary status. It is raw water running in huge amounts, the same water that flooded through the gates at Gibraltar and drowned the plain that became the Mediterranean. There are no safe margins by which a ship might sail across the Atlantic forever within sight of civilised land.

The Indian, on the other hand, is the cradle of a hefty chunk of real civilisations, from the east coast of Africa up to the fractured lands we call the Middle East and Mesopotamia, and along the coast of the Indian sub-continent, the central feature of that ocean, and down the Kra peninsula to Singapore and beyond. It ranges from Port Elizabeth in South Africa to Adelaide in South Australia.

The Indian is a benign ocean, relatively speaking. This is why trade across the Indian was the most important trade of all for many centuries. The Atlantic is relatively turbulent, and if not for the wholesale theft of the New World's riches to pay for the Old World's luxuries, was not an encouragement to global trade.

Winchester makes one mistake. He points out how European and American talent in the arts and letters were inspired by the Atlantic to develop complex Romanticism. But the question must be asked: What other ocean did the Romantic soul have to write, sing or play music about? In overstating the case, he did his marvelous oceanic subject a great disservice.

The Neglected Ocean

Someone just pointed out to me that Perth, Western Australia, is an Indian Ocean seaport. Heck, so is Adelaide, capital of South Australia. In fact the Indian Ocean stretches from 20°E to 146°55'E, which makes its westernmost port probably Port Elizabeth in South Africa.

Most of human trade and civilisation over the span of our history has traversed this neglected ocean. Egypt's only ocean access is to the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian peninsula is almost entirely surrounded by it. Few know how large the Chinese presence here used to be, still is, and continues to be. There perhaps more than 50,000 Chinese (mostly Cantonese) on Madagascar, and another 35,000 on Mauritius. Singapore is an Indian Ocean city.

This is why geography is both romantic and important. These are the huge stories hidden in plain sight. Or plain sites.

A Brief History Of Some Rock

Well, here I am back from the Bay of Bengal, the tsunami amplifier of the region. On a clear day you think you can see forever, but what you are seeing is inestimable beauty mixed with a poverty that is induced by the globalisation of a certain kind of wealth-concept.

Because certain people over the globalisation history of the last 200 years have successfully imposed certain wealth values on others, to their own benefit, those others have become poorer. Sri Lanka, the Ceylonese centre of great wealth and marvellous gems; the various city-states of the Indian sub-continent; the mysterious outskirts of Indochina... all of these have been exploited to their own detriment by the powers of the world, minor pieces and pawns in the Great Game.

Why else are gems mined in this region marked up 10x in their journey to the markets of Bangkok, marked up 10x again en route to Hongkong, and 10x again as they fly their clattering journey to London? The miners are as poor as dirt; the dirt is perhaps richer. The society belles with the outsize carbon and impure alumina and other Mammon-sanctified rocks — they live on the backs of the poor. And why ever should this have come to pass? These aren't even useful rocks in their shiny metal cages.

I sat by the Bay of Bengal. And I laughed, and the waters answered me.