Colonial Town Research Articles

Resuscitation of the colonial town and the creation of new communication - focucing on Gunsan -

Resuscitation of the colonial town and the creation of new communication - focucing on Gunsan -

The Experience of Diversity in Open Spaces of Two Historical Towns in Malaysia

This paper explores diversity of open space as one of the salient parameters for good public place making in the built environment. Two open spaces in colonial towns of Taiping and Georgetown were selected as study sites. This paper is exploratory in nature, which applied descriptive and affective analysis on the users’ experiences of the two open spaces. Diversity in both open spaces are characterized by the combination of richness in natural landscape elements, spaces, distribution of activity patterns, visual stimulants, strong historical, cultural and social significances. T he study suggests that diversity means socialization, which can be achieved through gradual and natural occurring assimilation.

Microhistory and Movement: African American Mobility in the Nineteenth Century

Microhistory and MovementAfrican American Mobility in the Nineteenth Century Nicole Etcheson (bio) Janette Thomas Greenwood, First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1862–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Earl F. Mulderink III, New Bedford’s Civil War (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). Sydney Nathans, To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012). Leslie A. Schwalm, Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Rebecca J. Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012). Eva Sheppard Wolf, Almost Free: A Story about Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012). Edlie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (New York: New York University Press, 2009). African American history may be one of the last fields to receive a micro-historical treatment. Nineteenth-century African American history has been favored with sweeping accounts of the black experience, ranging from John Blassingame’s classic The Slave Community to Ira Berlin’s more recent Many Thousands Gone. Studies on more focused topics such as slavery in the Chesapeake or free blacks in the North have certainly contributed to knowledge of the black experience, but scarce records, especially the lack of firsthand accounts for many aspects of black life, make microhistory’s tight focus on the “proudly small” difficult to achieve.1 [End Page 392] Microhistories are intensely concentrated examinations of topics that often appear narrow and insignificant until the microhistorian reveals how the subject illuminates greater issues. The microhistory falls between the grand synthesis or theoretical analysis that slights individual human actors and the antiquarian social history that ignores the larger meaning of the countless details it relates. Microhistories can test the conclusions of the grand synthetic histories as well as reveal the patterns of life in a particular place and time.2 Microhistory’s close relatives include biography and the community study. While biography relates the individual life, savoring its uniqueness, microhistory challenges conventional historical narratives by revealing how a life, often a very ordinary one, defied societal patterns or lived up to them in unexpected ways. Microhistory observes historical change up close and notes how historical forces operated on individuals.3 Similarly, examining a place can reveal the contours of the larger society by elaborating the different types of communities—rural or urban, agricultural or commercial, northern or southern—that people construct. There have been classic studies of colonial towns and nineteenth-century rural communities.4 Many microhistories of places have been what J. Matthew Gallman has called “city biographies,” but people inhabit places, and studies of those places connect their inhabitants to larger trends. John Mack Faragher used Robert Pulliam, “the pioneer of Sugar Creek,” as the iconic figure illustrating the nature of frontier Illinois.5 Studies of northern African American communities, such as James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton’s study of Boston, have generally focused on cities. Melvin Patrick Ely used county court papers to reconstruct the life of free blacks in the rural Virginia community of Israel Hill.6 The works under review include both genres of microhistory: studies of individual African Americans and accounts of the post-Civil War black diaspora that created new communities of freedmen in the North. If there is a theme that unites them, it is that of movement. White mobility is taken for granted, perhaps because whites chose to migrate, while slavery made black mobility far more constrained, but Africans and their descendants migrated in ship holds crammed with bodies or coffles of slaves, chained at the neck, walking toward the newly opened cotton lands of the interior South. The authors discussed here use microhistorical techniques to examine struggles over black mobility. Edlie L. Wong presents a nuanced history of sojourning cases in which a slave’s travels opened up the possibility of freedom. A scholar of African American literature, Wong draws from critical legal studies and race theory. She is...

The rhetoric of Lao/French fusion: beyond the representation of the Western tourist experience of cuisine in the world heritage city of Luang Prabang, Laos

Inextricably interwoven into the Western tourist experience of Luang Prabang, former royal capital and former French colonial town, is a food encounter increasingly subsumed under the description of ‘Lao-French fusion cuisine’. There has been a conscious exploitation of the connection between the cultural heritage of this World Heritage town, and the distinctiveness of its cuisine as intangible heritage. This article explores the intersections between the way the cuisine is represented, the contestations around these representations (what is included and excluded, the use of the past) and the Western cuisine experience of Luang Prabang. We argue the rhetoric of fusion is partial, selective and strongly influenced by the various ways Luang Prabang (re)presents itself to Western tourists. Further, that the touristic image/experience of Luang Prabang's cuisine camouflages under the fusion description a highly mobile set of dynamics and understanding of the food scenarios within the historic city. In particular, the intermingling of many food traditions; the highly improvized nature of cuisine, the interplay between local farming, markets and food production, food imports from Thailand, China, Vietnam and France, the way cuisine marks and ritualizes social groups (Lao bourgeoisie, students, monks, hilltribe ethnic minorities, expatriates, Western tourists, etc.) and the ebb and flow between these groups in food production and consumption. The heritage tourist rhetoric of fusion masks complexity and freezes an open-ended process into a fixed representation.

Making Worlds: Art, Words and Worlds

Introduction'The world' seems, often, to be more a proposition than a place, more a theory than a thing-in-itself. The fluidity of its meanings means that dominant discourse tends to focus on conceptual, economic and political, rather than on lived experience, phenomenological encounters, or multiple ways of being in what each person might consider 'the world'. How we might access plural experience of world is a point of considerable scholarly debate as philosopher Nelson Goodman notes, writing that 'universes of worlds as well as worlds themselves may be built in many ways'.1 We start from Goodman's constructivist premise, and focus on art as a domain for making of worlds. Art is perhaps under-determined compared with linguistic and political mediums, but it may have equally profound effects on how lived worlds emerge and are understood. In this paper we take up twin concepts of plurality and practice to explore how art might enable an exploration of connectivities and differences, and how it might form a venue for making of worlds that are not fully in accord with contemporary logics and 'truths'. We do this through a discussion of a recent exhibition that was framed around theme of 'making worlds', and mounted in a small regional city in New Zealand, Whanganui. It included work of seven artists2 whose common point of connection is that town-one of oldest colonial towns in New Zealand, and a fountainhead for indigenous rights protests within Aotearoa. The artists' connection with this liminal town, and their separate experiences and identifications, serve to highlight ways in which visual art can afford place to situate oneself: whether a geographical or an ontological place. From such places they can produce and present their works to un-make and remake known, authorised world-to allow new conceptual frameworks and, possibly, new grounds for human connectivity.Art and WorldArt is not a copy of real world. One of damn things is enough'3The relationship between art and world is something discussed frequently by artists and art critics. At conferences, in artist talks and in critical writings it is not uncommon to come across discussion about whether art reflects world, represents it, replicates it or re-makes it. We aimed to add to this discussion but focus on making of world. To do this, we mounted an exhibition titled 'Making Worlds' (27 June-23 July 2011). We invited a group of artists4 to show works that in some way reflect their sense of art and world; and interviewed them to tease out what they see as connection between art and world.Our starting point for this exercise was philosopher Nelson Goodman, who several decades ago published influential Ways of Worldmaking (1978), a text that lays foundation for so much thinking about world-making that has happened since. Goodman analyses relationship between domain of art and social understandings of 'the world'. Drawing on writing of earlier philosophers, including Ernst Cassirer and William James, he engages questions of 'the multiplicity of worlds, speciousness of the given, creative power of understanding, variety and formative function of symbols' in order to ask following questions: 'What are worlds made of? How are they made? What role do symbols play in making? And how is world-making related to knowing?'5 These are questions that engage us also: in particular, possible relationship between world-making and knowing; and creative power of understanding as each applies to art and to artists. In this paper we discuss outcome of process-of conceiving and mounting exhibition, interviewing artists, and undertaking archival and observational research into issue of whether, or how, particular artists build worlds, imagine worlds, and find ways to live in and across those worlds. …

A “Moorish World” within the Company: The VOC, Maritime Logistics and Subaltern Networks of Asian Sailors

Let us begin with a drawing, depicting the river mouth of Batavia. We see a lively scene. Europeans and Asians are fishing, peddling, rowing, riding, walking, and sitting along the waterway. A small prauw on the left appears to be manned by Javanese and Chinese. Behind the Waterkasteel, on the right, large numbers of oceangoing vessels are anchored before Batavia. In the middle of the drawing, we see three men on the path along the waterway, the “jaagpad,” pulling a flat cargo boat. The clothing indicates that these are “Moor” sailors. On the boat, we see three other sailors with turbans.This scene, drawn by Johannes Rach in 1764, places the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in its Asian context. In previous decades, increasing attention has been paid to the structure of the “Asian” or overseas organisation of the VOC. Even more so, research has shown the importance of the Company's participation in the intra-Asian trade. From 1500 onwards, European trading companies not only became important in intercontinental European–Asian trade, but they came to dominate maritime trade within Asia as well. The VOC was one of the largest merchants active in intra-Asian shipping for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the VOC, however, it was not only its presence overseas that built the link between the Company and its Asian context. The VOC and its Asian context became intrinsically interwoven. Leonard Blussé, for example, emphasises the character of Batavia, the headquarters of the VOC in Asia, as a “Chinese colonial town.”

RETHINKING POLITICS IN THE COLONY: THEMÉTISOF SENEGAL AND URBAN POLITICS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

ABSTRACTSenegal was unique in French West Africa for the nature and extent of electoral institutions that operated in its colonial towns. In the 1870s, Third Republic France elaborated on earlier short-lived policies by re-establishing local assemblies and a legislative seat for Senegal in Paris. Although histories of modern politics focus on Blaise Diagne's 1914 election to the French National Assembly, a local assembly called the General Council held greater power over economic and political matters affecting the colony between 1870 and 1920. This article reconsiders the history of urban politics in colonial Senegal by examining the ways that themétis(mixed race population) used the General Council as their field of engagement with French officials, sometimes facilitating the consolidation of French rule but at other times contesting colonial practice.

The remembered railway town of Anglo-Indian memory

Unlike those who grew up in railway towns, the majority of Indians would have a hard time locating towns with quaint names on the Indian map that signified adventure, romance and the Raj. Kharagpur is one such colonial railway town whose history has been overwritten by one of the ‘temples’ of the postcolonial nation state, the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. But Kharagpur, about 110 km away from Kolkata, is remembered as home in Anglo-Indian memory and finds a mention in histories and fiction dealing with the Anglo-Indian community. Senior residents of Kharagpur corroborate these memories of a vibrant Anglo-Indian community thriving in Kharagpur until the early 1960s when the exodus began. Little remains of that remembered past in the Anglo-Indian neighbourhoods where about 200 Anglo-Indian individuals struggle to resettle in the new constitutional and social space comprising independent India. Yet, the nostalgia of the Kharagpur diasporas produces it as an idyllic colonial outpost with a quintessential Raj lifestyle. Through examining the narratives and oral histories of the Kharagpur diaspora, this article complicates the way that the remembered railway town is produced as home by the community displaced by the new dynamics of power in independent India.

Gêneses urbanas do colonialismo: síntese de encontros culturais

Investigações sobre a gênese das vilas litorâneas de Cananeia, Iguape, São Vicente, Santos, São Sebastião e Ubatuba, no atual estado de São Paulo, evidenciam a significativa contribuição das sociedades indígenas nas ocupações do colonialismo. Presentes alguns séculos antes da chegada dos europeus, elas elegeram essa frente atlântica como habitat, estabelecendo em nichos ecológicos seus lugares de vivência. Tais escolhas balizaram as futuras instalações. Uma recorrência simboliza o encontro cultural entre indígenas e europeus: a articulação do módulo espacial da Matriz com a contiguidade da "rua direita".

Australian Responses to the Indian Famine, 1876–78: Sympathy, Photography and the British Empire

This article analyses Australian efforts on behalf of victims of the 1876–8 Indian famine as complex articulations of colonial identity and loyalty in the British imperial world. Focused on the Victorian Famine Relief Fund, which made extensive use of vivid photographic images of sufferers, the article also examines the public campaigns on behalf of Indian famine victims in other colonial cities and towns. It suggests that the language of filial duty most commonly associated with later military commitments had a humanitarian pedigree, and that the settler colonial ability to express empathy for non-white British subjects was enhanced by the capacity to see photographic images of them. Despite their promise of drawing the viewer closer to witnessing suffering, photographs of famine victims served rather to emphasise the distance between the viewer and the viewed, in ways that were productive for the fund-raising effort.

Urbs e civitas: a formação dos espaços e territórios urbanos nas minas setecentistas

O presente artigo procura situar a evolução das abordagens acerca da cidade colonial mineira dentro da perspectiva mais ampla dos estudos sobre o urbanismo colonial português. A análise privilegia os trabalhos que, em vez de se aterem aos aspectos ligados à estética urbana, procuraram relacioná-los às questões fundiárias e à constituição das redes e hierarquias urbanas.

Activity patterns in New Kingdom Nubia: An examination of entheseal remodeling and osteoarthritis at Tombos

The effects of Egyptian imperial expansion into Nubia during the New Kingdom Period (1,550-1,069 BC) have been debated. Here, the impacts of the Egyptian Empire are investigated through an examination of osteological indicators of activity at the archaeological site of Tombos. Entheseal changes to fibrocartilaginous attachment sites and osteoarthritis are examined to infer what types of physical activities this colonial town was engaging in. Many of the skeletal remains at Tombos were commingled due to looting in antiquity; undisturbed burials are presented as a subsample of the population (n = 28) in which age, sex, and body size can be considered. The total sample (n = 85) is then analyzed to better understand overall levels of activity. A number of Nile River Valley bioarchaeological samples are used as points of comparison to the Tombos population. Results indicate that the inhabitants of Tombos had relatively low entheseal remodeling scores; this is highlighted when Tombos is juxtaposed with comparative samples, particularly in men. Furthermore, osteoarthritis, as assessed by eburnation, was also markedly infrequent at Tombos. Collectively, these results indicate a relatively low level of activity and support the hypothesis that Tombos may have served as an administrative center.

Fashioning Freedom: Slave Seamstresses in the Atlantic World

In the eighteenth-century French Atlantic world, masters and mistresses sometimes sent their enslaved seamstresses to Europe to learn the latest fashion trends; other seamstresses resided in colonial towns and they moved about freely as they traveled to the linen markets or to the homes of their clients. In addition, skilled seamstresses often negotiated for compensation especially when such slaves were leased to other men and women. Enslaved seamstresses also occupied the top echelons of the slave hierarchy. Slaves involved in the preparation of cloth practiced occupational sabotage—they struck out at their masters using the tools of their trade. These characteristics—mobility, the ability to make money, a privileged position in the slave hierarchy, and occupational sabotage—often translated to freedom. Male slaves most often possessed these qualities; enslaved women, burdened doubly with field work and home work, did not. Hence, as enslaved seamstresses sewed, they also fashioned freedom.

Plazas and Power: Canary Islanders at Galveztown, an Eighteenth-Century Spanish Colonial Outpost in Louisiana

During the late 18th century Spain sent several hundred Canary Islanders (Islenos) to serve as soldiers and settlers in its Louisiana colony. Galveztown, in the Isle d’Orleans, was a planned settlement consisting of a fort and adjacent village. Galveztown was beset by disease, hurricanes, floods, drought, and war. By the 1790s the villagers were described as living in “the most abject want and misery.” In an effort to explain why the Islenos remained at Galveztown as long as they did, the nature of social control in Spanish North America must be understood. In particular, this article examines how Spanish colonial town planning functioned as a form of social control. It is argued that town plazas were the materialization of Spanish efforts to use the cultural landscape as a means of controlling colonial populations. As such, the materiality of the plaza at Galveztown may be reflected in the archaeological record.

Conceptions of Space in the Evolution of a Gridded and an Organic Town: Bloemfontein and Kimberley, South Africa

Writers argue that the gridiron and axial arrangement were the most important ordering devices of the colonial town in South Africa. In this paper, we suggest that power can be expressed in both ordered and organic urban built forms, drawing on developmental stages of two case study cities: Bloemfontein and Kimberley, South Africa. Drawing on the theory of natural movement and Space Syntax analysis, we develop an argument that socio-political and socio-economic relationships find expression through space. We demonstrate how the physical layout of power systems is maintained over time by the configurational properties of space.

南洋群島における日本植民都市の都市構造に関する研究

Japan occupied most of Micronesia at the outbreak of World War One and tranformed the island region with substantial migration and urban development under the Nan'yo-cho. This paper examines the urban morphology and functions of Japanese colonial towns and settlements in the Nan'yo-cho's three branch districts (shicho); Ponape (including Kusaie), Yap and Jaluit (Marshalls). As far as the number of Japanese migrants was concerned, excluding population centers on Ponape, the towns and settlements were much smaller as compared to those in the Northern Marianas and Palau. Yet the fundamental features of Japanese colonial settlements were shared with larger towns. The paper also discusses the functions of Japanese colonial outposts in the periphery of the short-lived colonial empire in the Pacific.

Death of a Beautiful Moor Woman: Obstinate Clerks and the Form of Evidence in the British Colonial Archive

This article studies the production, transmission, and reception of a cluster of archival documents about an alleged abduction and murder of a beautiful Moor in the colonial town of Madras in 1776. The papers provide evidence of interpretive commotion among late eighteenth-century colonial bureaucrats—writers and readers of colonial documentation—about the plausibility of the different versions of the surprising archival narrative about an indigenous woman in India. Their discussion about proper forms of documentation ties plausibility to ideological positions regarding the nature and legitimacy of imperial rule, to the colonizers' treatment of indigenous rulers as subjects or allies, to the role of women in the colonial encounter, and to the generative force of literary genres in shaping official reports from the colony. A study of the nature and status of archival documents as narratives caught up in political, social, and literary history, the article reflects on our definitions of and uses for...

Between the Garden and the Bazaar: The Visions, Spaces and Structures of Colonial Towns in Nineteenth-Century Provincial Bengal

This article looks at the conception and experience of provincial urbanism in colonial Bengal during the nineteenth century. The specific sites of enquiry are ‘civil stations’, colonial administrative towns that were initially established as agricultural revenue collection centres but that later grew to be key nodal points in late nineteenth-century imperial governance in India. Tracing the development of the towns in terms of their site selection and the carefully-mediated relationship between natural and built environments, the article reveals how the pursuit of a ‘picturesque’, idyllic and green urbanism was continuously subverted by apparently chaotic forces and spaces on which, ironically, the very functioning of the towns was dependent.

The War for Mexico’s West: Indians and Spaniards in New Galicia, 1524 – 1550

This is a lucidly argued book about a dark period in Mexican history. In the years after the fall of the Aztec Empire, disease ravaged the native population. To make matters worse, the crown granted sweeping governmental powers to soldiers of fortune. These men had little interest in the rule of law and a very great interest in getting rich. The chaos that ensued has been almost as disorienting for historians as it was for those who lived through it. Altman does a masterly job of combing through the tangled documentary record of this period, exploring New Spain’s emergence from chaos, and showing how a functioning colony was established.The early chapters draw on the voluminous records of three residencias, or royal investigations of the colony’s early rulers, to narrate the conquest and settlement of Nueva Galicia. These chapters focus on two related stories. The first is that of Spanish conquistadors trying to impose colonial order by violent means, only to find that violence brought about greater disorder than before. Nuño de Guzmán plays a leading role in this tale; Altman finds little to contradict Bartolomé de las Casas’s view that he was a wicked man. Guzmán was brutal to his indigenous enemies and — a much more serious strategic error — cruel to his Tlaxcalan allies as well. By the time the Mixtón rebellion erupted in 1540, Guzmán had been removed from office. But his legacy of violence lived after him, depriving settlers of much needed local allies.The second story Altman tells is that of ordinary people struggling to form communities in the midst of chaos. Altman’s expertise in the formation of colonial towns in central Mexico affords her exceptional insight on this topic. Much of what she argues is surprising. A semifunctional colonial society emerged in the 1520s and 1530s. The encomienda system worked. Indians paid tribute. Products were exchanged in networks of long-distance trade. Settlers founded towns and formed households with native women. They cultivated the land, learned local languages, and had mestizo children, all despite the storm of violence raging around them. Though Altman does a superb job of documenting these complicated years, it is still hard for the reader to imagine what it was like to live in such a world, where both cultural mixing and endemic violence were the norm.Altman’s chapters on the Mixtón uprising confirm much of what is already known about it. The rebellion was provoked by the cruelty of the Spanish, was well planned, and involved many native communities fighting for a common cause. The novelty of Altman’s account lies in her authoritative establishment of the basic facts and in the rich detail she has mined in the archives. Altman shows, among her many discoveries, that Zacateco Indians from the north played a role in uniting Cazcan communities against the Spanish. The Zacatecos also spread an anti-Christian ideology among the rebels. Altman goes on to show that Viceroy Antonio Mendoza was the key figure in the suppression of the revolt, and that his skillful acquisition of native allies was decisive in securing victory. If there is one disappointment in these chapters, it is that Altman does not explore the Andalusian roots of Mendoza’s behavior. The Mendoza family was deeply involved in the governance of the formerly Muslim Kingdom of Granada, and one wonders how the viceroy’s experience of imperial alliance-making there influenced his treatment of native peoples in Mexico.However one answers that question, Altman shows that the Mixtón War changed the colony in profound ways. The Spanish learned that there were limits to the utility of violence and that basic institutions of law and government were needed for the colony to function. More importantly, the colonizers learned that they needed allies among the native peoples in order to survive. The native societies of western Mexico were transformed by the war. Driven into the hills, cities, and mining towns, many rebel Indians survived, but their distinctive cultures were all but wiped out. As Altman tells it, the history of Spanish failure and adjustment in Nueva Galicia, and of native rebellion and fragmentation, was complicated, important, and bitterly sad. The War for Mexico’s West sheds a brilliant light on these dark years. Advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars of Mexican and borderlands history will profit from reading it.

A tropical enterprise: British planning ideas in a private settlement in Brazil

The northern region of Paraná State, Brazil, was colonized by an English company during the second quarter of the twentieth century. British private investment was attracted to this little‐explored region following the advance into the west of Brazil and the expansion of coffee‐growing areas. As a fundamental part of this overseas land speculation enterprise, the whole territory was parcelled into small rural plots, a cluster of regularly spaced towns was founded and a railway line was built; only then immigrants were settled. Thus, systematic colonization, deliberate urbanization and town and country planning in advance of territory occupation can be seen. However, no formal evidence of this comprehensive colonization scheme has been found, apart from a few maps, some company documents, a large number of photographs and some scattered information. Hence, drawing upon the history of planning, cultural studies, imperialism/colonialism, British colonial towns and the Garden City Movement, this paper argues that certain British planning ideas and practices were applied in this area, more specifically those related to the garden city concepts, which have contributed to the construction of a particular landscape.