ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to demonstrate the degree to which significant elements of the wartime Indian Ocean have remained beyond the horizon of a growing historiography of wartime Africa and Asia. The Indian Ocean was a major theatre in the Second World War, serving as the lynchpin of Britain’s fading imperial ambitions in Asia, while at the same time facilitating the movements of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, refugees, and sailors between Asia, Africa, and Australasia. In May 1942, 171 vessels jammed Bombay Harbour, while ports such as far-off Freetown served as the British Merchant Navy’s entrance point to their Indian Ocean region. The historiography of wartime shipping in the Indian Ocean has too long remained largely one based on European, or more recently Japanese, military and mercantile strategies. The Indian Ocean was home to several staunch pro-Vichy regimes; it also hosted a major Allied amphibious operation in Madagascar, a French colony since 1895.
