Rethinking Space and Power in East Asia: Digital Approaches to the History of Infrastructure

Abstract

In this report we briefly introduce the rationale behind a pilot project that is meant to serve as a test case for the feasibility of a longue-durée historical investigation of large-scale material infrastructures. The larger project is aimed at a critical analysis of how large-scale infrastructures such as roads, city walls, and bridges have contributed to regional and empire-wide integration, but equally why and how processes of integration regularly broke down, and how large-scale infrastructure projects contributed to countervailing trends including local tension, local autonomy, and cross-border regional formations.