CONFLICT, MOBILITY, and EMPIRE
4:00-5:15. Manu Vimalassery (Barnard College), author of Empire’sTracks: Indigenous Nations,Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (UCal Press, 2019)
Title: “Empire’s Tracks”
5:30-6:45. Heather Streets-Salter (Northeastern University), author of World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anti-Colonialism in an Era of Global Conflict (Cambridge 2017)
Title: “Opportunity, Mobility, and Anticolonialism in Southeast Asia during the Great War.”
Abstract: In 1914, small but significant numbers of anticolonial revolutionaries living in and moving through Southeast Asia saw the war between the Allied and Central powers as an opportunity. Members of the Indian diasporic group called Ghadr and the Viet Nam Restoration Association, especially, saw the enmity between their colonial oppressors and Germany as a chance to gain the financial and material backing they needed to finally win control over their territories. This talk focuses on the ways members of both groups sought to use independent Siam as a base for undermining colonial rule in India and Indochina. More generally, it explores the ways the peculiar geography and geopolitical configuration of Southeast Asia encouraged enemies of the Allies to use the neutral states that surrounded their colonies to foment revolution.
Heather Streets-Salter is Professor and Director of World History Programs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in History from Duke University in 1998. She is the author of World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Martial Races: The Military, Martial Races, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (Manchester University Press, 2004), Traditions and Encounters: A Brief Global History (McGraw-Hill, 2006) with Jerry Bentley and Herb Ziegler (now in its fourth edition), and Empires and Colonies in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2015) with Trevor Getz. Her next project is called The Chill Before the Cold War: Communism and Anti-Communism in Colonial Southeast Asia in the Interwar Period.
April 19, 2019
Time: 4:00-6:45 PM
Presenter: Manu Vimalassery, Heather Streets-Salter
Location: 53 Washington Square South

