ABSTRACT
While the historiography of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century labour movements in France includes comprehensive accounts of battles over the docks of major port cities far less is known about how Belle Époque struggles over labour unfolded outside the dockyards of metropolitan ports; that is, at sea and in motion. Through the case study of the French Messageries maritimes Company and its traffic along a route that extended from Marseille, France, to Yokohama, Japan, this chapter investigates labour struggles at sea, arguing that shipping corridors were neither neutral infrastructure nor homogenous expanses. Rather, these in-between spaces of empires were shaped by competing legal regimes, shifting borders and the complex interplay of people, ship, sea and port. Analysing mobile labour contests that entangled maritime workers, consuls, port police, corporate bosses and others, the chapter finds that workers proved surprisingly capable of foiling company plans. The Messageries’ ensemble of anti-labour tactics thus amounted to a strategy of opportunism – with one important exception. In developing a global system to recruit and circulate African and Asian workers the Messageries found a structural, as opposed to opportunistic, approach to thwarting labour militancy within its mobile workforce: outsourcing avant la lettre.
