Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (38 page)

While there has been some progress in recent years, there should be little surprise that a discipline rooted in the imperialism and colonialism of Europe and the United States has shied away from making empire and imperialism its immediate subject of study (see Talal Asad, “Introduction,” in
Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter
, ed. Talal Asad [London: Ithaca Press, 1973]). Notwithstanding Mina Davis Caulfield’s critique of anthropologists’ inattention to empire and Laura Nader’s still largely ignored exhortation to study the powerful, most anthropologists have continued to study the lives of the powerless, the poor, and those whose lives have suffered the impact of large-scale forces like imperialism (Mina Davis Caulfield, “Culture and Imperialism: Proposing a New Dialectic,” and Laura Nader, “Up the Anthropologist—Perspectives Gained from Studying Up,” both in
Reinventing Anthropology
, ed. Dell Hymes [New York: Pantheon Books, 1969]).

In recent years, there has been progress toward the investigation of empire, paralleling important new research on elites, policymaking, and policymakers. Catherine Lutz has called for the production of “ethnographies of empire” as a way to ethnographically explore the particularities, practices, shifts, and contradictions in empire, as well as its costs. In her ethnography of Fayetteville, North Carolina, home to the Fort Bragg U.S. Army base, Lutz illustrates the domestic costs of militarization and U.S. Empire, providing an important model for investigating the international effects of militarization and empire in the lives of the Chagossians. (See Lutz, “Making War at Home”; “Empire Is in the Details,”
American Ethnologist
33, no. 4 (2006);
Homefront
. See also McCaffrey,
Military Power and Popular Protest
; Gill,
School of the Americas
.)

Too often, however, many anthropological analyses treat large-scale forces and sources of power like imperialism and the U.S. Government, which shape and structure people’s lives, as abstract givens, without subjecting them to detailed analysis of any kind (Michael Burawoy, “Introduction: Reaching for the Global,” in
Global Ethnography
, ed. Michael Burawoy
et al.
[Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000], 1–40). To say, as many do, that structural forces shape
lives, constrain agency, and create suffering is one thing. To demonstrate how these things happen is another.

This book then is an attempt to build on the need to subject extralocal forces to ethnographic investigation and to realize a model for understanding widespread suffering developed by Paul Farmer: With suffering, “structured by historically given (and often economically driven) processes and forces that conspire . . . to constrain agency,” the task is to detail what the historically given, economically (and politically) driven processes and forces are, how they operate, and how they have shaped Chagossians’ lives. As Michael Burawoy says, forces “become the topic of investigation.” (See Paul Farmer, “On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below,” in
Social Suffering
, ed. Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997], 261–83; William Roseberry, “Understanding Capitalism—Historically, Structurally, Spatially,” in
Locating Capitalism in Time and Space
, ed. D. Nugent (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 61-79; Michael Burawoy, “Manufacturing the Global,”
Ethnography
2, no. 2 [2001]: 147–59; Burawoy, “Introduction: Reaching for the Global”; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization,”
Current Anthropology
42, no. 1 [2001]: 125–38; Eric R. Wolf,
Europe and the People without History
[Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982].)

At the same time, this corrective would go too far to focus, like many traditional foreign policy scholars, only on the structural dynamics or even the actors of U.S. foreign policy while ignoring the effects of foreign policy. I began to see that a bifocaled approach offering roughly equal study of the Chagossians and U.S. Empire would offer the best way to understand Diego Garcia (see also Gill,
School of the Americas
). The book aims to contribute to scholarship on empire, militarization, and foreign policy by subjecting U.S. Empire and its actors to the same kind of ethnographic scrutiny most often reserved for imperialism’s victims, while still attending to the lives affected by the U.S. Empire so often ignored by most non-anthropologist scholars. Ultimately the book attempts to do justice anthropologically to both sides of Diego Garcia, both sides of U.S. Empire, by seeking to investigate ethnographically the experience of U.S. Government officials and the Chagossians while attending to the larger structural context in which the base was created. Bringing the two sides “into the same frame of study,” I aim to “posit their relationships on the basis of first-hand ethnographic research.” See George Marcus,
Ethnography through Thick and Thin
(Princeton University Press, 1998), 84.

Chapter One
The llois, The Islanders

1
. On the history of Chagos, see especially former governor of colonial Mauritius Sir Robert Scott’s
Limuria: The Lesser Dependencies of Mauritius
, and former commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory Richard Edis,
Peak of Limuria: The Story of Diego Garcia and the Chagos Archipelago
, new ed. (London:
Chagos Conservation Trust, 2004). The most important primary sources are those available in the Mauritius Archives and the Public Records Office (National Archives), in Kew, England.

2
. Scott,
Limuria
, 68, 42–43, 48–50; Vijayalakshmi Teelock,
Mauritian History: From Its Beginnings to Modern Times
(Moka, Mauritius: Mahatma Gandhi Institute, 2000), 16–17.

3
. Robert L. Stein,
The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 9.

4
. Larry Bowman,
Mauritius: Democracy and Development in the Indian Ocean
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 13. See also Teelock,
Mauritian History
, 104–5; Stein,
The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century
, 119.

5
. Alfred J. E. Orian, “Report on a Visit to Diego Garcia,”
La Revue Agricole et Sucrière
38 (1958): 129; Scott,
Limuria
, 76.

6
. Iain B. Walker, “British Indian Ocean Territory,” in
The Complete Guide to the Southwest Indian Ocean
(Argelès sur Mer, France: Cornelius Books, 1993), 562; Scott,
Limuria
, 63, 69; Charles Grant,
The History of Mauritius or the Isle of France and the Neighboring Islands from Their First Discovery to the Present Time
(New Delhi: Asia Educational Services, 1995[1801]), 359.

7
. It is possible that other enslaved people arrived as early as 1770.

8
. H. Ly-Tio-Fane and S. Rajabalee, “An Account of Diego Garcia and its People,”
Journal of Mauritian Studies
1, no. 2 (1986): 91–92; I. Walker, “British Indian Ocean Territory,” 563; Scott,
Limuria
, 20; B. d’Unienville, “Notes on the Chagos Archipelago.” Mauritiana Collection, University of Mauritius, n.d.; Edis,
Peak of Limuria
.

9
. “Diego Garcia Expedition 1786,” India Office Records, Bombay Secret and Political Consultations, Vol. 73, 1786. See also Edis,
Peak of Limuria
, 30–31.

10
. Edis,
Peak of Limuria
, 31; Scott,
Limuria
, 75, 20; I. Walker, “British Indian Ocean Territory,” 562; “Diégo Garcia,” report, n.d. [1825–29], MA: TB 3/2.

11
. Europeans had previously referred to the Indian Ocean as an “Arab Lake.” See Enseng Ho, “Empire through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Other Boat,”
Comparative Study of Society and History
46 (2004): 219.

12
. Permits to Slave Holders to Transport Slaves between Islands, 1828, MA: IA 32. See also MA: IA 32; IG 59; IG 112/5052, 5117, 5353, 5355, 5448.

13
. See Herbert G. Gutman,
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925
(New York: Vintage, 1976), 185–201, on naming practices during slavery reflecting the maintenance of kinship ties among African Americans.

14
. Scott,
Limuria
, 112, 119; Donald Taylor, “Slavery in the Chagos Archipelago,”
Chagos News
14 (2000): 3; Dulary Peerthum and Satyendra Peerthum, “‘By the Sweat of Their Brow’: A Study of Free and Unfree Labourers in the Chagos Archipelago, c. 1783–1880,” preliminary paper abstract, 2002; MA: IB 12/47.

15
. M. N. Lucie-Smith, “Report on the Coconut Industry of the Lesser Dependencies, Mauritius,” Department of Agriculture, Port Louis, Mauritius, June 1959, 6.

16
. Ly-Tio-Fane and Rajabalee, “An Account of Diego Garcia and Its People,” 92; d’Unienville, “Notes on the Chagos Archipelago”; “Diégo Garcia” (report [1825–29]); I. Walker, “British Indian Ocean Territory,” 563; Orian, “Report on a Visit to Diego Garcia,” 129. Cyclones are only known to have hit Chagos in 1891 and 1944. See Edward P. Ashe, letter to Sir A. W. Moore, November 26, 1903, PRO: ADM 123/34, 2; Edis,
Peak of Limuria
. “Dauquet” was perhaps spelled “Danguet” or “Dauget.” Six Islands actually includes a seventh.

17
. Bowman,
Mauritius
, 17–18. British oversight in Mauritius and to an even greater extent in the isolated dependencies like Chagos was weak at best. The British sent the first government agent to investigate conditions in Chagos 10–15 years after taking possession of the archipelago, but otherwise simply encouraged the production of oil to supply the Mauritian market. See Scott,
Limuria
, 128; Ly-Tio-Fane and Rajabalee, “An Account of Diego Garcia and Its People,” 92–93.

18
. Lapotaire et al., “Mémoire,” letter, October 8, 1828, MA: TB 1/41828, 13. For descriptions of life under slavery, also see Scott,
Limuria
, 99, 104–5, 149.

19
. Lapotaire et al., “Mémoire,” 13. Scott confirms that by law, slave owners were technically required to provide basic food rations, clothing, housing, and medical care, and that “slaves were usually supplied with various vegetables . . . [and] encouraged to rear small livestock . . . either by way of incentives to good work or to place on the slaves themselves as much as possible of the onus of providing a balanced diet.” Scott,
Limuria
, 105.

20
. Also known as the “plantation complex.” See Sidney W. Mintz, “The Caribbean as a Socio-cultural Area,” in
Peoples and Cultures of the Caribbean: An Anthropological Reader
, ed. Michael M. Horowitz (Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1971), 17–46; Mintz,
Caribbean Transformations
(Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1974); Philip D. Curtin,
The Rise and the Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Michael Craton,
Empire, Enslavement and Freedom in the Caribbean
(Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Bandle, 1997).

21
. Curtin,
The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex
, 11–13; Mintz,
Caribbean Transformations
, 46.

22
. Mintz,
Carribean Transformations
, 52, 54.

23
. This was the case in the isolated Out Islands of the Bahamas, where similar conditions prevailed. See Howard Johnson,
The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783–1933
(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1996), 50.

24
. See W. J. Eccles,
The French in North America, 1500–1783
(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998), 172–74; William F. S. Miles,
Elections and Ethnicity in French Martinique: A Paradox in Paradise
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1986), 32–34; Deryck Scarr,
Seychelles since 1770: History of a Slave and Post-Slavery Society
(Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1999).

25
. Scott,
Limuria
, 136; Craton, Empire,
Enslavement, and Freedom in the Caribbean
, 3; Eccles,
The French in North America, 1500–1783
, 172.

26
. Eccles,
The French in North America, 1500–1783
, 172.

27
. Scott,
Limuria
, 140–41.

28
. L. B. Büehmüller and André Büehmüller, census record, April 8, 1861, MA: TB 3/1. The extent and rate at which Indian labor was introduced in Chagos is unclear. A visiting magistrate’s report from 1880 says that there were on the order of 10 Indians in all of Chagos, a figure almost certainly far too low. See J. H. Ackroyd, “Report of the Police and Stipendary Magistrate for the Smaller Dependencies 1880,” Magistrate for Lesser Dependencies 1880, Port Louis, Mauritius, March 22, MA: RA 2568, 11. Some claim a figure of 40 percent Indian descent by the 1960s, which may accurately reflect the percentage tracing at least some Indian ancestry. See Francoise Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community and the ‘Ilois’ Women,” unpublished MS, 1980; Iain B. Walker, “
Zaffer Pe Sanze”: Ethnic Identity and Social Change among the Ilois in Mauritius
(Vacoas, Mauritius: KMLI, 1986).

29
. Marina Carter and Raymond d’Unienville,
Unshackling Slaves: Liberation and Adaptation of Ex-Apprentices
(London: Pink Pigeon Books, N.D), 57.

30
. See Thomas V. Bulpin,
Islands in a Forgotten Sea
([no city], Netherlands: Howard Timmins, 1958), 314; H. Labouchere, letter to Governor Higginson, February 26, 1857, MA: SA 57/47, and letter to Governor Higginson, August 20, 1857, MA: SA 59/19; Scott,
Limuria
, 263; Ackroyd, “Report of the Police and Stipendary Magistrate,” 8.