EMPIRE LINES

Dr. Jared Hardesty picks up the party debris littered by New England's illegal imperialists, via John Greenwood's 1750s painting, Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam. Drinking, gambling, and debauchery reign in a private club in Paramaribo, then the Dutch colony of Surinam. John Greenwood's 18th century scene boasts of the illegal behaviour of ship captains and merchants from Britain’s New England c...

Dr. Caitlin Harvey maps out land transfers from Indigenous communities to European education institutions, through an 1873 Map of New Zealand’s 'Colonial' University. Depicting the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, a vast map outlines the lands around the Kimihia and Hakanoa Lakes and Waikato River. It's largest feature, thousands of acres in size, is labelled 'Endowment for Colonial Universit...

Dr. Saygin Salgirli mines the hidden link between four early modern empires, in a 17th century Painting of Silver Labourers in Potosí, Bolivia. In a peaceful mountain landscape, three labourers in colourful turbans and tunics mine silver together in a metric, obedient rhythm. Likely painted for the first non-European text on the Americas, this idyllic depiction of labour has a more complicated pas...

Aisha Hussain plays out tropes of Ottoman Turks in English Orientalist theatre, in two 17th century productions of The Tragedy of Mustapha. In 1553, the Ottoman Sultan Soleyman ordered the murder of his eldest son and heir to the throne, Prince Mustapha. Stranger than fiction, his story speaks to the crises of succession, sibling rivalries, and infanticide that marred the imperial Ottoman Court. T...

For EMPIRE LINES’ 40th episode, Professor Craig Clunas dials in from London’s Freud Museum to discuss their latest exhibition, Freud and China, shrinking the international networks of psychoanalysis. Smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Austria before World War II, Sigmund Freud's Chinese jade screen was amongst his most prized antiquities. Much like his chow dogs and cherry blossom trees, these mode...

Anna Ghadar turns back against colonial archives of Native American peoples, via Fred Wilson's 1992 exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society, Mining the Museum. Amidst precisely whittled arrowheads, and expertly crafted tools, five Cigar Store Indians in feathered bonnets stand dressed for battle. But beyond confrontation, they turn away from their viewers, engaging in conversation with portr...

Dr. Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi fires up legacies of British colonialism in contemporary American consumption, through Johnson Brothers' Old Britain Castles Ceramic Plate, produced from 1930. Manufactured for export to America, Old Britain Castles promised to connect consumers with their 18th century colonial origins. Produced by the British firm Johnson Brothers from 1930, designers used engravings of...

Dr. Tim Murray smashes imperial stereotypes of Asia through tastes and trades, in a 19th century Standard Willow Ceramic Plate from Josiah Spode's Staffordshire pottery. Adorning dinner tables across the world, Josiah Spode's Chinese-inspired ‘Standard Willow’ rapidly became the world's most popular ceramic pattern. Produced in Staffordshire from 1790, its blue-and-white pines and pagodas speak to...

A. A. Bastian navigates the commercial and Christian aspirations of Euro-American trading empires in 19th century Asia, through a Water Splotch from the Bay of Bengal in Levi Savage's ship diary. Hugging India's glistening Bay of Bengal, Euro-American ships like the Monsoon and Fire Queen carried goods and peoples to and from Calcutta, the meeting point of the British and Mughal empires. An emblem...

Dr. Mona Narain reimagines Britain through the eyes of the colonial Indian subject, via Elizabeth Hamilton's 1796 novel, Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah. Following the adventures of the fictional Indian Rajah Zāārmilla in London, Elizabeth Hamilton's Letters upends stereotypical narratives of the imagined east. Staged in a series of letters, her novel refocusses 18th century Britain t...

Dr. Desmond Manderson lashes new layers atop Australia's colonial founding myths, through Gordon Bennett's 1991 painting, Possession Island. When Captain Cook planted the Union Jack on Possession Island in 1770, Australia was entirely subsumed within the British Empire. Colonial imaginings of this moment reinforced the legal myth around terra nullius, still propagated in constitutional classes tod...

Jeremy Eccles etches out the colonial and continued denial of discrimination against Australia's Indigenous communities, through Judy Watson's 2005 series, a preponderance of aboriginal blood. Sixteen black and white documents from the Queensland State Archives, dating back to 1866, map out Australia's discriminatory race-based system of citizenship rights. Now splattered with blood red ink by the...

Dr. Lily Filson reroutes religious loot through the 6th and 8th centuries, via the Teak Column of al-Qalis, produced in Yemen, and plundered for Saudi Arabia. A tall wooden column towers over pilgrims to the heart of the Islamic faith in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Installed around the 8th century as Islamic pious plunder, it is one the last surviving remnants of the Christian church al-Qalis, erected in...

Dr. Tessa Murphy retouches European renderings of colonial Caribbean commerce in the 18th century, through Agostino Brunias' oil painting, Linen Market, Dominica. Painted around 1780, Linen Market, Dominica depicts a Caribbean port town teeming with commerce. Great ships and local Kalinago canoes straddle the coastline, as people of all races and classes and barter for carrots, calabashes, and cal...

For EMPIRE LINES’ 30th episode, we’re heading offline and out into the museum space - to SOAS’ Brunei Gallery, in London. Richard Gray is co-curator of their latest exhibition, Our Sophisticated Weapon: Posters of the Mozambican Revolution. Cashew nuts are a paradoxical symbol in Mozambique. Brought over from Brazil by 16th century Portuguese colonists, they were used to attract - and commit - Moz...

Dr. David Damrosch intertwines imperial expectations in 18th century Europe with Middle Eastern realities, in Antoine Galland's Les Mille et Une Nuit, or The Thousand and One Nights. Filled with flying carpets and trapped genies, the tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Scheherazade might seem little more than bedtime stories. But the tales of The Thousand and One Nights iwere born out of the real expe...

Dr. Dorothy Armstrong untangles British efforts to redefine colonial Indian culture, through a 19th century knotted pile carpet woven in Lahore Central Jail. Produced with the low-cost labour of Indian prisoners, jail carpets were big business in the British Empire. Beyond physical coercion, imperial authorities also trapped India in their vision of 'authentic' oriental aesthetics, privileging Per...

Jessica Albrecht busts the founding myths of 19th century Buddhist revivalism, through a Statue of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott at Fort Railway Station in Sri Lanka, the former British colony of Ceylon. Known as the 'White Buddhist', US Colonel Henry Steel Olcott is celebrated for sparking Sri Lanka's Buddhist revival movement in 1880s. Golden statues scatter across the island in tribute to the co-f...

Dr. Robert Larson replays the sounds of activism against apartheid and American neo-imperial hegemony, through Artists United Against Apartheid's 1985 song, Sun City. Field recordings from South Africa's anti-segregation protests open Sun City, a single, album, and music video released in October 1985. Miles Davies, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Run DMC joined fifty Artists United Against Apar...

Dr. Juan Luis Burke reorders urban spaces in colonial Mesoamerica, through Cristóbal de Villalpando's 1695 painting, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City. The Plaza Mayor sits at the historical heart of the sprawling megalopolis of Mexico City. Previously the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, it became the Mesoamerican capital of the Spanish Empire in the 16th century. With his expansive, b...

Dr. Deniz Karakaş follows the flows of water pipeline politics in the Ottoman Empire, through Mimar Sinan's 16th century Uzun Kemer Ottoman Aqueduct Bridge. On the outskirts of Istanbul, the ruins of the Uzun Kemer Aqueduct symbolise the superhuman strength of modern Ottoman engineering. Yet, constructed on the foundations of old Constantinople, with methods drawn from the Roman and Byzantine Empi...

Dr. Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil sounds out stories of migration between post-colonial Kerala and the Arab Gulf from the 1960s, through S. A. Jameel's Dubai Kathu Pattu (Dubai Letter Song). 'For the perusal of my most respected dear husband, your wife says with much love, assalaam'. Dubai Kathu Pattu is a letter song to a migrant labourer in the Arab Gulf, from his wife at home in India. By the la...

Manuela Gressani checks out the Asian cultural and intellectual roots of gameplay, through an Indian Elephant Chess Piece from the late 17th to early 18th century. Chaturanga was first played in 6th century India, a tabletop testing ground for court politicians' imperial tactics. Successive conquests carried the game across continents, leaving distinctly Persian and Chinese imprints, before arrivi...

Dr. Lou Roper explores the uncharted history of enslaved Africans in England's 17th century colonies, via Philip Lea and John Seller's A New Map of the Island of Barbados. In 1686, Lea and Sellers meticulously mapped the tooth-shaped Caribbean island of Barbados, England's central and wealthiest colony. Great detail was given to ‘every parish, plantation, watermill, windmill, and cattlemill…with t...

Dr. Sonia Ocaña Ruiz illuminates New Spain at the continental crossroads of colonialism, Catholicism, and Japanese culture from the 16th century, through a Mexican Enconchado of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Mexico City was beating heart of the Spanish Empire in the 16th century, connecting the continents of Asia and the Americas. Exclusively produced in 'New Spain', mother-of-pearl paintings, or encon...