Announcing SLBE: The role of Imperial Technology in the making of the 19th and 20th century world
Shaping landscapes and building
expertise
The role of imperial technology in the making of the
19th and 20th century world
Portugal ● Lisbon ● 2013 ● March 10 - 13
Call for papers
Deadline: September, 30, 2012
The theme
The
role played by technology in the making of European empires is now fully
acknowledged. Classical books on these
issues, such as Daniel Headrick´s TheTools
of the Empire, Michael Adas’ Machine
as the Measure of Men and Deepak Kumar’s and Roy MacLeod’s Technology and the Raj are mandatory
reading in all courses on colonies and empires.
These
classical theses on colonial technology have been later enriched and refreshed
by the introduction of new concepts and actors: the idea of “Europeanizing the
World/Provincializing Europe”, Gabrielle Hecht’s technopolitics, David
Edgerton’s creole technology and the growing interest in “other” empires,
sometimes anchored in small or/and peripheral, countries.
These
new approaches highlight the use of technology to enact political power and to
create/sustain a dynamic of cultural transfer and of entangled histories of
mutual influence.
In this meeting we will focus
on two main issues:
1) Reshaping colonial landscapes
Colonial technology allowed, through the construction
of networks of infrastructures in the colonies, to “domesticate” human and
non-human subjects. However, this was not an automatic process, but a
conflicting one often showing the difficulties of transferring and/or adapting
European technologies in tropical latitudes and the distance between the
colonial rhetoric and its translation in the landscape (the scarcity of
resources so often invoked by the colonial elites).
2) Colonial expertise and professional status
Colonial territories were used as experimental fields
for metropolitan engineers (and as field laboratories for scientists):
knowledge and professional and/or political status was acquired by European
technical experts from their involvement in colonial technology and science.
Moreover colonial territories were a very dynamic job market that supported the
circulation of technologies, experts, and expertise both between Europe
and colonies and between colonial powers. A significant number of scientific
and technological institutions were created to support this new worldwide
science and technology; the
administration itself was redesigned in order to accommodate the “colonial
corps” of engineers.
The colony was clearly perceived as a privileged trial field for
technologies that would later be brought into the European arena. Many
engineers, who were only able to find a job through their enrolment in colonial
endeavours, used such an experience in their subsequent activity in Europe.
We
aim at combining history of technology, political and economic history and
sociology of professions and at encouraging comparative approaches, thus
contributing to enlarge our perspective on this complex and multifaceted topic.
Deadlines
Abstract submission: September, 30, 2012
The abstract must have between 300 and 500 words and include the
name(s) of the author(s), affiliation and e-mail. Please try to keep the title
short (max.20 words)
Accepting the papers: November, 4, 2012
For further information or if you have any
questions, please feel free to contact us at Fátima de Haan: occoe@occoe.pt
Website: http://imperialtechnology.ciuhct.com (available soon)
We hope to hear from you!
Maria Paula Diogo
Chair of the Organizing
Committee