After having just completed another article relating to the development of scientific communication networks, I feel like I have expanded my understanding of the inherent communicative powers of information/knowledge. Unfortunately, I am still faced with the unwavering issue of how to apply the model of “the medium is the message” (and Secord’s advancement that “the message is the medium”) to my particular project topic of indentured servitude in and around the Indian Ocean (both colonized Africans and Southern Asians)- still feel like this could be narrowed to one region -. Specifically, to what extent the transfer of knowledge from a multitude of areas/localities to other destinations was employed by the actors within networks is of particular concern. In essence, I am still grappling with the issue of agency and, more specifically, how networks disseminated knowledge across regions.
Although I was initially of the opinion that the best course of action was to look at networks as modes of communication that could be utilized by non-human and human actors, Secord’s discussion of actor-network theory has given me ample reason to re-evaluate. Chiefly, I want to approach from a different angle by tracing knowledge/information’s inherent ability to create transnational networks. Simply, it appears that the way to understand whether or not indentured migration was strategic (both for the workers and for the employers) is to look at how knowledge occurred and arose out of established connections (i.e. ‘weak’ ties). This would hopefully produce a more encompassing view of migration that would place the information itself at the centre of determining migrant networks’ ‘strategy’, or conversely, ‘un-strategy’. It would appear that, by this, I am turning towards a view of exclusion with respect to actors’ own agency. Of course, I do not want to imply that workers and their employers were being controlled and directed in transnational networks by the very information it was disseminating.
Rather, I want to establish a common theme throughout my essay that positions the transfer of knowledge in terms of a teetering balance. The more localized and specific a network is analysed, the harder it will be to see the agency employed the large network, as well as the larger networks ‘strategic’, or ‘un-strategic’, communication (communication is inexorably linked with migration because indentured migrants had, at least, a choice whether or not to join). Conversely, the larger the scope of analysis becomes (macro-ized?!), the more difficult it will be to observe the levels of agency that employers and migrants had at their disposal. It will, thus, be imperative to constantly re-inforce Secord’s notion of the inherent communication power of things-in-motion and how they affected agency within the indentured migrant networks. Moreover, I believe it will be imperative to my argument to be able to observe whether or not influences on communication/migration networks impacted the ability of actors within these networks to employ strategy – essentially, ability to choose/or agency of an actor.
Moving on a bit, I have elected to revise my initial question (assuming Dr. Struck you are ok with it – and assuming you will be ok with future refinements) to this:
To what extent was indentured migration of the Indian Ocean ‘strategic’ for actors within (potentially British, though I am unsure ) colonial transnational networks?
Having just written my short essay on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and given that in our next class we will be discussing actors and networks, I thought it would be useful for us all if I wrote guide on some of the basics of ANT.
Firstly, what even is ANT? Its intended purpose is to look at the connections between different actor nodes and explain how the actions of one actor is the result of all the other actors connected to it. In other words, every event is in some way caused by connections between actors.
Now, it is important to note that an actor can be literally anything! Both humans and nonhumans are actors. Moreover, the reason why ANT classes anything as an actor has to do with its redefinition of ‘agency’. For ANT, agency does not mean that an actor has the ability to act out of free-will as we are accustomed to thinking. Rather, it means that an actor simply has an effect on another actor.[1]
Let me give you an example of why it is helpful to understand nonhumans as possessing agency in networks. Say Bernhard wakes up one morning in a bad mood. He is in such a bad mood that when he gets in the car to drive to St Katherine’s Lodge for work that he does not want to fasten his seatbelt in the car. As he starts the car and then begins driving, the seatbelt alarm sounds. For the first minute or so, he does carries on driving with the alarm sounding. But then, after a little while he starts getting so annoyed by the alarm that he pulls over to fasten his seatbelt and carry on driving in peace. Thus, the seatbelt alarm exercised agency that influenced Bernhard (our actor) to obey the law. What is important to note here is that if a human actor (say a policeman) pulled Bernhard over to tell him to put his seatbelt on, the result would have been exactly the same as our nonhuman seatbelt alarm. This means that both humans and nonhumans exercise very similar agency.[2]
Now, if you think back to our class on micro and macro history, you will remember how we discussed that the two do not need to be separate. Micro history is intertwined with macro history. Well, ANT provides a more advanced framework for understanding this idea. If we think of everything existing in terms of networks of actors (see the right hand diagram below), then ideas of scale do not matter. Even if ‘actor a’ is more ‘macro’ than ‘actor b’, there is no reason why ‘actor b’ can have just as much effect on the network as ‘actor a’. Therefore, ANT does away with the diagram on the left where ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ are viewed as having to be studies separately as they are unconnected.
On the left is the micro-macro distinction. On the right is the method proposed by ANT.
Another important aspect of ANT is that it removes the distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. This is along the lines of what we have already discussed this semester, namely that networks of actors can transcend national boundaries, thus enabling us to conduct a transnational history. This involves thinking in terms of the right hand diagram below and not the left hand diagram. National history writes history in terms of everything inside the nation being important and everything outside the nation being almost irrelevant. Both transnational history argues more that what is important is the networks of individuals that go beyond the national borders.
On the left is the idea that ‘inside’ is distinct from ‘outside’ (like national history). On the right is the idea that there are networks that transcend borders.
ANT takes this one step further by showing that everything that exists is found within networks, and that anything outside of the networks does not exist at all from the perspective of the network. Thus, in order for an actor to be important, it must be connected to the network itself. Actor-Network theorists (Ants) such as Bruno Latour and John Law take this perspective to its extreme by adopting a postmodernist view to this. For example, Latour argues that before Galileo discovered the phases of Venus, they did not actually exist at all![5] Galileo’s understanding of Venus from his (relativist) perspective was the result of connections between actors and cannot be said to resemble ‘truth’. Thus, everything that we see around us is the result of connections of actors and cannot be said to actually be objectively ‘true’.
Now, I appreciate that the last paragraph may have been quite complex, so let me slow things down a bit by giving us some more basic terminology.
One important concept to understand is that of ‘black-boxing’. Basically, this just means that networks should be kept simple. There are so many different actors and so much complexity within actors that it would simply be impossible to understand everything and come up with a comprehensive network analysis. Because of this, Ants ‘black box’ this complexity. If we go back to our seatbelt example and wanted to construct the network, it would take hours to explain all the connections within the seatbelt technology and how all the electronics and mechanics of it works. Instead, it is much easier to assume that the technology works and ‘black box’ all this complexity so we can get on with understanding the most important connections within the network.[6]
You also need to know a little bit about the concept of ‘translation’ too. Let me illustrate this with an example, as this will make it easier to understand. The reason why we are all here doing this transnational history module is because Bernhard thought up of the idea a few years ago. In this sense, he is a more important actor than us because he is responsible for assembling all other actors such as students into the network. In other words, Bernhard as ‘translated’ us all into the ‘transnational history at St Andrews’ network because he is the actor with which this network revolves around. The same goes for the nonhuman actors in this network. In week 6 when we gave presentations, we as students, ‘translated’ other nonhuman actors into the network, for example the faulty projector became an important actor in the network, as did Microsoft PowerPoint. Simply put, ‘translation’ means that one actor brings other actors into a network through their agency.
I hope to have made some of the concepts of ANT a bit clearer, though there is far more complexity to this. Hopefully this will help some of you out with the reading for next class!
[1] Bruno Latour, ‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’ in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, 1992), p. 151.
[5] Bruno Latour, Aramis: or the love of technology (Cambridge, 1996), p. 23.
[6] Jonathan Murdoch, ‘Inhuman/Nonhuman/Human: Actor-Network Theory and the Prospects for a Nondualistic and Symmetrical Perspective on Nature and Society’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15 (1997), pp. 747-749.
Wow I haven’t written in a while now. It’s been a hectic few weeks with the end to this half of the semester, but I wanted to get a post in before Spring Break just to keep things ticking over.
Having just finished my short essay, I think I’m now becoming more certain than ever about the transnational nature of art. And within the context of that, I think there is scope for us to redefine what we consider a national culture.
I know it’s a bit of a jump, but stay with me.
On Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare, right. A national icon, quintessentially British. And Romeo and Juliet. One of his most famous plays, possibly the world’s most famous love story. Also quintessentially British. So what would you say if I told you that an Italian author called Luigi da Porto wrote a story called Romeo e Giulietta about fifty years before Shakespeare – and the storylines are pretty much the same. Shakespeare adds some embellishments, fleshes out a few of the characters (like Mercutio and Tybalt), but overall, it’s the same piece.
Interesting that. Other sources for the play include Masuccio Salernitano’s Mariotto e Ganozza and even the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid’s metamorphoses. All of a sudden, this quintessentially British play is looking a lot less British and a lot more Italian.
Stories and creativity are not tied down by national boundaries – they are fluid, and can easily move across these boundaries as and when. Of course, a piece of work can have national significance, but it is simply impossible to accredit it or to pin it down within the boundaries of any particular nation.
Not so British NOW are you big Shakey?
On National Culture
I think that this point is very important – when dissecting aspects of national culture, the importance of transnational influences immediately becomes very clear. Without the transnational influences that Shakespeare had access to, living in sixteenth century London, his cannon of work may have been very different (and dare I say, a lot more limited). Shakespeare’s works have been translated in to over 100 languages, and are performed worldwide, which means it’s probably fair to say that his work has global significance. It was influenced by transnational exchanges, and it instigates transnational exchanges as well.
In order to keep a national culture moving forward, it is important to encourage engagement with transnational influences, both for the good of the nation, and in some way for the good of the whole world.
With Brexiteers trumpeting the UK’s removal from planet earth, I think that the UK is falling in to a trap – a misunderstanding – that British culture is somewhat autarkical. That what makes Britain great comes from within, and that Britain doesn’t need external influences. People say ‘we are the nation of The Beatles, of Isaac Newton, of Shakespeare. These things all show the power of our amazing nation. We don’t need to be outward facing because we have these things within us.’
What we must always remember is the very reason that these things are within us – because we faced outwards.
Class on Tuesday reminded me that I had a blogpost to write for this week, but inspiration did not hit till Wednesday. I have to admit, working on QGIS yesterday proved more challenging than I thought it would be, coming from somebody who’s worked with Photoshop since Grade 7. However, this was partially because I hadn’t had a chance to toggle around with the application beforehand, and partially due to the fact that I hadn’t worked with the application before. Both my flatmates are geography students, and have constantly complained about the difficulties of working with the application, and although I understand their struggles now, I decided to take it up as a challenge.
This is not a conventional blogpost about the readings I’ve done for the week, but is more related to how I’ve been using the QGIS application and what I’ve learnt from it so far.
My (unsuccessful) attempt at formulating a train-route in India- but at least I figured out how to label a city!
Thinking about my own project for agricultural circulation under the East India Company, I would need to consider mapping of transportation routes in India. I toggled around on the application, trying to note how easy it would be to map a version of India for myself instead of working on the csv files we were provided with last class. I find it interesting that the GIS data for India includes information such as transport hubs, streetlights, train stations, etc. This would make it easier for me to conduct my research in the long run. Of course, I would have to take into account just how recent each transportation hub was, but there were train stations and railways that were implemented in India in the 1850s which are still very much active today. Examining at major agrarian regions in India on a map might also be a visual way to depict the importance of agriculture to India at the time of the East India Company, specifically. This would involve investigating tea estates in the South of India, specifically in regions in Tamil Nadu, through Coimbatore and up into the Nilgiris. I would hope to perhaps find the percentage of the population working on agriculture in each state, to make a point about how the EIC exploited the Indians for their resources. I could also consider at the production of opium (for Chinese exports) in my project, and could map regions where poppy was cultivated and used, and track the social consequences of getting villagers addicted to the drug.
There’s so much that can potentially be portrayed through this application, especially for my long project. I could simplify part of my essay by portraying the major agrarian farming areas in the country, investigate at communication networks, and even examineship routes away from India and to Britain, further considering re-export away from the UK and towards the rest of the world. I found that the QGIS application might therefore be elemental to my long project due at the end of the semester.
While working on QGIS, I had one primary challenge. The first being creating a route for my map. Of course, the route was just made up, to see what I could come up with, but I noticed that the new update of QGIS does not include the Point2One plug-in. I did try to download it, but because QGIS 3.0 is so new, I don’t think a new download feature has arrived yet. For this purpose, I was unable to find a way to create the train route I had in mind, from the map above. But on that note, I came to the conclusion that QGIS is rather logical in its usage of layers, and mostly anything can be found on the Earth Natural Database. While my primary goal was to find out how to make a route, I came out of this with a better knowledge of QGIS and how to use the layers instead, which I definitely need for my long project, and craving an opportunity to spend hours on end on this application.
It should be noted that this blog post will not discuss the meaning of this title statement (or distinction); but rather its usages ….for me lol.
When I first approached the topic of control over information networks, I encountered a problem with the specific locations in which a cluster of communication exchanges intersected. To put it plainly, there was a noticeable issue with pin-pointing the particular centres of exchange of information in which agents of both ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ ties were formed and operated. David Lux’s foray into communication networks and their varying methods for enhancing or restricting the flow of information was particularly helpful in this regard. When he analyses the centres of communication exchange, he utilizes the distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ personal ties to explain the foundation of information controls and their respective aims.
‘Weak’ ties (acquaintances, associates; often from different social strata) and ‘strong’ ties (relatives, family friends) are the two components of information exchange networks. However, Lux elucidates that with careful examination of the ‘weak’ ties, which ultimately created and upheld long-distance networks of communication, it is possible to explain the areas in which governmental control (or control by a stately authority) was solely dependent on and at the mercy of ‘tacit’ alliances. This will be a significant focus of my essay on the nature and extent of authoritative control over information, either by transnational entities or nation-states. Moreover, my attempts to explain the Royal Society of London’s etc. reliance on ‘weak’ bonds between a multitude of social groups will be crucial in order to analyse the ‘real’ effect that government could have on communication networks. Committees erected by the Royal Society of London and their apparent efforts to find some form of control by formulating a report for travelling Britain’s to fill in.
In short, I will use the example of less policy-driven initiatives (those by RSoL committies) on the part of governments/state authorities to analyse the multitude of methods employed towards ‘policing’ (not sure if right word) transnational exchanges. Nevertheless, this explanation of the more ‘un-constructed’ controls utilized by state authorities is not the basis of my essay. Rather, in my attempt to explain that controls on communication were evident and distinguishable (instructed vs advised), I will use Lux’s distinction to explain that characterising the types of control is not as easy as merely establishing they existed (no duh). Though, the clarification between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ is one separates easily-restricted information networks from those that operate with effectively no obstructions. In conjunction with Lux’s analysis, the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ distinction will also provide a point of comparison when studying the different reasons for the success of ‘weak’ ties and the failure of ‘strong’ ones. However, unlike ‘weak’ vs ‘strong’, push vs pull (obviously very different in terms of direction) has a particularly restrictive form of analysis. These distinctions warrant further cross-examination and, while it may produce further confusion, additional distinctions (strategic vs un-strategic) might well provide an interesting take – although I am not optimistic.
Essentially, ‘weak’ vs ‘strong’ ties will form the basis of analysis, which will be expanded upon by analysis of strong and weak ties amongst civilian agents and amongst stately entities. This is the real scope of my essay and I am hopeful that this analysis will prove essential to understanding the nature and extent of control exerted by varying actors in communication networks.
Scholarly work on transnational history has often focused on a Eurocentric standpoint, and looked at how and why Europe especially fits into the transnational mold. Europe has undergone a series of border realignment, and since the 18th century there has been a constant undercurrent of nationalism. Therefore, Europe has experienced an inherently transnational past. The unification of Germany occurred in 1871, similarly, the unification of Italy which began in 1815, was completed in 1871. The rise of nationalism in Europe is a transnational force, as a political ideology it permeates frontiers, and culturally it passes through the links and flows of borderland regions. Furthermore, as Patel argues the development of the enlightenment, and the industrial revolution ‘has a strongly European accent and cannot be fully understood from a purely local or national perspective’. Events such as the enlightenment transcended national boundaries, and resultantly has to be studied transnationally in order to gain a full appreciation of the topic.
Another issue which become prevalent after studying Europe’s place in a transnational light, is the small problem of defining Europe. It has often been argued that Europe, and borders in general, are merely a social construct. As has been demonstrated, Europe’s history has changed dramatically over its lifetime, and what was once defined as ‘European’ may now be irrelevant. For example, is what constitutes as European simply a geographical boundary, or does it extend to political, cultural and economic too? In reality, most historians would suggest it to be an amalgamation of all these factors, however historically there has been some debate over the legitimacy of the United Kingdom and Iceland being in Europe because of the geographical exclusion. Patel, goes further to elaborate on the idea that Europe is a social construct, and suggests that because Europe was created by a series of unifications and treaties, it is an artificial boundary and thus has been constructed over time.
Further to Europe being viewed as transnational internally, it must not be forgotten that Europe has had a number of global influences over its lifetime. Mass migration to Europe has occurred in waves, with the most notable being that after the 1985 Schengen agreement. However, immigration dates back to the slave trade with millions of slaves being transported across the Atlantic and into Europe. The new demographic which came to settle in Europe has undoubtedly left their mark on what is European, and influenced culture, politics and art in their wake.
This blog post has not been written to advocate transnational history as a European phenomenon. Instead, it highlights Europe’s place within the transnational school and demonstrates that Europe has an inherently transnational past.
There are few instances of networks more clearly transnational than those in which human traffickers operate. Deliberately operating beyond the confines of state laws by definition, human traffickers and their victims clandestinely navigate boundaries.
For this reason, the proposed project will encounter many challenges. As Louise Shelley, among the world’s current leading academic experts writing on human trafficking, notes, although the ‘phenomena of human smuggling and trafficking is clearly delineated legally’ –by the UN at the 2000 Palermo Convention, in a definition of universal temporal utility despite its date of origin— ‘in reality the situation is often not as clear.’[1] The networks through which human trafficking has historically occurred are, though wide-spread, typically rudimentary: large-scale organised crime has played a role in its occurrence, but not to such an extent that paper trails are commonplace.
Equally, although trafficked individuals very seldom remained within their original country (and therefore almost always crossed borders), the illicit nature of the crossings, in conjunction with the fact that those expected to police the borders are frequently bribed by the traffickers, ensures that all too often, a paucity of concrete records renders the job of the historian of human trafficking a relatively thankless task.
For this reason the proposed project will not seek, unless unexpectedly developed resources are discovered, to attempt micro-histories of transnational actors within the trafficking networks, or to attempt to significantly delineate between networks or aspects of networks in order to historicise them individually. Instead, the project proposes to approach the topic from a macro perspective, examining the ways in which the interactions of different trafficking networks, NGOs, governments, and socio-economic-political attitudes and events affected the flow of individuals through the networks and across borders.
Due to the fact that human trafficking has only become popular to study in approximately the past twenty years, with an emphasis within existing literature upon relatively recent history, and that furthermore the proliferation of autonomous nation-states necessary for a truly transnational rather than intra-organisational approach occurred only following global decolonisation in the latter half of the 20th century, it is to that time period (approx. 1940- 2000) that the project will give most attention. The context of the studied societies, and the networks left in place or in flux following the withdrawal of the colonising powers, will, however, be of relevance and briefly examined.
The project is expected to focus primarily on Central and Northern Africa, but with comparisons also to be made between human trafficking networks in this region and those of South-East Asia and Eastern Europe. The Middle East, as an area on which few sources (particularly Anglophone) exist, is expected to have a minimal presence; America will not be addressed.
Attempting to look beyond the reductive analysis of ‘pull-factors’ and ‘push-factors’ in regions of complexity and impermanent relationships, the project will consider the conditions in which human trafficking became possible at both ‘ends’ of trafficking routes; and, to the extent that it is possible, the experiences of those involved.
It is expected that the project shall argue that a combination of wide structural components was necessary to the creation of the industry (multiple borders sufficiently open; easily accessible transport; increased communications possible between members of the trafficking networks), in conjunction with a number of proximate components (poor economic outlook in trafficking epicentres; relatively limited education of trafficked individuals; a demand for labour and/or sex workers in the ‘receiving’ locations).
The facets and factors to be considered in the creation of a coherent narrative will be numerous, and the argument can be expected to evolve considerably. The period-specific questions that this project initially proposes to investigate, however, are:
‘How did human trafficking networks use their transnationality to achieve their ends?’
‘To what extent did the increasing prevalence of globalised industry and global connectivity create a more porous migration system?’
‘How did transnational anti-trafficking actors and networks a) develop and b) seek to combat clandestine movements?’
By nature of its focus, this project will be obligated to be multi-disciplinary. Much of the relevant material will be contained in, among other sources, NGO workers’ notes, testimonies or diaries of those trafficked, minutes of UN or governmental meetings, laws, and police records. Approaches used more frequently by scholars of anthropology, sociology or international relations will therefore be appropriate to allow a fully developed historicisation. Although the field is young, several scholars and individuals are of prominent initial interest. Among them are Kevin Bales; Louise Shelley; J.O’C. Davidson; A.P. Jakobi; and David Kyle. The records of the UN, the IJM, and similar organisations are also expected to be drawn upon.
Transnational history is a very young sub-discipline; the study of 20th-century human trafficking, though recently a relative cause célèbre, is of roughly the same age. The study of human trafficking networks is not only firmly within the remit of the transnational historian’s interests (to the extent, arguably, that a holistic approach to it can be undertaken by the transnational historian alone), but is also, by virtue of its youth as an academic field, one to which almost any study will bring something new. The proposed project is thus one of significant interest.
[1] Louise Shelley, Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective, (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p. 11
When Giovanni Gozzini utilized the phrase ‘strategic migration’ to describe the exploits and agency of migrant workers in the 19th and 20th centuries, he knowingly confronted a long-standing historiographical viewpoint on the subject of Indenture. As Hugh Tinker’s A New System of Slavery illustrates, historical writing on the emigration of labour often approaches the topic of indenture in a similar fashion to how historians study slavery. For Tinker’s ilk, Indenture was seen as a legal continuation of slavery following its abolition in the British Empire in 1834. As such, Gozzini’s ‘strategic migration’, and all its signifiers, will become a determining factor when analysing whether or not certain migrants had agency and choice within the indentured labour networks.[1] Moreover, a timeframe of nearly 100 years will allow thorough investigation into the nature of indentured labour on the west and east coasts of Africa, stretching as far east as the Indian Ocean and back across to the West Indies. In particular, this investigation into British indentured labour networks will attempt to explain the real levels of agency that indentured labourers held as well as the driving forces behind worker migration, which ‘strategic migration’ opponents would claim were primarily negative.
These makeshift boundaries, or networks of indentured migration, will provide ample evidence as to whether worker migration was determined by ‘push’ (economic hardship, little employment opportunities) or ‘pull’ (shortage of labour elsewhere, higher wages) factors. This, like ‘strategic’ vs ‘un-strategic’ migration, is a distinction that will be helpful when determining the true nature of migrant workers’ actions and mentalities. Employers’ ‘strategic’ actions will also be examined in the light of the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ dynamic that drove migrant labour. Signifiers of ‘strategic migration’, including high numbers of single males, will be supported by records of dis-embarkation at particular port cities such as the Report of the Assam Labour Enquiry Committeee (Calcutta, 1906).[2] Further, rates of repatriation will reveal the obstacles to ‘remigration’ for indentured migrants in their given migrant network; ‘un-strategic’ migration has several developed arguments. It should be noted that repatriation was experienced and treated differently by each employer in their particular indenture network. This will be another point of contention in my analysis and, thus, will have the potential to skew my conclusions. This is why secondary works on migration systems will be crucial as they encompass a wide-range of historiographical viewpoints: from Brij Lal’s assessment of indentured labour’s stark contrast to slavery to Tinker’s conclusion that they are one and the same.
Besides utilizing an extensive bibliography, the aim of this indentured labour research will also be to explain, through mapping, why certain areas saw subjectively better (fulfilled promises of healthcare, accommodation, and wages) – in the eyes of the migrants – migrant experiences. With the help of network maps, it will also be possible to explain why rates of repatriation differed according to the place of embarkation and disembarkation. In contrast, analysis from a micro level will inform us of the conditions experienced by indentured workers and provide insight into worker mentality in a certain locale. In particular, efforts have already and will continue to be made to attain Consul Müller’s correspondence with English and German representatives during the worker exchange between German South-West Africa and British South Africa. Macro-level sources will also be referenced as with the statistics for levels of black migration throughout Africa during the gold rush of the 20th century.
Problems are not ubiquitous, as ample evidence and reporting on indenture exists (especially on a macro level). Yet, notable issues arise with the analysis of workers’ mentalities as well as their initial aspirations for emigrating to find employment. Plainly, did indentured servants and migrant workers understand the difficulties they were going to face and was an areas rate of repatriation dependent on the types of people who worked there and where they came from? Moreover, the ‘strategic’ aspect of my question will focus on whether indentured labour was a necessity, due to negative ‘push’ factors, or was it a choice that was enticed by positive ‘pull’ factors (‘push’ and ‘pull’ don’t always correlate to negative and positive, respectively).
In essence, the aim of this project will be to determine the nature of indentured labour and the processes (both macro and micro) behind it which led to a widely varied and misunderstood cluster of migrant worker networks. Even further, mapping and contemporary accounts should shed light as to whether indentured labour can really be distinguished from slavery by the terms ‘strategic’ and ‘un-strategic’.
[1] Giovanni Gozzini, “The Global System of International Migrations, 1900 and 2000: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Global History 1, no. 3 (November 2006) p. 324.
[2] Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920 (London, 1974) p. 50.
On 31 December 1600, Queen Elizabeth I presented the East India Company [EIC] with the ability to monopolise English trade in the East Indies. The Company, incentivised by the abundance of resources in India, secured a strong foothold in a country that later became their most valuable colony. Through numerous campaigns, the British EIC was not only able to commission the circulation of Indian crops for re-export, but also facilitated the development of foreign technologies and led a world-wide discussion of revolutionary ideas.
The vast historiography of agricultural production during the years of the EIC tends to focus primarily on the political and economic consequences of the Company’s rule during Indian colonisation. The following project, scoped between the Battle of Plassey of 1757 and the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857-1858, will investigate the dynamism of transnational space with regards to agrarian development and circulation under the influence of the Company in India. Rather than approaching this project from simply a socio-economic or political viewpoint, this paper is unique in its examination of the transmission of agricultural practices, ideas and output from a cross-border perspective.
This paper intends to achieve three primary objectives. First, and perhaps most crucially, the development of new technologies and English efforts to improve means of cultivation in India allowed for the formation of transnational networks between the two aforementioned countries. The project will use cartographical evidence to track communication programs and transportation systems that enabled the spread of such technologies. Next, the paper will consider the crucial world-wide transmission of knowledge and ideas, emphasising a cross-border communication that was gradually developing over time. I will suggest that desires for political supremacy led to a scramble for more rapid agricultural-development. By establishing an understanding of differing historiographical approaches towards agrarian circulation, this project will finally investigate how the function of transnational space has progressed over time. This would be done by investigating globalisation and its effect on secondary literature regarding crop cultivation in India, or the consequence of climate change on cross-border circulation of crops in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Historical perspective on such topics tends to vary across borders, depicting discrepancies in the way scholars approach agricultural history today. This project will also analyse a darker aspect of British policy, particularly their agricultural reform which broke the back of the agrarian society of India. I will be using events such as the Bengal Famine of the 18th century to prove that Britain’s motivations were driven by self-interest. Events such as these would be placed into a transnational lens, as the project will investigate their global effects on the rest of the world.
There are numerous primary sources that prove invaluable to this project. Letters from Lord Grenville to King George III, along with court minutes written by the EIC provide evidence of Britain’s motivations behind introducing new crops and technologies to India. The writings of Arthur Young on agricultural development in Britain, particularly Political Arithmetic, is elemental in perceiving British attitudes towards technological advancements in India, and the circulation of agricultural knowledge that was transmitted from India to England, and vice versa. In regards to the EIC, there is an abundance of secondary literature that is also available. Roberto Davini’s “Bengali Raw Silk, the East India Company and the European Global Market” is insightful in its analysis regarding the transnationalism of technological advancement, through Davini’s thorough examination of the silk industry in India and the introduction of Piedmontese reeling technology. More niche books, such as “The Origin of “the Pusa Experiment”: The East India Company and Horse-Breeding in Bengal, 1793-1808”, introduced not simply a British development, but brought to India “the whole cultural and technological baggage of European civilisation as well [1].” More general readings on the Company, such as Tripta Desai’s “The East India Company From 1599-1857” are paramount for not only contextual knowledge, but also for a thorough comprehension of the relationship Britain held with foreign powers, thus assisting with the dispersion of knowledge that took place along with the trade of agricultural produce.
In addition to the written aspect, the project will include a mapping component to investigate transportation networks for crop and technological circulation from India and Britain, to demonstrate an increase in communicative technology during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With this in mind, this project will ultimately aspire to take a unique, more modern stance towards agricultural circulation during the prime years of the EIC, in what hopes to suggest that transnational space was vital in the Indian agrarian industry.
[1] Renata Kerkhoff. Kathinka. Colonising Plants in Bihar (1760-1950). (India, 2014). pp. 104-105
The border between the United States and Mexico, which spans approximately 3 million miles of land between the two nations, has been a topic of political, economic, and migratory tension which has been heightened significantly in the age of globalization. Historically, it has also represented and facilitated a myriad of significant transnational exchanges containing not only migrants, capital, goods, and labor, but concepts of identity and culture as well.
Many Mexican-Americans who reside in the United States identify as Chicano or Chicana. This chosen identifier and its cultural, political, and social significance has developed over time as the result of how Mexican-Americans experienced life in the United States. Chicanos have found that their national identity tends to take on an ambiguous form—north of the border, they are considered Mexican, but South of the border they find it difficult to incorporate themselves into the Mexican national identity due to their geographical and cultural “otherness”. Therefore, the Chicano identity has formed in a liminal space in which neither nation which is built into the Chicano identity actually identifies with it in return. While Chicanos live north of the border, the border seems in many ways to be inextricably linked to Chicano identity. This project seeks to historically locate the transnational exchanges inherently embedded into the Chicano identity, arguing that these exchanges can be found when scholars look at the border not simply in terms of its modern geographical and political significance, but as a circuit via which identity and culture are brought into and out of each nation, respectively.
Performing this study involves looking at a multiplicity of factors, guided by two central research questions:
How can taking a transnational approach to history inform scholars about migrant identity and culture—what do they bring with them, what do they add to their chosen destination?
What can history tell us about the Chicano people and their built and imagined communities?
In addition to these questions, there are several moments in the history of the border which create valuable starting points when approaching this project and the research required for it. These mainly consist of events that have facilitated an influx of migration across the border. When the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, the other side of the border symbolized safety for thousands of Mexican migrants.[1] As was a common global trend, World War I and World War II created a need for labor in participatory nations. For the United States, much of this labor came from Mexican migrants. For Mexican migrants, the need for labor in America created an opportunity to seek prosperity and job security. Along this trend, the Bracero Program drew migrant labor from Mexico into the U.S. in mass, amounting to approximately 5 million migrants.[2] Finally, in 1965, the Border Industrialization Program was launched. This was an attempt to industrialize the border, resulting in hundreds of emerging enterprises on the border which are subsidized by U.S. firms.[3] The industrialization of the border has facilitated further migration since.
These transnational moments in history incorporated more identities, more voices, and more communities into what it means to be Chicano. That is, what it means to have a liminal identity embedded within a transnational and migratory past. Exploring these moments of movement and exchange, tracing who these people were and where they went, and tracing how Chicano identity changes in structure and form along with transnational exchanges (via literature, political activism, etc.) may yield valuable insight into who these people are, how they relate to their home and concepts of homeland, and how they participate in their wider communities as a whole.
‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’
Let’s imagine that I go for a walk in Switzerland— in the easternmost part of the state, near the little-known town of Nauders. It’s slightly dark, I’m absent-minded, and in my extended perambulations I also happen to wander into not just Italy but also Lichtenstein. There are no borders marked, or none that I can see in the dark; it’s all under Schengen, and there are no police checks or fences; I’m mostly off-road anyway, and so there are no CCTV cameras to pick me up.
The respective states don’t know that I’ve encroached upon them; I myself don’t know that I’ve ever left Switzerland, and wouldn’t write it down even if I had; and so if one day a historian should set out to record my life, that little episode would quite probably never make it in.
Even if I was a compulsive diarist, and recorded my every move, and even if I made that same absent-minded walk, following the same route, every day for sixty years, the border-crossing nature of my walking career would never be placed by the historian into a narrative. There would be no evidence of it.
Now, let’s turn our attention to the real topic. In the example above, there is still, I suppose, a chance that somebody’s dashboard-cam, or amateur drone footage, or whatever else it might be might pick me up, leaving a trace. But that’s the 21st century. Transpose such movements back into the early 20th, let alone the 19th, and the disturbances left by them become far fewer. The state doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, and neither does the individual.
Let’s say, to add another layer of difficulty for the historian to a nut already difficult to crack, that the individual or individuals making such a journey are actively seeking to avoid being observed; and that moreover, rather than moving between Switzerland and Italy, historically well-regulated borders, they’re instead moving between, let us say, various decolonised nations in central Africa.
It’s my intention to write my project on human trafficking –the necessary conditions; the lived experiences of those involved; responses to it— in the early-to-mid-20th century. I had always expected this to be a somewhat difficult pool in which to fish, to invoke EH Carr. Patricia Clavin posits a vision of the world as a great hexagoned honey-comb, in which various actors are operating in the spaces in between the hexagons. Those who operate there, it turns out, frequently do so for a reason: they wish to remain undetected, and those who could seek to detect them are either unable to or do not desire to (bribery; incompetence; systemic apathy). The crowd goes mild. What a surprise.
That presents quite a conundrum to the historian. How do you historicise something deliberately unremarked at the time that it took place?- especially when it occurred in multiple locations, each of them with little interest in making records? With innovation- that’ll have to be the answer. It’s going to be a challenge, and it’ll require an approach that does more than the simple perusal of secondary works: this will have to be a project that dives into primary sources wholesale, and sources of a wide and varied nature.
After initially looking at the project proposal and the possible range of ideas I had for my final topic, I realized my main two ideas for the extended essay were actually closely related. First, I wanted to analyse the rates of repatriation for guest (temporary) workers that operated in migrant systems across the whole of the Atlantic. Second, I conceived of a topic that centred around the importance of transnational companies (EIC) of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and their employment of temporary workers and migrant labour.
As I examined these two topics closer, I began to take notice of the similarities between these two topics and how their points of comparison could translate into an expansive project idea. Primarily, I began to see the migration systems of the 19th century as the central period for analysis and, as such, would be wholly concerned with the world the British Empire. Giovanni Gozzini attempted to explain the reasons for the development of large migratory patterns across the Atlantic (and the Indian and Pacific as well). Where Gozzini peaked my interest was in his distinctions between indentured labour and slavery. As he demonstrates, the impetus to see indentured servitude as a continuity of slavery is unwarranted. Listed as the reasons were: “the migrants’ conscious and voluntary signing of long-term contracts hiring out their labour, to the relative improvement of sea-travel conditions”.(gozzini, p. 322) à This statement, supported by mortality rate’ss considerable decline over late 19th century, is testament to the establishment of firm migratory patterns over multiple generations. As Gozzini explains, an initial cluster of movements between two regions creates a self-sustaining network of information, money, and migration over a period of time.
Finally, this gets me to my [supposedly more] refined essay topic: Something along the lines of à How did long-established migrant systems affect guest worker’s desire to repatriate to their mother country (or remigrate)?
My initial thoughts on this question were primarily directed at the comparing the usage of indentured labour in the Americas compared to its usage on the opposite side of the Atlantic. As this will no doubt produce a confusing and vast picture of immigration in the Atlantic world, I will then attempt to look at the success of return migrant workers in the indentured servitude system to that of the guest worker system which developed later in the early 20th century. Of course, these two very similar programs will make finding clear breaks much more difficult. However, I believe it will be in my best interest to utilize the micro-analyses of multiple macro-connected countries and regions in order to paint a picture of how and why repatriated workers from India were so resolute in their plans to return home compared to those of Russia. Moreover, it will shed light on the failures of certain countries to support their own workforce as well as helping me determine the usage of strategic migrations vs (un-strategic?) or (out of desperation) migrations.
While doing reading for my upcoming project on the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, I was struck by something in particular: a glaring lack of information on the subject. One would think that there would be plenty of sources to be found on such a demographically significant period in history. In the singular year that the influenza raged worldwide, it infected 500 million people and killed between 50 and 100 million of them. The death toll, even at its most modest estimate, exceeds that of World War I (15.9 million) and is on par with that of World War II (50 to 80 million). No corner of the world was left untouched, whether it be the trenches of Europe, the Samoan islands, or even the arctic villages of northern Alaska. Hartford, Connecticut, where my parents work, was almost completely shut down.
In this university’s library, there are upwards of 100 books on World War I. There are under ten on the influenza, and even less are focused on the 1918 pandemic. These books, like those on the bubonic plague, are shelved in the medicine section. I then tried to research the pandemic by way the time period itself, not necessarily the disease. In a 600-plus page book literally titled 1918 (Gregory Dallas), the same year that three to five percent of the world’s population succumbed to influenza, the disease doesn’t even merit a full page. Why?
While searching the general disease section, I was struck by a passage from Andrew Nikiforuk’s The Fourth Horseman. Nikiforuk quotes Catholic philosopher Jacques Ellul’s depiction of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (from the Book of Revelations) as central to history itself: ‘“all history depends on them and there are only these forces in history.”’ Nikiforuk interprets the first horseman as representative of God; the second, as representative of war and power. The third and fourth are more sinister: the former represents famine, whereas the latter is both pestilence and death. Nikiforuk argues that it is the Fourth Horseman that is the most significant, citing the empires and armies flattened by disease and the changes in social attitudes and structures. He then points out the strange willingness of people to forget this: ‘…we don’t like to think that we are a part of history anymore, or that we are walking memories of past plagues.’ In short, those living today much prefer to think of plagues and epidemics as nasty relics – problems people faced only in the absence of modern medicine and cleanliness. Others have indirectly shared his view; Terence Ranger and Paul Slack, for example, note a predisposition for epidemiological history to be ‘Whiggish’ in nature in their Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence. Historians have had a history of portraying disease as something increasingly vanquished by modernization and therefore less relevant today.
This is exacerbated by the fact that disease is often very difficult to explain: the virus causing the 1918 pandemic, for example, was only discovered in 1995 and completely identified in 2005. Historians for most of the twentieth century, therefore, would have seen the pandemic as something unpleasant, unexplained, and irrelevant in a modernizing world. It’s not that there isn’t primary information on the flu – countries tend to be pretty good about tracking how many of their people are dying – but rather for a long time, it seems, nobody wanted to use it. While I don’t think this will hinder me too much on my project – in which I will (hopefully) track the disease’s progression along transportation networks – it is certainly striking and, I think, unjustified.
Sea of Poppies is a historical novel written by Amitav Ghosh, and is an intriguing study into opium trade, and how it affected the Indians who were involved. It also focuses on indentured servitude of Indians away from the subcontinent and towards islands such as Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad. The book is labelled under the Ibis Trilogy, named after the ship that transported groups of people away from the Indian subcontinent, and focuses on the East India Company and their cultivation of opium in India in order to profit from trade with China. In my study on the East India Company for my extended project, which will be looking at how the British utilised foreign relationships to benefit their association with India, this book seemed to crop up in numerous sources and I thought that it would be interesting to consider in a blog post.
“Opium Financed British Rule in India”, says Amitav Ghosh in an eyeopening interview with the BBC.
The book, crucial in our study of Indian history during the East India Company, is inherently transnational in nature. The Ibis, which is the ship that these many cultural groups meet to travel to Mauritius, becomes a transnational space that seems to cloud the definitive boundaries amongst the varied groups of people. The people who board the ship include an Indian female villager (who escaped from ‘sati’), A French woman, an African-American freedman, an Indian landowner and a half-Chinese convict. Paulette, the French woman, refuses her European heritage to embrace life as an outsider, a foreigner. She therefore disguises herself as a Brahmin, and establishes a connection with the other women on board. This demonstrates the fact that nations and borders did not necessarily play a significant role in the forging of alliances.
Ghosh, it is argued, uses untold stories: “The coolies who inspired ‘Sea of Poppies” didn’t have that power [to inscribe]… they didn’t leave diaries behind; after all, they couldn’t even write. So where does that leave those who would tell their stories? Ghosh is forced to imagine them, based on the limited sources available, but he does so with the instincts of an anthropologist more than a novelist…Ghosh obviously wants to make the novel a literary excavation, digging up the stories of people lost to history, but in the process his characters themselves often seem like artefacts.” While it is widely considered a novel, not a microhistory, it can be argued that this book is rather historically accurate in its approach to understanding the atmosphere around the major fictional characters. Ghosh, for example, “read the description of the great Sudder opium factory at Ghazipur…by the factory superintendent, JWS MacArthur,” and therefore “creates an encyclopaedia of early 19th century Indian food, servants, furniture, religious worship, etc.”
Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies
Photograph: Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies
In our readings a couple of weeks ago, we discussed Fernand Braudel’s comment on how an imagination is a historian’s most valuable tool. However, Ghosh is not a historian. To what extent can we treat his book like a microhistory? Can we treat this representation of coolies in rural India, and peasant workers who worked on opium farms as an accurate representation of the Company’s influence in the country? Personally, I find that this book is vital to my study of the East India Company, and approaches a rather dark subject within Indian history in an engaging and intriguing manner.
As I sit here contemplating my project proposal, I have come to wonder exactly what my specific 5000 word essay should be on? There are a number of avenues I would like to explore, and I have decided to settle on Africa. However, this hardly narrows down my search, as now I begin to question where should my focus lie.
While conducting my research I came across the Happy Valley Set in Kenya. A largely Aristocratic group of hedonists who lived in the Wanjohi Valley between the 1920s and 1940s. As I delve further into their adventures I find that the Happy Valley Set were entangled in a life of mischief and murder. One notable member of the group, Kiki Preston was named ‘the girl with the silver syringe’ because of her penchant for cocaine and heroin. Preston had numerous affairs with the British aristocracy, including Prince George, Duke of Kent, and was subsequently banned from meeting with him after she introduced him too to drugs.
I find the lives which the members of the Happy Valley Set to be particularly interesting. Yet for my project I would like to focus further on the wider picture of colonial settlement. The hedonism of the Happy Valley Set will be just one of the issues I will explore. Of particular interest to me is the interaction between the locals and the settlers, despite a largely negative picture being painted of the relationship, and the racism which ensued, my research last semester regarding Anglo-Indian relations revealed that a codependent relationship existed between the Indian employees and the British employers.
The British aristocracy is an interesting angle to take, their lives in Britain were structured by rigid formality, yet those who came to the colonial outposts of Africa seem to have let go of their inhibitions and taken to a life of hedonism. The impact this had on the legacy of the British is one I would like to look into further, and understand whether the British had an overall negative or positive impact on the country. It is easy, in hindsight, to look back and look at a society taken over single handily by European influence, but it is important to understand the benefits that empire had. The impact of women, and the lives which they led, such as that of Kiki Preston are biographies which I would like to look into. Perhaps then, my project will take on a micro-history approach…
The British in Africa is a lesser explored topic in colonial historiography. There has been a large focus on the Indian subcontinent, and the mark which the Empire has left. However, Africa too has a long history of colonization which has been slightly overlooked. It garnered much attention after the Scramble for Africa during the late 19th century, but in my opinion has been largely overshadowed by the British in India.
My essay has not been sufficiently narrowed down by my research stated above. I still need to condense it down in a chronological order, and formulate a question. Although, the benefit the extended project has given me is the freedom to conduct my own research and formulate my own argument.
