Humanitarianism and racial capitalism in the age of global shipping
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221139062 |
| Author | Laleh Khalili |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221139062
European Journal of
International Relations
2023, Vol. 29(2) 374 –397
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221139062
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Humanitarianism and racial
capitalism in the age of global
shipping
Laleh Khalili
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Abstract
In what ways does humanitarianism uphold racial capitalism? The article draws on and
expands Cedric Robinson’s arguments about the relationship between humanitarianism
and racial capitalism in his Black Marxism. It does so by focusing on the Mission to
Seafarers in the countries of the Persian/Arabian Gulf. The Mission has worked
alongside state institutions and businesses, both before and after independence from
Britain, to facilitate maritime trade through these Arabian ports. In the context of
seafarer exploitation, these institutions – the extractive, the governing and the caring
– need to ensure worker productivity to facilitate racial accumulation of capital. I argue
that the Mission acts as part of the structure of political economic order to produce a
racially striated, capitalist politics of care to individuated and atomised seafarers, acting
to conciliate conflicts between seafarers and shipowners, maintain seafarer productivity
and diminish the possibility of collective mobilisation.
Keywords
Seafarers, racial capitalism, humanitarianism, Arabian Peninsula, colonialism, Mission to
Seafarers
Introduction
The Mission to Seamen (whose name was changed to Mission to Seafarers in 2000) is an
arm of the Anglican communion and formed in 1856 to minister to British sailors travel-
ling to the colonies (Kennerley, 1989). As the British maritime empire expanded and
consolidated in the latter half of the 19th century, the missionary work of salvaging
Corresponding author:
Laleh Khalili, Queen Mary University of London, London, E1 4NS, UK.
Email: l.khalili@qmul.ac.uk
1139062EJT0010.1177/13540661221139062European Journal of International RelationsKhalili
research-article2022
Article
Khalili 375
seafarers – these ‘muscles of empire’ (Broeze, 1981) – would also grow exponentially.
The Gulf emirates were crucial nodes in the empire and were governed via protectorate
arrangements by Britain since the turn of the 20th century. Between 1961 and 1971,
Britain ceded its protectorates over Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Muscat and Oman, and the
Trucial emirates (which subsequently federated in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)).
Throughout the time that the British maintained its protectorates in the Gulf, the colonial
government officials refused to grant the Mission permission to open offices or clubs for
seafarers in the petroleum and dry cargo ports of Persian/Arabian Gulf emirates. The
Mission was only able to do so a few years after the independence of those emirates from
Britain.
The central puzzle of this article is this: if the work of the Mission to Seafarers was
co-extensive with and imbricated in the British empire, why did colonial officials in the
Gulf prevent it from establishing a presence there? And if the work of the mission entailed
humanitarian work and Christian evangelism, why were the Muslim rulers of Bahrain
and the UAE amenable to entertaining and supporting the work of the Mission? In other
words, what explains the shifts in the relationship between humanitarian organisations,
state institutions and seafarers in the Gulf states after the Second World War?
To respond to this puzzle, I argue that the maintenance of capitalism in the Gulf, both
before and after independence, has been centrally predicated on racialised labour
regimes, and humanitarian work is embedded and implicated in these regimes of labour.
The mechanism for the maintenance of racial capitalism in the Gulf has been adaptively
dynamic and has changed in response to contestation by the workers and to cataclysmic
political transformations (e.g. decolonisation). The humanitarian activities of the
Missions, though often exercised with sincerity and commitment, reinforce racialised
hierarchies of labour, depoliticise subject populations, circumscribe popular discontent
and facilitate the accumulation of capital. I argue that colonial officers excluded the
Missions not only because other mechanisms of control – often outsourced to businesses
– existed, but also because the presence of the Missions in the ports implied the presence
of often militant and politically organised seafarers. However, after independence, in
order to maintain productivity among workers, but without the possibility of collective
mobilisation, humanitarian organisations were welcomed, albeit in a circumscribed and
surveilled manner in keeping with imposition of broad strictures on labour organisation.
Their orientation was towards a practice of individualised care.
The broader aims of this article are twofold. The first is substantive. This article aims
to show the importance of humanitarianism in shoring up racial capitalism in the Gulf by
conceptualising how it worked alongside governing institutions and corporations, and
acted like a safety valve by providing care to attenuate the worst effects of capitalist
depredation. These governing institutions suture together global geopolitical alliances,
colonial officials, local rulers, government experts and bureaucrats, corporations,
humanitarian organisations and even unions. The article shows the interdependence of
the Mission and these institutions, and how in its encounter with the seafarers them-
selves, the Mission’s chaplains acted to conciliate conflicts, discourage dissent and
encourage meekness.
The second interrelated aim is methodological. This article gives an affirmative
response to the question posed by Jenkins and Leroy (2021: 16) in their introduction to a
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