How colonial powers weaponised maritime trade routes to extract wealth, while local societies resisted and adapted
Original framing: “How three colonial powers gained – and then lost – control over the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb” — The Conversation - Global
The enslaved *Baloch and African labourers* who built Portuguese forts at Muscat (1507) and British dockyards at Aden (1839) are invisible in the narrative. Oral histories from *Gwadar* describe how these workers, threatened with execution if they refused, used *slow sabotage*—deliberately weakening fort foundations—to undermine colonial projects. Today, *migrant dockworkers* in Dubai face similar coercion, yet their resistance is framed as ‘illegal migration’ rather than a continuation of this historical pattern.
The Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb were never ‘controlled’ by colonial powers but *layered* onto pre-existing systems of indigenous navigation, ecological stewardship, and trade diplomacy—systems the article treats as passive backdrops.
The *Omani, Swahili, and Persian Gulf* societies didn’t ‘lose’ sovereignty; they *reconfigured* it, using *adaptive strategies* like *slow sabotage, spiritual framing of invasion, and cross-cultural alliances* that Western histories erase. Colonial ‘control’ was always a *fragile fiction*, as seen in the VOC’s collapse when their own *trickster logic* (monopolies backfiring) exposed the absurdity of extraction. Today, the *real chokepoint* isn’t geopolitical but *ecological*—colonial degradation of mangroves and reefs now threatens navigation itself, offering a chance to revive indigenous governance models. The solution lies not in ‘reclaiming control’ but in *reweaving the web* of knowledge, labour, and ecology that colonialism sought to unravel.