Cultural Encounters in a Colonial Port: The 1806 Sydney Muharram

Abstract

This article investigates the meaning and significance of a single event in Sydney in 1806 when a group of Asiatic seamen’ (lascars) led a religious procession through the streets of the town. Lascars were an essential pillar of British imperial maritime dominance yet were a repressed and exploited group. The article argues the procession can be understood in two ways; as an assertion by the lascars of religious and cultural identity, and as a case study where the colonists’ dominant response suggested acknowledgement and acceptance, if not approval, of difference.

Notes

^*I would like to thank Grace Karskens, Jim Masselos and Heather Goodall for their comments on draft versions of this article.

¹The reconstruction of the Muharram procession that follows relies chiefly on the account provided by George Howe, editor of the Sydney Gazette, in the edition of 23 March 1806, the sole written source extant. Other sources employed to set the scene of Sydney in 1806 include the following: Sydney Gazette, 16 March 1806; J. Meehan, ‘Plan of the Town of Sydney’ (1807), in Historical Records of New South Wales: Vol. VI—King and Bligh. 1806, 1807, 1808, ed. F. M. Bladen (Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1898); Susannah de Vries, Historic Sydney As Seen By Its Early Artists (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1983), 8–11; Grace Karskens, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 7–8, 18–19, 32; Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009), 169–72, 181, 250.

² Sydney Gazette, 23 March 1806.

³See, for example, Thomas Watling's sketch of Sydney Cove, and two views, probably by Edward Dayes and based on Watling's sketch, Mitchell Library, Sydney; ‘Sydney Cove in 1803’ by George William Evans, Dixon Galleries, Sydney. See also de Vries, 8–11; Karskens, The Colony, 58.

⁴ Sydney Gazette, 23 March 1806.

⁵ Sydney Gazette, 30 March 1806.

⁶ Sydney Gazette, 30 March 1806.; Historical Records of New South Wales, VI, no. 52, 60; Margaret Steven, Merchant Campbell 1769–1846: A Study of Colonial Trade (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), 137.

⁷In fact there are no other references to Muharram in any edition of the Gazette sampled between 1803 and 1813.

⁸ Historical Records of New South Wales, VI, no. 52, 60; Steven, 138.

⁹While the literature on the age of sail is sparse, that on steam is extensive and rapidly growing. The following are of particular interest: Ravi Ahuja, ‘Networks of Subordination—Networks of the Subordinated: The Ordered Spaces of South Asian Maritime Labour in an Age of Imperialism (c. 1890–1947)’, in The Limits of British Colonial Control in South Asia, ed. Ashwini Tambe and Harald Fischer-Tine (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 13–48; Ahuja, ‘Mobility and Containment: The Voyages of South Asian Seamen c. 1900–1960’, International Review of Social History, 51, Supplement (2006): 111–31; Janet Ewald, ‘Crossers of the Sea: Slaves, Freedmen and Other Migrants in the Northwestern Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1914’, The American Historical Review, 105, no. 1 (February 2000): 69–91; G. Balachandran, ‘Searching for the Sardar: The State, Pre-capitalist Institutions and Human Agency in the Maritime Labour Market, Calcutta, 1880–1935’, in Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, eds, Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 206–36.

¹⁰State Records New South Wales: www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-archives/guides-and-finding-aides/archives-in-brief. The Sydney Gazette's account provides us with little idea, either of the size of the procession or of the crowd of observers, save references to two individuals who pierced their cheeks, tongues and thighs with sharp instruments, and three others who kept rhythm on tambourines. However, the Sydney, at nine hundred tons with a crew of 130, was a large ship, and we could reasonably estimate that there were perhaps more than a hundred ordinary seamen on board. A group this size could not all have had lodgings in Back Row East, the destination of the procession; contemporary illustrations suggest each dwelling might sustain a handful, at best. However, it was common practice also for seamen in port to stay on their ships, as much as it was for them to seek accommodation ashore, so it is feasible that a large number of ship-based lascars joined their Back Row colleagues for the procession.

¹¹The British parliamentary Report From the Committee on Lascars and Other Asiatic Seamen makes this clear distinction. See Parliamentary Papers, 1814–15, III, no. 471, 4–5, in Marine Department Records (L/MAR). Accessed from <www.bl.uk>. George Howe in the Sydney Gazette also distinguishes between ‘lascars’ and ‘Chinese’, ‘Malay’ and ‘Manilla’ seamen. See the Sydney Gazette, 1 March 1807 and 24 July 1808.

¹²Michael Fisher, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600–1857 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 139; Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas: Indian Maritime Labourers in India, Britain and In Between, 1600–1857’, International Review of Social History, 51, Supplement, (2006): 26.

¹³Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 23–25.

¹⁴‘Bengali-speaking Community in the Port of London.’ Accessed from <www.portcities.org.uk>

¹⁵Ahuja, ‘Networks’, 26; Norma Myers, Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain 1780–1830 (London: Frank Cass and Company), 106.

¹⁶Ahuja, ‘Networks’, 26; Rozina Visram, First Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002), chap. 2.

¹⁷Myers, 105.

¹⁸Steven, 33.

¹⁹See for example editions of the Gazette for 19 February 1804, 21 October 1804, 4 November 1804, 26 May 1805, 28 August 1805, 22 September 1805, 6 October 1805, 24 July 1808, 31 July 1808, 28 August 1808 and 17 March 1810. See also Karskens, The Rocks, 19.

²⁰George Windsor Earl, The Eastern Seas, or Voyages and Adventures in the Indian Archipelago in 1832–33–34 (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1837), 2.

²¹Mike Nash, Investigation of a Survivors’ Camp from the ‘Sydney Cove’ Shipwreck: Maritime Archaeology Monograph and Report. Series no. 2. (Adelaide: Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, South Australia, 2004); Nash, Cargo for the Colony: The Wreck of the Merchant Ship ‘Sydney Cove’ (Sydney: Braxus Press, 1996), 17, 37, 42–43.

²²Ahuja, ‘Networks’.

²³This portrait of contemporary attitudes towards lascars is drawn from D. MacPherson, History of European Commerce with India (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1812), 235–36. See also Earl, 81; Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 29 and Fisher, Counterflows, 144.

²⁴For a discussion of the process of constructing the ‘effete Bengali’, see the following: Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly’ Englishman and the ‘Effete’ Bengali in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980); Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983); Thomas R. Metcalfe, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

²⁵Views of a Christian missionary in 1814, in Rozina Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700–1947 (London: Pluto Press, 1986), 47.

²⁶Letter dated 28 November 1809 from Hilton Docker, medical doctor to the lascars, describing lascar conditions on board and in England. L/MAR/C/902, 1, ff. 25–26. Marine Department Records. Accessed from <www.bl.uk>.

²⁷Visram, First Asians, chap. 2.

²⁸Georgie Wemyss, The Invisible Empire: White Discourse, Tolerance and Belonging (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009), 150.

²⁹Visram, Ayahs, 47; Letter dated 28 November 1809 from Hilton Docker, medical doctor to the lascars, describing lascar conditions on board and in England: L/MAR/C/902, 1, ff. 25–26. Marine Department Records. Accessed from <www.bl.uk>.

³⁰Ahuja, ‘Networks’, 14.

³¹Nash, Cargo for the Colony, 26; Ahuja, ‘Mobility and Containment’, 112.

³²Ahuja, ‘Networks’, 14; Ahuja, ‘Mobility and Containment’, 116; Visram, First Asians, chap. 2; Wemyss, 150–51; Myers, 109; Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 29.

³³Lascars brought many cases of alleged mistreatment by ships’ officers before Australian colonial courts. See the following cases: Sydney Gazette, 24 July 1808; Sydney Gazette, 8 September 1819; The Australian, 17 February 1825; The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 9 June 1825; Hobart Town Courier, 12 January 1828; Sydney Monitor, 12 February 1831; Sydney Monitor, 19 January 1833. See also Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 24; Earl, 80; Visram, First Asians, chap. 2.

³⁴Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 31.

³⁵Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 31.

³⁶Ahuja, ‘Networks’, 19–20, 28–29; Ahuja, ‘Mobility and Containment’, 133–36. Ahuja acknowledges that Balachandran disputes the strength of community bonds between Indian seamen. See Balachandran, ‘Searching for the Sardar’.

³⁷Myers, 110; Earl, 83.

³⁸1816 Parliamentary Papers [BPP 1816 X 349 p. 16], in Myers, 112; Letter dated 28 November 1809 from Hilton Docker, L/MAR/C/902, vol. 1, ff. 25–26. Marine Department Records. Accessed from: <www.bl.uk>.

³⁹Greg Dening, Mr. Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 77–80 and passim.

⁴⁰Greg Dening, Mr. Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 81.

⁴¹Greg Dening, Mr. Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 80.

⁴²Earl, 82.

⁴³Nawab Ali's account in Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers: Life Stories of Sylheti Settlers in Britain, ed. Caroline Adams (London: THAP, 1994) 79, cited in Ahuja, ‘Mobility and Containment’, 136.

⁴⁴Ahuja, ‘Networks’, 33.

⁴⁵Ahuja, ‘Mobility and Containment’, 135.

⁴⁶Fisher, Counterflows, 141; Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 21.

⁴⁷Fisher, ‘Working Across the Seas’, 23. Amitav Ghosh illustrates how lascars’ speech operated in his novel, Sea of Poppies (London: John Murray, 2008).

⁴⁸Joseph Emin, Life and Adventures of Emin Joseph Emin 1762–1809 (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, Second edition, 1912), 24–26.

⁴⁹Caroline Adams, ed. Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers: Life Stories of Pioneer Sylheti Settlers in Britain (London: THAP, 1994), cited in Ahuja, ‘Mobility and Containment’, 136.

⁵⁰The concept that individual human identity is comprised of a plurality of ‘collectivities’ of various kinds that respond to different contexts is drawn from the writings of Amartya Sen. See Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2006) and The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (London: Allen Lane, 2005).

⁵¹For a discussion of Muharram's trans-communal nature, see J. R. I. Cole, ‘Popular Shi'ism’, in Cultural History of Medieval India, ed. Meenakshi Kharma (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2007), 73–91; Jim Masselos, ‘Change and Custom in the Format of the Bombay Mohurrum During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 5, no. 2, (December 1982). Muharram is an occasion for the community to commemorate the trials, suffering and deaths of Hussain, his family and followers and to express its senses of grief and mourning. The flagellation administered by some participants can be understood as vicarious punishment for having been unable to protect the victims.

⁵²Rebecca Brown, ‘Abject to Object: Colonialism Preserved Through the Imagery of Muharram’. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 43, Islamic Arts (Spring 2003): 209.

⁵³Masselos, 57–60.

⁵⁴Masselos, 50–52.

⁵⁵Karskens, The Colony, 178.

⁵⁶Balachandran has demonstrated how frustrations might be released in spontaneous and collective industrial action on arrival in a foreign port, or before the moment of leaving, or when crews were being transferred from one ship to another. See G. Balachandran, ‘Cultures of Protest in Transnational Contexts: Indian Seamen Abroad, 1886–1945’, Transforming Cultures eJournal, 3, no. 2, (2008): 48. See also Fisher, Counterflows, 42; Wemyss, 150.

⁵⁷Dening has illustrated this tendency in his account of the crew of the Bounty. See Dening.

⁵⁸ Sydney Gazette, 23 and 30 March 1806.

⁵⁹Howe was born in the West Indies, the son of an English government printer, but he had been found guilty of shoplifting in 1799 and arrived in Sydney after his sentence had been commuted to transportation for life. He was an educated and literate Enlightenment individual, given a classical education in England and said to be well read in contemporary European literature. Australian Dictionary of Biography (2006). Accessed from: <http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/adbonline.htm>.

⁶⁰Masselos, 48, 53; Brown, 203–4.

⁶¹David Pinault, The Shi'ites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), 69. William Henry Sleeman's 1844 account illustrates how the British identified violence and religious zealotry as inherent in Muharram ‘when the Mahomedans are inflamed to madness … with gloomy downcast looks, beating their breasts, [are] ready to kill themselves, and too anxious for an excuse to kill anybody else.’ Cited in Travellers’ India: An Anthology, ed. H. K. Kaul (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), 170–71.

⁶²Peter J. Marshall (no date), ‘The Muharram Riot of 1779 and the Struggle for Status and Authority in Early Colonial Calcutta.’ Accessed from: <http://www.asiaticsociety.org.bd/journals/Golden_jubilee_vol/articles/H_459%20%28PJ%20Marshall%29.htm#_ftn2> Pinault, 63; Masselos, 54. E. M. Forster encapsulates a similar view of Muharram in his account in A Passage to India (1924), 93.

⁶⁴ Sydney Gazette, 29 December 1805.

⁶³Val Attenbrow, Sydney's Aboriginal Past: Investigating the Archaeological and Historical Records (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010), 131–38; Karskens, The Colony, 440–41.

⁶⁵Karskens cites similar views as expressed by the colonists Samuel Smith and Margaret Catchpole. Karskens, The Colony, 443.

⁶⁶Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers (Melbourne: Text, 2003), 287 and passim.

⁶⁷Attenbrow, 14–15; Nigel Parbury, Survival: A History of Aboriginal Life in New South Wales (Sydney: Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs New South Wales, 1988), 56–57.

⁶⁸Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: Black Responses to White Dominance 1788–2001 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001), 26–39.