Appropriations: Remaking Maritime Technologies in the Dutch East India Company World

Appropriations: Remaking Maritime Technologies in the Dutch East India Company World

In this talk, Dániel Margócsy examines appropriations of natural resources, human labour, and intellectual property in the early modern Dutch East India Company's empire in India and the Indonesian archipelago.

Through the lens of shipbuilding and ship repair, he reconstructs the immense work required to keep the logistics of empire afloat, and how these logistics, by necessity, relied on encounters with and appropriations of local and diasporic knowledges and materials.

He explores the colonial logics of appropriation that treated humans, artefacts and nature in highly analogous manners. Case studies include the deforestation of Java in the wake of the Trunajaya wars, the making of the Hortus malabaricus, as well as epidemics of parasitic worms.

Attend in person, or watch on Zoom!

Date: November 22nd, 2024

Location: Denbo Center, Cherokee Mills

Zoom Link: https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/89536576811

Time: 12 noon

Host or Publisher Labor of Science Seminar Series