Everyday Technology in South and Southeast Asia, 1880-1940

by

Prof. David Arnold

Professor of Asian and Global History
University of Warwick

Date:	5pm, Thursday 12th February 2009
Location:	AS7Auditorium (AS7/01-02) NUS Kent Ridge Campus

Abstract:

Historical discussion of technology in South and Southeast Asia has mainly focused on such 'big' technologies as railways, steamships and electricity schemes, and on their role in constituting the material and ideological colonial order. However, no less important were small-scale technologies, such as bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines and typewriters, which, despite their foreign origins, were rapidly assimilated into local work practices, popular imagery, and state structures. Moving rapidly across the colonial divide, they demonstrate the extent to which technology change might occur in the late- and early pos-colonial era, but also the diverse responses of societies across the wider region.