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Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Political History of Surfing

1·How Surfing Became American: The Imperial Roots of Modern Surf Culture

2·A World Made Safe for Discovery: Travel, Cultural Diplomacy, and the Politics of Surf Exploration

3·Paradise Found: The Discovery of Indonesia and the Surfing Imagination

4·When Surfing Discovered It Was Political: Confronting South African Apartheid

5·Industrial Surfing: The Commodification of Experience

Epilogue: A New Millennium

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

I had the privilege of growing up near the beach in California. I learned to surf in Santa Monica, where I was born, and spent countless hours chasing waves up and down the coast. After high school I moved north, enjoying a couple of years in Santa Cruz before leaving for the Bay Area, where I spent much of my free time surfing at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I now live about as far from the ocean as one can live in the United States. Yet I still regularly surf. As ridiculous as it may sound, my adopted hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, enjoys probably the best waves in the Midwest. It may be colder, less consistent, and smaller than California, but I still find the pleasure and solace in Lake Superior that I found in my younger years in the Pacific. Surfing, in other words, has been important to me for the better part of my life. As has history. I first consciously began to conceptualize Empire in Waves in 1993, when, as a university student, I spent the summer as an editorial intern at Orange County–based Surfer magazine. It was a tough commute from L.A., particularly when waiting tables at night, but what an experience. I worked with great people, joined the editors for periodic surf breaks, and claimed my first publication—a brief article on a Pearl Jam benefit for Aaron Ahearn, a young surfer and sailor in the U.S. Navy who was disciplined for going AWOL and blowing the whistle on the Navy’s practice of dumping garbage offshore. I was also, at that time, becoming increasingly active in human rights issues. I soon found myself presented with an intellectual conundrum. As an activist I knew a fair bit about Indonesia and its occupation of East Timor. As a surfer I knew a lot about Indonesia but nothing about the occupation of East Timor. Why? My attempt to answer that question represents the origins of this book.