Les Maldives : L'halieutique maldivienne, une ethno-culture millénaire

As early as the 10th century Arab navigators identified the Maldive Islands as a source of cowries as currency and coir as an indispensable material for the assembling of sewn hulls and rigs of fishing and commercial vessels. Later on, skipjack filets, once dried and smoked, provided the third specialty of these islands. The meeting of monsoon navigation networks brought the Maldive Archipelago in contact with the whole of Arab, Persian, Indian and Malay worlds. The shores of East Africa and South China could be reached from there too. The dynamics of the piscatorial ethno-culture, which flourished in a way of life entirety dominated by the sea, lay in the exclusive control of the barter system by the central power established in Male. In the cultural, political, and commercial sway of Salafi Sunnism, the Maldive Islands fully developed their potentialities, which flourished during the 15th century, and they were able to resist the Portuguese intrusions of the following century. Stranded there in the early years of the 17th century, Pyrard de Laval wrote an account of his stay and gave minute descriptions of lagoon and pelagic fishing techniques, related industries, and economic and commercial practices. This socio-economy, unique because of its coherence based on marine life, was dismanteled in the 19th century by the force of colonial imperialisms (demonetisation of the cowries, loss of political and commercial independence) and the constraints caused by the mutations of the industrial revolution (diversion followed by disappearance of the large sailing ships, industrialisation of the coir). The Maldive Islands had lived for one millenium by following a unique piscatorial way of life, associating a perfected art of navigation with the exhaustive exploitation of the sole resource of the islands, the coconut tree, and of the infinite variety of products of coral reef and nearby ocean.