Book Review: Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing – Scott Laderman

Ford, G. (2015). Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing by Scott Laderman, Asian Review of Books, 22 October.

This short book is no definitive political history of surfing—or surfers—but rather one focusing on four particular episodes in surfing history. These are the initial suppression of surfing in Hawaii as part of an attempt to empty Hawaiians of their culture so as to discipline them to field and factory within a framework of evangelical Christianity at its most puritanical—followed by surfing’s later resurrection to serve the needs of the nascent tourist industry selling Hawaiian exotic exceptionalism.

The discovery of Indonesia’s breaks and waves—particularly Kuta beach on Bali—and then those on the shores of South Africa with the taint of mass murder and apartheid followed, all capped off by surfing’s industrialization by the multi-national corporations that created a market for surfing fashion among adolescents many of whom had never seen the sea let alone rode a wave.

Surfing, with its scantily clad practitioners, both male and female, and elements of sexual courtship, horrified the proponents of “the new civilization” in Hawaii. The Christian missionaries taught that wave riders were exchanging immediate gratification for eternal damnation.

But religious prohibition was probably less compelling a motive than the alienation of labour as the Hawaiian population crashed from 800,000 when Cook arrived to 40,000 by 1890 as disease and death, alcohol and poverty wreaked their toll. The number of Hawaiian surfers dropped precipitously, even if the pastime never quite died out. Following annexation in 1898, US colonists saw the lure of the exotic as an opportunity to attract both tourists and white folks. Surfing sold the archipelago as a safe American retreat not only to visit but to live: the “white population so badly needed” arrived as immigrants and settlers to take over the running of the islands from the feckless natives: like the American Indians, Hawaiians were by definition racial inferiors The natives were allowed to teach the sport but were strictly excluded from its institutions. In 1908, Alexander Ford founded the Outrigger Canoe Club on Waikiki as an exclusively white club appropriating surfing for the “haole” elite. Surfing became a part of Empire as American as apple pie.

It was American surfing that started a cultural colonization. The age of surfing exploration began in the sixties. The decade 1970-80 was the golden age of Indonesian surfing as Bali took off as a tourist paradise emerging as the premier destination for thousands of young men finding “some of the best surf outside of Hawaii.” The Balinese were just quaint naive natives ministering to their needs. Yet by the mid-seventies, Bali was losing its allure: it was just too crowded, the food was poor and the beggars were worse than Tijuana. But there was no hint then that Indonesia’s blood spattered Government might be a problem. In 1965, it had killed a million people associated with the Indonesian Communist Party, nailing the “genitalia of male communists to shop fronts.” On Bali, the “smiling children” had been involved in the death of eighty thousand fellow islanders where the populations of whole villages were executed and where “the rivers literally ran with blood and the graveyards overflowed.” Surfing in the seventies demanded serious ignorance.

It was a decade later in South Africa that surfing discovered it was political. Here the issue was black and white with apartheid and surfing increasingly entangled in the wider sporting boycott of South Africa initiated by the United Nations. Previously in the mid-sixties, Surfer magazine published a photo of a young black man standing on the water’s edge fully-dressed while in the background were several white surfers walking with their boards under the caption, “Durban’s beaches are segregated so this native youngster can’t join these three surfers”. The response—with some exceptions—was that sport and politics don’t mix, which was a bit rich coming from South Africa,  one of the only countries where the Government was providing heavy subsidies to both its surfers and the professional surf circuits legs.

But the times they were a-changing and by 1985 Tom Carroll, immediately after securing his second world championship, announced he would boycott the South African leg of the next World Tour. Not without cause: in 1989, the Durban leg of the South African Surfing Union national championship precipitated a “racial surf war” as groups of white teenagers racially abused the colored and Indian surfers. Carroll was joined by many—but not all—of his co-competitors as the screws tightened on South Africa. Surfing never led, rather it followed, but it and the surfers concerned are worthy of an honorary mention for their role in the South Africa sports boycott.

Why was South Africa different from Indonesia? The key differences were domestic and international. The Civil Rights Movement in the US was challenging black discrimination at home while the international mobilization against South Africa gave surfers little place to hide. Nobody in the US was leading campaigns against Indonesia’s pogrom against its communists, nor was the regime being treated as a pariah by the world even if tens of thousands of survivors were still rotting in jails and prison camps.

By the late ’80s, surfing was big money. The very existence of the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association founded in 1989 whose largest member was by 2010 a $2 billion multinational conglomerate says it all. This political battle was between these endemics and the non-endemics from Nike and the like of the sports industry.

Frankly, it’s difficult to share the author’s enthusiasm for the battle between two sets of sports clothing and equipment behemoths one of whose origins lay in surfing and one in other sports. The “outsiders” bought the “insiders” for “beach cred”. One company, Hollister, cut to the chase and manufactured rather than bought authenticity. It was far cheaper. They fabricated their history and outsold Billabong Australia’s billion dollar company without sponsoring a single surfer or contest. Yet all sold the idea of surfing as edgy and rebellious. By then their customers were neither.

Empire of Waves is well-written and engaging even as it is exhaustingly annotated, with 63 pages of notes for 164 pages of text.

One would have welcomed a longer book dealing with some of the issues touched on here only in passing. The claim in Vietnam that “Charlie don’t surf”, the back story to the iconic surfing film North Shore (1987) where the local Hawaii surfers had formed the Hui O He’e Nalu (Club of Wave Sliders) to fight the colonization of the North Shore by both endemic and non-endemic corporations. Their Da Hui clothing brand was in Hawaii for a time as edgy and rebellious as it got. Surfing4Peace and The Gaza Surfer Girl Project equally leave one wanting more, let alone the unmentioned UK-based Surfers Against Sewage whose exploits gave the EU “The Bathing Water Directive”.

They all deserve their own Scott Ladermans.