Ghosts in the Machine: Technology and Imperialismin Maritime Asia

 When can “machines be seen as the measure of men”, as the historian Michael Adas so beautifully opined? This talk focuses on three moments when technology became crucial in “wiring” maritime Asia into larger landscapes of modernity and colonization. First, we examine the laying of telegraphs across Indochina’s coasts en route to China, as the French started to plant flags in this part of the world. Second, we look at the notion of building a canal across the Isthmus of Kra, in what is today southern Thailand, and what was then the semi-independent kingdom of Siam. Finally, we also analyze the spread of lighthouses as Foucauldian instruments of coercion in the Anglo-Dutch sphere of Insular Southeast Asia, in land-and seascapes that currently comprise Malaysia and Indonesia. I argue in this presentation that all these Asian processes were inter-related, and that they show in regional miniature the shadow and shape of larger forces then sweeping the globe. 

Eric Tagliacozzo is John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University, where he also directs the Southeast Asia Program (SEAP), and edits the journal INDONESIA. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of fifteen books on Southeast Asia, and its place in the wider seascapes of Asia writ large.