EMPIRE LINES

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 Persian patterns and Parisian market demands over traditional Mughal methods. This particular carpet was one of a pair, purchased at the 1881 Punjab Exhibition for what would become the V&A Museum. Riding the history of both carpets - one surviving, and missing - into mass manufacture reveals how South Kensington intervened in the crafts of the colonised, centralising control and defining expectations both in India and at home, then and now.

PRESENTER: Dr. Dorothy Armstrong, May Beattie Visiting Fellow in Carpet Studies at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. She was previously a lecturer and tutor in Material Histories of Asia for the V&A/Royal College of Art History of Design Programme.

ART: Knotted Pile Carpet, Lahore Central Jail (c. 1880).

IMAGE: 'Carpet with woollen pile, palmette and leaf designs on a black ground with a red ground border, woven in Lahore Jail, c.1880'.

SOUNDS: V&A.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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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-founder of the Theosophical Society, the source of religious and educational reform and resistance to British colonial rule in Ceylon.

But these statues also pose complex post-colonial questions, like whether Olcott's book, The Buddhist Catechism, was anything but 'Protestant Buddhism', or his schools simply new institutions of external control. Instead of pulling Olcott down, his statues invite us to figure out those silenced in the archives, whether the non-white Buddhists of the Panadura Debate, or the women behind Ceylon's girls schools - without whom Olcott would not have the same standing today.

PRESENTER: Jessica Albrecht, PhD student at the University of Heidelberg and editor at EnGender Journal. She focusses on the colonial entanglements of feminism and religion.

ART: 'White Buddhist' Statue of Theosophist Henry Steel Olcott, Colombo (c. 1970s).

IMAGE: 'Statue of HSO in front of Main Railroad Station in Colombo, Sri Lanka'. 

SOUNDS: Kala Ketha.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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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 Apartheid, a multicultural collective who boycotted performing in the racialised regime. Striking its Sun City casino complex, where capitalistic excess comingled alongside extreme poverty, these artists targeted the homeland seizures at apartheid's core. Their lyrics shine light on how apartheid accelerated British and Dutch colonial methods, and relied upon the United States' neo-imperial international hegemony. Yet Sun City's uniquely anti-West critique also speaks to American understandings of racial solidarity, questioning the role of Western musicians as political activists, fundraisers, and historians of Africa.

PRESENTER: Dr. Robert Larson, independent historian and knowledge producer. He received his PhD in history from the Ohio State University in 2019, specialising in the anti-apartheid movement.

ART: Sun City, Artists United Against Apartheid (1985),

IMAGE: 'Coretta Scott King, Little Steven, Julian Bond, and Vernell Johnson (Manhattan Records) at a press conference hosted by Mayor Andrew Young in Atlanta'. 

SOUNDS: Artists United Against Apartheid.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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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, bird’s eye view, Cristóbal de Villalpando depicts everyday encounters between classes and clashes against the colonial urban order for the viceroyalty's eye. Now housed in England, this colonial commission shows the Plaza as a marketplace of imperial ideas, revealing co-option and cooperation between indigenous Mexicans, Asian merchants, and European and Spanish colonisers. Five hundred years after the fall of the ancient Aztec imperial capital, Tenochtitlán, the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City remains a site of protest today.

PRESENTER: Dr. Juan Luis Burke, Assistant Professor of Architectural and Urban History at the University of Maryland.

ART: View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, Cristóbal de Villalpando, (c.1695).

IMAGE: ‘View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City'.

SOUNDS: Victrola.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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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 Empires, these grand architectures really make visible the everyday actors of empire. Drawn from Serbia, Albania, Greece, and Armenia, the hired hands of suyolcu (water conduit experts) and lağımcı (diggers) were crucial in the transfer of knowledge, their skills often redirected for the imperial mines or military. Beyond the shallows, the pipeline politics of water supply reveals how power flowed within empires, exposing the Ottomans on - or under - the ground.

PRESENTER: Dr. Deniz Karakaş, visiting scholar in the Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University.

ART: Uzun Kemer Ottoman Aqueduct Bridge, Mimar Sinan (c. 1560s).

IMAGE: ‘The Aqueduct of Uzun Kemer near Belgrade Forest'.

SOUNDS: Daniel Birch.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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For the construction history of the Canal du Midi, see Chandra Mukerji, Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

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 late 1970s, 200,000 such migrants had left behind the post-colonial scarcities in Kerala, seeking cash from the crude oil industries of the Gulf. Jameel's ode obeys the strict formula of the Mappila tradition. Yet it speaks to Asia's 'cassette revolution', a time of transformation where tapes, telephones, and informal migrant networks challenged state-dominated cultural and gendered norms.

PRESENTER: Dr. Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil, assistant professor at the Manipal Centre for Humanities, India.

ART: Dubai Kathu Pattu (Dubai Letter Song), S. A. Jameel (1977).

IMAGE: ‘Keralan Migrant Listening to Tapes, 1980s'.

SOUNDS: S. Ambili.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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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 arriving in Europe as chess. Adapted for local tastes and hierarchies, ivory was swapped with stone and jade, and elephants for bishops and castles. Still, shrunk down to the size of a tabletop board, the Indian Raja, the Persian Shah, the Chinese General, and the European King and Queen, all possessed the same agency as in their respective settings.

Picking up these pieces challenges our tendency to associate chess with western intellect and popularity, exposing the layers of European imperialist and orientalist bias that blur our understanding of Asian histories. Beyond a simple game, chessboards, pieces, and rules, are historically socially significant symbols, revealing the complexities of pre-modern global interactions outwith Europe - and the great debt we owe them.

You can also read Manuela's full article on the Indian Elephant Chess Piece in Things That Talk, a project exploring humanities through the life of objects.

PRESENTER: Manuela Gressani, History of Art MA graduate from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She specialises in the art of the Safavid Empire in the 15th and 16th century.

ART: Indian Elephant Chess Piece (c. 17th-18th Century).

IMAGE: ‘Chess Piece, Bishop'.

SOUNDS: Karpov not Kasparov.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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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 the name of the present possessor’. Yet they wholly excluded the island’s most important element - the population of enslaved people of African descent. Peeling back the layers of the New Map uncovers how England's early empire was a private enterprise, with contemporary echoes down to Conservative MP Richard Drax. It also reveals how England's colonies were interdependent and detached from metropolitan involvement by design - and why seemingly distinct, competitive empires often overlapped and fuelled each other.

PRESENTER: Dr. Lou Roper, SUNY Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York. He is the co-General Editor of The Journal of Early American History.

ART: A New Map of the Island of Barbados, Philip Lea and John Seller (1686).

IMAGE: ‘A new map of the Island of Barbadoes'.

SOUNDS: Tuk Band.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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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 enconchados, embody the artistic and religious standards imposed by imperial Europe. But their shimmering façades also reveal how cross-continental flows of goods and peoples informed a uniquely New Spanish cultural identity - perhaps none more so than Japanese lacquers. Few enconchados still survive today. This vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe is a rare final testament to how Mexican and Asian artists received and resisted European cultural hegemony, and how colonial territories were often more cosmopolitan than their imperial cores.

PRESENTER: Dr. Sonia Ocaña Ruiz, professor of history at Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco. She is a member of Japón y España: Relaciones a Través del Arte.

ART: Mexican Enconchado of the Virgin of Guadalupe (c. 1700s).

IMAGE: ‘The Virgin of Guadalupe'.

SOUNDS: Manuel de Sumaya.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Patrícia Martins Marcos maps out Portugal’s designs for imperial civilisation in the 18th century, through Carlos Julião’s Four Ports Panorama.

From urban slaves to street peddlers, the Four Ports Panorama charts the diverse peoples of the Portuguese Empire on a universal path to civilisation, via clothing and Catholicism. Administrators and military men like Carlos Julião used the visual language of mapping to enforce assimilation within an exclusive Portuguese identity. But such maps reflect their makers’ selective sight, revealing how Portugal really occupied a precarious, peripheral position by the 1780s. The Four Ports Panorama exposes the faulty design at empire’s core - that abstract ambitions could only ever be concretised in violence and resistance.

PRESENTER: Patrícia Martins Marcos, doctoral candidate in History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, Visiting Scholar at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and Associate Editor at the History of Anthropology Review. She specialises in the history of race, medicine, and visual culture in Portuguese colonialism.

ART: Four Ports Panorama, Carlos Julião (c. 1780s).

IMAGE: ‘Four Ports Panorama’.

SOUNDS: Stealing Orchestra and Rafael Dionísio.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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