ABSTRACT
We have just written of people travelling widely around the ocean to propagate new religious ideas, and to purify the faith. Earlier we also wrote of people moving over the ocean for economic reasons, that is the dubiously voluntary movement of indentured labour (see pages 223–4). There was however also completely voluntary movement, one example being the Indian financiers, or agents of home-based financiers, whom we found dominating much of the imperial economy of the Arabian Sea in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see pages 219–20). This movement continued, and we can now move forward into the twentieth century. In the first half of the century we will find many trends similar to those already outlined in the previous chapter; independence after World War II marks something of a break, though arguably the later phenomenon of globalisation had a greater influence on the ocean. We will first look at more recent migratory movements across the water, this time for economic reasons.
