Infrastructural extraterritoriality on the waterfront: jurisdiction at the Port of New York, 1857–1921

Abstract

ABSTRACT Between 1857 and 1921, the Port of New York’s waterfront infrastructure was the target of jurisdictional extraterritorialisation that would remove its control from local hands within the nation state. I present a case study of this process to understand how infrastructural extraterritoriality functions as a state response to the central tension of infrastructure: fixity and flow. This tension is characterised by the need to ensure the material embeddedness in the everyday life of cities of the Port of New York’s piers, wharves and slips, and the scale-jumping connectivity required to ensure the global networks of trade and transportation function appropriately. In this paper, I examine a case study of the Port of New York’s efforts to re-territorialise jurisdiction over waterfront infrastructure as attempts to resolve this tension. I demonstrate how not only is this tension on-going, but that it requires the sort of extraterritorial governance that has become commonplace over infrastructure today.