The Architecture of Empire in Modern Europe: Space, Place, and the Construction of an Imperial Environment, 1860-1960 by Groten Miel

Author:Groten, Miel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2025-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Flagships of empire

Like industrial capitalism, the rise of shipping was a global and not just an imperial phenomenon. Numerically, until the second half of the twentieth century most global shipping took place between north-western Europe and North America, outside of the imperial orbit: in 1913, this stretch accounted for over three quarters of all sea traffic.24

24 Rübner, Konzentration und Krise, p. 37; Miller, Europe and the maritime world, p. 73. Return to text.⏎ Nonetheless, shipping was bound up with imperialism in important ways. Shipping was inherently part of the influence imperial powers projected outwards and of the economic relations of empire discussed before.25Although some of the most well-known firms, such as Cunard and White Star Line (of Titanic infamy) focused on the Atlantic, other important lines had close ties to imperial expansion and sustained the existence of imperial spaces. Mail contracts that governments awarded to shipping firms were a well-known way in which they were tied to colonial empires. In 1837, the British Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) was granted the mail contract between London and Gibraltar. This was then extended 183with a contract to Alexandria which, through the Suez Canal, would quickly expand to India and China; by 1850, P&O had started a mail service to Australia. Thus, the demands of the British state shaped P&O’s shipping networks, and the company came to be seen as a national asset to the extent that its vessels have been interpreted as ‘flagships of imperialism’.26Its French equivalent was the Messageries Maritimes, which developed around mail contracts to Algeria and later the South Atlantic, Indochina, China, Japan, Madagascar, and after that, Australia and New Caledonia.27The Dutch Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij (KPM) was awarded its operations in the Dutch East Indies by the government and its ships were therefore the ‘engines of empire’. Closely aligned with the colonial state, the KPM provided surveillance and transport duties, linked the islands of the archipelago together, and helped bring the colony into the world economy. It worked as a feeder line for the intercontinental lines of the Dutch Stoomvaartmaatschappij Nederland (SMN) and Rotterdamsche Lloyd, its parent companies.28 The Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linie was started with a government subsidy, while its West African equivalent Woermann Linie profited from troop transports to German South West Africa during the infamous wars of 1904–1907.29 In general, strong personal relations existed between shipping directors and chairmen and their respective governments, as in the case of the British Cunard and White Star lines and the German HAPAG discussed below.30 Demonstrating the importance attached to shipping in contemporary thought in a different way, the short-lived Black Star Line founded by Marcus Garvey in 1919 challenged the dominance of these European lines by providing trade and travel possibilities between black diasporic communities along the Atlantic.31

25 Miller, Europe and the maritime world, pp. 13–16. Return to text.⏎ 26 Harcourt, Flagships of imperialism, pp. 1–17. Return to text.⏎ 27 Berneron-Couvenhes, ‘La concession des services maritimes’. Return to text.⏎ 28 À Campo, Engines of empire, pp. 577–579. Return to text.

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