The Arafura Zone: Indigenous Globalisation in the Asian Pacific
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Manimporok Dotulong will present “The Arafura Zone: Indigenous Globalisation in the Asian Pacific.”

In the heyday of colonialism and empire, global connections conspired to produce a singular industrial and ‘civilised’ world on the ruins of many others. But another form of connectivity facilitated the survival of worlds of an entirely different kind. One example can be found in the late 19th century, in day-to-day interactions that linked East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia at the non-state level. Indigenous and non-state actors turned to the ocean, where their local knowledge of nature served to facilitate transnational coexistence and mutual aid, inadvertently undermining colonial forms of relating. ‘Japanese’ fishers, ‘Manillamen’, ‘aboriginal Australians’, ‘Melanesians’, and many others thereby shaped the contours of what I call the ‘Arafura Zone’.

This seminar will demonstrate how Asia was not just a historical backdrop for the expansion of industrial civilisation but also the originator of an indigenous form of globalisation.

Join us in person at St. Antony’s College, or online at: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclcemorzMoGtd4VkJx75F0097hxbKvaPq6

More details
Date: 13 February 2023, 14:00 (Monday, 5th week, Hilary 2023)
Venue: St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details: Gateway Board room and online at : https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclcemorzMoGtd4VkJx75F0097hxbKvaPq6
Speaker: Manimporok Dotulong (Brown University)
Organising department: Faculty of History
Organisers: Madeleine Jane (University of Oxford), Adrita Mitra (Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: admin@oxfordtghs.com
Part of: Transnational & Global History Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Adrita Mitra