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SUMMARY:Transnational Trade & Labour History - Camille Neufville (Universi
 ty of Strasbourg)\, Amrit Deol (California State University\, Fresno)
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260225T140000Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260225T150000Z
UID:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/7d26e808-0b69-45e9-a156-df7ae91322ac/
DESCRIPTION:*Camille Neufville* (University of Strasbourg)\n*The Transnati
 onal Origins of Soviet Tea: Foreign Expertise and Foreign Presence on the 
 South Caucasian Tea Plantations Before and After the Establishment of Sovi
 et Power (1915-1935)*\n\nWhen the Bolsheviks took over the Georgian Democr
 atic Republic in 1921\, they inherited\, among the country’s most valuab
 le (and little-known) assets\, its tea-growing and tea-making industry. Th
 is budding branch of the rural economy had been established in Western Geo
 rgia in the 1880’s-1890’s\, following the conquest of the formerly Ott
 oman region of Adjara. Tea culture was promoted as the perfect tool for im
 perial integration\, as it made the landscape more « legible » through a
 gronomy\, soil sciences and plant biology\, and enabled better control ove
 r an unruly and elusive local workforce composed of ottomanized Muslim Geo
 rgians (Adjarans)\, Greek\, Armenian and Gurian peasants\, and Kurdish nom
 adic groups. The founding of a South Caucasian tea industry was made possi
 ble by the tireless efforts of a few Russian scientists and adventurers wh
 o travelled to the main tea-producing regions of Asia\, in order to extrac
 t knowledge\, tools\, seedlings\, and even men who could help them in thei
 r enterprise\, like the Cantonese tea master Liu Jenzhou. The South Caucas
 ian tea industry was therefore a transnational enterprise from its very in
 ception\, having taken inspiration from both traditional Chinese tea farmi
 ng\, and the colonial tea plantations established by the British in Assam 
 and on Ceylon\, and by the Dutch in Java. But how did this transnational c
 haracter evolve past the critical years of World War I\, the 1917 Russian 
 Revolution and the Civil War ? Could the tea industry survive the severing
  of international ties that followed the Bolshevik takeover of the country
  ? And was this transnational heritage ideologically compatible with the S
 oviet ideal of proletarian self-sufficiency ? I will show how local actors
  of the tea industry (workers\, managers\, as well as plant scientists) an
 d local\, regional and national authorities tried to navigate the hardship
 s of post-war disorganisation\, and the conundrum of having to build a hig
 hly modern and productive Soviet tea industry from the rubbles of a once c
 osmopolitan one.\n\n*Amrit Deol* (California State University\, Fresno\n*A
  Bridge Between Empires: Anticolonialism\, Labor\, and the Geopolitics of 
 Labor and Surveillance in Panama*\n\nThis paper situates Panama as a criti
 cal yet under-examined site in the global and transnational history of the
  Ghadar movement\, foregrounding the intersection of migrant labor\, antic
 olonial politics\, and imperial surveillance in the early twentieth centur
 y. Centered on South Asian laborers who traversed the Panama Canal Zone an
 d surrounding port cities\, the paper argues that Panama functioned not me
 rely as a transit space but as a politically charged site where imperial i
 nfrastructures of labor extraction and intelligence gathering converged. T
 he Canal\, then\, simultaneously generated transnational working-class sol
 idarities and heightened anxieties among colonial and imperial authorities
 .\nDrawing on British India Office records\, U.S. news/media publications\
 , and scattered references in revolutionary correspondence and intelligenc
 e reports\, the paper demonstrates how Ghadar ideology circulated through 
 maritime routes\, labor camps\, and emerging diasporic social networks in 
 Panama. British and U.S. officials closely monitored South Asian workers\,
  viewing them as mobile political threats whose anticolonial consciousness
  exceeded the territorial boundaries of empire and nation-state alike. Thi
 s paper reveals how cooperation and tension between British and U.S. surve
 illance regimes shaped intelligence sharing\, deportation practices\, and 
 racialized categories of suspicion (particularly as the United States emer
 ged as a hemispheric imperial power after 1904). Methodologically\, the pa
 per bridges labor history and the history of surveillance\, treating censo
 rship\, policing\, and intelligence not as reactive measures but as founda
 tional features of imperial governance. By centering Panama\, this paper c
 hallenges nationalist historiographies of Ghadar that privilege North Amer
 ica or South Asia alone\, and instead advances a transoceanic framework at
 tentive to infrastructure\, mobility\, and state power. In doing so\, it r
 epositions Panama as a vital site in the making of global anticolonial rad
 icalism and the early architecture of modern imperial surveillance.\nSpeak
 ers:\nCamille Neufville (University of Strasbourg)\, Amrit Deol (Californi
 a State University\, Fresno)
LOCATION:Radcliffe Observatory (Room 20.402\, History Hub\, Schwarzman Cen
 tre)
TZID:Europe/London
URL:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/7d26e808-0b69-45e9-a156-df7ae91322ac/
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DESCRIPTION:Talk:Transnational Trade & Labour History - Camille Neufville 
 (University of Strasbourg)\, Amrit Deol (California State University\, Fre
 sno)
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