Ghosts in the Machine: Technology and Imperialism in Maritime Asia
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Edyta Roszko
In this talk, Eric Tagliacozzo focuses on three moments when technology became crucial in “wiring” maritime Asia into larger landscapes of modernity and colonization.
First, he examines the laying of telegraphs across Indochina’s coasts en route to China, as the French started to plant flags in this part of the world. Second, he looks at the notion of building a canal across the Isthmus of Kra, in what is today southern Thailand, and what was then the semi-independent kingdom of Siam. Finally, he analyses the spread of lighthouses as Foucauldian instruments of coercion in the Anglo-Dutch sphere of Insular Southeast Asia, in land-and seascapes that currently comprise Malaysia and Indonesia.
Tagliacozzo argues that all of these Asian processes were inter-related, and that they show in regional miniature the shadow and shape of larger forces that were then sweeping the globe.
Edyta Roszko will chair the session and together with James D. Sidaway provide comments to Tagliacozzo’s presentation.
A light lunch will be served.
The event is organised by the research project Transoceanic Fishers: Multiple Mobilises in and out of the South China Sea, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Research Professor Edyta Roszko.
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