Abstract:
Over the nineteenth century, England and Portugal contested the possession of Delagoa Bay in south eastern Africa. Using documents from a British hydrographical survey mission of the east coast of Africa, and British Parliamentary Papers recording the dispute over possession of the bay in the 1870s, I demonstrate that bordermaking in the region was rooted in interimperial claims and disputes reaching back to the 1820s. The English claim to Delagoa Bay highlights how hydrography and cartography were used as tools of empire in the new imperial expansion and land appropriation of the nineteenth century. The production of the colonial border between Portuguese Mozambique and British South Africa interrupted and disconnected indigenous networks of relation, trade, and movement, while simultaneously entangling imperial projects of white worldmaking through racialized dispossession.
Abstract:
The city of George Town, Penang has always been enmeshed in complex circulations of trade, people, and ideas. By the end of the nineteenth century, George Town developed a multicultural and polyglot society that included a kaleidoscopic mix of ethnic groups. This article investigates the role played by George Town’s cosmopolitan population in developing the port-city into a global hub for commercial, intellectual, and physical interchange. In particular, this article argues that the city’s success depended on intricate webs of personal and professional connections developed by George Town’s residents across Southeast Asia and beyond. It hones in on how one community, the Peranakan Chinese, built and leveraged networks across the British, Dutch, and Japanese Empires. By exploring these intra-and trans-imperial networks, this article makes the case for studying colonial cities like George Town not as passive nodes of empire but as active sites within overlapping imperial networks.
Abstract:
Universalism has driven many imaginations of the world. From civilizational discourse to cosmopolitan ethics, universalism as an idea and ideal have mobilized various political units, social activism, and religious movements. This article introduces a hitherto neglected expression of religious universalism in the fin-de-siècle—Indo-U.S. brotherhood. Unlike other colonial Indian and U.S.-American connections, this alliance was designed to be ephemeral and rooted in the transimperial moment of rising U.S. power, rather than in anti-imperialism. The article traces the emergence, dispersion, and afterlives of transimperial Indo-U.S. brotherhood to reveal the politics of universalism, which involved processes of marginalization and unfolded around the intersection of gender, race, and religion. The article reorients us to move beyond the important discussion of “multiple universals” and to place ephemerality and exclusion at the center of our historical investigation of how universalism has shaped diverse world-imagination and world-making.
Abstract:
Atomic energy has played an important role in international relations as a means of state power. From 1945 to 1959, Japan was significantly influenced by developments in atomic energy as a result of the Anglo-American “special relationship.” During World War II, Britain and the United States cooperated to develop atomic weapons to use against Japan. In the ensuing Cold War era, the two countries advanced peaceful uses of atomic energy for Japan to counter the influence of the Soviet Union through psychological warfare. The U.S. Atomic Energy Peace Mission visited Japan in May 1955. However, the Japanese government altered its nuclear policy to solicit support from Britain because the United States was falling behind in atomic energy development. A British nuclear reactor was used as the first commercial nuclear power station, in 1959, whereby Britain earned parity with the United States in the context of nuclear power.
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