Summary

The history of architecture and urban planning in former colonized territories has been shaped by canonical narratives and single agents (Lagae&Boonen, 2020). The question of architectural authorship has been at the center of most colonial studies, whether they focus on the designer, the engineer, the owner, or the political-administrative decision-maker who approved the territorial infrastructure, the urban settlement, or the building. “Can the subaltern speak” (Spivak, 1988) overcoming the architectural history focused on the designing elite? We welcome scholars to critically engage with the representativeness of labor subalternity and its importance throughout the process of architectural design and construction, questioning: who were those workers whose role was crucial to the colonial sphere, but who remained underrepresented in the history of colonial architecture? How did their labor, presence and skills influence the building site, construction methods and the project/design?
This session intersects the history of colonial architecture and the theme of labor, encouraging scholars to submit papers that address the agency of labor in the Public Works Departments during the late colonial period, between the 19th and 20th centuries. Contributions related to the African and Asian contexts are particularly appreciated, as are those related to the history of colonial architecture focusing on the relationship between project design and unskilled labor and analyzing the impact of subalternised collective subjects (workers) who remained largely “hidden” in both colonial and postcolonial narratives. This session seeks for papers that explore the liaison between architecture, colonialism and labor, addressing: i) construction methods and skills; ii) construction sites; iii) authorship; iv) gender and race; v) division of labor. Researches based on both case studies and methodological approaches to the theme are welcome to enable a discussion on the impact of labor within the colonial architectural effort and how to approach it from a theoretical perspective.
Among the various proposals, most of them of high quality, we have chosen six scholars for this session. We will begin with Sarah Melsens, whose research focused on the work carried out under British imperial rule in India, who today brings us the perspective of the workers involved in the concretization of the Shivaji Bridge. We’re interested in her methodological approach to oral history and how she has managed to uncover personal narratives that don’t exist in the archives, gradually revealing the complexity of labour relations in operations of this scale.
The next presenter, Jingliang Du, used a set of cases drawn up by G. L. Wilson of Palmer & Turner in Shanghai to emphasise how Chinese builders consolidated their dominance in the construction industry, through processes that involved the adoption of Western technologies, for example. Our attention was drawn to the recruitment process and the role played by recruitment agencies in attracting labour. But the analysis goes much deeper than that, as you’ll see.
Moving on to the Middle East, namely the British protectorates of Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, Maggie Freeman we will bring our attention to the case of the Bedouin labourers, in a paper that also focuses on issues of informal recruitment through agencies that have emerged as interlocutors, dealing in particular with the case of work carried out by prisoners.
The following presentation, by Brian McLaren will focus on Italian colonialism in Libya and the construction of the Libyan Coastal Highway (La Strada Litoranea), analysing a very appealing set of images. One of the points that caught our attention was the description of the labour relations between Italian and Lybian workers. As this is a mobile construction site that accompanies the building of a road, aspects such as the distance of drinking water from the workplace bring to the discussion interesting perspectives on “labour maintenance”. The same can be said of the lodgings and camps in which these two labour forces coexisted.
Finally, Romain David brings us the example of Nigeria and the role of NEDECO, a Dutch engineering expertise firm migrating from colonial Indonesia to Africa. It was inspiring for us to understand the balance between the European experts and the Nigerian ones and the possible negotiations that could result, since it is a labour relationship we are not use to deal with in the Portuguese case.

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