Summary

This PATIO Conversation explored parallels and intersections between current scholarship on opposite sides of the Indian Ocean World that is pursuing new perspectives on colonial infrastructure, construction and institutions through ‘labour’ as the primary focus of investigation. From the mobilisation, classification and containment of labour that arose from public works and village modernization schemes in Portuguese Africa, to Portuguese technical perspectives on Chinese labour constructing a modern hospital in late-colonial Macau, Ana Vaz Milheiro shared an overview of the ongoing work of her current ArchLabour research project team, in conversation with Indonesian scholar, obin Hartanto about his work on the logistics of racially and ethnically discriminating labour deployment in the plantation industries of Dutch colonial Sumatra and associated built infrastructure including temporary labourers’ quarters.
Of particular interest to the PATIO audience and our invited expert respondent, Associate Professor Amanda Achmadi, the conversation highlighted the intercolonial networks of migrant labour supply that trans-oceanic flows and procurement enabled across the intersecting Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial empires that still straddled the greater Indian Ocean World in the 20th century. It offered further methodological insight into the historical ‘labour’ of imperial record-keeping, for scholars attempting to extract new knowledge from comparable colonial archives.

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