A History of Architecture and Trade

A History of Architecture and Trade draws together essays from an

international roster of distinguished and emerging scholars to critically
examine the important role architecture and urbanism played in the past
five hundred years of global trading, moving away from a conventional
Western narrative. The book uses an alternative holistic lens through which
to view the development of architecture and trade, covering diverse topics
such as the coercive urbanism of the Dutch East India Company; how
slavery and capitalism shaped architecture and urbanization; and the
importance of Islamic trading in the history of global trade. Each chapter
examines a key site in history, using architecture, landscape and urban scale
as evidence to show how trade has shaped them. It will appeal to scholars
and researchers interested in areas such as world history, economic and
trade history and architectural history.

Patrick Haughey is a Professor of Architectural History at Savannah College

of Art and Design, USA, where he teaches modern, urban and global architec-
ture history. His research uses a multidisciplinary approach to architecture
history, deploying world systems, economics, history and cultural geography.
His scholarship critiques the impacts of colonialism and finance on architec-
ture and urbanism. He also teaches studio, drawing and rendering for the
Interior Design and Architecture Departments.
Routledge Research in Architecture

The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the
latest scholarship in the field of architecture. The series publishes research
from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history and
theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details, design,
monographs of architects, interior design and much more. By making these
studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to
promote quality architectural research.
For a full list of titles, please visit:
www.routledge.com/architecture/series/RRARCH

From Doxiadis’ Theory to Pikionis’ Work

Reflections of Antiquity in Modern Architecture
Kostas Tsiambaos

Thermal Comfort in Hot Dry Climates

Traditional Dwellings in Iran
Ahmadreza Foruzanmehr

Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture

Kim Sexton

The Ideal of Total Environmental Control

Knud Lönberg-Holm, Buckminster Fuller, and the SSA
Suzanne Strum

The Architecture of Medieval Churches

Theology of Love in Practice
John A.H. Lewis

A History of Architecture and Trade

Patrick Haughey
A History of Architecture
and Trade

Edited by Patrick Haughey

First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Patrick Haughey
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Haughey, Patrick, editor.
Title: A history of architecture and trade / edited by Patrick Haughey.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. |
Series: Routledge research in architecture | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017030220 | ISBN 9781138635739 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315206363 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and society—History. | Commerce—Social
aspects—History.
Classification: LCC NA2543.S6 H57 2018 | DDC 720.1/03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030220

ISBN: 978-1-138-63573-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-20636-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Author biographies ix

Introduction: The architecture of trade is as old as

human history 1
PATRICK HAUGHEY

1 Legacies of colonialism: Towards an architectural history

of capitalism 10
PATRICK HAUGHEY

2 Spices, spies, and speculation: Trust and control in the early

Batavia-Amsterdam system 44
ROBERT COWHERD

3 Cities of incense and myrrh: Fantasy and capitalism in

the Arabian Gulf 62
NASSER RABBAT

4 Borneo, the river effect, and the spirit world millionaires 80

MARK JARZOMBEK

5 House as marketplace: Swahili merchant houses and their

urban context in the later Middle Ages 115
THOMAS GENSHEIMER

6 An anachronism of trade: The Mercato Nuovo in

Florence (1546–1551) 128
LAUREN JACOBI
vi Contents
7 Merchant identity: The cartographic impulse in the
architectural sculpture of the Llotja of Palma de Mallorca 142
DORON BAUER

8 The travels of a merchant throughout the Islamic World 156

CECILIA FUMAGALLI

9 Savannah’s Custom House: A peculiar construction of

galvanized iron, apparently durable and well-adapted
to a southern climate 168
DENNIS DE WITT

10 The modernization of a port in British India: Calcutta,

1870–1880 194
ANIRUDDHA BOSE

11 Building the marble elephant: The creation of Philadelphia’s

iconic City Hall 208
GLEN UMBERGER

Index 223
Acknowledgments

In February of 2015 the Architectural History department at Savannah

College of Art and Design held its 9th and final international Symposium
on the Architecture of Trade, co-directed by Patrick Haughey and Robin
Williams. While this book was inspired by the symposium, it is neither a
compendium of the topics presented nor a publication affiliated with the
department or the college.
Books like this require the effort of a number of people. First and foremost,
I would like to thank my wife. Without her, I cannot be who I am. For all of
my work I am extremely grateful for my family and friends, who, with an
abundance of patience both challenge and support me.
I must thank Robin Williams, my department chair and co-director of the
2015 9th Symposium: The Architecture of Trade, for his tireless commitment
to the discipline of architectural history and to our community. The Savannah
Symposium was a vital bi-annual gathering of scholars from all over the
world and the department of Architectural History. As of now, this is the last
book to be inspired by the hundreds of participants and supporters, as the
symposium has been cancelled.
The Savannah Symposium, my inspiration as an educator, and our depart-
ment would not be possible without the support of Savannah College of
Art and Design. As always, behind the scenes of the symposium and our
department are some very special people including, among many: Marilyn
Armstrong, Sandra Hatteberg, Susan Richards and Alice Eisner, as well as our
own dedicated students and professors. In addition, I received valuable edits
and advice on my chapter from Professor John Carey Murphy and former
architecture student Samson Johnson, among others. I would also especially
like to thank the editors and people at Routledge Publishers for their patience.
Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues from my History, Theory
and Criticism family at MIT, especially Robert Cowherd and Mark Jarzombek
who helped inspired my research, as well as my other friends here in Savannah
and elsewhere for supporting my decades-long history obsession. I am grateful
for all of the teachers in my past who have left their mark. To all the authors
whose contributions made this volume possible, thank you for your dedication,
timeliness and support. Any and all errors or misunderstandings of their
contributions are of course my own doing.
viii Acknowledgments
Now more than ever, it is important that readers, scholars, schools and
publishers stand up to what seems to be an endless assault against education,
history and humanity.
This book is dedicated to my students, past, present and future, whose
passion, insight and trust have always kept me inspired.
Author biographies

Doron Bauer is Assistant Professor of Art History at Florida State University,

USA. He received his PhD in 2012 from Johns Hopkins University. He has
received a number of awards, including Research Fellowship, Kunsthistorische
Institut in Florenz (2016); Predoctoral Research Fellowship, Kunsthistorische
Institut in Florenz (2011–2012); La bourse d’échanges culturels de la Conseil
Général de la Vienne (2010–2011); Chateaubriand Fellowship, French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2009–2010) and Singleton Graduate Fellowship,
The Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe (2009–2010). He
is the co-editor of a forthcoming book, Art in the Kingdom of Majorca:
An Anthology of Sources (Universitat des les Illes Balears, 2017); ‘‘Milk as
Templar Apologetics in the St. Bernard of Clairvaux Altarpiece from
Majorca” (Studies in Iconography, 36, 79–98, 2016); and “Castus Castor
(The Chaste Beaver): Some Reflections on the Iconography of the Southern
Portal of Santa María de Uncastillo” (Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies,
1, 213–230, 2009).
Aniruddha Bose is Assistant Professor of History in the History and Political
Science Department at Saint Francis University, Loretto, Pennsylvania,
USA. He received his PhD in History from the Department of History at
Boston College, Massachusetts in 2013. He is the author of “Science and
Technology in India: The Digression of Asia and Europe,” History Compass
(February 2007). Dr Bose is currently revising a manuscript based on his
doctoral dissertation tentatively titled “Modernization and Class Conflict:
The British Raj on the Calcutta Waterfront.” His research for this project
has been supported by generous grants from the Clough Center for the
Study of Constitutional Democracy in Boston College, where Dr Bose was
a Graduate Fellow (2011–2012) and by a University Fellowship from
Boston College. It has also been supported by grants from the Faculty
Development Committee at Saint Francis University and the School of Arts
and Letters at Saint Francis University. The manuscript is currently under
contract with Routledge.
Robert Cowherd is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Wentworth
Institute of Technology, Boston, USA. He was a 2014–2015 Fulbright
x Author biographies
Scholar pursuing research on the role of design in the social transform-
ations of Latin American cities. He is a board member of the Global
Architectural History Teaching Collaborative and the author of “Cultural
Construction of Surakarta,” in The Emerging Asian City, Vinayak Bharne,
ed. (2012), as well as “Identity Tectonics: Contested Modernities of
Java and Bali, in Across Time and Space: The Politics of Architecture in
Modernity, Patrick Haughey, ed. (2016). He holds a PhD in the History
and Theory of Architecture, an Urban Design Certificate from MIT, and a
BArch from The Cooper Union. His research focuses on the history and
theory of architecture and urbanism in Southeast Asia and Latin America
and is informed by extensive field work in the developing world; including
work in post-tsunami Aceh, where his open-source model for village
mapping and planning was widely applied.
Dennis De Witt is Vice-Chairman and former President of the Metropolitan
Waterworks Museum in Boston, USA. He holds Masters’ degrees in
Architecture from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. He is
currently a Commissioner of the Massachusetts Historical Commission.
His past academic affiliations include Head of the Department of History,
Theory and Criticism at the Boston Architectural College; Research
Associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Archaeologist-
Cartographer on the Broken-K Pueblo expedition for The Field Museum.
In addition to helping research and develop the Waterworks Museum’s
permanent exhibits, he designed and curated “Vinal/Wheelwright: The
Work of Each as Boston’s Official City Architect,” 2016 and “The Art of
Engineering” (concerning nineteenth-century colored-ink-wash engineer-
ing drawings), 2015. De Witt was US co-curator of “Aqueducts of
Portugal,” 2014. His previous publications include: Arthur H. Vinal and
Edmund March Wheelwright: Architects of the Chestnut Hill High Service
Pumping Station, Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, Boston, 2016;
The Brookline Reservoir Gatehouse, National Historic Landmark
Nomination, 2015; “Conspicuous Iron and the Cochituate Aqueduct
Gatehouses,” The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology,
2015; Modern Architecture in Europe: A Guide to Buildings Since the
Industrial Revolution, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, E.P. Dutton, New
York, 1987; and “Neo-vernacular: eine Moderne Tradition,” Architese, 9,
1974. He also contributed to Art and Architecture of the Metropolitan
Waterworks, Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, Boston, 2011 and
edited and co-authored Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Process
Architecture, Tokyo, 1990.
Cecilia Fumagalli obtained her Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Architecture
at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in 2006 and 2009, respectively, and a
Masters’ in Technology, Architecture and City in Developing Countries at
Politecnico di Torino in 2012. Since 2013, she is a PhD candidate in
Architecture at the Architecture, Built Environment and Construction
 Author biographies xi
Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano. Her research and publish-
ing focus on the relationship between the character of the so-called Islamic
city and the issues posed by the international institutions operating in the
heritage field. Since 2006 she has worked at the Politecnico di Milano as a
Teaching Assistant and in various Architectural Design Studios as an archi-
tect and urban designer. Fumagalli also collaborates with international
organizations in many restoration and urban rehabilitation projects in
different countries—notably in Morocco, Mauritania and Malaysia.
Thomas Gensheimer is a Professor of Architectural History at the Savannah
College of Art and Design, Georgia, USA, where he teaches courses
in World Architecture, African Art and Architecture, and Islamic Art,
Architecture and Cities. He received his PhD from the University of
California Berkeley in 1997, where he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship
to conduct research in Kenya on the urban history of the medieval East
African coast prior to European contact. Professor Gensheimer has worked
in Pakistan excavating the ancient Indus Valley city of Harappa and has
lectured and published on the cities of the East African coast, as well
as Swahili medieval houses and tombs. He served as co-director of the
4th, 6th and 7th Savannah Symposiums and has co-authored the edited
volume World Heritage and National Registers: Stewardship in Perspective
(Transaction Publishers, 2015). His most recent publication is a chapter
on Swahili houses for Swahili World, one of Routledge World Series
publications. He also serves as a board member for the Historic Sites and
Monuments Commission for the city of Savannah, Georgia.
Patrick Haughey is a Professor of Architectural History at Savannah
College of Art and Design, Georgia, USA, where he teaches Modern,
Urban and Global Architecture History, as well as Architecture Studio.
He received his PhD in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture
from MIT in 2009. He is the editor and author of Across Time and Space:
The Politics of Architecture in Modernity (Transaction Press, 2017),
derived from the 8th Savannah Symposium that he co-directed. He is
also a co-author of Robin Williams ed., Buildings of Savannah (2016).
Recently, he has presented topics, including “Global Savannah: An
Economic History, 1733 to the Present,” sponsored by the Society of
Architecture Historians and National Endowment of the Arts for the
Reading the City series, May 4, 2016 in Savannah: “Cartel Urbanism:
Finance and the Architecture of Displacement, Towards a New History
of Urbanization.” He was Presenter and Chair of the Geographies of
Violence session at The Worlds of Violence, 9th Pan-European Conference
on International Relations, September 23–26, 2015, Catania, Sicily; “The
Architecture of the Slave Economy,” MIT, May 16, 2015, Cambridge;
“The Politics of Style: Historicism and the City,” Spatial Politics, American
Association of Geographers’ Conference, April 7, 2017, Boston. He is also
a member of the Andrew Mellon Foundation-funded Global Architecture
History and Teaching Collaborative.
xii Author biographies
Lauren Jacobi joined the History, Theory and Criticism faculty at MIT, USA,
in 2013. Her research interests focus on the history of late-medieval
through pre-industrial Italian architecture and urbanism with an empha-
sis on connections across the Mediterranean world. She applies economic
and sociological concerns to studying urban growth and transform-
ation, architectural history and visual culture. Prior to her position
at MIT, Jacobi was a visiting lecturer in the Department of Art History at
Dartmouth College. She has also taught at New York University, where
she completed her PhD in 2012. She is the author of publications on
topics ranging from issues about how money was made to work in the
late Middle Ages, to the topographic location of international and local
banks in Rome, to the medallic representations of Pope Paul V’s architec-
tural projects. Jacobi was a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy
in Rome from 2015–2016 where she has been working on a book
project in which she studies the topography of money in and beyond
Renaissance Florence. Her research has received support from the Kress
Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Dutch Institute
in Florence, the American Numismatic Society and the Morgan Library
and Museum, among other institutions.
Mark Jarzombek is a Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at
MIT, USA, and is one of the country’s leading advocates for global history.
He has published several books and articles on that topic, including
A Global History of Architecture, Wiley Press, 2006, with co-author
Vikram Prakash and illustrator Francis D.K. Ching and Architecture
of First Societies: A Global Perspective, Wiley Press, 2013. His Urban
Heterology: Dresden and the Dialectics of Post-Traumatic History (Lund
University, 2001) rethinks the conventions of urban history, an issue he
also addresses in Krzysztof Wodiczko, City of Refuge: A 9/11 Memorial
(Blackdog Publisher, 2009), which he edited with Dr Mechtild Widrich.
He is currently working on a new book, Architecture Modernity
Enlightenment. Recent scholarship includes “Architecture: The Global
Imaginary in an Antiglobal World” (Grey Room, 61, Fall 2015), “The
Rise of the So-called Premodern” (GSAPP Transcripts: The Urgencies of
Architectural Theory, Columbia University, 2015) and “The Shanghai
Expo and the Rise of Pop-Arch” (Log, 31, Spring/Summer 2014).
Jarzombek serves on the board of several journals and academic
institutions including the SSRC and the Buell Foundation and has
organized several major international conferences on topics such as
Holocaust Memorials, Architecture and Cultural Studies, and East
European Architecture. He is the co-founder and Chair of the Andrew
Mellon Foundation-funded Global Architecture History and Teaching
Collaborative.
Nasser Rabbat graduated with a Diplome of Architecture from the University
of Damascus, Syria, in 1979. He received his Masters’ of Architecture at
 Author biographies xiii
University of California, Los Angeles in 1984 and his PhD in Architecture,
Art, and Environmental Studies at MIT in 1991. He is the Aga Khan
Professor of Islamic Architecture and the Director of the Aga Khan Program
for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at MIT. Rabbat is a world-renowned
scholar and advocate for the re-conceptualization of Islamic architecture
as a coherent, yet fluid, multifaceted, and open-minded field of study. In
2007, he was a visiting professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität,
Munich, followed in 2009 at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales in Paris. He has received The J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship,
as well as fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Fellowship, The American Research Center in Egypt Fellowship the Chaire
de l’Institut du Monde Arabe. Recently, Dr Rabbat received the British-
Kuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies (2011). He has
authored numerous books and edited volumes, including The Citadel
of Cairo: A New Interpretation of Royal Mamluk Architecture, Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1995; Making Cairo Medieval, eds. Nezar AlSayyad, Irene
Bierman & Nasser Rabbat, Lantham, MD: Lexington Press, 2005; The
Citadel of Cairo: A Guidebook, Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities,
2010; in English and Arabic: Al-Mudun al-Mayyita: Durus min Madhih
wa-Ru’an li-Mustaqbaliha (The Dead Cities: Lessons from its History and
Views on its Future), al-Aws Publishers, 2010; Mamluk History Through
Architecture: Building, Culture, and Politics in Mamluk, Egypt and Syria,
London: Tauris I. B., 2010) and is editor of The Courtyard House between
Cultural Reference and Universal Relevance, London: Ashgate, 2010). He
has authored dozens of scholarly articles in both English and Arabic, and
is the author of the BBC’s Museum of Lost Objects series.
Glen Umberger earned a Master of Fine Arts in Architectural History
from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Georgia, USA, in 2015.
His thesis, “Philadelphia City Hall: Redefining the Civic Image of the
Modern American City” was awarded the Outstanding Architectural
History Graduate Thesis for the 2014–2015 academic year. Mr Umberger
is currently the Manager of Special Projects for the New York Landmarks
Conservancy. He is also an Adjunct Instructor at New York University,
School of Professional Studies, Center for Applied Liberal Arts, where he
teaches courses on New York City’s architectural history. Mr Umberger
has presented two academic papers: “Curing Architectural Amnesia:
A New Look at a Forgotten Famous Civic Masterpiece,” 2014 Annual
Meeting Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians
(SESAH), Fayetteville, Arkansas and “Building Philadelphia’s Marble
Elephant: The Economics and Politics of Creating an Iconic City Hall
for the Workshop of the World,” Architecture of Trade, 9th Savannah
Symposium, Savannah, Georgia. Mr Umberger has also been inducted into
the Gamma Eta Chapter of Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society in Architecture
and Allied Arts.
Introduction
The architecture of trade is as
old as human history
Patrick Haughey

The exchange of manufactured goods and foodstuffs has formed an integral

part of human history in almost every corner of the planet from our earliest
days of our existence down to the present.1

Trade is as old as humanity. Indeed, the exchange of goods may be what has
always defined humans in relationship to each other. While economists,
sociologists, and historians have been writing about trade for centuries,
trade is rarely included in the history of architecture. This is itself rather
surprising, as the activity of trade is often facilitated by architecture.2 More
often than not, trade is what pays for architecture.
In 1415, Prince Henry convinced his father, Portuguese King Joao, to
conquer the Muslim North African city of Ceuta (Morocco) and launched
the process of establishing a series of private trading posts down the Atlantic
coast of Africa. For the rest of the century, Portuguese trading posts con-
trolled the trade activities of the African coast in an effort to ensure that
Portuguese traders were the primary beneficiaries of the lucrative exchange;
especially with the rich gold and salt mines of the Ashanti and Mossi via
trading centers of the West African Gold Coast and up the Niger River to
Djenne and Timbuktu.
By 1440, Lisbon had a monopoly on Atlantic trade from their islands and
West Africa where they traded for pepper, which came to West Africa overland
from Alexandria and Mozambique. They also trade for the pepper now
grown in Guinea. One of the great myths of history is that Venice began
its decline when the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453—a bias
of Christian history. In fact, Venice was already in decline due to the rise of
Lisbon, who were able to undercut their trade in spices by harvesting them at
the western end of the Muslim trade routes in West Africa and from their
newfound monopoly on cheap sugar. Portugal was also the first European
Empire to realize the potential of sugar indigenous to Southeast Asia, planting
it on their islands of the Azores, Goree, and the Canary Islands, although
Muslim merchants had already successfully planted the crop in Sicily. To
make the trade work, Lisbon traded spices and sugar for grain, wool, copper,
2 Patrick Haughey
and timber in Antwerp, which they exchanged for spices, pepper, and gold in
West Africa. The gold helped to finance their expeditions around Africa to the
Indian Ocean and eventually the China Sea (see Chapter 2 for more).
In 1498, Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and introduced
the relatively peaceful Indian Ocean to violence and extortion. In 1510,
Alfonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa and proceeded to try to conquer
every port between Aden and Malacca to ensure a complete monopoly.
While Lisbon, for the most part, remained the political capital of the
Portuguese trading empire, the region of Goa, with its port at Daman Diu,
was the economic capital, controlling the vast administration of the Estado
de Indies. Eventually, the global powerhouse of the Estado de Indies was
challenged by their European neighbors. However, Goa remained Portuguese
for centuries until the newly-minted independent nation of India took it
back by force in 1961.
Portuguese trading ships were armed with cannon, a technology that was
new to the ports along the African coast. After several centuries of open
trade dominated by Muslim and Chinese sea traders, the Portuguese exploited
local rivalries and used cannon fired from their ships to batter lightly forti-
fied port towns into submission. The Cartaz trade monopoly system is named
after the “cartaz,” or “letter,” certifying the payment of ‘The Royal Fifth’—a
20% tax or trade duty—to the Portuguese crown. Failure to produce such
a letter could result in the confiscation of cargo, the destruction of ships, or
death. The original ambition of the Cartaz System was to make Portuguese
merchants the sole beneficiaries of the most lucrative trade commodities,
particularly pepper. The market prices of spices brought through long chains
of middlemen to from the Spice Islands (Indonesia) were based on the incre-
mental price increases each time it changed hands along the way. By bypass-
ing as many of the middlemen as possible, Portuguese merchants limited
competition and concentrated profits in their own hands
The East was low-volume, but its products commanded a massively high
price. Returns on pepper, mace, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg in Lisbon
could reach 180 times the price paid in Calicut on the Malabar Coast and
reach higher than that in Antwerp, London and Bruges. Lisbon’s wealth
was derived from the unprecedented profits from the Portuguese domi-
nance of sea-based trade routes along the Atlantic coast of Africa, the
Indian Ocean and the China Sea all the way to Japan. Prior to the arrival of
the Portuguese under the Muslim Trading System, when pepper arrived in
Europe it was more valuable than gold. The arrival of the Portuguese fleet
in the Indian Ocean and their virtual monopoly of the spice trade to Europe
by 1580, as well as the slave trade from the Captaincy of Angola to their
American colonies, paid for a number of impressive architectures and infra-
structure back in Lisbon, including the Tower of Belem and the Monastery
of Saint Jerome.
The Tower of Belem was built from 1510–1514 to protect the Portuguese
Fleet as it departed for Africa and later, India. It is also a reference to the
 Introduction 3
endless crusade to return the “Holy Lands” to Christianity at the behest of
the 15th-century Papal Bulls and in the aftermath of the conquest of the
Turks. Only seven ships made the trip out of Lisbon to Goa in the early
years, so protecting them from European competitors was important, as
was ascending Lisbon’s dominance over trade not only north to Antwerp,
but into the Mediterranean due. The Tower of Belem (a reference to
Bethlehem), is an exemplary architecture of both power and the multiple
cultural influences on the Iberian peninsula. The naming of the Tower, if not
its form, from scripture would come to play an important role in the both
the Estado de Indies and the Americas under Portuguese rule. Towers to
protect valuable harbors were not new to the region, as they were prominent
throughout the coastal lands controlled by Muslim rulers for centuries, as
well as the many others, from the Visigoths to the Carthaginians and
Romans. What is relatively unique about the Tower is that it was designed
and built by Fransisco Arruda, who studied architecture across the straits in
North Africa. The tower is built with what is known as the Manueline style
(after the King). The style is a hybrid of the Byzantine-Islamic style typical
of Umayyad and Almohad Al-Andalucia and North African structures, with
delicate horseshoe arches, details and stonework. Much of the architecture

Figure 0.1 Jeronimos Monastery, before 1755 (first half of the 18th century (PD)).3
4 Patrick Haughey
in both Portugal, Spain and their colonies overseas is influenced by the long
ties with both Byzantine and Arabic craftsman, many of whom converted to
Christianity by force, or to avoid the Inquisitions that begin in the middle of
the 15th century, rather than be forced away from their homes. You can also
see similar features in the cloister of the Monastery of Saint Jerome, as well
as in the remnants the Palace of the King that was later remodeled to imitate
French Versailles in the 17th century, after the devastating earthquake the
destroyed the city in 1755.
The Monastery of Saint Jerome (1516–1544) is also known as the “Pepper
Cathedral,” despite the fact that it was largely built with a tax on non-pepper
spices (Figure 0.1). King Manuel originally funded the project with money
obtained from the Vintena da Pimenta, a 5% tax on commerce from Africa
and the Orient, equivalent to 70 kilograms (150 pounds) of gold per year.
Pepper, cinnamon and cloves went untaxed because those profits went to the
crown. With the influx of riches, the architects built one of the largest build-
ings in Europe. The narrow columns on the interior are adorned with the
representations of the riches from the Indies, including the important pep-
percorns. The ornamentation also illustrates images of navigation instru-
ments as well as “exotic” plants and animals from the colonies. Vasco de
Gama, whose navigation around the Cape of Good Hope allowed the
Portuguese fleet to the exploit the Indian Ocean and the modern poet Luís
de Camões, who commemorated de Gama’s achievements, are buried here
in elaborate tombs. In 1833, the Monastery was secularized; its art stripped
and the space abandoned before restoration began in 1863 that has com-
pletely altered its exterior appearance, demolished significant portions of the
building, and relocated the tombs.
By the turn of the century, the Monastery of Saint Jerome became a
secular temple for the burial and commemoration of a few nationalist poets,
as well as for Dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, who was interned there
for ten years in 1951 before his body was moved to a new memorial. The
Tower and the Monastery are in the neighborhood of Belem, where for
the past four centuries, Portugal has used monuments and architecture to
commemorate its discoveries while eliminating the violence of its exploita-
tion. Included here are the Praça do Império, built in 1938 to commemorate
the dictatorship and new 1933 Constitution of the Estado Nova, which
permanently enshrined Portugal’s “civilizing powers” beyond its European
boundaries. The Praça briefly held an exposition celebrating the triumphs of
Portugal’s age of exploration.4
As other European powers reduced Portugal’s influence on the East,
Lisbon increasingly relied on the violent exploitation of Angola and Brazil’s
slave-based economies for its wealth. Indeed, Angola spans around 481,226
square miles along the southwest coast of Africa and is notably rich in
mineral reserves, including oil, iron, copper, bauxite, diamonds and uranium.
After the loss of Goa in 1961, the Captaincy of Angola was the primary
source of Portugal’s wealth. However, by the 1970s, the collapse of oil
 Introduction 5
prices, the postcolonial tensions throughout much of Africa and the civil
wars from Algeria to Angola, created a complex and violent rupture in the
last remaining large colony of the former Portuguese empire, from which
the host country and its leadership in Lisbon never fully recovered.
While the 1938 exposition was temporary, the fountain with the crests
of the families from that era remains along with Salazar’s 1960s monument
to Henry the Navigator, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos. The endless
remodelling of the large former monastery continued into the 1960s when
the Maritime Museum was added to the building, completing the Monastery’s
role as a centuries-long monument to Portugal’s once vast Trading Empire.

Chapter summary
This volume owes its existence to the generous work and research conducted
by its authors and, of course, the hard work of its publisher. Indeed, we
hope that this volume serves as an inspiration for the renewal of research
into how architecture influences and participates in trade on a global and
local scale across time. It is not intended to be comprehensive; rather each
chapter is a specialized look at trade through the lens of eleven Architectural
Historians. Indeed, much of what historians and economists have written
about trade unfairly privileges a Eurocentric model. Yet the emergence of
this European trading world—particularly the new financial innovations
such as banking, bond markets, and currency arbitrage that paid for and
gave birth to the art and architecture of the “Italian” Renaissance, exists
precisely because it was at the intersection of the European textile trade and
the centuries-old Muslim Trading World that spanned from Cordoba to
East Africa and the China Sea.5
In the first chapter, Patrick Haughey cites architectural evidence and
history to prove that the features of contemporary global capitalism were in
existence long before Adam Smith theorized its existence or Karl Marx
offered his widely-read critique. What is more, it has been operative on a
global scale centuries before the emergence of the neoliberal post-World
War order of the late twentieth century. “Legacies of Colonialism: Towards
an Architectural History of Capitalism,” argues that contrary to popular
belief, the origins of what we now think of as financial capitalism and its
mythical “free-market” ethos can be traced to the coercive and violent laws
that enabled an on-going 500-year global war over resources for profit originat-
ing in the late 16th century, with colonialism by profiteering shareholders
in English charter companies, as well as in the simultaneous systems of
consumerism, slavery, and coercion that underwrote both the Industrial and
“American” Revolutions.
In Chapter 2: “Spices, Spies, and Speculation: Trust and Control in the
early Batavia-Amsterdam System,” Robert Cowherd reveals the coercive and
violent origins of capitalism through the architectural and urban lens of the
Dutch East India Company. Cowherd examines the specific formal-spatial
6 Patrick Haughey
conflicts of Dutch Batavia (Jakarta) and offers insights to these larger sets of
instrumental forces that constitute a set of prerequisites for the operations
of early European adventures in expanded trade relations. Batavia exemplifies
an architecture of control characteristic of the widely-dispersed type of the
European fortified port town. For several centuries, Europeans were driven
by religious imperative and greed to break the tightly held Muslim spice
trade monopolies supplying Venice from then mythical locations far to the
east. Among the multiple elements that figure prominently into the 16th-
and 17th-century history of discovery, capture, defense, and control of the
transcontinental networks of exchange is the architecture of an interconnected
series of fortress-port-factory-towns. Like the technologically sophisticated
ships shuttling goods, munitions, priests, soldiers, laborers, finance, and
information between ports of call, the port towns themselves were designed
to minimize the labor needed to move goods and secure the town against all
threats, whether external or from the population of the town itself. One of
the lasting legacies of these port towns is the strategy of strict physical
segregation and social fragmentation, permitting a handful of Europeans to
guard against insurrection.
Nasser Rabbat, in Chapter 3: “Cities of Incense and Myrrh: Fantasy and
Capitalism in the Arabian Gulf,” notes that trade can persist for millennia,
transforming the landscape between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf over
time, adapting along the way to invent and reinvent systems of trade as
architecture and urbanism. As Rabbat writes, in the second and first
millennium BCE, the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent witnessed
the emergence of highly efficient cities as commercial emporia along the
trade routes bringing the luxury goods of Asia to the consumption centers
of Antiquity along the Mediterranean. Over time, these legendary cities,
Babylon, Byblos, Dura-Europos, Palmyra, Petra, Alexandria, Sanaa, Mokha,
Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Istanbul, which rose and fell with the rise
and fall of empires, became the subject of myth. This fairy tale image
survived their political and commercial decline and tinged the monumental
architecture of their Middle Eastern urban heirs in the modern age with an
aura of Oriental mystery and opulence. Nowhere is this more evident than
in cities of the Arabian Gulf—Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Manama—
which have become the contemporary “fabled cities of the East” by design.
Trade, even as it is mobile, leaves its traces in both architecture and
memory. For Mark Jarzombek in Chapter 4: “Borneo, the River Effect, and
the Spirit World Millionaires,” the absent elite architecture of Borneo is
contrasted with traces left in the landscape that reveal a long ignored yet
crucial aspect of global trade. For that reason, Borneo is rarely mentioned in
discussions about the development of architecture and cities in Southeast
Asia. However, that Borneo was targeted early on by Indian traders because
it possessed an extraordinary litany of wealth-producing commodities, from
gold, diamonds, camphor, and pearls, which were interesting to the Indian
traders to tortoise shells (used by the Chinese as oracle bones), hornbill
 Introduction 7
ivory (which the Chinese value above true ivory, or even jade, to make belt
buckles for high officials), rhinoceros horn (used to treat fever, rheumatism,
gout, and other disorders), and edible bird’s nests, a food item so valuable
that it was reserved only for the family of the Chinese emperor.
Thomas Gensheimer, in Chapter 5: “House as Marketplace: Swahili
Merchant Houses and their Urban Context in the Later Middle Ages,”
describes the vibrant, yet often neglected role of the East African coast in
this global trade. The port cities of the East African coast had served as
centers of commercial exchange centuries before the Portuguese arrived at
the end of the 15th century. For over a thousand years, traders from Persia,
India, and southern Arabia ventured to the coast, providing the economic
foundation for the development of an indigenous and prosperous Islamic
urban culture whose cities shared many architectural features common
throughout the western Indian Ocean basin. Despite the importance of
trade, the presence of extensive bazaars, characteristic of cities throughout
the medieval Muslim world, appears to be largely lacking along the Swahili
coast. Indeed, Gensheimer explains how, due to the nature of the luxury
trade, Swahili domestic structures served as a substitute arena for facilitating
inter-regional exchange between foreign merchants and local elites.
While much has been written about the art, architecture, and philosophy
of this “Italian” Renaissance era, it was trade and banking that paid for this
largess.6 Indeed, due to competition from the Portuguese and the new trade
monopoly imposed by the Ottoman Empire, much of the power of this
region faded by the late 16th century. Yet, many of the banking families
remained powerful. Indeed, by the middle of the 16th century the mercantile
loggia, a relic of an earlier period of Tuscan power, re-emerged as a building
type that was once again used to demarcate places of trade in Florence and
areas of Tuscany under the Medici’s control. Lauren Jacobi, in Chapter 6:
“An Anachronism of Trade: The Mercato Nuovo in Florence (1546–51),”
argues that this architecture, designed by Giovanni Battista del Tasso
between 1546 and 1551 to encourage gold and silk trade, was deliberately
anachronistic in its modality, at a time when Florence’s elite paradoxically
sought to distance themselves from a connection to commerce.
Doron Bauer, in Chapter 7: “Merchant Identity: The Cartographic Impulse
in the Architectural Sculpture of the Llotja of Palma de Mallorca,” reminds us
that Spain also had a vibrant and architecturally significant role in trade. His
chapter focuses on the closely related Llotja of Palma de Mallorca and the
Llotja of Valencia. The two late-medieval gothic buildings were commissioned
by merchant guilds in prominent port cities in the western Mediterranean to
function as stock markets as well as the seat of the College of Merchants (and
in Valencia also of the Consulate of the Sea). Bauer notes that both cities
feature large and impressive commercial halls where commodities were
brought and their prices were subjected to negotiations.
In Chapter 8, Cecilia Fumagalli brings us back to the architecture of
the Muslim Trading World with “The Travels of a Merchant throughout
8 Patrick Haughey
the Islamic World.” Indeed, for Fumagalli, the Islamic urban world is based
on the idea of the market, which is arguably the visible part of the urban struc-
ture for visitors. The towns of the entire Islamic world are connected to each
other through caravan routes, where goods travel up to suqs and bazars,
which are the arrival point of a broader territorial system. Therefore, to under-
stand the Islamic urban and territorial structure, Fumagalli insists that it is
from the perspective of the merchant traveling from town to town that we
witness how the architectural, urban, and land structures of the Islamic city
are shaped to accommodate the merchant during his travels.
While global trade systems and their regional and urban impacts dominate
this volume, in Chapter 9, Dennis De Witt introduces new structural evidence
on an architectural typology crucial to global trade: “Savannah’s Custom
House: A Peculiar Construction of Galvanized Iron, Apparently Durable
and Well-Adapted to a Southern Climate.” De Witt reminds us that
architecture must be built, and often it must deploy an innovative structure.
Further, his scholarship is a reminder that architectural history is forever
unfinished. Indeed, as De Witt argues, these structural innovations embodied
in the Savannah’s Custom Custom House and its relationship to the Boston
Merchants Exchange is quite possibly unique in the history of United States
architecture.
Aniruddha Bose challenges the Western narrative of industrialization, by
reminding us that much of the colonial world was at the forefront of trade
innovation in Chapter 10: “The Modernization of a Port in British India:
Calcutta, 1870–1880.” In the 19th century, the Calcutta port was not only
the most important trading center in eastern India; it was the capital of the
British Raj. From around 1860 to 1910, the British Indian government
invested considerable sums to upgrade the port’s infrastructure. Throughout
this period, thousands of men, women, and children labored, loading and
unloading the cargoes passing through the port. This chapter examines
records from 1860–1870 in order to understand the impact of these changes
on the port’s workforce. The significance of this research is threefold. First,
it sheds light on the processes of class formation in British India, while demon-
strating that violence and coercion are embedded in trade. Second, it com-
plicates our understanding of the relationship between technology and
subaltern populations in British India. Third, it demonstrates the scale of
the Calcutta waterfront, thereby underlining the importance of trade in the
architecture of urban India.
Finally, in Chapter 11 Glen Umberger introduces us to an understudied,
yet significant late-19th century monument in “Building the Marble Elephant:
The Creation of Philadelphia’s Iconic City Hall.” Umberger considers how
political resolve managed to produce a monumental municipal building
symbolizing the city’s image of itself as the manufacturing capital of the
world, without any mortgage, liens, or encumbrances and how, in spite of its
cost and size, it is still one of the most overlooked architectural landmarks in
the United States. For the next thirty years, Philadelphia would be involved
 Introduction 9
in the construction of the New Public Building, which was designed by a
dedicated small group of world-class architects and artists whose goal was
to create an iconic architectural masterpiece that “in some far off future day
be all that remains to tell the story of our civilization, and to testify to the
dignity and public spirit of our people.” Boasting a didactic sculptural
program designed “to express American ideas and develop American
genius,” the new City Hall featured a multitude of allegorical representa-
tions including commerce, industry, and trade. Remarkably, although con-
ceived during the national financial crisis surrounding the Panic of 1873, the
city officially completed their monumental task in July 1901, producing the
largest and most expensive municipal building in North America.

Notes
1 Charles Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800
(Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010), 68.
2 Parts of this introduction were written with Robert Cowherd for the Andrew
Mellon Foundation funded Global Architecture History and Teaching
Collaborative. It has been edited and modified for publication.
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jer%C3%B3nimos_Monastery#/media/File:
Mosteiro_dos_Jer%C3%B3nimos_antes_de_1755.png.
4 Elen Sapega, “Remembering Empire/Forgetting the Colonies: Accretions
of Memory and the Limits of Commemoration in a Lisbon Neighborhood,”
History and Memory v.20, n.2, 2008, 19–24.
5 “Italian” is in quotes because there was no such thing as Italy until the 19th
century conquest first of northern Italy by Napoleon, followed by the decades-
long invasion southwards of Victor Emmanuel during Risorgimento. Indeed,
from around 586 to 1815, what we think of as Italy was a series of shifting
territories, Papal States, and Kingdoms.
1 Legacies of colonialism
Towards an architectural
history of capitalism
Patrick Haughey

A brief history of economics and enlightenment philosophy

The origins of capitalism, as opposed to other forms of exchange, has a
murky history. Most economists and historians pinpoint its emergence
between its diagnosis by Adam Smith in the late 18th century and its cri-
tique by Karl Marx in the late 19th century. Historians attempting to under-
stand the relationship of capitalism have followed this pattern. The eminent
American Historian, Joyce Appleby published The Relentless Revolution: A
History of Capitalism in 2010. She notes admirably that to claim a start
date for capitalism is arbitrary and that it is cultural as well as economic.
Despite noting the influence of the Portuguese, Spanish, various Papal
decrees and even the Dutch, she claims these only bolster the case for English
exceptionalism. For Appleby, capitalism begins in England “with the con-
vergence of agricultural improvements, global explorations, and scientific
advances.”1 Indeed, she insists their experience was “unique,” all while she
admits that people in Africa, the Middle East and India had capitalism
“thrust” upon them; yet, while there is little mention in her book of “revolu-
tion” against state-sponsored violence, she does mention the relationship
between the Natural philosophers and economic justification and cites the
usual suspects in her introduction: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thomas Paine,
Max Weber, and others.2 She notes Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776)
is the first diagnosis of nearly two centuries of history, yet still finds the
origins of English capitalism to occur around this moment. This chapter is
going to take her at her word. The English did create capitalism, but not in
the way she and many others have seen it.3 Appleby’s “global explorations”
required state-sponsored violence. The agricultural improvements and
scientific advancements leading to the industrial revolution were the result
of law and privileged landed power.
Even Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century
(2014) places the origins of capitalism, in his twist, the beginning of wealth
inequality at this moment. Piketty pairs the classical natural philosophy
of England with its late 18th-century emergence in France under the guise of
enlightenment and the rapid explosion of its population. He also unpacks
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 11
Thomas Malthus’ infamous Essay of 1798 and David Ricardo’s Principles
of Political Economy (1817). Without statistical proof, they were both
concerned with rising land rent in the face of demographic and resource
pressures. Ricardo introduces the principle of scarcity within the context of
supply (land) and demand (resources): if land and its resources are only in
the hands of a few, then the solution must be state intervention in the form
of taxation. Ricardo assumed land would rise faster than goods, wrongly,
according to Piketty, bringing about an apocalypse.4 Piketty goes on to insist
that Karl Marx, Das Capital (1867), took Ricardo’s principle of scarcity
and applied the principle of infinite accumulation through an analysis of
industrial manufacturing. Piketty goes on to insist that Marx predicts an
apocalypse where capitalism inevitably fails unless there is a revolution.5
Piketty, using statistics, generates a plausible, but much critiqued, method of
demonstrating how infinite accumulation creates an ever-growing wealthy
class. Yet, like most economists, he forgets that math is only part of the story.
Historians of architecture are no different when they pay attention to
capitalism at all. Peggy Deamer, in Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the
Present (2014), determines the origins of capitalism following the model of
economic history:

The first consideration, the time frame and sequence, is determined

by the advent of industrial society and with the self-conscious awareness
of the working of capitalism. While this ostensibly begins with Adam
Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, its connection with the built
environment comes to the fore in the nineteenth century with the work
of John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), and Karl
Marx, Das Capital (1867).6

Deamer insists on a critically important point following her determination

of time where she notes that architecture and its relationship to capital are
necessarily unstable. This is due in large part to the impact money has on
design, where intentions are compromised by the desires of the supplier of
capital. Yet, like many historians, she takes the origin of its emergence for
granted. Indeed, the authors assembled by Deamer, rather than look at archi-
tecture, or the “built environment,” as is mentioned in the introduction,
actually attempt to diagnose how architects respond to capitalism, from
Henry Cole to Le Corbusier to Rem Koolhaas. This is an excellent exercise.
However, it masks how architecture is created by and is embodied in the
operation of capitalism.7 Perhaps a more apt title would have been “Architects
and Capitalism.” The timeline embraced in this book largely ignores the roles
colonialism, industrialization, urbanization, finance and slavery play in the
origins and perpetuation of capitalism. In summary, architectural historians
tend to take the narrative of economists for granted.
What all the authors above have in common is either a deliberate or un-
intentional neglect of 500 years of colonialism—legacies which continue to
12 Patrick Haughey
impact the world. Indeed, colonialism and mercantilism then, as now, have
a major role in supplying very fabric of architecture. Iron, stone, concrete,
oil, copper, timber: these extractive processes at the heart of historical and
contemporary architecture are embedded in capitalism and global trade.
This resource dependence is often ignored in the practice of architecture and
the writing of its history.
When Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776, he was imposing
a Newtonian naturalist universe on an economic system that existed for well
over a century. Isaac Newton provides a method for the empirical observation
of the natural world.8 Smith imports Newton’s methods to observe the
“natural” phenomena of productivity and labor, which he assumes are only
regulated by the value of inputs (commodities), inaugurating the idea of
Supply and Demand. For Smith, natural philosophy provides science as a
means for diagnosing the principles of what is now known to economic
historians as the beginning of Classical Political Economy. The universal
laws of Newtonian nature provide a clean model for how social and political
forces of capitalist market economics operates in the world.9 However,
following Smith, observation of the natural world no longer is necessary as
its philosophical premise is firmly established, where technological and
therefore, scientific progress is linked to capitalism. Thus, the Enlightenment
assumes that the state of the world where Europe is dominant at the turn of
the 18th century is the result of natural, and therefore inevitable causes,
correctly diagnosed through its own use of reason. However, this rationalist
scientific philosophy swiftly becomes racial with the publications of Jean-
Baptiste Lamarck’s Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
(1801), followed by Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon’s Types
of Mankind (1858). Reason and nature are thus deployed, along with
religion, to justify slavery and violent colonialism.
In the 1870s, economists, having established their universal and thus
inevitable, roots in Enlightenment natural philosophy, begin to deploy
mathematics in what is known as the Marginal Revolution. William S.
Jevons and Leon Walrus apply math to the study of human behavior. Jevons
explains, “I have attempted to treat Economy as a calculus of Pleasure and
Pain . . . [therefore] it must be a mathematical science in matter if not in
language.”10 Leon Walrus, in Elements of Pure Economics (1874) provides
the economic discipline’s a priori assumption of the Theory of General
Equilibrium, where on balance the cost of pain imposed is canceled out
by the benefits of pleasure, just as later economists would insist that supply
and demand must, eventually equal out to zero. The preservation of this
“beneficial” equilibrium becomes the primary task of the 19th-century
nation-state.11 According to Arne Heise:

Leon Walrus’ intention was to show (or, rather, to prove mathematically)

that there may exist a system of relative prices (a price vector) which
will simultaneously equilibrate all markets – for consumer goods,
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 13
capital goods, labor and money, i.e. to create a general equilibrium. In
such an equilibrium state, where supply equals demand, excess demand
must necessarily be zero.12

Walrus’ Law remains the cornerstone of orthodox economics and its model
for the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, which is the generally
accepted economic principle that ‘‘there can be no overall excess supply or
excess demand in an economy comprised of markets where goods, labor,
capital, bonds and money are exchanged freely.”13
John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and
Money (1935), while often seen as refutation of Walrus, proposed that
Walrus, while correct on structure, missed the role of debt and credit, and
the existence of a monetary economy and that market forces work for every
commodity, except that it requires involuntary unemployment.14 Keynesian
“liberal” economists do not question the equation; they merely demand that
the power of the state is used to minimize public pain in a crisis.15 Indeed,
Heise, through a blistering array of equations, cannot help but conclude,
trapped in math, that Keynes remains valid after years of confronting the
defense and assault on Walrus. This conflict is why architectural history is
necessary, as the economists’ reliance on numbers has caused their struggle
to zero-out the equation when the concept of the idea of limited resources
or the spatial, political and demographic forces make equilibrium in a
Walrus market impossible.
The irony of this mathematical purity is that the frictionless mathematics
that justifies capitalism through the “pain” equation occurs in what Mark
Twain dubbed the Gilded Age. During this period emerging monopolies
swallow competitors and reduce the “friction” of labor on the movement
of capital through violence, all while protected by law.16 Railroad riots,
restrictive immigration laws, company towns and extravagant mansions are
the architectural and historical evidence of power and control during this
period. The credit event that caused the Long Depression at the end of the
nineteenth century prophetically coincided with massive assets gains concen-
trated in few hands. This condition inspired reform-minded philosophers
like Thorstein Veblen to consider the effect of unfettered or privileged asset
acquisition on the broader economic landscape in his Theory of the Leisure
Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) and his later essays on
absentee ownership. The economist Michael Hudson, reviewing Veblen
noted that “inherited privilege, monopoly power and land ownership rights
were rewarded more than labor . . . The largest asset in every economy was
still real estate.” For Hudson, “the key to understanding Veblen’s 1923 essay
on ‘Absentee Ownership’ and indeed, the Reform Era, is to analyze land
rent, and how urban real estate speculation was becoming not only the fastest
way to get rich but also the major customer of banking and high finance.
Thus Veblen became justly famous for describing small towns as real estate
14 Patrick Haughey
promotion projects . . . [and] he described America’s rapid urbanization as
a great [zero-sum] real estate game.”17
Systems persist over long periods of time, even as localized sites adapt or
transform in response. As Michel de Certeau writes, “The making of history
is buttressed by power which creates a space proper (walled city’s, nations,
etc.) where the will must write (construct) a system.”18 From an economic
standpoint, especially in contrast to trade, capitalism is a relatively new
system designed to create wealth from invested capital and compound
interest alone, without possessing a tradable skill, inventing technology or
providing the labor for production.
Yet, this new form of wealth is increasingly visible long before Adam
Smith and can be found in the architecture and history of the colonial era.
What is more, the recovery of capitalism’s long history is vital to under-
standing the emerging modern city. One aspect of colonial capitalist systems
is that the benefits of wealth are largely returned to and concentrated in
particular cities, financing growth at both ends of the system, in Amsterdam
or London at the expense of territories governed in the colonies ruled from
cities such as Batavia and Calcutta.19 What is more, it has grown exponen-
tially, through wars, shifting borders and every manner of governance since
the 16th century to allow very few people to control vast portions of wealth
in today’s global world.20 In short, the economics of pain versus pleasure are
not equally distributed as capital or architecture.
Capitalism in the colonial era, and after, therefore is more than a financial
innovation. It is a system that has altered the inhabitable world and thus its
architectural history. It begins when emerging monarchies and later, nation-
states, outsource the extraction and exploitation of conquered territories to
for-profit companies in exchange for a fixed fee, taxes and dividends paid
to elite power brokers and the state’s treasury. What is more, charter compa-
nies relied on a number of financial innovations that predate this period.
Banks and the emerging bond markets invented in the city states of the
so-called “Italian” Renaissance allowed merchants, nobles and sovereigns to
borrow money to invest in better ships and new routes.
Much that we take for granted in contemporary finance was a creation of
Florentine banking: denominated currency, checks, receipts and double-entry
bookkeeping. With the rise of textile manufacturing in Florence and other
bank and trade dominated city-states of the Italian peninsula, came a demand
for credit to buy supplies and to pay workers. Banking arrives to meet this
demand. Florence becomes the dominant banking site for Mediterranean
and European trade routes. The Florentine gold coin, the Florin, was the
benchmark currency of Europe for centuries. Florentine banks had agents in
cities throughout Europe and into the Middle East, as far away as London,
Lisbon, Moscow, Cairo and Damascus. Florentine bankers were the major
lenders to the Papacy and kings and nobles throughout Europe. Florentine
banking families eventually became the new nobility of the city, forcing out
the old feudal nobility.21 This wealth produced the wonders of art and
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 15
architecture we call the “Italian Renaissance.” The word “credit” derives
from the Latin credere, which means “to believe.” Faith is thus the origin of
modern financial markets.
The rulers of Venice deployed a unique form of credit finance, borrowing
from its citizens in order to repel the advances of the more powerful Ottoman
Empire as well as its competitors in Florence and Genoa. Selling bonds
(promises) to its wealthy citizens allowed the city-state to access a pool of
capital that was roughly proportional to the entire economy of Venice
(versus merely the contents of the treasury) and forced its citizens to be
“invested” in the success of their military defense.22 The bond market was
also an outlet for surplus capital. Less risky than merchant voyages and
more predictable than farming, bonds are also easier to manage. Bonds pro-
vided much-needed funding to the city and later nation-states primarily to
finance war while guaranteeing a fixed return for the bond investor, who
is now invested in the economic growth of his debtor state. The investor is
now invested in the stability of the state in order to receive the promised
return on capital. Bond markets improve the ability of an affluent popula-
tion to build wealth without doing anything besides loaning money to a
sovereign entity for a guaranteed return or allowing banks to use their
deposits for further lending at interest. Bond investors today are the largest
source of finance for cities, states, nations and companies. They remain a
legally protected class who can hold the citizens or stakeholders of any
indebted entity hostage for their guaranteed returns.
The stock market, invented in the early 17th century, allowed new compa-
nies to sell shares to other owners, both raising capital and diversifying risk,
the key advantage companies had over sovereign-funded fleets. The risk of a
single voyage could be pooled among many owners rather than bankrupt
a family. As a stockholder, you could hold onto the shares and receive either
goods or a dividend paid at a fixed time upon the conclusion of a voyage, or
sell your shares to somebody else for a profit or loss. Shares and goods were
liquidated after each voyage, with new shares issued for each new venture.
The commodities themselves were worth money in a direct sale or on a future
sale at a fixed price, in what is now known as the “futures” market. You
could purchase an option to buy or sell a given item at a fixed price at some
date in the future, thus guaranteeing a known price and pre-funding the
acquisition of the product for the merchant.
For defenders of Efficient Market Theory, this is the best thing about
capital markets: they allocate capital efficiently to the best-performing com-
panies, rewarding success, and with fewer barriers erected to stifle this flow
(regulations or cost of labor), the more efficiently the capital will be allo-
cated. The Enlightenment assumption behind this idea is that capital alloca-
tors are rational people. Smith’s Homo Economicus, “will never make poor
decisions in their own self-interest.” This is where John Stuart Mill, in his
Principles of Political Economy (1848), Book I, Chapter 2 (“Of Unproductive
Labor”) describes the division of labor using bread as his example. Bread,
16 Patrick Haughey
the most useful of foods, must somehow cost enough to provide for its
means of production, from tools, to harvest to transportation.23 Mill, con-
cludes that no matter the labor, it must be subservient for its compensation
to production, and in the process, notes that this gives rise to architecture:

This gives rise to another mode in which labour not employed directly
about the product itself, is instrumental to its production; namely,
when employed for the protection of industry. Such is the object of all
buildings.24

In “Of Unproductive Labor,” Mill lays his trap whereby he measures the
production of labor by its measurable utility. He admits that he can only use
material wealth and then make the following astounding claim:

All labour is, in the language of political economy, unproductive, which

ends in immediate enjoyment, without any increase of the accumulated
stock of permanent means of enjoyment. And all labour, according to
our present definition, must be classed as unproductive, which terminates
in a permanent benefit, however important, provided that an increase of
material products forms no part of that benefit. The labour of saving a
friend’s life is not productive, unless the friend is a productive labourer,
and produces more than he consumes.25

For Mill, it is consumption that makes labor useful. The next chapter is
“Capital.” For Mill, capital is neither money nor wealth. It is there to make
sure the conditions for labor, money, and wealth exist:

What capital does for production, is to afford the shelter, protection,

tools and materials which the work requires, and to feed and otherwise
maintain the labourers during the process . . . As whatever of the
produce of the country is devoted to production is capital, so, conversely,
the whole of the capital of the country is devoted to production.26

In Mill’s narrative, the logic of capital must be linked to the progress of the
state, whereby Mill defends British rule in India as “Tolerant Imperialism.”27
Stock companies combined with new banking innovations and technological
innovation (machines) allowed emerging European nation-states to finance
growth and, according to Western history, achieve progress.28
This financial innovation also allows nation-states to finance local infra-
structure and endless war with other competitor states over global resources,
as dividends and imported commodities are recycled into war through tariffs,
and eventually taxes. In addition, many companies are often structured
as limited liability companies. This structure legally shields the majority
owners and operators from the consequences of the company actions by law.
The corporation is a legally separated from its agents. A few companies
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 17
received a monopoly from their home country, in theory, to allow them to
remove the “friction” of competition (the mythical essence of the Free
Market hypothesis). Monopoly power allows them to grow without worry.
Most importantly, charter companies had the means and license to wage
war on behalf of their stockholders’ interests and their state. This requires
the architecture of forts, ports and cities. The protected right to trade
and ensure shareholder profits at home was always enforced by violence
elsewhere.
By exerting power, territorial violence and resource extraction, the limited
liability company is the essence of colonialism and modern capitalism.
Historian Sven Beckert calls this form of trade “war capitalism.”29 Contrary
to mathematics and popular belief, capitalism never operates in a vacuum of
frictionless exchange. It always relies on violence at some point, whether
physical and deadly or implied through the force of law. From the perspective
of the Enlightenment myth of rationalism, this is the ghost behind Smith’s
“free hand of the market.” Law has to be enforced, creating the conditions
for violence. Jacques Derrida reminds us that “law is always an authorized
force, a force that justifies itself or is justified in applying itself, even if the
justification may be judged from elsewhere to be unjust . . . No law without
force, as Emmanuel Kant recalled with great rigor.”30
In order understand the capitalist system, there has to be an account of
violence beyond the mathematics of pain in the service of equilibrium.
It requires a more accurate description of capitalism. Rarely in a capitalist
system is any form of exchange for profit completed without violence or
coercion at one point in the system, from harvest through production to
consumption. Most of the growers, harvesters and crafts people who pro-
duced any valued commodity that created the vast wealth were slaves,
chattel labor or serfs. As historian C.A. Bayly wryly notes:

The final competitive advantage enjoyed by parts of Europe lay in the

relationship between finance and war. Crudely, the Europeans became
much better at killing people. The savage European ideological wars in
the Seventeenth Century had created links between war, finance and
commercial innovation.31

Bayly notes the irony of the emergence of the Enlightenment and commer-
cial companies during this period of savage, expensive maritime war.
The expensive cost of maintaining a global fleet to protect one commodity,
sugar, from competition required the cane plantation colonies in the
Caribbean to be immensely profitable. Maintaining the architecture of
capitalism—forts, ports, shipyards and ironworks for canon—is incredibly
costly, as is the forcible relocation of millions of people to harvest the
cane and process it on the plantations. The same expensive architectures
are also deployed for spice routes, timber routes, silver routes, or from a
contemporary perspective, oil, copper and food. This is why it is necessary
18 Patrick Haughey
to consider slavery, capitalism, industrialization, urbanization and the
Enlightenment together. They are self-reinforcing systems that emerge during
the same period.32

Capitalism and violence: The East India Companies,

the Bengal Famine and the American Revolution
Back to England. In 1591, Queen Elizabeth granted permission for three
ships to sail to the Arabian Sea, following the paths traced (violently) by the
Portuguese a century earlier. They returned in 1594 loaded with spices and
luxury goods. Each voyage raised money through stock, which was sold
upon return. Voyages were intensely risky, long, and rarely successful in the
early years. Therefore, a new group of investors was granted a 15-year
monopoly company charter by the Queen for the Governor and Company
of Merchants of London trading with the East Indies in exchange for a fixed
fee to the Kingdom, thus yoking the fortunes of the Crown to the success of
the company. The English East India Company that will emerge from these
early endeavors received its charter from Queen Elizabeth on December 31,
1600. Though not the first chartered company in England, the East India
Company (EIC) helped to pioneer, along with the contemporary Dutch East
India Company (VOC), the concept of joint stock ownership as a way of
raising the capital needed for a successful overseas trade, as well as manag-
ing the risk of a voyage. The capital and profits were underwritten by the
monopoly guaranteed by the state. In the beginning, the companies rented
the ships and sent them off on their stately journeys with one trip out and
one trip back in each year before vertically integrating the shipbuilding
process within the EIC itself.33
Gradually the funding methods changed, and by the 1650s, the EIC became
a joint stock company managed by a board of shareholders, governed by a
Chair with a handful of trading posts along the west coast of India. In 1657,
the company was formalized as a continuous, unlimited investment without
reference to individual voyages. This is the date that an English company
becomes a joint stock limited liability company. The EIC kept its monopoly
by paying an increasingly large fee to the Crown and so had a well-established
system in place when the British government finally decided to remove
the monopoly and allow open competition for a period coinciding with the
English Civil War and Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the Directorate back
in England.34
Beginning in 1670, the restored Catholic King Charles II of England
passes a series of acts returning the monopoly to the company in exchange
for his annual fee.35 The new law turned the company into a quasi-state,
allowing it to acquire territory, build forts, mint money, negotiate alliances,
make war and adjudicate over its territories without recourse to the crown.
In 1682, the EIC deployed its new power to negotiate with the local Bengal
Nawab for a firman (unlimited permission to trade for a fee) that covers all
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 19
of Bengal, but they are rejected. In 1685, the East India Company requested
soldiers from King Charles II to protect and build a walled factory on the
river Hooghly (one of the many outlets of the Ganges delta).
In 1688, England experiences its “Glorious Revolution.” Dutch Burgher
William, the nephew of Charles II, comes to power, permanently shifting the
religion of the crown from Catholic to Protestant. The following year, a
Mughal fleet retaliates for the company, arming itself and attacking the com-
pany’s factory town of Bombay on the west coast, where the EIC has most of
its trading operations. After a year, they surrender by prostrating themselves
before the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb with a large ransom. In 1690, an
administrator of the East India Company, Job Charnock, arrives at a village
named Sutanuti, near the mouth of the Hooghly River, and decides the loca-
tion is ideal for a trading post. In 1698, Sutanuti, along with two nearby
villages, are bought by the EIC from a local landowner. The new factory is
named Calcutta and stealthily fortified. This was the original Fort William
(named after the new Protestant King of England), William III. At the end of
the 17th century, the EIC had a total of twenty-three trading posts in India.
In 1707, Aurangzeb, the last powerful Mughal ruler of India died, creat-
ing a power vacuum among local lords and the competing European compa-
nies. Ten years later, Bengal ruler Shaista Khan abolishes customs duties to
raise money to the great advantage of the company factors. Feeling under
threat from locals and other competing companies, Governor Hedges secures
soldiers from Fort St. George in Madras, down the coast, to protect his resi-
dence in Hooghly-Chinsurah, and asks the local ruler if he can build a new
fort to protect Calcutta. Shaista Khan denies his request and imposes a
new 3.5% tax. Company warships arrive, and soldiers ransack the town.
Five hundred houses are destroyed by the constant bombardment. The
Emperor evicts the EIC from Bombay and Hooghly-Chinsurah to the delight
of the Dutch VOC and the French in Pondicherry. The company retreats to
their walled outpost of Calcutta and other factories.
Over the next decade, they recover in part by muscling in on the tea trade
out of Canton. This rapid expansion came at a steep cost. By 1750, many of
the EIC agents were highly indebted to Indian moneylenders, in many cases
using local loans to finance the purchase of goods, especially for lucrative
tea from China.36 While the goods fetched a very profitable price back in
England, it could take months or years to get reimbursed back in Bengal.
Specie (coin) from sales and the stock dividends often stayed at home. Under
pressure from the rising trading prowess of the French upriver from Calcutta
in Chandernagore and Plassey, and the increasing competition from the
Dutch VOC, the EIC shares and dividends began to plummet in the markets
of London.
In 1751, EIC agents begin to cut out the local merchants, who were by
now the wealthy middlemen negotiating the movement of locally produced
products into the hands of the English. This had the added benefit of bypass-
ing the trade tax introduced by the Nawab, who, like the Mughal Emperor,
20 Patrick Haughey
was already under siege from multiple fronts. Having lost important revenue
used to finance his own wars to the west and the south, the Nawab responded
by going to war with the EIC, capturing their fortified factory outpost of
Calcutta in 1756. The French and Dutch also begin to attack the EIC’s hold-
ings along the east coast of India.
When news reaches London, the company shares plummet once again.
However, everyone underestimated the ruthless military skills of the 31-year-
old Director General Robert Clive. Clive, with his legal mercenary army
and help from the British Fleet, ignores Calcutta and heads north to assault
the French enclave upriver at Plassey where he massacres both a Mughal
army and most of the French population. Once that is complete he turns
south, and with no army at his back, he ruthlessly recaptures Calcutta,
killing most of the native population. Clive then turns his forces east to
wrestle control of the opium trade in Bengal from the Dutch, permanently
displacing the Dutch from India, before moving back down the east coast of
India to retake the port of Madras from the French. In two years, Clive and
his army, with the help of massive British naval bombardment, are able to
temporarily remove both of their European rivals and weaken the centuries-
old Mughal domination of Bengal. In 1758, a new Fort William was built to
protect Calcutta from future attack. Back in London, the company celebrated
its growing power with a new building in the Classical style on Leadenhall
Street in 1760 (Figure 1.1). During this period, the buildings of the East
India Company expanded to fill the entire block between Leadenhall Market
and Lime Street creating a new capitalist center for London.37 The following
year, at the Battle of Buxar, Clive defeats the joint forces of Mir Qasim, the
Nawab of Bengal, the Nawab of Awadh and the Mughal Emperor Shah
Alam II. The following year, Clive extorts a new demand from the now
weakened ruler. With the firman already guaranteeing them indefinite
trading rights, Clive goes further, demanding the diwani over Bengal from
the Mughal Emperor. The diwani is only given to loyal Nawabs and allows
them to have autonomous control over taxes, laws, and governance in their
territory in exchange for a fixed monthly fee. The Emperor agrees to not
only give the EIC the diwani but to rent out his own “sepoy” soldiers for
their use.38 The EIC then forbids local lords from maintaining their own
armies, forcing them to turn to the company for protection. When they
either could not pay or refused to pay, the company took land as payment.
The EIC is now a state with complete control over Bengal, including admin-
istration, laws, taxes, prices and a well-trained army. It is in the aftermath of
1765 that one of the very first Hindi words enters the English language—
“loot.”39 News of the EIC’s triumphal conquest of Bengal causes the stock
price to soar from its depths back in England, and within a few years the
revenues from the EIC make up nearly a quarter of the total revenue of Britain.
In the decade that followed, Bengal was plundered of its ageless produc-
tivity. The diverse and fertile region of the Ganges Delta was reshaped by
the EIC. First to go were the traditional textile towns that had been the
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 21

Figure 1.1 “East India House,” by Thomas Malton the Younger (1748–1804).
Watercolour over an etched outline. 8 1/2 in. x 11 15/16 in. (21.6 cm x
30.3 cm). Courtesy of the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British
Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (PD).40

backbone of Bengal’s global influence for centuries to secure the emerging

textile industry back in England. Food crops were replaced with monocul-
ture crops for profit such as cotton, opium, and indigo. Cotton is the only
trade item China accepts for its valuable tea, other than coin. Tea is now the
Company’s most profitable product back in England. The EIC. then raises
the land tax on agricultural products to 50% and forced formerly independ-
ent weavers into what amounted to chattel slavery. In addition to cotton, the
EIC planted thousands of acres of indigo in Bengal. Indigo produced the rare
color of blue, used to dye fabric for royalty and the wealthy in Europe for
centuries. With cotton, indigo and opium taking up vast amounts of land
through the EIC territory, there is little space for traditional agriculture,
placing a strain on remaining arable land.
In 1769, a massive two-year drought devastated Bengal. Without the fertile
agricultural lands, food was scarce. Where in the past, the Emperor and his
agents would have fixed food prices, punished hoarders and invested in water
infrastructure, the EIC agents hoarded grain, increased taxes and charged
high prices for ever-scarcer food and water, increasing their reported revenue
back in England. This increase in revenue leads to an increase in demand for
their stock, driving the price higher.
22 Patrick Haughey
When the news of the EIC’s acquisition of the diwani arrives in London in
1765, the stock is in high demand. People leverage lands and homes for credit
to buy ever-dwindling supplies of stock in what appears to be an easy way to
get rich. Despite a volatile stock price history, the company had a hundred
year history of a double-digit dividend. The lack of stock supply (restricted
by the Board and the Government) to meet the increased demand drives the
price up over 200% in less than two years. Then, it all comes to an end.
News of the famine arrives in London, and the stock crashes on the
potential prosecution of Clive and demands in Parliament by merchants
to eliminate the company’s monopoly. Everyone rushes to sell to buyers who
no longer exist. The crashing price sets up a classic panic. For those
who used borrowed money to buy stock, “margin calls” are made by lenders
to quickly recoup losses. When nobody can pay, as most wealth is tied to
now illiquid stock and investments in hard-to-sell resources located overseas
or land, bankruptcies explode, and tax revenues plummet. Banks that lent
money to purchase the stocks fail by the hundreds. Lands are foreclosed on,
and England plunges into a deep recession as thousands of people, including
many nobles and important government officials are on the verge of being
wiped out (Figure 1.2).
By 1773, after the recession incurred by the stock crash, the EIC and
England are in dire financial straits. England relied on the company to help

8
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News of the Famine
arrives in London
News of the Diwani arrives in London
oIl) Recovery after 1773 bailout,
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Calcutta arrives in Revolution and opium
~ London smuggling
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Figure 1.2 Contrary to popular belief, the price of stock is not a function of rational
market expectations of profits and margins or supply and demand.
Rather it reflects irrational sporadic human behaviors from panic to
euphoria as they respond to everything from gossip and local minutiae to
global events.41
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 23
finance its global war against competitors in the Indian Ocean and its
American colonies through the payment of monopoly fees and import tariffs
on tea. The company was important to Britain. First, the company was the
only source of England’s income from the East. Second, the company
provided nearly a quarter of the State’s revenue in addition to the wealth it
brought to England through dividends and services. The EIC paid £400,000
annually to the government to maintain its monopoly, as well as a large
dividend to its shareholders, many of whom were members of Parliament.
Yet the EIC had been unable to meet its dividend commitments since 1768
after of the loss of tea sales to America. This was due to an unwise import
tax imposed on the Americas in 1767 that caused colonists to buy black
market tea from the Dutch. Although the tax was swiftly repealed, the EIC
never regained trust. This loss was now compounded by a massive stock
crash, as its debt obligations were backed by the value of its stock The Bank
of England and the British Government lent the company money to keep it
afloat with the hope of recouping its already massive losses from prior
investments. However, the EIC owed money to both the Bank of England
and the Government, and it had 15 million pounds of tea rotting in British
warehouses and thousands of pounds more en route from China.
Despite protests, Lord North and Parliament decided to bailout the
company. Lord North overhauled the management of the EIC with the 1773
Regulating Acts. The Acts set up a system where Parliament supervised and
regulated the operations of the company. They cut the dividend to 6% until
the Government was repaid its massive loan. This is the beginning of direct
intervention into the EIC from Parliament. Now the former company turned
autonomous state and financier to the Kingdom, becomes a State agent. The
Acts did nothing to undermine its autonomous authority in India, nor was
anyone imprisoned.
To help the EIC recoup its losses, Lord North allowed the EIC to sell its
tea at lower prices in the Americas to undercut the illegal Dutch tea and
other English merchants. Desperate to save the EIC, the London import
tax, which provided a source of revenue for the Crown, was lowered from
12.5%. The export tax from London was eliminated and replaced by yet
another import tea tax on the colonies. This import tax had been tried
before and inevitably led to massive boycotts of English tea. Given the
massive drop in price due to oversupply the English government calculated
that the reintroduction of the tax would not be noticed. Four ships
headed to Philadelphia, Charleston, New York, and Boston. The tea tax
was moved from the company onto the British colonists in the Americas
for the second time.
Despite the lower price, this was the last in nearly a century of mercantilist
provisions designed to restrict the economy of the British Americas for the
benefit of England, including bans on anvils of a certain size, fishing quotas
and dozens of restrictions on manufacturing. In addition, there was always
24 Patrick Haughey
a shortage of actual coin, as most of what existed made its way around the
world to China. Colonists who were not Lords of Parliament were heavily
restricted in terms of economic activity (aside from slavery, which was
present in all 13 colonies at the time); they were also short of currency.
When the tea arrived, Lord North turned out to be wrong. Broadsides
against Lord North and the Crown’s restrictions on the colonies, already
in circulation for years, became more intense, listing grievances as many
colonists once again felt fleeced by their government without any way to
influence law back in London. In the end, the American Revolution, contrary
to popular belief, was not inspired by a single tax and one night in Boston.
It was the result of one hundred years of mercantile restrictions in the British
colonies without recourse to representation in Parliament, a massive famine
in Bengal, and the unintended consequences of the first corporate bailout by
a sovereign nation in history. Unfortunately, most people only remember the
tea, the tax, and only in Boston.
In 1773, Calcutta becomes the official center of the EIC’s administrative
operations and will remain the capital of British India until 1917. In 1784,
the Pitts India Act restructured the company, solidifying its ties to the English
Government. By 1799, after seven years of constant wars over trade and
territory under the command of Sir Eyre Coote, the EIC eliminates all of its
rivals, including the newly emboldened Maratha and the Mysore. The
Company secures the valuable Malabar coast below Goa, as well as the east
coast of India and all of Bengal. They celebrate with a brand new palace for
the Governor in Calcutta built for the recently arrived new Governor, Lord
Wellesley, the brother of the Duke of Wellington. The palace was designed
by a soldier, Charles Wyatt, who was related to influential architects back in
England (Figure 1.3).42 Wellesley was an advocate for a conservative new
“forward policy” in Parliament, whereby India would not just be governed
by British laws, it would also abide by Christian values. The country would
be ruled and redeemed. In 1796, the East Company House was refreshed by
architects Richard Jupp and Henry Holland. The EIC is now the largest
company in the world with a private navy, army and civil service larger than
that of most countries. Once again, it is the largest source of income for the
ever-expanding British Empire.
The lesson of the EIC is that there is no such thing as efficient or “friction-
less” markets. The economic benefits of Walrus’ pleasure through profits
require devastating pain, death, and wholesale reshaping of the world that
includes architecture at every scale. Further, laws and governance matter.
Companies and their shareholders are always beholden to the state for per-
mission and the ability to use law and violence to increase returns. The EIC,
among the many other charter companies, as well as 15th-century financial
innovations, should permanently banish the myth detailed in the intro-
duction that capitalism is a recent and relatively harmless market-based
phenomenon.43
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 25

FPO

Figure 1.3 1860s view of 1799 Charles Wyatt, Palace of the Governor, Calcutta
(nga.gov).44

Laws matter: The Enclosure Acts, tithing and origins

of industrialization
In parallel to the emergence of the East India Company is the birth of
the Industrial Revolution in England. From purely a technical standpoint, the
Industrial Revolution involved a new form of steam power that involved
the ability to burn fuel in order to make heat. The heat turns water into steam
which then exerts a force on a lever, which can be attached to a wheel to turn
a machine. This invention, in theory, replaces human muscles and labor with
mechanical muscles. From a labor standpoint, this is the invention of mass
production. This was famously diagnosed as “the division of labor” in Adam
Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations: “The greatest improvement in the produc-
tive powers of labor . . . seem to have been the effects of the division of labor.”
Technological improvements, however, are not linear, and only proceeded
incrementally, with little foresight into their future. The first steam engine,
known as the Atmospheric Fire Engine, was invented by iron worker Thomas
Newcomen in 1712. This was invented to pump water out of tin and coal
mines that as they went ever deeper in search of the needed resource and
thus were prone to flooding. Coal becomes the most important fuel for the
Industrial Revolution when it is transformed from a way to heat houses, as
it had been for most of human history, into a fuel used first to produce
mechanical, then electrical energy.45
Edmund Cartwright designed what may be the first power loom in 1784,
along with the Sir Richard Arkwright’s water loom in 1775, revolutionizing
26 Patrick Haughey
textile manufacturing in England. Yet, few know how Cartwright and many
others of his generation found the leisure time and wealth to tinker, write
and thus contribute the so-called English Enlightenment and the accompany-
ing Industrial Revolution. Cartwright graduated from Oxford in 1766,
whereupon he immediately became a member of the Anglican Church. Like
all clergy, Cartwright received a stipend from the Church, provided by the
State of England. In 1779, he was named the Rector of Goadby Marwood,
in Leicestershire, before being canonized at Lincoln Cathedral. Rectors and
vicars of the English Church were entitled to tithing lands that included a
manor house and a generous stipend.
Tenant farmers were required by law to pay in kind or coin one-tenth of
their harvest to the English Church. Rectors and vicars also received rents
from their tenants as well as their share of the harvest tithing.46 Rental income
for rectors was many times the yearly wage of their peasant laborers, and as
clergy, they were exempt from any form of taxation. This meant they could
grow and invest their wealth without cost (in stocks, bonds, land, etc.). In
short, a heavy land tax mandated for peasants fed the investments that the
government relied on to maintain England’s infrastructure, its Industrial
Revolution and its global war machine. Indeed, though Cartwright gets
credit for his invention, he was engaged in a massive lawsuit over his design,
and never actually made money off of it. As soon as he opened his mill, the
designs were copied. What is more, his idea did not have an immediate eco-
nomic benefit as it needed refinement, mostly done by others, before it could
be adapted to large-scale production.47
The idea that the Anglo-Enlightenment institutions (common law and
representative government) created efficient growth should be viewed with
some skepticism. Take for example patent laws; the patent laws, passed in
1624 to encourage investment were becoming an impediment by the middle
of the 18th century due to high cost. In theory, they were cited as the secret
behind the English ability to marshal capital more efficiently. Adam Smith,
John Stuart Mill and many who followed in their footsteps believed that the
English patent system encouraged innovation, by encouraging “venture
capital” to invest in something that would be protected by the state from
competition for a time.48 From this perspective, patent law is like a limited
monopoly, protecting the inventor from the free market of competition,
challenging the very idea of free markets and the notion that good ideas
always win. Further, patent disputes could take years to resolve, slowing
down this vaunted innovation. The legal system also created a hierarchy of
access. If you add the cost of the patent at £100 combined with the ability
to afford a lawyer, and the court fees, the legal system privileged people with
means over those without. The cost of a patent was more than five times the
yearly average wage of England during this period.49
None of this really mattered to Cartwright. Unlike other inventors, like
Arkwright who started as the son of a tailor, Cartwright was already wealthy
by his birthright and position.50 Cartwright was a privileged clergy landlord
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 27
and benefited greatly from the Enclosure Acts that stripped land away from
common ownership in favor of owners after 1688. The Enclosure Acts were
a slow-moving process until 1750. Prior to 1750, “proprietors were resorting
to a more clever solution to the problem by leveraging the ‘equitable’ powers
of the court. Lords, owners of tithes, and landed proprietors could agree
in the present to a future enclosure award by referees or commissioners, and
the Court of Chancery would enforce this agreement against those who
subsequently balked at the sale.”51 The economic (rational) argument for
enclosure has always been about efficiency:

Rising food prices and innovative efforts perhaps broadened the eco-
nomic gains from enclosure, increasing the number of proprietors who
would have sought it. With a large enough gain from enclosure, recourse
to simple agreement, as opposed to Parliament, would generally have
been the more rational choice; enclosure would have increased rents
and incomes generally. Where this was not the case, those who stood to
gain would have had a larger pot from which to compensate those who
fared poorly.52

The first Parliamentary Act of Enclosure was the Farmington Enclosure Bill.
This required a unanimous vote by the landowners in a parcel. However,
between the 1730s and the 1750s, the requirement of a unanimous vote was
diminished, as were the rights of the freedman (smallholders who had no
property rights). It is important to remember only landed male property
owners could vote during this period of England’s history. In addition, a new
bill was required for each parcel. For example, the 1738 Ashendon Bill was
the first bill passed where minority owner’s rights were disregarded. The 11
holdouts owned only 17 of the 429 pastures, and by 1740, despite the hold-
outs, the Enclosure Bill was passed. Keep in mind the 11 holdouts were
entitled to property rights and votes, while the peasants and freedmen whose
livelihoods were also tied to the land were not. Regardless, all were evicted.
By the 1750s, 80% of voting landowners was enough to pass an enclosure.53
During proceedings, it is notable that while some lands in the English tradi-
tion were considered Commons, the rest that were not considered efficiently
productive were labeled, due to their lack of measurable productivity, as
“Wastes”. This legal term helped to justify eviction.
When enclosure was complete, the dissenting owners were compensated
at a price negotiated by the Lord who initiated the act. Similar to the cost of
patents, proposing an Enclosure Bill before the House of Commons or Lords
was expensive and could cost upwards of £80 at every stage of advancement.
This prohibited all but the most affluent of landowners from beginning
the procedure. Since the ruling class by law had to be entitled to property, the
incentives for the larger property owners to disenfranchise small holders
without regard for them or peasants increased through the 18th century and
were common through the late 19th century.
28 Patrick Haughey
The ever-increasing demand for landed property matched the increasing
demand for woolen textiles as England ramped up its reliance on the late
18th-century mill system for economic growth. Indeed, the Enclosure Acts
were initially concentrated in the northern regions such as Cumbria, where
the people practiced a drover lifestyle with small farms and were considered
less “ethnically” English. As Ian Whyte noted, “the larger proprietors had
monopolised the grazings and on other commons . . . and the sheep of small
owners were driven off the best pastures and even chased off the commons.”54

Urbanization: Displacement and the Industrial Revolution

The Enclosure Acts were an enormous benefit to the emerging mill towns
hungry for labor:

Parliamentary enclosure has been viewed as a form of oppression of

smaller landowners by larger ones, with smallholders and owner-
occupiers being forced to sell out due to its high costs. The common
rights of smallholders and cottagers were removed and replaced, if they
were replaced at all, by small, sometimes distant allotments. Loss of
common rights and the sale of their plots forced cottagers and small-
holders to work as full-time labourers for the larger farmers. This
caused increasing social polarisation and growing poverty at the lowest
levels of rural society, with a consequent outflow of population to towns
and industrial areas.55

This migration influenced the rapid growth of towns such as Liverpool and
Manchester. In 1700, the population of Liverpool was 5,715. Within ten
years it doubled to 11,813. By 1766, the town grew to 25,787 people. In
1790, Liverpool’s population doubled again to over 55,000. Within 21 years
it had 78,000 people. In one century the population grew more than tenfold.
Liverpool was the northernmost point of the system of the Triangle Trade.56
For nearly two centuries, the demand for and price of wool and cotton in
Liverpool determined the fate of the most lucrative markets in the world.
For decades Liverpool was also the busiest slave port in Europe until slavery
was banned in 1833. The wealth harvested by Liverpool allowed it to
expand in grand fashion. Liverpool had nine large markets: St. James
Market near Great George’s place; St. Thomas Market in Cleveland Square;
Derby Square Market; Islington Market; the markets at Scotland Place and
in Powell Square and the Pig Market, among others.
Just off the docks in the middle of the city oriented perpendicular to the
Mersey River, was the most important building in Liverpool: the Exchange
Hall, which also served as the town hall. The Exchange Hall in Liverpool
was first recorded as being built in 1515. It was replaced in 1673 by a
building slightly to the south of the present town hall. This town hall stood
on pillars and arches of stone where merchants and traders carried out
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 29
their business. A newer exchange and town hall was built between 1749
and 1754 by John Wood the Elder, with an extension added by James Wyatt
in 1789. The ground floor acted as the Exchange, and a council room with
offices for governing the city was on the upper floor. The ground floor also
had a central courtyard surrounded by Doric colonnades, but it was con-
sidered too dark, so many merchants preferred to conduct their business in
the street outside. It is here that men decided the value and demand for
goods such as wool and cotton, and in many ways, controlled the world.
Their decisions could move millions of Africans across the Atlantic, dis-
place indigenous Americans and timber for plantations, as well as deter-
mine the well-being of countless workers in the mills in Manchester and the
surrounding territory whose prosperity relied on the volatile demand for
cotton.
In the 19th century, the Exchange was remodeled to become the grand
City Hall, and a new Exchange was built elsewhere. The dome is supported
by a base with four clocks, each supported by the Lion and the Unicorn, the
symbols of the merging of the Houses of Lancaster and York. Liverpool’s
elite imagined the city as a new Athens, controlling the trade and culture of
the world. On the top of the dome is a ten-foot statue of Minerva, the
Roman Goddess of wisdom, arts, trade and strategy. For the Greeks, Athena
was the patron Goddess of Athens and is the aspect of wisdom, courage,
inspiration, civilization, law and justice, mathematics, strength, war strat-
egy, the arts, crafts and skill. Around the base of the interior of the dome is
the town motto from Virgil Deus Nobis Haec Otia Fecit or “God has given
to us this leisure” and in the pendentives are paintings from 1902 depicting
scenes of dock labor. This phrase combined with the imagery demonstrates
how capitalism, by the providence of God, can provide for everything one
might need to pursue a rich life at the expense of the rest of the world.57
While Liverpool controlled global trade, the manufacturing of textiles
from the cotton it controlled gave birth to its dirtier partner, Manchester.
The rise of the cotton industry in Manchester and its hinterland transformed
a market town feudally subservient to the Lords Mosley, with a population
growing from 22,500 in 1773 to 84,000 in 1801. Manchester became the
second-most populous town in Britain, with over 500 thousand people by
the 1890s. The growing town demanded labor. From English counties,
from Ireland and the Scottish Highlands men and women were driven off
their rural land in poverty, often into worse urban poverty. Most of this
half million were the workers whose hierarchy ranged from unskilled
factory laborers to skilled artisans. They provided the blood and muscles
that powered the city. Their financial situation and consequential living
conditions not only varied considerably from family to family but fluctuated
widely according to the state of the economy. Women and children, the
greater part of the labor force, received substantially less than men, who
usually received less than two shillings per day. Most laborers could not
read or write.58 What is more, the rapidly expanding industrial apparatus
30 Patrick Haughey
needed insurance and finance in order to withstand the volatile markets for
textiles.59
The origins of the modern critique of capitalism emerge in the rapidly
urbanizing factory towns of England. Friedrich Engels, in The Condition
of the Working Class in England (1844), is arguably one of the first to sci-
entifically study the health conditions in rural versus urban and industrial
locations. Engels was the son of a wealthy German textile industrialist.
In his early adulthood, he travelled to Manchester, where the conditions
inspired him to turn to a statistics-based critique of the lives of men, women,
and children working in the mill towns. He noted that the death rate, as well
as the epidemic rate, was significantly higher in Manchester than in the sur-
rounding countryside. Engels, the associate of Karl Marx when living in
Manchester in the 1840s, wrote memorably, not only of the appalling living
conditions in the courts leading from the main streets to the banks of the
Irk, but he also commented on the peculiar conformation of the town which
insulated the business people and entrepreneurs from the working people’s
quarters, possibly the first historical mention of gentrification.
Karl Marx (1818–83) meets Engels in England. He makes a number of
important diagnoses in both Capital (1876–84) and his three-volume
Theories of Surplus Capital (written first, published later), only one of which
will be mentioned here: the relationship of labor to law.60 Marx critiques
Mill by turning to the wage-laborer “who can no longer produce commodi-
ties, but must sell his labor himself, the minimum of wages, the equivalent
of the necessary means of subsistence, necessarily becomes the law which
governs his exchange with the owner of the conditions of labor.”61 Marx in
this phrase has diagnosed the essential problem as one of law, both natural
as in Smith and enforced by the emergence of capitalism.

The architectures of addiction: Slavery and the consumer

economy
Consumption and desire have always been a part of capitalism and trade.
The desire for pepper, nutmeg and silk drove the millennia old spice and
silk trade from East Asia to Western Europe. The need for gold, salt, food
and other luxury goods powered the trade across North Africa to both
Asia and north across the Mediterranean as well as is in the pre-Hispanic
Americas. Demand for textiles created the wool trade from North Europe to
the south, giving birth, among other things, to the “Italian” Renaissance,
also a result of global trade.62
Consumerism, however, is not just about desire. For centuries it required
slavery. In recent years, scholarship has provided convincing evidence that
the capitalism requires slavery. Sven Beckert, in Empire of Cotton (2014),
makes this explicit, arguing that capitalism cannot exist without violence
and war. He describes how capitalism actually operated in the world during
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 31
the so-called “Age of Exploration,” referring specifically to the companies
mentioned above:

Heavily armed privateering capitalists became the symbol of this new

European domination, as their cannon-filled boats and their soldier-
traders, armed private militias, and settlers captured land and labour
and blew competitors, quite literally out of the water. Privatised violence
was one of their core competencies.63

The desire for tea, spices and eventually opium drove the predatory practices
of these “privateering-capitalists” to meet the goals of their shareholders.
Desire created the largest forced removal and movement of humanity in
human history through the so-called Triangle Trade. This begins with the
enslavement and eradication of the indigenous peoples of the Americas
before shifting the east across the Atlantic, extracting human beings by force
from West Africa.64
Without the West’s newfound addiction to sugar and caffeine, much of the
Triangle Trade may not have existed. The Triangle Trade system refers to the
movement west across the Atlantic, forcibly extracting human beings as
slaves to arrive in the Americas to produce raw goods gold, silver, sugar,
tobacco, timber, whale oil and cotton for the ever-growing consumer desires
of Europe. Those goods are then returned to Europe and manufactured into
finished products or luxury items and then sold back to the colonies in the
Americas and West Africa. This economic system, known as mercantilism, is
designed to keep the colonies subservient to the capital, as mentioned in the
context of the American Revolution above. Often the goods are used as a
medium of exchange for other goods or human beings. Cotton cloth from
Manchester or Liverpool, for example, was traded in the ports of West
Africa for human beings to be sent to Charleston and sold to planters along
the coast to grow cotton, rice and tobacco.65 A majority of the slaves forcibly
extracted from their homes were sent to the West Indies and to Brazil to
produce highly desired commodities for global trade. The “Triangle” in the
trade is, of course, inaccurate. It refers to West Africa as a place, the entire
Atlantic coast of the Americas as a place, and then Liverpool, London or
another Western European port as one place. In fact, many cities and regions
were involved in this trade in Western Europe. All coasts and the interior of
Africa played a role in the Triangle Trade as did the Americas and Asian
ports in the Indian Ocean. The slave economy is embedded in capitalism and
therefore a truly global system.
What is more, the slave economy was deemed rational and necessary to
serve the emerging desires of Western Europe that Jan de Vries called the
“industrious” revolution:

This meant using family labour more efficiently by buying in goods

and services from outside the household. Families acquired new
32 Patrick Haughey
“packages” of consumer items which worked on each other to produce
yet larger gains in productivity and satisfaction. For instance the con-
sumption of coffee, and later tea, went along with the purchase of
sugar, fine breads and easily replaceable plates with which to eat these
items. The resulting package—let’s call it “breakfast” gave people a
higher caloric intake, a new time discipline and a new pattern of socia-
bility and emulation in the household. It also gave birth in the trade in
specialist foods.66

Without slaves growing these desirable consumer items, this so-called

“industrious” revolution would not exist. Indeed, the Dutch West India
company made most of its fortune playing the slave trade.67 As Julia Ott
writes, “The New World yielded vast quantities of ‘drug foods’ like tobacco,
tea, coffee, chocolate, and sugar for world markets. Europeans worked a
little bit harder to satiate their hunger for these ‘drug foods.’” 68 It is not the
Dutch Burgher who is industrious; it is the violently coerced, beaten and
displaced slave.
Slavery and the desire for consumer goods transformed the modern
world, leaving architecture, transformed landscapes and human suffering
as its evidence. The production of sugar is a vital part of the Triangle Trade,
fed by an addiction to sweet chocolate, coffee and tea in Europe and the
colonies. The production of sugar requires the complete transformation of
the Caribbean landscape as well as the use of industrial processes to trans-
form cane into sugar, molasses and rum. The constant cost of war nearly
bankrupted Western European states during this period celebrated as the
century of the Enlightenment.69 The rise of their new Caribbean sugar colo-
nies between the 1660s and the 1730s allowed Great Britain through
Barbados, Jamaica and France through Martinique and St. Dominique to
break the Dutch monopoly over molasses production and sugar refining for
European markets. The latter shift begins just as sugar was transforming
from a 17th-century luxury European commodity into an 18th-century
item of wider consumption among the propertied and labor classes of
Europe and the European Americas. The War of the Austrian Succession
(1740–48), the Seven Years War (1756–63), and the French and Indian War
(1756–63) reshaped the global trade wars from Dutch, Spanish, and
Portuguese to an Anglo-French hegemony that lasted until Napoleon was
deposed in 1815. Contrary to the Euro-centrism of history, this conflict is
most violent during this period in the Caribbean as a proxy war for land,
sea, and sugar.70
During the second half of the 18th century, France made considerable gains
on San Dominique at the expense of the Spanish. Throughout the latter half
of the 18th century, France capitalized on Great Britain’s slave revolts in
Britain’s most important plantation colony in the Americas, Jamaica, in 1760,
1765, 1766, and from 1795–96. The French profited off the slave revolts in
other British Caribbean colonies as well, including Dominica (1791), Grenada
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 33
(1795–97), and St. Lucia (1797). Together with the resurgent “Maroon”
Wars in St. Vincent (1772–73, 1795–97, 1797–1805), revolts in Grenada
and Dominica offset the initial expansion of sugar production in these
islands that Great Britain received as a result of the 1763 Treaty ending the
Seven Years War. These losses were augmented by the expensive revolt in
thirteen of Great Britain’s North American settler colonies from 1776 to
1783, otherwise known as the American Revolution (discussed earlier).
Indeed, French San Dominique soon eclipsed Jamaica as the leading sugar
colony in the world. It is within this context of control over vastly important
sugar colonies that the French involvement in the America Revolution
becomes more than just an attempt to weaken its English rival through
idealism. Rather it was in her mercantilist interest to distract the English, both
in the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean Anglo-Mysore wars (between the
India companies of both states) from jeopardizing what was now the most
profitable island in the French Empire on the eve of its own revolution.71 From
this perspective, the pivotal events in the United States and French history are
arguably byproducts of the global war for resources.
The economics of slavery is embedded in the form and creation of archi-
tectures from the west coast of Africa, to the Americas, in the forts, planta-
tions and port cities.72 Without slavery, there is no Industrial Revolution,
no mass production of textiles, no fashion, no rapid urbanization in
England, no railroads and no modernity.
Following the violent intentional depopulation of the indigenous
Americas during the 16th century, the human costs of colonialism are stark
when viewed through the lens of slavery. Slavery was not invented in the
colonial period, as many ancient and contemporary cultures throughout
the world utilized slaves, often for domestic, sexual, military or menial
tasks. In most of these cases, slaves were captured in smaller groups during
military conflicts or raids to be sold in markets around the world.
Colonialism, however, institutionalized slavery on an industrial scale, relo-
cating millions of people by force around the world for profit for nearly
four centuries. What is more, the justification for slavery, as for the con-
quest of the Americas and free market capitalism, was always framed in
religious, moral, biological, health, scientific and market terms.
The argument for slave labor, and later child labor, or even women’s labor
is always phrased as a form of Christian paternalism, whereby the father
figure has the moral and educational right to treat them as inferior mental
creatures, who need their protection and their nourishment. Leviticus 25:
44–46 reads:

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you;
from them, you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the tempo-
rary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your
country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to
your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.
34 Patrick Haughey
The argument for Christian justification of enslavement as both ethical and
superior to “northern” capitalism, appeared in the Richmond (Virginia)
Examiner, on July 17, 1861:

Christian morality is impractical in free society and is the natural moral-

ity of slave society. Where all men are equals, all must be competitors,
rivals, enemies, in the struggle for life, trying each to get the better of the
other. The rich cheapen the wages of the poor; the poor take advantage
of the scarcity of labour, and charge exorbitant prices for their work; or,
when labour is abundant, underbid and strangle each other in the effort
to gain employment . . . Every man for himself is the necessary morality
of such society, and that is the negation of Christian morality . . . On the
other hand, in slave society, . . . it is in general, easy and profitable to do
unto others as we would that they should do unto us. There is no com-
petition, no clashing of interests within the family circle, composed of
parents, master, husband, children and slaves . . . Were the parent to set
his children free at fifteen years of age to get their living in the world, he
would be guilty of crime; and as negroes never become more provident or
intellectual than white children of fifteen, it is equally criminal to eman-
cipate them. We are obeying the golden rule in retaining them in bondage,
taking care of them in health and sickness, in old age and infancy, and in
compelling them to labor . . . ’Tis the interest of masters to take good care
of their slaves, and not cheat them out of their wages, as Northern bosses
cheat and drive free labourers. . . . Hence the relation of the master and
slave is a kindly and Christian one; that of free laborer and employer a
selfish and inimical one. It is in the interest of the slave to fulfil his duties
to his master; for he thereby elicits his attachment, and the better enables
him to provide for his (the slave’s) wants. Study and analyse as long as
[you] please the relations of men . . . in a slave society, and they will be
found to be Christian, humane and affectionate, whilst those of free
society are anti-Christian, competitive and antagonistic.73

Yet despite this false parable, the slave owners relied heavily on the prosper-
ous agrarian North for the credit and financing for land and slave acquisition
deploying the demand for their slaves’ production back into this early mani-
festation of the industrial capitalist system.74 Capitalism derived from invest-
ment, whether financial, through land rent or human labor is always coercive,
and rarely mutual. Slavery was, and remains, the most convincing evidence
against the fallacy of the Enlightenment era’s assumptions of contemporary
neo-liberalism otherwise known Rational Market Theory (Efficient Market
Hypothesis), where human beings never make poor decisions in their own
self-interest in a frictionless balance of Walrus’ equation of pain and pleasure.
This rationalist model leads to what geographers call a system of capitalist
barbarism: “[T]he pursuit of profit and development without limit produces
inequalities, dispossession, and violence, which operate through technologies
of racism, denigration and militant policing.”75
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 35
Through this lens, capitalism is beyond cruel and borders on the absurd.
This vast expense of capital and humanity was merely to ensure, in the case
of sugar, that the caffeine you are consuming will be sweet. This does not
count the millions of people forced to produce cotton, the raw material for
cheap cloth, or those who were forced to turn a plant used for a sacred
indigenous ritual into an ever-growing popular nicotine habit. This latter
example paid for the signature heritage architectures of the United States:
Monticello and Mount Vernon.
While Enclosure Acts (1710–1880s) increased farm productivity, neces-
sary to feed a growing population, it also displaced peasants and small
farmers who were forced to find work in coal mines, factories, and the cities.
Cities in England quickly became overcrowded and heavily polluted. Poor
living conditions, no sanitation, starvation, violence and endemic poverty
creates conditions for escalating crime and tensions.
In 1700, 80% of England’s income derived from land, by 1800 it was 40%.
In 1750, England’s population was six-and-a-half million, and by 1830 it was
fourteen million. By 1900, England was 80% urban. Meanwhile, the slave
economy and the coerced labor of the Industrial Revolution supplied this
rising tide with all manner of goods for addiction, fashion and consumption
in a capitalist system designed to extract as much profit as possible for a few
in the global war over resources.
As the world rocketed from around one billion people in 1800 to just
over two billion by 1900, the myth of urbanization was born. Cities were
the future, and they were always a “good thing” as people voluntarily
left their old traditional lives “on the farm” for a new and better life in the
city. Unfortunately, historical and architectural evidence has yet to dispel
this popular myth. Many cities around the world grew in population and
expressed the accompanying wealth with architecture due to trade, but also
through displacement, coercion and violence. Similar to the peasants forced
into the mills and cities of England, immigrants that flooded into the United
States from the 19th century to the present only rarely left home willingly.
Migration is a massive emotional, financial and physical risk often accom-
panied by emotional trauma.76 Almost all of these people driving urban
growth on the periphery of the United States for the past two centuries
and in some of the fastest growing metropolises in the world from India to
West Africa were and continue to be displaced under the age-old problem
of survival amidst a global system of violence and economics beyond their
control.

A conclusion of sorts: Architectural history and

neoliberalism in the present
More than any other discipline, academic economics has been implicated in
the drive to neoliberalise the institutions of the global economy, all while
hiding behind abstract aloofness and technical finery.77
36 Patrick Haughey
In the aftermath of the Second World War, as the European imperial colonies
are beginning to unravel, the emergent global power is the United States.
Together with its beholden European allies, they introduce an international
system of laws and finance to the world, rebranding war capitalism under
the guise of what is now known as neoliberalism, based as always, in the
rebranding of the Enlightenment.78

Continuing beliefs in this philosophy [of progress] may be seen, in a

significant degree, in Western (and especially American) contemplation
of the rest of the world. More specifically the philosophy of progress is
observable at the roots of our foreign policy and our mission in the
world.79

New institutions formed out of the 1944 Bretton Woods meetings of 44

allied nations and created a Cold War financial apparatus.80 The International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank, capitalized by the United States and its
allied states offered credit and assistance in exchange for privatization of
public assets, and so called pro-growth tax reform.81
This rebranding of capitalism in the past decades has had devastating con-
sequences for cities and their publics. Assumptions on the cultural benefits of
certain forms of urban development nearly always fail in the absence of an
analysis of its real economic and human costs. A multi-decade trend of
declining prosperity for the majority of people in the United States and else-
where is taking place within the context of arguments for increased city
density paired with market-rate affluent desirability, all augmented by privi-
leged tax codes that often reinforce issues of economic stagnation and racial
inequality. Indeed, the evolution of credit and finance parallels the logarith-
mic growth of the global population as well as the transformation of urban
space from the colonial era to the present. This is particularly true in the
context of boom-bust inflationary and deflationary commodity costs, given
that everything we build with must, by necessity, comes out of a hole in the
ground somewhere and it must be paid for, usually with borrowed money.
Real estate and other forms of land value are also linked to debt cycles that
are influenced by law, strategies of currency debasement and the need for
over-leveraged households, municipalities and businesses relative to produc-
tivity amidst a global growth and consumer obsession—often with laws and
policies targeted to exclude or discriminate against entire populations by
race, ethnicity and income.82
Recent trends in neoliberalism have inspired quite a lot of excellent
critique from within the disciplines of architectural history and critical geo-
graphy.83 Reinhold Martin, in his recent essay, “The Demagogue Takes the
Stage,” notes that image has the power to co-op and re-imagine capitalist
systems. The resurgence in race-based economic nationalism is staged as a
rebuke of neo-liberal globalism. Yet, as he notes, this is merely a rebranding
of capitalism in search of its mythical Judeo-Christian soul. Of course,
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 37
Martin recognizes that only an insecure real estate developer can become
the messiah: “Real estate is never mere property. Or to put it the other way
around, property is never a mere profanity. Under capitalism, property is
the most enchanted thing there is. In this light, developers of property—real
estate developers—are conjurers, makers of meaning; they are neoliberal
capitalism’s shamans, priests, rabbis, imams.” 84
Capitalism remains the stage on which buildings shift their meaning
without shedding their essential money-making function. Indeed, as Martin
notes, “Modern fascism aimed to build a murderous utopia; postmodern
fascism builds a murderous hall of mirrors.”85 The hideous reflection, there-
fore, inspires intentional blindness. Yet, as this chapter notes, God, violence
and race have a long history of romance with capitalism. Therefore, this is
neither new nor an anomaly of the present.
The slow-moving, billionaire-funded nationalist takeover of the United
States began decades ago and is merely rebranded neoliberalism, colonial-
ism, industrialization and slavery, evidence of which is still shrouded in the
ostensibly murky history of the Civil War by the current US President.
Beckert’s war capitalism remains undeterred. Heavily-armed, state-supported
privateers continue their global conquest for resources through the union of
war and finance. The only difference now, as opposed to the past 500 years,
is that humanity is racing ever faster towards its own extinction, driven in
large part by consumption-inspired extraction for the billions of people now
inhabiting the world.
Despite this immanent change, there remains desire among the economic
elite to continually rebrand capitalism. In 2017 MIT Professor Andrew Lo
of the Sloan School of Business published Adaptive Markets: Financial
Revolution as the Speed of Thought, with a typical Darwinian evolution
image on its cover. At first, it appears that he is skeptical of the idea of rational
markets. Yet, on closer inspection, he actually insists that the model is merely
incomplete and generally works well until moments of crisis, when behavio-
ral economics, necessitating Keynesian state-intervention, kicks in. Indeed, he
insists on using Darwin to augment the mathematical precision of economics
by citing the “messiness” of biology, where markets act like a living organism
with this astonishing quote: “Financial markets are an adaptation that a par-
ticular animal species, Homo sapiens, has developed to improve its chances
of survival. We are all better off for having financial markets, as it allows us
to fuel economic growth and manage risk. It is, by definition an adaption, so
of course the principles of evolution should apply.”86 In other words, Walrus
is back, via Smith’s Newtonian Natural Universe adapted to 21st-century
techno-utopianism. Pain will just “adapt”—naturally and faster within the
benevolent political constraints of market forces, messy human greed or
violence—for the betterment of humanity. Yet, as Mark Karlin writes,
“Globalization is just a contemporary word for financial colonialism.”87
In summary, addressing issues of trade—past, present, and future—is not
just about economics, money or the flow of capital. It must include the
38 Patrick Haughey
critique and understanding of the lasting impact trade has had on human
beings, their movements. The traces of their wants, fears and desires are mani-
fest as architecture. The history of architecture therefore should not be written
without a history of trade, nor should it be written without continually assess-
ing its role in perpetuating the violence of capitalism, past, present and future.

Notes
1 Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), 13.
2 Ibid, 13–26. Appleby is right in insisting that capitalism is not just a morality
play, and she details many of its failures. However, her narrative provides
comfort for those who believe, despite its many flaws, it has made the world
better off.
3 The most prominent historian, and arguably its greatest apologist, is Niall
Fergusson in his Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Penguin
Group, 2008), a masterful diagnosis of the invention of credit and finance in the
city-states of Italy and in Holland, as well as of the invention of insurance in
Scotland. However, as he moves into the 19th century, the violence and coercion
becomes absent as he moves to embrace the abstract monetary conservatism of
Milton Friedman.
4 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Harvard University Press, 2014), 5–7.
5 Ibid, 8–10.
6 Peggy Deamer ed., Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present (New York:
Routledge, 2014), 2–5.
7 There is actually a good book that explores the material reality of architecture,
see Juliet Odgers, Mhairi McVicar and Stephen Kite, eds. Economy and
Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2015). Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance:
Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1995) is one of the first to confront this issue along with
essays from Kazys Varnelis, “The Caress of the Commodity” and Ellen Dunham-
Jones, “Stars, Swatches and Sweets” in the Creativity in Consumer Culture issue
of Thresholds 15 (Fall 1997).
8 Brian O’Boyle and Terrence McDonough, “Bourgeois Ideology and Mathematical
Economics,” Economic Thought 6, no. 1 (2017): 22.
9 Ibid, 23.
10 As quoted in ibid, 24.
11 Leon Walrus, Elements of Pure Economics (1874), first published as L. Walras,
“Economique et Mécanique,” Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise des Sciences
Naturelles 15 (1909): 313–25. Reprinted in Metroeconomica 12 (1960): 3–11.
12 Arne Hiese, “Walrus’ Law in the Context of Pre-Analytic Visions.” Economic
Thought 6, no. 1 (2017): 65.
13 Ibid, 83.
14 John Maynard Keynes worked for the India Office and his first recognized
publication was Indian Currency and Finance (London: Macmillan and Co.,
1913).
15 This is the crucial difference between “liberals” and “conservatives.” Liberals
expect the state to minimize pain. Conservatives think pain is necessary and
beneficial to the moral education of society. Poverty creates pain and therefore is
proof of moral failure. Conversely, wealth is evidence of an abundance of a
moral work ethic.
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 39
16 See, for example, an early post-war diagnosis of this flaw in J.D. Wiseman,
“Legitimation, Ideology-Critique, and Economics,” Social Research 42, no. 2
(1979): 291–320, where he quotes Michael Hudson, and in O’Boyle and
McDonough (2017). This runs contrary to Piketty’s critique of Ricardo,
and Marx’s focus on industrial mechanization. Land and privilege still matter.
See Fred Pearce, The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2012) and Sanjoy Chakravorty, The Price of Land:
Acquisition, Conflict, Consequence (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013),
among others.
17 Michael Hudson, The Bubble and Beyond: Fictitious Capital, Debt Deflation
and Global Crisis (Dresden: Islet, 2012), and Alexander Stille, “The Heirs of
Inequality” (August 23, 2012), www.project-syndicate.org/print/the-heirs-of-
inequality-by-alexander-stille.
18 Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988), 6.
19 See Robert Cowherd, Chapter 2, for the Amsterdam-Batavia analysis.
20 There is a persistent myth that capitalism is synonymous with emerging
democracy, when in fact it flourishes no matter the structure of the state. In
recent years this fundamental “flaw” in this model has finally emerged within
popular culture and the economic discipline. See, for example, James Galbraith,
Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great
Crash (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of
Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., 2012).
21 John F. Padgett and Paul D. McLean, “Economic Credit in Renaissance
Florence,” The Journal of Modern History, 83, no. 1 (2011): 1–47.
22 Yadira Gonzalez De Lara, “Enforceability and Risk-Sharing in Financial
Contracts: From the Sea Loan to the Commenda in Late Medieval Venice,” The
Journal of Economic History, 61, no. 2 (2001): 500–4.
23 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848, 1870 ed.), I.2.1–16.
24 Ibid, I.2.12.
25 Ibid, I.3.13–16.
26 Ibid, I.4.2–5.
27 Mark Tunick, “Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill’s Defense of British Rule
in India,” The Review of Politics, 68, no. 4 (October 1, 2006): 586–611.
28 This gives birth to the virtually unquestioned myth of Western Emergence, based
on economics, philosophy, and civic institutions, such as law. Robert Nisbet, A
History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980) enshrines this
idea by moving through the great western philosophers. There are many
examples—see William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped
the World (New York: Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2009).
29 Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Alfred Knopf,
2014), xv.
30 Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion (Routledge: New York, 2002), 233.
31 C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 2004), 62.
32 See for example, Tristram Hunt, Cities of Empire: The British Colonies and the
Creation of the Urban World (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014).
33 The history in this chapter is derived from Nick Robins, The Corporation That
Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern
Multinational (London: Pluto Press, 2012); L.S. Sutherland, “The East India
Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics,” The Economic History Review 17,
no. 1 (January 1, 1947), 15–26; Amar Farooqui, “Governance, Corporate Interest
and Colonialism: The Case of the East India Company,” Social Scientist 35,
40 Patrick Haughey
no. 9/10 (September 1, 2007): 44–51; Larry Neal, “The Dutch and English East
India Companies Compared,” in James D. Tracy, ed. The Rise of Merchant Empires
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 195–222; Charles Parker,
“International Markets and Global Trade,” in Global Interactions in the Early
Modern Age, 1400–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 67–109;
K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic
History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1985 [2005]); K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East
India Company, 1600–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); A.J.
Farrington, Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia, 1600–1834
(London: British Library, 2002); Philip Lawson, The East India Company: A
History (London: Routledge, 1993) and H.V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The
East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
34 This is period where Thomas Hobbes gives birth to the philosophy of moral
political economy, with his defense of the King in Elements of Law [1640]
(London: Oxford University, 2005), De Cive [1642] (London: Oxford University,
1984) and Leviathan [1651] (London: Oxford University Press, 2012). Hobbes
creates the moral justification for violence in pursuit of justice, justified by reason
in order to defeat the selfishness and greed of human nature.
35 Arnold A. Sherman, “Pressure from Leadenhall: The East India Company Lobby,
1660–1678,” The Business History Review 50, no. 3 (October 1, 1976): 329–55.
36 Hejeebu Santhi, “Contract Enforcement in the English East India Company,”
The Journal of Economic History, 6, no. 2 (June 1, 2005): 496–523.
37 The dividends and wealth created in London by the EIC no doubt paid for a
number of architectures, interiors, furniture and art.
38 The Sepoy are highly trained Muslim soldiers.
39 “Loot” is Anglicization of a Hindu word and one of many language legacies of
British colonialism.
40 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:East_India_House_THS_1817_
edited.jpg#/media/File:East_India_House_THS_1817_edited.jpg.
41 This is an annotated image by the author based upon a chart found at www.
voxeu.org/sites/default/files/image/voth_april2014_fig1.png.
42 For an excellent analysis of this architecture and the city during this period,
see Swati Chattopadhyay, “Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of ‘White Town’ in
Colonial Calcutta,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 59, no. 2
(June 1, 2000): 154–79.
43 For an architectural history of the British in India in the 19th century, see Vikram
Prakash, ed. Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in
British India and Ceylon (New York: Routledge, 2015).
44 www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/slideshows/footsteps-of-the-raj.html.
45 For more detail see, Stanley D. Chapman, “The Textile Factory Before Arkwright:
A Typology of Factory Development,” The Business History Review, 48, no. 4
(December 1, 1974): 451–78; and John Smail, “Manufacturer or Artisan? The
Relationship between Economic and Cultural Change in the Early Stages of
the Eighteenth-Century Industrialization,” Journal of Social History, 25, no. 4
(July 1, 1992): 791–814.
46 See Eric Evans, The Contentious Tithe, The Tithe Problem and English
Agriculture (London: Routledge, 1976); and Jennifer R. Baker, “Tithe Rent-
Charge and the Measurement of Agricultural Production in Mid-Nineteenth-
Century England and Wales,” The Agricultural History Review, 41, no. 2
(1993): 169–75. In 1826, the Tithe Commutation Act replaced the annual tithe
with a fixed rent. This in many ways was worse, as the clergy now were insulated
from any losses due to a failed harvest.
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 41
47 Gillian Cookson, “Innovation, Diffusion, and Mechanical Engineers in Britain,
1780–1850,” The Economic History Review, 47, no. 4 (1994): 749–53; Trevor
Griffiths, Philip A. Hunt and Patrick K. O’Brien, “Inventive Activity in the
British Textile Industry, 1700–1800,” The Journal of Economic History, 52,
no. 4 (December 1, 1992): 881–906.
48 Adam Smith (London: W. Strahan, 1776), 83; (1848), 933.
49 Joel Mokyr, “Intellectual Property Rights, the Industrial Revolution, and the
Beginnings of Modern Economic Growth,” The American Economic Review 99,
no. 2 (2009): 349–55. Also see Philip Richardson, “The Structure of Capital
during the Industrial Revolution Revisited: Two Case Studies from the
Cotton Textile Industry,” The Economic History Review, New Series 42, no. 4
(November 1, 1989): 484–503.
50 This is not entirely true. Although born to tailors, Arkwright was wealthy
enough to file patents in 1769 and 1775 and to spend 12,000 pounds with help
from new investors on his new machine, an enormous sum in late 18th century
England. He actually failed to defend his patent in 1785 after a long, costly legal
battle, and died in 1792, still wealthy with a massive 500,000-pound fortune,
but unable to fully realize the potential profits of his invention. For more on
Arkwright see R.S. Fitton, The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1989).
51 Robert Tennyson, “From Unanimity to Proportionality: Assent Standards and
the Parliamentary Enclosure Movement,” Law and History Review, 31, no. 1
(2013): 206.
52 Ibid, 209.
53 Ibid, 213.
54 Ian Whyte, “Parliamentary Enclosure and Changes in Landownership in an
Upland Environment: Westmorland, c.1770–1860,” The Agricultural History
Review, 54, no. 2 (2006): 244. For a parallel moment in architectural history,
this is the period of Stowe and Capability Brown.
55 Ibid, 240.
56 Martin Greaney, Liverpool: A Landscape History (Stroud: The @History Press,
2013).
57 Ian Collard, Liverpool City Center Through Time (Stroud: Amberley Publishing,
2013).
58 John C. Brown, “The Condition of England and the Standard of Living: Cotton
Textiles in the Northwest, 1806–1850,” The Journal of Economic History, 50,
no. 3 (September 1, 1990): 591–614.
59 Patrick O’Brien, Trevor Griffiths and Philip Hunt, “Political Components of the
Industrial Revolution: Parliament and the English Cotton Textile Industry,
1660–1774.” The Economic History Review, New Series 44, no. 3 (August 1,
1991): 395–423; Robin Pearson, “Collective Diversification: Manchester Cotton
Merchants and the Insurance Business in the Early Nineteenth Century,” The
Business History Review, 65, no. 2 (July 1, 1991): 379–414.
60 More has been written about Karl Marx than can be covered here. However, this
phrase reinforces the arguments made at the outset, that beyond the mathematics
of economics and the movement of capital, law remains vital. Marx writes what
becomes these books between January 1862 and July 1863 under the original
title of “A Contribution to Political Economy.” He mentions these notebooks to
his friends Engels (who also writes on this subject and hopes to publish them)
and Kautsky, yet Marx never includes them in Capital. They are first published
by Kautsky between 1905 and 1910. See the Preface of Karl Marx, Theories of
Surplus Value, Part I (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963) for more detail on
this history.
61 Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part I (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1963), 56.
42 Patrick Haughey
62 See for example, Roxanne Prazniak, “Siena on the Silk Roads: Ambrogio
Lorenzetti and the Mongol Global Century, 1250–1350,” Journal of World
History, 21, no. 2 (2010): 177–217; and John F. Padgett and Paul McLean,
“Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence,” The Journal of Modern History,
83, no. 1 (2011): 1–47.
63 Beckert (2014), 37.
64 There are nearly limitless resources for this topic, including Andrés Reséndez,
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
(Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016); Herbert S. Klein and Ben
Vinson, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. 2nd ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007); James F. Searing, West African Slavery
and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
65 This is where architectural history begins to critique architecture. See John
Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993) and Charles W. Joyner,
Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 1985).
66 Jan de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution,” The
Journal of Economic History, 54 (1994): 24–70, as quoted in C.A. Bayly, The
Birth of the Modern World: 1780–1914 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing
2004), 51. Bayly’s title reinforces the idea that capitalism is a recent phenomenon,
although he is emphasising systemic economic and political changes between the
late-18th-century revolutions and World War I.
67 Virginia Lunsford-Poe, Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Johannes Postma, The Dutch in the
Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
68 Of all the topics in this chapter, this needs the least explanation. The purpose
here is to return the topic of slavery to the history of capitalism where it belongs,
and as recent scholarship has proven. Julia Ott, “Slaves: The Capital that Made
Capitalism” (2014), www.publicseminar.org/2014/04/slavery-the-capital-that-
made-capitalism/#.WPjEHhIrLaZ.
69 Bayly (2004), 51–2.
70 Santiago-Valles Kelvin, “World-Historical Ties Among ‘Spontaneous’ Slave
Rebellions in the Atlantic,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 28, no. 1 (2005):
51–83; Carolyn Fick, “Revolutionary Saint Domingue and the Emerging Atlantic:
Paradigms of Sovereignty,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 31, no. 2 (2008):
121–44.
71 Ibid, Fick (1980).
72 For example, see James Rawley, “The Port of London and the Eighteenth
Century Slave Trade: Historians, Sources, and a Reappraisal,” African Economic
History no. 9 (1980): 85; and Louis Nelson, “Architectures of West African
Enslavement,” Building and Landscapes 21, no. 1 (2014): 88–125.
73 As quoted in Andrew S. Coopersmith, Fighting Words (New York: The New
Press, 2004), 49–50. See also Charles W. Joyner, Remember Me: Slave Life in
Coastal Georgia, Rev. ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011).
74 Revisionist histories of this period claim that it was the industrial might of the
northeast that defeated the agrarian south. While pockets of industrial activity
occurred along river valleys from Delaware to Massachusetts, agriculture was by
far the number one economic activity for the entire nation well into the 20th
century.
75 Claire Blencowe, “Ecological Attunement in a Theological Key: Adventures in a
Antifascist Aesthetics,” GeoHumanities, 2, no. 1 (2016): 25.
76 See Kenneth Carswell, Pennie Blackburn and Chris Barker, “The Relationship
between Trauma, Post-Migration Problems and the Psychological Well-Being of
 Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 43
Refugees and Asylum Seekers,” The International Journal of Social Psychiatry
57, no. 2 (March, 2011): 107–19.
77 O’Boyle and McDonough (2017), 30.
78 Europe is beholden for the military assistance during the war as well as for the
massive monetary aid in the form of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, better
known as the Marshal Plan.
79 Nisbet (1969), 308.
80 For a quick history see “What Was Decided at Bretton Woods,’’ The Economist
(July 2014), www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/06/economist-
explains-20.
81 The big bang of the Thatcher/Reagan 1980s privileged non-wage income over
wage income, and deregulated financial engineering, with tax-deductible debt.
For a quick primer on this see Les Leopold, Runaway Inequality: An Activists
Guide to Economic Justice (New York: Labor Institute Press, 2015), 33–42,
93–105. Robin M. Robe Greenwood and David S. Scharfstein, “The Growth of
Modern Finance” (July 1, 2012), www.people.hbs.edu/dscharfstein/growth_of_
modern_finance.pdf.
82 Richard Rothstein, “From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government
Sponsored Segregation,” Economic Policy Institute (April 29, 2015), www.epi.
org/blog/from-ferguson-to-baltimore-the-fruits-of-government-sponsored-
segregation; Emmanuel Saez, “Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes
in the United States,” Pathways Magazine, Stanford Center for the Study of
Poverty and Equality (2010), http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-US topincomes-
2010.pdf; Barry Z. Cynamon and Stephan M. Fazzari, “Inequality and Household
Finance during the Consumer Age,” Institute of New Economic Thinking,
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Working Paper (January 2013).
83 See for example David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism (New York: Verso,
2006). Aggregate, Governing by Design: Architecture, Economy and Politics in
the Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012);
Tim Di Muzio, The Capitalist Mode of Power: Critical Engagements with the
Power Theory of Value (London: Routledge/RIPE Studies in Global Political
Economy, 2014).
84 Reinhold Martin, “The Demagogue Takes the Stage,” Places Journal (March
2017), https://placesjournal.org/article/the-demagogue-takes-the-stage/.
85 Ibid.
86 Andrew Lo, “Why Financial Markets Behave like Living Organisms—MIT
Sloan School of Management,” MIT Sloan School of Management, http://
mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/why-financial-markets-behave-like-living-
organisms. His optimism is countered by the analysis of his colleague Peter
Temin’s Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in the Dual Economy
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017).
87 Mark Karlin, “Globalization Is Just a Contemporary Word for Financial
Colonialism,” Truthout, www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39786-globalization-
is-just-a-contemporary-word-for-financial-colonialism.
2 Spices, spies, and speculation
Trust and control in the early
Batavia-Amsterdam system
Robert Cowherd

Architectural History only partially overlaps with the role of architecture

in history. The historical evidence examined within the disciplinary bound-
aries of Architectural History only partially overlaps with the architectural
evidence of interest to historians. Historians in pursuit of deeper understand-
ings of social, cultural, economic, and political forces increasingly engage
buildings, infrastructures, landscapes, and cities in ways that lie beyond the
territories of conventional architectural historical approaches. Instead of
the curatorial question of what architecture is worthy of study, history requi-
res the broader question: What significant roles has architecture played in
history?
This chapter examines the architectures of trade developed at the two ends
of a 21,000-kilometer sea route. Rather than looking at either location on its
own, an understanding of the forces operating through these architectures
compels us to consider Amsterdam and Batavia together as mutually consti-
tutive poles of a world system. Looked at in parallel, we find two versions
of the fortified port town typology whose similarities and differences speak
to the distinctions between the two ends of a single system. The architectures
and landscapes constructed in each city announce a set of instrumental
functions essential to the effective operation of extractive regimes. The most
obvious of these involve the logistics of moving the most tonnage of commo-
dity materials from one side of the globe to the other or the military defenses
against piracy or conquest by rival trading interests; others remain more
subtle, specific architectural juxtapositions of transport and trading halls
facilitated trust in sight-unseen exchanges.
The examinations of the specific formal-spatial-institutional arrange-
ments of Dutch Batavia (Jakarta) and Amsterdam during the 16th and 17th
centuries offer insights to a larger set of instrumental forces that constitute
prerequisites for the operations of early-European adventures in expanded
trade relations as they became increasingly extractive. Amsterdam’s architec-
tural and urban arrangements played a role in reflecting and creating the
conditions for the birth of what some have argued is the first and largest
multinational corporation in history. At the other end of the grueling sea
voyage, Batavia exemplified an architecture of control characteristic of the
 The Batavia-Amsterdam spice trade and spies 45
widely dispersed type of the European fortified port town. After a period
when architectural culture invested much to defend its boundaries against
“mere buildings” like those found in Batavia and Amsterdam, there is much
work to be done as Architectural History theory examines architecture that
means what it means, at least in part, because it does what it does.

Port towns and spices

After thousands of years of floating things to market, the 3rd century BCE
scientist Archimedes explained how a boat displaces enough water to equal
the weight of its load, no matter how heavy. Even today, no other technology
offers a more efficient means of moving large quantities of goods. This
simple law of physics is why human settlements have always favored the
edge of navigable waterways. Any location where bulky goods can be trans-
ferred between boats and wheeled vehicles continue to hold a strategic
importance and demand specific architectural arrangements to optimize
transfers and the associated operations of trade. Among the multiple elements
that figure prominently in the 16th- and 17th-century history of discovery,
capture, defense, and control of the transcontinental networks of exchange,
the architecture of an interconnected series of fortified port towns facilitated
their exploraton. Like the technologically sophisticated ships shuttling goods,
munitions, priests, soldiers, laborers, finance, and information between ports
of call, the port towns themselves were designed to minimize the labor
needed to move goods and secure the town against all threats whether
external or from the population of the town itself.
At some point before the 12th century, North Sea fishermen seeking a
sheltered location to come ashore began tying up their boats along the banks
of the Amstel River. Roads to and from the resulting village fish market made
it a convenient place to bridge the Amstel. The bridge became a dam when
the monasteries of the area organized individual dikes into a collective effort
to resist flooding and protect arable lands. By the 15th century, the market
on the Aemstelredamme (Amstel River dam), or Amsterdam, was the busiest
marketplace in Holland. The Amsterdam market was connected to similar
markets across Europe and beyond. Each port-town market in the network
connecting to Amsterdam had origin stories that began with the discovery of
a place where boats could be moored safely for the transfer of goods between
water- and land-based transportation.
Among the goods arriving at the quay in Amsterdam were spices from
Venice. Like other ports, fisherman chose a bog close to productive fishing
grounds and landed on the last place to flood called the rivo alto (high
bank), or Rialto, still the location of the fish market in Venice. Weary of
competing with the salt producers of Comacchio, the Venetians conquered
them.1 It became a business model, building fabulous wealth, particularly
effective in the spice trade, and eventually manifesting in the splendor of
Venice.
46 Robert Cowherd
Despite the oft-repeated truism that spices were used to preserve meat or
to mask the taste of meats gone bad, European cookbooks chronicle a long
process by which exotic spices crossed over from the medicine cabinet to
the kitchen, where they were added at the end of the cooking process
to maintain their flavor, not at the butcher shop to preserve meats.2 Instead,
spices rose in popularity for the familiar reason that it made food taste
better. After changing hands several times along the way, the market price of
pepper in Amsterdam was about 80 percent higher than its cost in Venice.
Anyone who could sail directly from Venice to Amsterdam could make a
fortune. Over the course of the 15th century, the incentives for acquiring
spices ever-closer to the European source in Venice drove fortunes and com-
petition. For a time, pepper and spices, in general, became a status symbol
within reach of a widening segment of society as merchants competed to
bring it to markets throughout Europe.
The greatest profits accrued to Venice from the infamous 1204 Fourth
Crusade onward. Venice held Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey) and a con-
trolling share of the spices entering Europe. To maintain this control, the
ships carrying spices became the armored cars of the Mediterranean, sailing
from Alexandria (Egypt) to Venice in military convoys. Even as pepper remai-
ned dominant, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and mace became lucrative
commodities made all the more exotic because not a single merchant could
say exactly where they came from. Beyond Alexandria, Muslim trade net-
works proved impenetrable to spies for centuries. A disciplined code of
silence and the obstacles of geography kept prices high and kept the stories
of a miraculous cornucopia of spices in far off lands shrouded in mystery.
Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II’s 1453 conquest of Constantinople did not end
the flow of spices. On the contrary, the Ottomans evened the playing field by
placing Venice in competition with Genoa, Florence and others.3

Lisbon
Despite the lower prices, a European “Age of Discovery” driven by fantasies
of a spice monopoly sent spies and ships over the horizon with brutal
ferocity. When Portuguese spies sent word across Egypt with clear directions
to a great spice market, in 1498 Vasco da Gama sailed around the Horn
of Africa and across the Indian Ocean with a cry of, “For Christians and
spices!”4 The Portuguese established a fixed pepper price by treaty with the
rulers of the Malabar Coast (India) and sold the same pepper in Lisbon for
ten times the price. Unable to end trade through the Red Sea port of Aden,
the Portuguese took to piracy, raising protection costs enough to drive prices
in Venice to many times the price in Lisbon.5
Tracing the spice flows upstream brought them inevitably to the Muslim
Port of Melaka, the primary spice emporium of Southeast Asia. In 1511, the
Portuguese captured and fortified the port in order to control the Straits of
Melaka, the strategic choke point between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
 The Batavia-Amsterdam spice trade and spies 47
Black pepper produced on Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and else-
where in mainland Southeast Asia flowed westward through the Straits past
Portuguese guns.
Finally, in 1512, the Portuguese fulfilled their mission by being the first
Europeans to reach the Spice Islands. The rewards for cutting out the
middlemen: The Portuguese purchased cloves for about one one-hundredth
(one percent) of the price in Venice.6 They established fortified storehouses
on two separate clusters of what they called the Moluccas (Maluku). The
island of Ternate sits among to the islands that were the world’s sole source
of cloves. Nutmeg and mace turned out to be two products of the same tree
found only on the Banda Islands, a two-week sail to the south. Plagued by
shipwrecks and local hostilities, the Portuguese worked to maintain their
price advantages even as they withdrew to Ambon, about halfway between
Ternate and Banda. There they joined Muslim Javanese, Malay, Gujarati,
Persian, Arab, and Chinese traders in the interisland trade. With the long
chain of exchanges and the still troublesome Ottoman relationships in
the Levant and Mediterranean, these Muslim competitors did not have the
reach and market access enjoyed by the Portuguese.
During the 16th century, Lisbon surpassed Venice to become Europe’s
wealthiest city. The European demand for spices increased sharply around
the time of Lisbon’s emergence as a supplier. About three-quarters of Europe’s
spices entered Lisbon’s harbor under the protection of the Tower of Belem, a
massive bastion with 17 guns.7 The massive fortifications are lightened by
delicate stonework exhibiting clear Muslim influences from the architect’s
prior fortification projects in Morocco. The style of the tower was retro-
actively identified as Manueline after Portuguese King Manuel I. The salient
characteristic of the Manueline is the facile incorporation of a vast diversity
of symbolic references from Castile, to Moorish Andalusia, to its vast trade
networks in the Mediterranean, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Far East.
The most dramatic tribute to the 16th-century Portuguese trading empire
is the 200-meter-long Jeronimos Monastery, festooned with references to
the sources of its funding: the five percent tax on spice traded outside of the
royal monopolies.8
In response, Venice diversified its commodities, tactics, alliances, and
routes to remain a player in East-West trade but never regained its prior
dominance.9 In the 1520s, Papal intervention and Spanish-Portuguese inter-
marriage softened Spanish claims when Magellan established the westward
route to the Spice Islands promised by Christopher Columbus. Even though
they never established an absolute monopoly in Asian spices, Lisbon’s trade
network stretched to Formosa (Taiwan), Macau (China), and Nagasaki
(Japan). Lisbon’s port was thronged by the masts of ships bound for every
port in Europe. The biggest re-export destination after Lisbon was Antwerp
harbor, the gateway to the Northern Habsburg Empire with its productive
silver mines. Antwerp’s rise as the financial capital of Northern Europe
ended abruptly in 1576 when mutinous Spanish forces murdered or exiled
48 Robert Cowherd
its residents in an escalation of the Eighty Years’ War. Antwerp’s financiers
fled north to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam
Located near the mouth of three of Europe’s major navigable waterways,
Amsterdam grew rapidly with the rising volume and value of goods brought
by Portuguese ships from across the globe. At war with the Spanish-Portuguese
Iberian Union after 1581, the Dutch found themselves cut off from many of
their former trading partners at the very moment of an influx of entrepreneurial
spirit and capital fleeing Antwerp. Among the many factors contributing to
Amsterdam’s rapid economic growth after the fall of Antwerp was its role as
Northern Europe’s warehouse. The typical canal house of Holland (The
Netherlands) consisted of a retail shop one-half level below the street, two
residential levels starting one-half level above the street, and one or more
floors above the home used for storage of goods (Figure 2.1). But these goods
were not necessarily related to the retail activities. Instead, they were stocks
of goods purchased at one price awaiting sale for (hopefully) a higher price.
The Dutch canal house often leans outward over streets to maximize the
storage capacity; features stairways that are extremely steep and so narrow
that furniture is moved through large windows; and a hoist hangs from the
ubiquitous ridge beam at the front roof gable. In this way, every resident of
Amsterdam was a speculator, buying and selling lumber, pickled herring,
or spices for storage in the capacious attics. When demand was low for
Norwegian lumber, a drop in prices would trigger Amsterdammers to buy. In
the 1580s, when investors decided to send ships beyond the Iberian- controlled
ports to buy goods, shipbuilders sent prices upward, and lumber was lowered
down from attics to the canals and floated to the shipyards of Amsterdam.
With every home doubling as a warehouse, Holland became a giant machine
for moderating price fluctuations through speculation.
In this way, the architecture of the Dutch canal house performed several
functions at the heart of what economic historians identify as key factors in
the rise of Amsterdam as the most important financial center of the 17th and
18th centuries and the birthplace of modern capitalism.10 Each of five factors
associated with the late 16th-century rise of the Dutch economic position
has a more or less direct relationship with the formal-spatial infrastructures
of Amsterdam. First, the warehouse attics of canal houses served as a ready
stock reserve to buffer changes in supply and demand in ways that stabilized
prices. Second, because beating other sellers to the market was the key to
getting the best price, hoistways at the front of every house/warehouse,
streets that doubled as quays, and the ability to have a barge at the ready
for transporting even the bulkiest of goods, created what economists call
“elasticity,” in which even small changes in price result in rapid changes
in supply. Third, the relative liberty enjoyed by entrepreneurs to engage in
exchanges without the friction of guilds, royal monopolies, the church,
Figure 2.1 1670 section and plan of a “three-story” merchant’s canal house
(Amsterdam Parish Library). From Renée Kistemaker and Roelof
van Gelder, Amsterdam: The Golden Age, 1275–1795 (New York:
Abbeville Press, 1983).
50 Robert Cowherd
plutocracy, or even licensing bureaucracies, reduced the transaction costs
of business and thus, lowered the barriers to engaging in commerce. Fourth,
given the need to constantly monitor price fluctuations, in 1585 the commo-
dities market on the dam of the Amstel River was the first market in Europe
to distribute price sheets, further quickening the response to changes in market
conditions. And finally, the dependability of the information in Amsterdam
augmented the size and volume of transactions beyond its former role of
regional “gateway” to a new position of global market “entrepot.”11 The last
three of these factors were facilitated in part by the architectural performance
of an ensemble of buildings organized in and around Amsterdam’s Dam
Square.
In the early days of the informal market on top of the dam, buyers and
sellers of herring took to gathering at a particular shopfront or street corner,
separate from those interested in corn or wheat, who gathered at their own
designated locations. The social practices of exchange are such that by mak-
ing the goods available to potential buyers for easy inspection a few steps
away on boats moored at the quay, these became suddenly unnecessary. The
trade custom of keeping one’s dagger in its sheath, but at the ready and on
display on one’s belt, here gave way to a higher level ritual reinforcement
of trust. With mutually beneficial repetition over time, this step came to be
taken for granted as there would be consequences for delivering a bad ship-
ment of grain. The verifiability of quality was matched by the establishment
of municipal Waag, or Weigh Houses, adjacent to the market so that the
trustworthiness of the quantity of goods also came to be dependably taken
for granted. As trust grew among traders, transactions could be made without
the contentiousness that would otherwise slow down commerce.
As the market activity exploded in the early 17th century, Hendrick de
Keyser built the korenbeurs (corn), or Commodities Exchange, in 1617 and
the Beurs van Hendrick de Keyser Amsterdam Exchange in 1611. Both
markets were constructed on top of the Amstel River adjacent to the quays
where goods could be (but rarely were) inspected and practically in
the shadow of the Waag Weigh House (Figure 2.2). Across Dam Square, the
Wisselbank Exchange Bank was established inside the City Hall, throwing
the weight of the city fathers behind all guarantees of payment. Another
factor in the capacity of a marketplace to foster the steady accumulation of
trust is a long track record of civility. With so many buyers and sellers
shouting and gesticulating in the high-stakes competition for the best prices,
the risk of violence could run high. Whereas in a different setting operating
under fewer rules, the frenzy of buying and selling might give way to braw-
ling and bloodshed, the Amsterdam Exchange strictly prohibited cursing,
shouting, physical violence, or ungentlemanly behavior of any kind. Rules
of decorum restricted entry to gentlemen of a certain stature and established
standing in the trading community. Early 19th-century depictions based
on earlier accounts include merchants and brokers from other lands and
cultures.12 Reinforcing the Exchange as a space of refinement, the upper
 The Batavia-Amsterdam spice trade and spies 51

Figure 2.2 Architectures of trust on Dam Square in 1624 view of Amsterdam

(Berckenrode PD).13

galleries of the exchange housed the offices of the various trade guilds
alongside the Academy of the Visual Arts. The rules of decorum observed
within the architectural framings of the Exchange and the Dam reinforced
the daily rituals of deference to the institutions and social norms of trust
among trading partners. Together these formal-spatial-institutional arrange-
ments constituted an architecture of trust, operating alone and together, to
amplify the benefits of consensual exchange and hasten the consequences
for anyone who would break faith.
Both of De Keyser’s market halls on the Dam reproduced the column and
portico arrangement of earlier open markets. For example, we can know the
gentlemen in the left foreground of Job Adriaenszoon Berckheyde’s 1670
painting of the Amsterdam Exchange (Figure 2.3) are negotiating the price
of lumber (column 43).14 On the bench are brokers waiting to arrange for
the rental of attic and cellar storage space in canal houses. The presence of
foreign traders would have been a common sight, as merchants and brokers
from across the world of the Dutch trading empire would have frequented
the Exchange.
Since prices rise or fall depending on scarcity and surplus, the more trade
can be centralized in a single point with the greatest number of suppliers
and the greatest number of buyers, the more precisely the forces of supply
52 Robert Cowherd

Figure 2.3 Lumber merchants at column 43 in 1670 in the courtyard of the

Amsterdam Exchange (Berckheyde PD).15

and demand can interact to establish a dependable market price. As Amsterdam

came to host the greatest numbers of buyers and sellers in Europe, no other
market had as many participants openly bidding prices up or down on a
specific good. Though it has become a common term, the origin of the term
“open market” was, in this way, quite literal. The formal, spatial, and insti-
tutional arrangements of the Amsterdam Exchange came as close to the ideal
conditions for gauging the balance point between supply and demand as
could be found at the time. The resulting price was considered so dependable
that by the 1590s price sheets printed up in Amsterdam were widely disse-
minated and used to set the market value of commodities throughout Europe.16
The ability of traders to respond most quickly, and thus most profitably to
sudden price changes, came to depend on being physically present at the right
column at the right moment in the Amsterdam Market.
Physically present for the buying and selling of spices were a group of
gentlemen who recalled the days in Antwerp when Portuguese ships offloa-
ded great volumes of pepper and other spices. The demand for these spices
appeared to be so great, especially around holidays, that high prices did
relatively little to slow sales. With Portugal united with Spain against the
Dutch, the choking off of the spice trade presented an opportunity to anyone
 The Batavia-Amsterdam spice trade and spies 53
bold enough to take on the high stakes of entering the Far Eastern spice trade.
The first barrier to entry was the secrecy of the location of the Spice Islands.

Batavia
In 1592, ten gentlemen gathered in secret around a rare map containing
details purchased from a Portuguese mapmaker of the Indian Ocean route to
the Spice Islands. Needing confirmation of multiple details, they dispatched
a young adventurer named Cornelis de Houtman to Lisbon impersonating a
man of business. When he was imprisoned for espionage, the Dutch gentle-
men paid a ransom for his release. De Houtman’s report on the location of
key ports and Portuguese defenses emboldened the gentlemen to bankroll
four ships and 249 sailors as the Compagnie van Verre (Long-Distance
Company). Its mission was to become the first Dutch expedition to bring a
cargo directly back from the Spice Islands.17 Despite De Houtman’s near
failure in Lisbon, he was placed in charge. The expedition followed the more
southerly route favored by Muslim traders, avoiding the Portuguese-
controlled waters around India and the Straits of Melaka to exit the Indian
Ocean via the Sunda Strait. Despite being welcomed by the Sultan of Bantam,
De Houtman’s combination of arrogance and ignorance had doomed the
venture from the start. Insufficient provisions, scurvy, mutiny, murder, a
pirate attack, and arbitrary violence against the people of Bantam and
Madura resulted in a failure to reach the Spice Islands, the loss of one ship,
and the death of two-thirds of the crew. A Balinese King’s gift of peppercorns
was the only way the Compagnie van Verre was able to repay investors
without suffering massive losses.
Despite the near disaster of De Houtman’s adventure, investors throughout
the northern provinces formed their own companies, each existing only
for the duration of a single voyage. By 1601, some 65 Dutch ships had left for
Java and Sumatra (Indonesia) with some investors losing everything, and one
famously returning in 1599 packed with 500 tons of spices and a fourfold
return on investment.18 The markets at both ends of the journey responded
quickly with inflated prices on Java and a glut in Holland. Each new voyage
became less and less attractive as an all-or-nothing gamble with prohibitive
costs and decreasing price advantages. In 1600, the English East India
Company emerged as a competitor. In 1602, the solution was the formation
of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie,
VOC). Although the English East India Company was formed two years
earlier, the VOC was the world’s first joint stock company with transferable
shares and limited liability, greatly reducing the risks of ownership and the
barriers that prevented selling shares in De Keyser’s Amsterdam Exchange,
the first stock exchange.19 Other extraordinary powers derived from its govern-
mental authority representing six city councils and the United Provinces
of the Dutch Republic. As the first, and some argue the largest, multinational
corporation, it had the authority to wage war, negotiate treaties, and claim
54 Robert Cowherd
territories. The company held a 21-year monopoly on all Dutch voyages to
the East Indies. It sold shares in the company that paid dividends every ten
years, averaging out the successes and failures over more than a hundred
expeditions.
The key factor in the emergence of paper-based exchanges generally,
and the trading of shares in the VOC joint stock company specifically, was
a well-established set of institutions of trust with a long track record of
successful transactions in which the need for actual inspection of the physical
goods could be taken for granted. These conditions were well-established in
part through the architectures and infrastructures of trust in Amsterdam.
The combination of trustworthiness and flexibility greatly broadened the
appeal of investing in the new company. As VOC shareholders began to
receive handsome dividends, sometimes paid in pepper, cloves, or nutmeg
for storage in canal house attics, the value of stocks rose. Ultimately, this
mechanism for financing the activities of long-distance trade raised more
operating capital than the royal houses of Portugal and Spain and the less
innovative practices of the English East India Company combined.20
The longer time horizon of the Dutch East India Company introduced an
opportunity previously unavailable to Dutch investors: the spice monopoly
that eluded the Portuguese and the Spanish crowns. The Dutch established
a fort on Banda Neira and displaced the remaining Portuguese to establish
its primary base of operations in Ambon. So firm were the Portuguese forti-
fications of Melaka that the Dutch were forced to use the Sunda Strait
between Sumatra and Java until 1641. The English East India Company
proved a more difficult adversary, as they always seemed to be one step
ahead of Dutch efforts to capture and hold the port towns of the archipelago.
In 1619, after decades of sustained rivalry, the newly appointed Dutch
Governor-General J.P. Coen brought a new level of unbridled violence to the
multisided battle for Jayakarta. In one swift move, Coen drove the English
away, defeated the Sultan of Bantam, and drove off the Prince and people of
Jayakarta, burning it down to the ground.21 On its ashes, Coen built the
fortified port town of Batavia (an ancient name for Holland) as the new
headquarters of the Dutch East India Company from where it could control
ships at the multiple choke points of the Southeast Asian archipelago.
Intent on establishing a monopoly no matter the cost, the Dutch killed
the English defenders of Run Island and uprooted every nutmeg tree they
found.22 In 1621, Coen murdered all but 1,000 of the approximately 15,000
residents of the Banda Islands. About 200 Bandanese survivors remained
to ensure the proper care of the nutmeg trees tended by slave labor from
other islands. Nutmeg trees found elsewhere were either transplanted to
68 Dutch nutmeg plantations on three of the Banda Islands or destroyed.23
In a mixed message from his bosses, Coen received a letter from the VOC
Directors, known as the “Gentlemen Seventeen,” severely reprimanding
Coen for his near-genocide of the Bandanese along with a 3,000-guilder
bonus.24
 The Batavia-Amsterdam spice trade and spies 55

Figure 2.4 1667 map of Batavia (PD).25

The other 800 surviving Bandanese were enslaved to work on digging canals
and constructing the fortifications of Batavia in a tropical translation of the
Dutch fortified port canal town. The Ciliwung River was canalized, establish-
ing a grid of parallel and perpendicular canals for every block of the town
(Figure 2.4). The houses were a Chinese variation of the Dutch canal house,
with the roof ridges turned parallel to the canal to ease construction and
supposedly to create a modicum of shade against the relentless tropical sun.26
In the first decades of the Batavia-Amsterdam transfer of spices, the
company pursued and eventually eliminated the competing flows of cloves,
nutmeg, and mace. Starting in the middle of the 17th century, the dream of a
spice monopoly became a reality. From the 1620s to the 1640s, the ratio of
the company’s purchase price in Ambon to its sale price in the Amsterdam
Market was about three or four for both cloves and pepper. As a native of
Malabar (India), pepper was grown throughout the tropics, so a markup ratio
between purchase and sales prices of three or four is likely to be a dependable
reflection of the cost of doing business. In the 1650s, the Dutch achieved
exclusive control of the world’s clove supply, which allowed them to sell
cloves for about ten times its purchase price. This rose to an astounding 25 in
the 1660s before stabilizing at around 14 where it remained for a century.27
56 Robert Cowherd
The central challenge to the smooth operation of the tremendous extraction
machine that was the VOC was how to control such a vast operation with
the minimum number of Dutch men. The first manifestation of this challenge
was military. With the right fortifications, as demonstrated by the fortified
port town of Melaka, a small number of defenders are capable of withstan-
ding attacks of overwhelming force and numbers. The Flemish polymath
Simon Stevin from Bruges (Belgium) designed the fortifications for Batavia,
Amsterdam, and port towns throughout the Dutch sphere of influence.28
The second and perhaps more ever-present threat to the survival of
the VOC was administrative: How do a handful of Europeans subjugate
and control a vast workforce, a majority of whom are slaves? The Dutch
Governor-General was completely dependent upon the appointed Chinese
Captain who in turn directed several Lieutenants and Secretaries.29 The key
to maintaining the strict hierarchies that prevented the Chinese from finding
common cause against the Dutch minority was to amplify the distinctions of
class, sub-nationality, and clan as much as possible. The Chinese Quarter on
the west bank of Batavia’s main canal was subdivided to reinforce these
class and clan distinctions. This was all the more important because several
of the more successful Chinese merchants were significantly wealthier than
much of the Dutch population of Batavia. The wealthiest Chinese merchants
and officers were given special privileges that served to distance them from
those they oversaw. The rest of the non-European population of Batavia was
carefully assembled from all over the Dutch trading world. Each group
was kept small in number to reduce the possibility of unified armed insurre-
ction. Each identity group was housed in a small ethnically segregated enclave.
Each ethnically segregated enclave or kampung was named for the group.
Thus the 800 survivors of the 1621 Banda Island massacre served as soldiers
garrisoned in the northeast corner of town in Kampung Banda, adjacent to
the Bandanese Canal. These segregated enclaves were characterized by their
carefully controlled thresholds and gateways that were locked at night and
guarded throughout the day. The canals of Batavia added another level of
protection against the free movement of residents as bridges served as addi-
tional guarded checkpoints. The locally indigenous Javanese and Sudanese
populations were excluded from Batavia altogether in order to better
prevent armed revolt, especially after the 1629 siege by the Javanese Sultan of
Mataram.30
The complexity and diversity of so many distinct ethnic, class, and clan
groups necessitated the imposition of strict sumptuary codes governing the
way every resident of Batavia was permitted to dress. Sumptuary codes were
used in Medieval Europe to limit extravagant displays of consumption as a
strategy of social climbing. Non-Dutch residents of Batavia were required to
wear outward symbols of their identity to help armed guards enforce rules
of strict spatial segregation. Portuguese-speaking mixed race Mardijkers
from Madura were often baptized into Christianity, could be freed from
slavery when his master died, and were permitted to wear shoes (Figure 2.5).
Figure 2.5 1704 Topaz Mardijkers, Batavia (Churchill PD).
58 Robert Cowherd
Further degrees of class distinction were signaled by whether or not the
shoes featured metal buckles and whether those buckles displayed pewter,
brass, silver, or gold. Maps were keyed to illustrated books as tools in the
architectural regime of spatial segregation. Sumptuary codes included ele-
ments of dress, objects carried, and means of conveyance. These methods
were used in the VOC port of Cape Town (South Africa), thus their obvious
similarities to the divide-and-rule strategy employed by the 20th-century
Grand Apartheid system.
The same 1667 map of Batavia (Figure 2.4) listed the names of Dutch
residents keyed to where they lived on the east (upper) side of the main canal.
The first buildings constructed after the fortifications tended to be cultural
icons such as the Church, City Hall, the Governor General’s Palace, and
other symbols, supporting claims that the European way of life was being
recreated in the tropics. The European enclave of Batavia was extravagant
by comparison, bearing the names of the six cities joined together in the
VOC. On maps featuring perspective views, the city of Batavia was often
depicted as if it were simply another Dutch town, just further away. Maps
were used as both technical instruments for administering the town as well
as vehicles of propaganda for attracting investment and young recruits into
the company project. The scale of buildings, public spaces, and a general
grandiosity and grace were all exaggerated in order to attract Europeans
to relocate to Batavia. Even the proximity of the mountains and distance
were grossly misrepresented in order to more closely match popular notions
of the ideal city in Europe at the time. One of the lasting legacies of these
port towns is their role in sustaining a relatively high quality of life for a
handful of Europeans while imposing strict physical segregation and social
fragmentation as a means to dependably subjugate a large workforce.

One city worlds apart

The rapid transformation of the swampy lands around Batavia were closely
paralleled in Amsterdam. The expanding flow of goods and the associated
profits, especially on those goods supplied solely by the Dutch East India
Company, drove the expansion of the cities on both ends of the global
exchange route. The labor force in Batavia grew in proportion to the activities
of the company. In Amsterdam, the constant flow of goods, the growth of
the company infrastructure, and wealth attracted ever greater flows of immi-
gration to the city. The concentric additions to the canal network of
Amsterdam was a land speculator’s dream come true (Figure 2.6). From the
first landing of a single fishing boat in Java or Holland, the water’s edge
stretches exponentially in the fractal geometry of a canal network, even
within the strict confines of a fortified port town. During the 17th century,
the Dutch cut canals through the wetlands and hardened the edges of
extensive canal networks on two sides of what was to become one of the
longest and most exploitive and productive projects of colonial extraction.
 The Batavia-Amsterdam spice trade and spies 59

Figure 2.6 1688 map and view of Amsterdam (Frederik de Wit PD).31

As the entrepôt activities diversified from spices to coffee, tobacco, sugar, and
tea, Batavia had to increase its capacity for processing and storage. For every
ton of goods transferred through Batavia, a certain value of dividends was
paid out in Amsterdam. Sometimes, dividend payments were made in the
goods themselves, in which case, the goods stored in the canal house attics in
Amsterdam are likely to have been at one time stored in a parallel world
of attic storage spaces in Batavia. In this way, the VOC was a mechanism
that directly translated the growth of Batavia into the growth of Amsterdam
as the literal accumulation of wealth generated by the new multinational
capitalism that it made possible. The value embedded in the paper shares of
the Dutch East India (VOC) joint stock company came to depend upon the
operations and relationships structured by Batavia and Amsterdam’s physical
architecture, urban form, and geography.

Notes
1 Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great
Cities of Spice (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008), 545.
2 Ibid, 84–122.
60 Robert Cowherd
3 William H. McNeill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081–1797 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009), 86.
4 The spies were sent out in 1487 to find the fabled missionary Prester John,
presumed to have established a great Christian kingdom in Africa, and negotiate
a spice monopoly in the name of Christendom. Nayan Chanda, Bound Together:
How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 53; William J. Bernstein, A
Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World (New York: Grove/Atlantic,
2009), Kindle loc 2735; Derek S. Linton, “Asia and the West in the New World
Economy—The Limited Thalassocracies: The Portuguese and the Dutch in Asia,
1498–1700,” Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching, edited
by Ainslie T. Embree and Carol Gluck (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2015),
67.
5 Frederic C. Lane, “Pepper Prices Before Da Gama,” Journal of Economic
History 28, no. 4 (1968), 596; Kirti N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the
Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge;
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 63–68.
6 David Bulbeck, et al., “Southeast Asian Exports since the 14th Century: Cloves,
Pepper, Coffee, and Sugar,” Sources for the Economic History of Southeast Asia,
no. 4 (Singapore; Leiden; Canberra: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; KITLV
Press; Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU, 1998), 26.
7 Balachandra Rajan, Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 36.
8 Paulo Pereira and Isabel Varea, Jerónimos Abbey of Santa Maria (London;
Lisboa; Scala: Ministério da Cultura; Instituto Português do Património
Arquitectónico, 2002).
9 Herman van der Wee, “Structural Changes in European Long-Distance Trade,
and Particularly in the Re-Export Trade from South to North, 1350–1750,” The
Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World,
1350–1750, edited by James D. Tracy (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 27–31.
10 Clé Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information Exchange:
Merchants, Commercial Expansion and Change in the Spatial Economy of the
Low Countries, c. 1550–1630 (Aldershot; Burlington: Ashgate, 2006); Jan De
Vries and A.M. van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure,
and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
11 Lesger, Rise of the Amsterdam Market, 16–17.
12 Actien Handel, “Early Dutch Finance and the Founding of America,” Museum
of American Finance Exhibition Catalog (2009), www.moaf.org/exhibits/
actienhandel/index
13 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABalthasar_Florisz._van_Berckenrode_
003.jpg
14 1668 Amsterdam Exchange’s Pillar numbers and locations for regular exchange
of specific goods (Jan Caspar Philips PD), http://archief.amsterdam/archief/10056
15 http://collectie.boijmans.nl/nl/object/1278/De-Oude-Beurs-te-Amsterdam/Job-
Adriaensz.-Berckheyde
16 Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989), 73–75.
17 Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City (New
York: Vintage, 2014), 94–95.
18 Ibid, 100.
19 Bryan Taylor, “The First and the Greatest: The Rise and Fall of the Vereenigde
Oost-Indische Compagnie,” Global Financial Data (2013), www.globalfinancial
data.com/gfdblog/?p=1518
 The Batavia-Amsterdam spice trade and spies 61
20 Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade.
21 See Susan Abeyasekere, Jakarta: A History (Singapore: Oxford University Press,
1987).
22 In the 1667 Treaty of Breda, English claims to Run Island were relinquished to
the Dutch in exchange for the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on the island of
Manhattan.
23 Massacre also occurred on the islands of Lontar, Ai, and Banda Neira.
24 Muridan Satrio Widjojo, The Revolt of Prince Nuku: Cross-Cultural Alliance-
Making in Maluku, c.1780–1810 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 18.
25 http://collectie.tropenmuseum.nl/Default.aspx?ccid=153129
26 C. Nico van der Heiden, “Town Planning in the Dutch Indies,” Planning
Perspectives 5, no. 1 (January 1990), 63–64.
27 Ronald Findlay and Kevin H O’Rourke, Power and Plenty Trade, War, and the
World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2009), 207–209.
28 Although Batavia’s defenses held in the attack of Sultan Agung of Mataram in
1628 and 1629, the walls were subsequently redesigned and expanded. M.C.
Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia: Circa 1300 to the Present (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1981).
29 Leonard Blussé, “Batavia, 1619–1740: The Rise and Fall of a Chinese Colonial
Town,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1981), 166–168, www.
jstor.org/stable/20070419
30 Abeyasekere, Jakarta, 19–23.
31 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amsterdam1688.jpg
3 Cities of incense and myrrh
Fantasy and capitalism in the
Arabian Gulf
Nasser Rabbat

It is generally agreed that the first cities appeared in the region of modern-
day southern Iraq, bound by the two mighty rivers, the Tigris and the
Euphrates. These were the Sumerian city-states such as Eridu, Ur, Uruk,
Lagash, and Zabala that are credited with being the first politically structured
human settlements.1 They were shortly followed by a series of urban settle-
ments along the Nile in Egypt, which quickly merged in the two kingdoms
of Upper and Lower Egypt before being united in one mighty kingdom
under the first Pharaoh Mina around 3200 BC.2 Syria, Palestine, and
the three long coasts of the Arabian Peninsula along the Persian Gulf, the
Arabian Sea, and the Red Sea followed soon thereafter in undergoing intense
urbanization.3 Highly efficient cities emerged along the water’s edge or a bit
further inland as commercial emporia along the trade routes that crossed
the Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent from south to north and east to west,
connecting Asia to the Mediterranean, and bringing the luxury goods of
China, India, and Arabia to the consumption centers of Antiquity first in
today’s Iraq, Egypt, Greece, and Turkey; then to Rome and then Byzantium
and their provinces.
Conventional histories tell the story of that world system of Antiquity,
with a focus on the Mediterranean half, including the Fertile Crescent and
Egypt. But little attention has been given to the ancient cities of the Arabian
Peninsula in what we know today as Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the
Eastern and Western provinces of Saudi Arabia, and above all, Yemen. This
was due primarily to the scant archeological information we possessed on
their location, exact name, and actual appearance, for they have disappeared
in the early medieval period and classical historians had very little to say
about them. But a sustained program of excavation in most Arabian states
in the last couple of decades has changed the situation.4 We now have a
wealth of new data on the ancient Arabian settlements that would allow
us to rectify the historical record and to draw a general picture of the
urbanization of the region and its trade routes network.5
In the rather harsh environmental conditions of the region, the city
functioned primarily as an interface between constantly mobile human
groups. Some groups brought the bounties of the sea or of faraway lands
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 63
and other groups ensured their distribution through an intricate network
of caravan routes that crisscrossed the sparsely-populated, yet dangerous
desert, and linked it to the more urbane and wealthier cities of Syria,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Yemen.6 Yemen and the Horn of Africa were also
the source of two legendary aromatic products: frankincense and myrrh,
both resins extracted from the sap of trees that are native to these regions of
southern Arabia or Arabia Felix (the Happy Arabia).7 They were harvested
and prepared for incense and perfume by designated families and clans in
Yemen and Somalia from time immemorial. Both items were highly prized
commodities in Antiquity that were traded as afar afield as Rome and beyond
to be used to fragrance mansions of the powerful, temples—and later
churches—and as highly valued gifts, such as when the three Magi kings
brought incense in gilded boxes to the infant Jesus as a sign of his elevation.
The trade was a lucrative one: it supported several commercial cities in
Yemen and along the way north to Syria and the Mediterranean port-cities
from the second millennium BCE into the very end of late Antiquity in the
eighth and ninth centuries CE.8
These legendary trade centers are known to us mostly through digs and
classical texts of geographers and historians, and some through archeo-
logy and actual and physical remains. Foremost among these sites are the
Nabataean cities known as Mada’in Saleh in today’s Saudi Arabia lined
along the south-north axis linking Yemen to Syria, which were at an earlier
time wrongly identified with the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, punished
by God for their excesses, probably because of the opulence of their stone
cut tombs still standing today.9 The jewel in the crown of these cities is the
Nabataean capital of Petra, hidden inside a natural passage cut in the living
rock, whose magnificent monuments, mausolea, palaces, and possibly, meet-
ing halls, are carved into the mountains with modified classical facades
(Figure 3.1). Petra controlled the trade routes that connected Yemen to Gaza
on the Palestinian coast and other Syrian cities to the north and west, as well
as the desert passages to Persia to the east.10
The historical importance of these trade centers varied, but their layout
had a common theme: a nucleus, usually in the form of an open and poly-
valent market place-cum-cult center with various temples, fulfilling the
needs for exchange both among people and between them and their Gods, a
royal palace surrounded by a defensive wall, and then residential areas
fanning out of the center towards the wilderness outside the space of the city
proper and beyond its walls where the nomads threatened at every moment
to disrupt the fragile economic equilibrium. Transitional thresholds between
the city and the desert either in the form of suburbs or farmlands were
redundant. The main function of the city was the trade; either in its center
or in makeshift platforms on its periphery, and as agricultural hinterland
was practically inexistent.11
These cities became the subject of myth, which had consecrated their
strangeness and remoteness in fanciful illustration of quintessential Oriental
Figure 3.1 The mausoleum known as Khaznat Phir‘awn (The Treasury of the Pharaoh)
at the Nabataean Capital of Petra (first century CE) (Photo by Hafiz
Sherali, 1990, courtesy of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT).
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 65
books such as the Arabian Nights.12 That mythical narrative, in fact,
trumped history in articulating the representation of the cities of the East
long before observation and documentation became the reliable tools of a
new empirical method. But even after their introduction, the grip of imagi-
nation and myth remained paramount.13 They even subsumed observation
and documentation and turned them into reinforcements of the fantastic
images circulating in the West of the cities of the East.
Witness, for example, Italo Calvino in his Invisible Cities, where he
captured that mythical strangeness in lyrical descriptions that hide both the
fascination with the Orient and the cavalier attitude toward acquiring
knowledge of it.14 His Marco Polo, who may or may not have visited China
in reality, recounts the fables of the cities of his vast Mongol empire to a rapt
Qublai Khan, which the Khan had apparently not visited. Calvino deploys
all the tricks in the book and then some in his depictions of the extraordinary
qualities of these cities. They are magical, mysterious, magnificent, enchant-
ing, secretive, libertine, orthodox, illusive, captivating, addictive, depressing,
oppressive, liberating, ensnaring, degrading, aggrandizing, humanizing, and
demonizing all at once. But all along, Calvino is really constructing a chro-
nicle of nostalgia, for we discover later that his fictional Marco Polo was
essentially weaving together, from memory but also from fantasy, a thousand
and one images of his beloved Venice, the queen of the Mediterranean, and
the prototypical trade city, all cast in the fragmented narrative of the fabled
cities of the vast Orient.15
Let us jump to the late twentieth century and revisit the same area and we
will see new cities, as the Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasem said in a different
context, rising out of the edge of the desert (Figure 3.2).16 And by rising. I
mean literally rising to amazing heights and vast expanses, to the point that
many of them have erected a concentration of high-rises that confidently
compete with Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. These Arabian Gulf
cities are still primarily loci of exchange rather than production, be it agri-
cultural, industrial, or technological, and the memory of their predecessors
in Antiquity seems to have been inscribed in their DNA, if not in their
appearance.17 But their range of trading has now expanded exponentially—it
is now the entire globe with its sea routes and airspaces. Thus, the caravans
of yesteryear have given way to slick world-class airports and gigantic
seaports where the import/export activities are going on round-the-clock,
and fiber-optic and wireless networks that keep the residents in touch with
every corner on earth.18 Yet, the cities themselves are still squeezed between
the desert and the sea, although modern technology, which has recently been
exploited to an ecologically critical extreme, is allowing them to push the
desert back and reclaim the sea. Their swift expansion has thus been literally
predicated upon their ability to equalize the two sharply distinct natural
environments that have framed and defined them for so long—sea and
sand—mobilizing them both in the service of rapid and sometimes drastic
urbanization, figuratively and factually fueled by the third natural element
66 Nasser Rabbat

Figure 3.2 Doha, West Bay sea front at sunrise, 2010 (Photo by Author).

that distinguishes them: oil, an equally lucrative element, even though it’s not
as fragrant as the main commodities of Antiquity.19
Of course. there is a long history stretching across centuries between
the fabled cities of Antiquity and the fantastic cities of today. A history that
stamped the region with a firm and particular Islamic character: diverse and
open to the influences coming from across the Persian Gulf, or the Red Sea
to the north, east, and west, or from the faraway rims of the Indian Ocean,
yet also austere and a bit mystical due to the looming presence of the desert
right behind the horizon.20 But also a history in which the region that gave
Islam to the world had lain for centuries as ignored backwater on the
periphery of a succession of Islamic empires whose capitals had been so
distant and so careless, yet sometimes so punishing of the occasional religi-
ously motivated nomadic uprisings.21 This history left very few material
traces: mostly ruins of adobe structures that the poets mourn and the wind
sweeps back into the sand.22 But its alternating layers of short-lived pros-
perity and long-wretched poverty, of neglect from the distant imperial
centers, or imminent threat from the surrounding raiding nomads, of fata-
listic inertia, or resolute struggle to eke out a living in the inhospitable desert
or the treacherous sea have carved deep burrows on the collective psyche of
the community that have not been totally washed out by the balm effect
of the gushing oil in recent times.23 But the sudden and immense prosperity
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 67
generated by oil did indelibly affect the outlook of these cities and the
expectation of their citizens in the short span of a decade or two. In fact, it
ended up creating a new urban reality that reveals an uneasy and contra-
dictory mix of ruthless capitalism, ostentatious consumption, cutting-edge
technological contemporaneity, and proud, tenacious traditionalism.
Several Gulf cities already had a long history as small regional trading
centers and modest pearl fishing ports. But in the first half of the nineteenth
century, the British began to capitalize on the Persian Gulf, treating these
port cities as way stations from India, their most beneficial colony and their
empire’s proverbial “jewel in the crown.” With the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869, the British intervention in the region evolved from marginal
commercial interests to securing their long-distance maritime trade routes,
using Dubai as a convenient entrepot. The British continued to intervene on
both sides of the Gulf throughout the early twentieth century, playing each
tribal group off of each other as they brought an end to the Ottoman Empire.
Winston Churchill’s decision to convert the British Navy from coal to oil
between 1912 and 1914 was followed immediately by securing a continuous
supply of this new strategic commodity for twenty years through a deal with
the Anglo-Persian oil company.24 As a result of the deal, the British govern-
ment became majority owner of the company, which translated into increased
influence in the area.25
The first discoveries of oil on the southern side of the Gulf in the 1930s
and 1940s and the unfair concessions imposed on Gulf tribal rulers by
multinational oil companies with the enforcement of state-sponsored threats
and lopsided treaties, brought in only modest wealth and a little brazen
luxury. The cities that have maintained the same patterns of traditional life
and used the same types of vernacular architecture for centuries started to
slowly acquire the basic amenities of modern life. New social and civic
services, such as schools and hospitals, were introduced; streets were cut
across the traditional fabric or laid around it; and new styles of urban living
were thrust upon a population that had no prior experience of many of their
underlying and totally foreign social adjustments. Thus, the Arabian cities
of the 1960s and 1970s exhibited a configuration similar to that of many
colonial Third World cities that had already taken the high road of modern-
ization: a traditional organic settlement punctured by new access roads and
modest civic services, surrounded by new districts planned à la European
with wide avenues, apartment buildings, separate villa-type residences, and
clusters of social, religious, and commercial buildings. New city centers
grew in the interstices between the old fabric and the new districts where
most new business and governmental complexes, central Friday mosques,
and emirial palaces congregated.26
Things changed more spectacularly in the wake of the 1970s enormous
oil price surges: the rich Gulf countries suddenly became super-rich. With
the massive cash flow and its concomitant socioeconomic empowerment
and the increasing exposure to the cult of consumption came the desire to
68 Nasser Rabbat
develop fast and big.27 The cities had to be expanded and truly modernized,
and up-to-date infrastructure had to be installed in record time to serve
the growing population of natives and expatriates to satisfy their mounting
sociocultural needs and newly acquired expensive tastes (which Beirut,
a city that served as the outlet to Gulf Arabs’ break from tradition could
no longer fulfill, as it was mired in a nasty civil war between 1975 and the
early 1990s).
This urban expansion and hyper-commercialization needed a huge labor
force to sustain it, which the natives of the Arabian city-states could not
provide. A massive process of importing poor labor, mostly from Egypt and
South and Southeast Asia ensued, through which hundreds of thousands
of disenfranchised workers were brought to the Arabian cities to run its
services and build its infra and supra structures (Figure 3.3).28 Lodged in
crowded, ill-kempt camps and rental neighborhoods, these workers epito-
mize the urban and social imbalance that many developing cities in the world
suffered from in the post-colonial period with the flight of the bourgeoisie
from their old centers and their replacement by poor rural immigration. Like
the rural immigrants in the old colonial cities, the workers in the Arabian
cities are poor, unskilled, and unaccustomed to city life. But unlike the rural
immigrants, the workers in the Arabian cities are actually foreign. They
share neither language nor culture with the privileged population or with the
professional expatriates, who come mostly from the West.29
Nor are these workers granted any civic or political rights in their host
countries. The severe problems that this situation has created have yet to be
tackled, but we see signs of relenting to international pressure with the Gulf
governments promising to ease the restrictions that have shackled their
guest workers thus far. Not surprisingly, the situation is paradoxical, as the
Gulf countries force their ways into the contemporary world of business
and finance and glitzy architecture, while they maintain a medieval form of
commerce, namely an economic dependence on the trade in men in the form
of indentured labor, rather than the trade in goods, which has marked the
modern age of business.30
Architecturally, the Arabian cities plunged into the postmodern ethos that
was burgeoning around the world in the 1980s with gusto and, as we might
say in our politically-correct parlance, with a strong psychological urge to
satisfy their “special needs”(Figure 3.4).31 The wealth that the cities and
their citizens were accumulating, their desire to occupy their rightful place
on the world scene as a financial powerhouse, their deeply religious and con-
servative outlook, and their fervent quest for political and cultural identity
combined to create a demand for a contemporary, financially beneficial,
yet recognizably Gulfi (or Arab or Islamic) architecture. Sincerely at times,
but opportunistically at many others, scores of architects responded by
incorporating various historical elements dubbed “traditional,” “Arabic,”
or “Islamic” into their otherwise state-of-the-art designs depending on the
ideological preferences of the patrons, which the architects often used as
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 69

Figure 3.3 Workers cleaning tower in Doha, 2013 (Photo by Author).

basic diagrams for their plans and façades or splashed on the surfaces as
ornament.32
The architectural extravagance and urban expansion continued apace in
the Arabian Gulf despite short halts primarily caused by the foolish series
of misadventures that the regime in Iraq plunged the region into between
70 Nasser Rabbat
1980 and the early 2000s and the savage destruction of that country by the
US and its allies since. It, in fact, grew exponentially under the dual influence
of a long-brewing economic process and a sudden and unprecedented
terrorist act. The decisive victory of the West against the Soviet bloc in 1989
and the marginalization of almost all socialist politics thereafter emboldened
an already rampant global and multinational late capitalism to further
extend its search for new and profitable outlets. The Arabian Gulf, awash
in cash, relatively underexploited, and eager to diversify and secure its
sources of income presented the perfect combination of willing market and
potential partner to global business. The investment opportunities in the
Gulf became even more localized after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington DC. Erratic new Western financial and security
measures and knee-jerk policies, ostensibly aimed at fighting terrorism,
caused a partial reorientation of the accumulated oil wealth of the Arabs in
Western financial institutions. Some of it began to head back home and to
seek easy and reliable investments there. But lacking a skilled labor base, long-
term patience, or established norms for sustained and large agricultural or
industrial projects, the returning wealth joined the resident wealth in building
gargantuan business parks and malls, luxury housing and hotels, and touristic,
cultural, and entertainment complexes as investment.33 Architecture at once
assumed the role of branding instrument and spectacular wrapping for
these new lavish enterprises, which swiftly sprang up in cities like Dubai,
Abu Dhabi, Doha, Sharjah, Manama, Riyadh, Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, and
Kuwait, as well as other, less affluent cities around the region, and broke all
previous measures of scale, form, luxury, and at times, purpose and urban
vision.34
Dubai, with its entrepreneurial spirit, unrestrained economic laissez-faire,
and aggressive pursuit of investments, was the first to ride the new tide. As
it had centuries worth trade experience, it initiated a massive expansion
of its port—now one of the busiest in the world—and a tax-advantaged
investment policy. With its financial and transportation infrastructure
established, the city launched an unprecedented real estate development
project.35 The entire city, its surrounding desert, and even its coastal water
became the world’s most phenomenal visual laboratory, where the only
check on architectural and urban flights of fancy seems to be the unbridled
ability of the designers to push the limits of size, height, eccentricity, desire,
and the willingness of their patrons to bankroll those fantasies.36 In this
milieu, the architecture of what Mike Davis called the “utopian capitalist
city” seems to have emerged as a tacit design objective shared by the designers
and the patrons to lure in more investors in a cyclical financial scheme.37
Thoughtful regionalism, traditionalism, revivalism, and even postmodernism
were hastily given up in favor of a new architecture that loudly, and often
too loudly, bespeaks the ambition to endow a global pursuit of luxury aimed
at the wealthy with sanitized, but recognizable local flavors that Joseph
Rykwert matter-of-factly calls the “Emirate Style” (Figure 3.4).38
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 71

Figure 3.4 Dubai Mall with the Burj Khalifa in the background. Aerial view, façade
(© Courtesy of architect/Chopper Shoot Productions, LLC, photographer).

Some cities are trying to taper the seemingly unstoppable “Dubai effect”
by investing in culture and education as counterparts to the naked com-
mercialism of business and luxury apartment towers and cavernous
malls, and probably as long-term social enrichment projects.39 Two cities,
Abu Dhabi and Doha, have made major strides in the two areas recently.40
Abu Dhabi, for instance, is pursuing several new campus projects and a very
ambitious cultural mega-project on Saadiyat Island, which will have four
world-class museums, one performing arts center, and a study-abroad cam-
pus for New York University planned by Rafael Vinoly.41 The first museum
is the Guggenheim Modern Art Museum designed by Frank Gehry. The
second is the Abu Dhabi-Louvre for Classical Art designed by Jean Nouvel.
The third is the Maritime Museum designed by Tadao Ando (which has
been on hold for some years), and the fourth is Sheikh Zayed National
Museum designed by Foster + Partners (which is yet to be unveiled). The last
iconic building is a Performing Arts Centre designed by Zaha Hadid. All
these projects, slated to open between now and 2020, have yet to identify
their audience, respond to their expectations, and build their cultural and
social missions.42 As of now, they are still mostly shimmering images blipp-
ing on the computer screens of scores of swooning potential investors,
architects, and students of architecture around the world. All, I think were
deliberately commissioned from international “starchitects” as a way to
encapsulate the glamour associated with these world-famous designers in
72 Nasser Rabbat

Figure 3.5 Billboard from Abu Dhabi—“Souq Culture” (Photo courtesy of Yasser
Elsheshtawy).

the actual buildings of the museums they design.43 They were perhaps also
meant to tacitly present the sensational envelope as the aspiration—and
potentially the substitute for—the still unclear content and unresolved ten-
sions embedded in the scale, extravagance, and ambiguous social functions
of the museums themselves, which seem to have been conceived more as
loci of exchange, gain and loss, much like the activities in the traditional
souk (or marketplace) are, as encapsulated by this very revealing billboard
from Abu Dhabi, which locates culture in the marketplace (Figure 3.5).44
The reasons for this state of affairs are many. Some are sociopolitical
and can be summed up by the two complementary questions: What do the
patrons in the Gulf, namely the ruling sheikhs and their family members and
business partners, want their cities to be and why? And how does the
population comprehend these intentions and react to them?45 Other reasons
have to do with the profession of architecture and planning and its current
demographics, as well as its changing conceptual, financial, technical, and
especially its ethical parameters, which are affecting the way in which archi-
tects see themselves and evaluate their socioeconomic role and the limits and
meaning of their work. Still, other reasons are purely economic: they relate
to the effects of the insatiable, but lazy late capitalism, which animates most
investments in the Gulf (and most of the world for that matter) today. Most
of these issues have been dissected in numerous publications whose analysis
has wavered between the all-knowing dogmatic (and sometimes apocalyptic)
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 73
economic theory and the ideologically motivated and antagonistic gloating
of the “I-told-you-so” variety, which both emphasize the inability of the
culture to measure up to the challenges of modernity, with very few studies
maintaining a clear-headed and historically grounded perspective.46
But one factor that has not received much attention in the current discourse
has to do with the deep historical roots of the cities of the Arabian Gulf.47
My contention is that although glamour and excess in the Arabian Gulf
cities are clearly predicated upon the various empirical and critical aspects I
and others have delineated, the culture of ensuring exchange in a difficult
environment inherited through the millennia affects the kind and choice of
architecture in the Arabian Gulf cities today in similar ways to how it
affected it in Antiquity, and is conversely bolstered by the success of that
architecture.48 But having focused on one specific kind of trade, namely real
estate and its accouterments, the Gulf cities find themselves turned into cities
of trade in an existential way: The object of commerce is the city itself, its
image, its potential income, and its inviting glitzy buildings that function
mostly as billboards for the promising urban brand.49 What is more, the
surplus wealth, leveraged through global finance is now (where it can be
identified) spread through real estate around the world.
However, the effects of these economically excessive conditions are felt
more harshly in the older and poorer Arab cities that are directly influenced
by the fluctuations of jobs, investment, and spending in the Arabian
Gulf cities.50 Architecturally, we witness the proliferation of Dubai-style,
exclusive “New Cities” around these older cities or in their commercial
cores (Figure 3.6). After urbanization, the decay of the old cities’ historic
centers is accelerating under the weight of severe population explosion and
heavy rural emigration accompanied by an assortment of governmental
neglect and corruption, a greedy real-estate market, chaotic zoning and
overbuilding, and more recently, the exodus of the remaining businesses

Figure 3.6 Beirut souk, aerial view with skyline in background (Photo by Rafael
Moneo, 2009, courtesy of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture).
74 Nasser Rabbat
and pockets of bourgeois to the new cities rising on the peripheries.51 But the
most alarming effect of this relentless movement of people and capital is
neither architectural nor urban. Rather, it is the fading away of their civic
quality that was slowly and painstakingly acquired over the last two centu-
ries and its replacement by a double-headed, market-driven commodification
process, which is splitting the city into two extremes. On one end, the poor
quarters are robbed of the last vestiges of urban life and turned into
contiguous village-like neighborhoods living by their own informal codes.
On the other end, the new, rich suburbs acquire a slick consumerist, neo-
liberal, and globalized identity that has no local feel or connection.52 And
that, I would argue, is the not-so-hidden price of moving from the trade city
to the traded city.

Notes
1 The first to ascribe the first cities to Mesopotamia was V. Gordon Childe, “The
Urban Revolution,” Town Planning Review 21, 1 (1950): 3–17. Not everyone
agrees with Childe’s definition of a city, and later archeologists wanted to expand
the definition to include older sites that were urban enough, though culturally
less advanced than the Mesopotamian sites. But Childe’s views still resonate with
many scholars’ research on the origins of cities today. Gwendolyn Leick,
Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City (London: Penguin UK, 2002) provides
the most complete study to date on the earliest cities of southern Mesopotamia
and still attributes the invention of the city to that land.
2 For a good overview of urban development in Ancient Egypt see Charles Gates,
Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and
Egypt, Greece and Rome (London: Routledge, 2d ed., 2011), 78–117.
3 Ibid., 153–200, for Syrian and Arabian ancient cities. A succinct review of
current knowledge on ancient Arabia is Robert G. Hoyland’s Arabia and the
Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (London: Routledge, 2001).
4 Michael Rice, The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf (London: Routledge, 2d ed.,
2002), 24–77; D. T. Potts, “Rethinking Some Aspects of Trade in the Arabian
Gulf,” World Archaeology 24, 3 (1993): 423–40; idem, “The Archaeology and
Early History of the Persian Gulf,” The Persian Gulf in History, Lawrence G.
Potter, ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2009), 27–56.
5 A recent study of urbanization patterns in Arabia that incorporates and synthetize
the recent archeological finds is Michel Mouton and Jérémie Schiettecatte, In the
Desert Margin: The Settlement Process in Ancient South and East Arabia (Rome:
L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2014).
6 Fergus Millar, “Caravan Cities: The Roman Near East and Long-Distance Trade
by Land,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 42 (1998): 119–137. The
original study by M. I. Rostovzeff, Caravan Cities (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1932), 1–36, offers a good introductory survey of caravan cities in Syria
and Arabia. See also Alan Walmsley, “Byzantine Palestine and Arabia: Urban
Prosperity in Late Antiquity,” Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, N. Christie and S. T. Loseby, eds. (London:
Scolar Press, 1996), 126–56.
7 Gus W. Van Beek, “Frankincense and Myrrh in Ancient South Arabia,” Journal
of the American Oriental Society 78, 3 (1958): 141–52; Mats Thulin and Ahmed
Mumin Warfa, “The Frankincense Trees (Boswellia spp., Burseraceae) of
Northern Somalia and Southern Arabia,” Kew Bulletin 42, 3 (1987): 487–500;
J.W. Thieret, “Frankincense and Myrrh,” Lloydiana 1, 4 (1996): 6–9.
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 75
8 Nigel Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh: A Study of the Arabian Incense Trade
(London and New York: Longman, 1981), 22–54; Caroline Singer, “The Incense
Kingdoms of Yemen: An Outline History of the South Arabian Incense Trade,”
Food for the Gods: New Light on the Ancient Incense Trade, David Peacock and
David Williams, eds. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007), 4–27.
9 Philip C. Hammond, The Nabataeans: Their History, Culture and Archaeology
(Gothenberg: Paul Aströms Förlag, 1973); John F. Healey, The Religion of the
Nabataeans: A Conspectus (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 25–72.
10 Jane Taylor, Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans (London: IB Tauris,
2001), 13–120; Martha Sharp Joukowsky, “The Petra Great Temple: A
Nabataean Architectural Miracle,” Near Eastern Archaeology 65, 4 (2002):
235–48; Lucy Wadeson, “Nabataean Tomb Complexes at Petra: New Insights in
the Light of Recent Fieldwork,” Proceedings of the Australasian Society for
Classical Studies 32 (2011): 1–24.
11 A. Leo Oppenheim, “Mesopotamia-Land of Many Cities,” Middle Eastern
Cities: A Symposium on Ancient, Islamic, and Contemporary Middle Eastern
Urbanism, Ira Lapidus, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969),
3–18; Marc van de Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 63–100.
12 Mary B. Campbell, “The Fabulous East: ‘Wonder Books,’ and Grotesque Facts,”
The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 47–88.
13 Michael Gilsenan, Imagined Cities of the East: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered
Before the University of Oxford on 27 May 1985 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1986), is a succinct review of European attitudes towards the cities of the East,
both real and fanciful.
14 Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, W. Weaver, trans. (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1974).
15 Italo Calvino, “On ‘Invisible Cities,’” Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art
8 (Spring/Summer 1983): 37–42; Laurence A. Breiner, “Italic. Calvino: The Place
of the Emperor in Invisible Cities,” Modern Fiction Studies 34, 4 (1988): 559–73.
16 Samih al-Qasem, “Marthiya ila Muhammad,” in his collection Qur’an al-Mawt
wa-l Yasamin (Jerusalem: Muhtasib Library, 1967–69), 106–07, is a soulful
poem on the difference between the vigor of early Islam and the torpor of
contemporary, conservative Islam.
17 Sulayman Khalaf, “The Evolution of the Gulf City Type, Oil, and Globalization,”
Globalization and the Gulf, John W. Fox, Nada Mourtada-Sabbah, and
Mohammed al Mutawa, eds. (London: Routledge, 2006), 244–63; Miriam
Cooke, Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2013), 64–98.
18 Ben Derudder, David Bassens, and Frank Witlox, “Political-Geographic
Interpretations of Massive Air Transport Developments in Gulf Cities,” Political
Geography 36 (2013): A4–A7; John F. O’Connell, “The Changing Dynamics of
the Arab Gulf Based Airlines and an Investigation into the Strategies that are
Making Emirates into a Global Challenger,” World Review of Intermodal
Transportation Research 1, 1 (2006): 94–114; Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Gulf
Airlines and the Changing Map of Global Aviation (Houston, TX: The James A.
Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University, 2015).
19 Yasser Elsheshtawy, “Cities of Sand and Fog: Abu Dhabi’s Global Ambitions,”
The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development,
Yasser Elsheshtawy, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 258–304; Esra Akcan,
“World, Open City?” Architectural Design 74, 6 (2004): 98–104.
20 Louise E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities? Arab Societies of the Persian or Arabian
Gulf, 18th Century,” Ethnohistory 11, 3 (1964): 262–80; Nelida Fuccaro,
76 Nasser Rabbat
Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama Since 1800 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 16–110; Frederick F. Anscombe, “An
Anational Society: Eastern Arabia in the Ottoman Period,” Transnational
Connections and the Arab Gulf, Madawi al-Rasheed, ed. (London: Routledge,
2004), 21–38; John E. Peterson, “Tribes and Politics in Eastern Arabia,” The
Middle East Journal (1977): 297–312.
21 One of the most consequential events is the routing of the Wahhabi Saudi state
at the hands of the Egyptian army of Muhammad ‘Ali in 1818 on order of the
Porte in Istanbul, see Madawi al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2d ed., 2010), 14–22; Alexei Vassiliev, The History
of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Books, 2000), 140–73.
22 Shirley Kay and Dariush Zandi, Architectural Heritage of the Gulf (Dubai,
UAE: Motivate Pub., 1991); Ronald Hawker, Traditional Architecture of the
Arabian Gulf: Building on Desert Tides (Southampton, Boston: WIT Press,
2008), 43–75.
23 Frauke Heard-Bey, “The Tribal Society of the UAE and its Traditional Economy,”
Perspectives on the United Arab Emirates, E. Ghareeb and I. al-Abed, eds.
(London: Trident Press, 1997), 254–72; Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Making of
the Modern Gulf States: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and
Oman (London: Routledge, 2d ed., 2016), 1–23.
24 Eirk J. Dahl, “From Coal to Oil,” Joint Force Quarterly (Winter 2000–01):
50–56.
25 Stephen Ramos, Dubai Amplified: The Engineering of Port Geography (New
York: Routledge, 2016), 57–65.
26 Salih A. el-Arifi, “The Nature of Urbanization in the Gulf Countries,” GeoJournal
13, 3 (1986): 223–35; Alexander Melamid, “Urban Planning in Eastern Arabia,”
Geographical Review 70, 4 (1980): 473–77; Michael E. Bonine, “The Urbanization
of the Persian Gulf Nations,” The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey, Alvin J.
Cottrell, ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 225–78.
27 Farah al-Nakib, “Kuwait’s Modern Spectacle Oil Wealth and the Making of a
New Capital City, 1950–90,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East 33, 1 (2013): 7–25. Nelida Fuccaro, “Visions of the City: Urban
Studies on the Gulf,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 35, 2 (Winter
2001): 175–87.
28 Ahmed Kanna, Dubai, the City as Corporation (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2011), 43–104.
29 A very detailed case is B. Van Esveld, “The Island of Happiness”: Exploitation
of Migrant Workers on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi (New York: Human Rights
Watch, 2009); Anh Nga Longva, “Keeping Migrant Workers in Check,” Middle
East Report 29, 2 (1999): 20–22; Ginu Zacharia Oommen, “South Asian
Migration to the GCC Countries: Emerging Trends and Challenges,” South
Asian Migration to Gulf Countries: History, Policies, Development, Prakash
C. Jain and Ginu Zacharia Oommen, eds. (London: Routledge, 2016), 17–45.
30 Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Insecure Gulf: The End of Certainty and The
Transition to the Post-Oil Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014),
85–108.
31 Khaled Adham, “Rediscovering the Island: Doha’s Urbanity from Pearls to
Spectacle,” The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity, and Urban
Development, Yasser Elsheshtawy, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 218–57;
Joan C. Henderson, “Global Gulf Cities and Tourism: A Review of Abu Dhabi,
Doha and Dubai,” Tourism Recreation Research 39, 1 (2014): 107–14; Florian
Wiedmann and Ashraf Salama, “From Pre-Oil Settlement to Post-Oil Hub: The
Urban Transformation of Doha,” International Journal of Architectural Research
7, 2 (2013): 146–59.
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 77
32 Yasser Mahgoub, “Architecture and the Expression of Cultural Identity in
Kuwait,” The Journal of Architecture 12, 2 (2007): 165–82; Rosanna Law and
Kevin Underwood, “Msheireb Heart of Doha: An Alternative Approach to
Urbanism in the Gulf Region,” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 1,
1 (2012): 131–47; Ashraf M. Salama and Florian Wiedmann Demystifying
Doha: On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City (London: Routledge,
2d ed., 2016), 42–56; Nader Ardalan, “Sustainable Identity: New Paradigms for
the Persian Gulf,” Architecture and Globalisation in the Persian Gulf Region,
Murray Fraser and Nasser Golzari, eds. (London, Routledge, 2d ed., 2016),
329–46.
33 Michelle Buckley and Adam Hanieh, “Diversification by Urbanization: Tracing
the Property-Finance Nexus in Dubai and the Gulf,” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 38, 1 (2014): 155–75.
34 Yasser Elsheshtawy, “Redrawing Boundaries: Dubai, The Emergence of a Global
City,” Planning the Middle East City: An Urban Kaleidoscope in a Globalizing
World, Yasser Elsheshtawy, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 169–99; Samer
Bagaeen, “Brand Dubai: The Instant City; or the Instantly Recognizable City,”
International Planning Studies 12, 2 (2007): 173–97.
35 Michael Pacione, “Dubai,” Cities 22, 3 (2005): 255–65; George Katodrytis,
“Metropolitan Dubai and the Rise of Architectural Fantasy,” Bidoun Magazine
4 (2005): 2–3; Michele Acuto, “Dubai in the ‘Middle,’” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 38, 5 (2014): 1732–48.
36 Michele Acuto, “High-Rise Dubai Urban Entrepreneurialism and the Technology
of Symbolic Power,” Cities 27, 4 (2010): 272–84; Larry R. Ford, “World Cities
and Global Change: Observations on Monumentality in Urban Design,”
Eurasian Geography and Economics 49, 3 (2008): 237–62.
37 Mike Davis, “Sand, Fear and Money in Dubai,” Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of
Neoliberalism, Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, eds. (New York; London:
The New Press, 2011), 48–68, published also as “Fear and Money in Dubai,”
New Left Review 41 (Sept-Oct 2006): 46–68.
38 Joseph Rykwert, The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), 370–71; Jerry Harris, “Desert
Dreams in the Gulf: Transnational Crossroads for the Global Elite,” Race &
Class 54, 4 (2013): 86–99.
39 Yasser Elsheshtawy, “The Production of Culture: Abu Dhabi’s Urban Strategies,”
Cultures and Globalization: Cities, Cultural Policy and Governance, Helmut K.
Anheier and Yudhishthir Raj Isar, eds. (London: Sage, 2012), 133–44; Brettany
Shannon, “The ‘Dubai Effect’: The Gulf, the Art World and Globalization,” The
Emerging Asian City: Concomitant Urbanities and Urbanisms, Vinayak Bharne,
ed. (London: Routledge, 2013), 254–64.
40 Mounir Bouchenaki, “The Extraordinary Development of Museums in the Gulf
States,” Museum International 63, 3–4 (2011): 93–103; Sarina Wakefield,
“Museum Development in the Gulf: Narrative and Architecture,” Architectural
Design 85, 1 (2015): 20–27; Andrew Petersen, “Building the Past: Archeology
and National Development in the Gulf,” Representing the Nation: Heritage,
Museums, National Narratives, and Identity in the Arab Gulf States, Pamela
Erskine-Loftus, Mariam Ibrahim Al-Mulla, and Victoria Hightower, eds.
(London: Routledge, 2016), 95–108.
41 Andrew McClellan, “Museum Expansion in the Twenty-First Century: Abu
Dhabi,” Journal of Curatorial Studies 1, 3 (2012): 271–93.
42 Btihaj Ajana, “Branding, Legitimation and the Power of Museums: The Case
of the Louvre Abu Dhabi,” Museum and Society 13, 3 (2015): 322–41;
Sarah White, “The Relationship Between Museum Architecture, Exhibits and
78 Nasser Rabbat
Audience,” Reimagining Museums: Practice in the Arabian Peninsula, Pamela
Erskine-Loftus, ed. (Edinburgh; Boston: MuseumsEtc [sic], 2013), 392–431.
43 Paul Knox, “Starchitects, Starchitecture and the Symbolic Capital of World
Cities,” International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, B. Derudder,
M. Hoyler, P.J. Taylor, and F. Witlox, eds. (Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA:
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012), 275–83; Davide Ponzini, “Large Scale
Development Projects and Star Architecture in the Absence of Democratic
Politics: The Case of Abu Dhabi, UAE,” Cities 28, 3 (2011): 251–59; Ahmed
Kanna and Arang Keshavarzian, “The UAE’s Space Race: Sheikhs and
Starchitects Envision the Future,” Middle East Report 248 (2008): 34–39.
44 Seth Thompson, “The Museum as Economic Catalyst: Abu Dhabi’s New
Cultural District,” The Emerging Asian City, 244–53.
45 Youssef Ibrahim, “Can Culture Be Bought In the Gulf?” The Sun, New York
(February 5, 2007), www.nysun.com/article/48001; Nicolai Ouroussoff,
“Building Museums, and a Fresh Arab Identity,” New York Times (November
27, 2010), A1, www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/arts/design/27museums.html;
Miriam Cooke, Tribal Modern, 99–137.
46 One of the most expansive critical studies is Mashary al-Na‘im, “Mustaqbal
al-Madina fi al-Khalij al-‘Arabi: Marhalat ma-ba‘d a-Tafra al-Naftiyya,”
Majallat Dirasat al-Khalij wal-Jazira al-‘Arabiyya 37, 140 (2011): 151–226; see
also, Murray Fraser, “The Scale of Globalisation,” Architecture and Globalisation
in the Persian Gulf Region, 383–403; Sean Foley, The Arab Gulf States:
Beyond Oil and Islam (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010), 144–52,
273–82.
47 Marc Lavergne, “Global City, Tribal Citizenship: Dubai’s Paradox,” Cities of
the South. Citizenship and Exclusion in the 21st Century, Barbara Drieskens,
Franck Mermier, and Heiko Wimmen, eds. (London: Saqi Books, 2007), 261–92.
48 See the perceptive analysis of the trade network and mercantile practices before
the oil and their effect on society and state in Khaldoun Hassan al-Naqeeb,
Society and State in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula: A Different Perspective, L.M.
Kenny trans. (London: Routledge, 2d ed., 2012), 6–47.
49 Thomas J. Sigler, “Relational Cities: Doha, Panama City, and Dubai as 21st Century
Entrepôts,” Urban Geography 34, 5 (2013): 612–33; Arang Keshavarzian,
“Geopolitics and the Genealogy of Free Trade Zones in the Persian Gulf,”
Geopolitics 15, 2 (2010): 263–89; Leslie Sklair, “Iconic Architecture and Capitalist
Globalization.” City 10, 1 (2006): 21–47.
50 Yasser Elsheshtawy, “The Great Divide: Struggling and Emerging Cities in the
Arab World,” The Evolving Arab City, 1–27; Adam Hanieh, Capitalism and
Class in the Gulf Arab States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2011),
103–65.
51 A good review of some of the cases of Dubaification of poorer Arab cities is in
the final section of Steffen Wippel, Katrin Bromber, and Birgit Krawietz, Under
Construction: Logics of Urbanism in the Gulf Region (London: Routledge,
2016). They are: Khalde Adham, “Modes of Urban Diffusion: Culture, Politics
and the Impact of the Recent Urban Developments in the Arabian Gulf Cities on
Cairo’s Vision 2050,” 233–46; Pierre-Arnaud Barthel, “Global Waterfronts in
the Maghreb: A Mere Replication of Dubai? Case Studies from Morocco and
Tunisia,” 247–58; Leïla Vignal, “Dubai on Barada? The Making of ‘Globalized
Damascus’ in Times of Urban Crisis,” 259–70; Armelle Choplin and Alice
Franck, “Seeing Dubai in Khartoum and Nouakchott: ‘Gulfication’ on the
Margins of the Arab World,” 271–84.
52 Nasser Rabbat, “Arab Cities and Identity Crisis,” The Arab City: Architecture
and Representation, Amale Andraos, Nora Akawi, and Caitlin Blanchfield, eds.
(New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016), 41–49; Hilal
 Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf 79
Khashan, “The Curse of Underdevelopment and the Radicalization of the Arab
City,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs 17, 1 (Fall/Winter 2010): 7–18; for
the Syrian case see, Faedah M. Totah, “‘Nothing Has Changed’: Social Continuity
and the Gentrification of the Old City of Damascus,” Anthropological Quarterly
87, 4 (2014): 1201–27; for an analysis of the Egyptian case, see Nabil ‘Abd
al-Fattah, “The Anarchy of Egyptian Legal System: Wearing Away the Legal and
Political Modernity,” Legal Pluralism in the Arab World, Baudouin Dupret,
Maurits Berger, and Laila al-Zwaini, eds. (The Hague: Kluwer Law International,
1999), 159–71; Diane Singerman, “The Contested City,” Cairo Contested:
Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity, Diane Singerman, ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–40.
4 Borneo, the river effect, and
the spirit world millionaires
Mark Jarzombek

Indianization, beginning in the first century of the common era and escalat-
ing over the next centuries, is described as the process by which southeast
Asian chieftain cultures adopted some form of Hindu or Buddhist world
views in order to gain a foothold in the increasingly vibrant and messy mari-
time world. The resultant palace-based kingdoms operated as theocentric,
distributional nodes. Inevitably, the story revolves around irrigation, paddies,
palaces, temples, ports and shipping, and just as importantly, the India-
China trade that energized the system. Less fleshed out is the history that
looks in the other direction, namely into the forest highlands. And yet, so
many of the commodities that were transported across the ocean came from
the forests: rubies, diamonds, gold, camphor, cinnamon, Dragon’s Blood,
edible bird’s nest and so forth. These commodities were not there “just for
the taking,” but were in territory that often belonged to animist forest
cultures.
One can imagine Indianization as an inverted sieve sucking in commodi-
ties from its upstream periphery to place them in the civilizational vortex of
luxury trade. As James Scott has pointed out, little is known about the
nature of these upstream exchanges in comparison with the volumes we
know about southeast Asian oceanic trade, so one moves into the upstream
world with caution; but to ignore the difference between sites of trade and
sites of extraction is to ignore one of the fundamentals of the success of the
Indianized palace cultures of southeast Asia. On its surface, the trade was
asymmetrical, gold was exchanged for beads, and thus, ultimately what is at
play is the “cunning” of exploitation, a cunning that escalated by the 12th
century with the introduction of coinage. But the upstream cultures were
more than just passive suppliers; they also profited from these exchanges,
mainly in the hope of enhancing ceremonial status and fulfilling ritual
obligations. In their own way, they too “drove” the economy. In this chapter,
I look at Borneo as a test case for this discussion, since such exchanges
occurred in a particularly concentrated form and survived, though weakened,
into the 19th century. The Borneo story shows how powerful the animist
world was a necessary and equal partner in extraction enterprises. Borneo
is, in fact, so important to the story of southeast Asian trade that without it,
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 81
Indianization would have taken on a significantly less dramatic profile. And
yet it falls completely out of the literature on Indianization because the
nature of the exchange that took place on the island does not rise to the level
of a document-based, civilizational narrative.

Borneo’s export portfolio

The scholarly literature on southeast Asian trade describes most of the things
coming out of Borneo as “forest products.” But this modern-era concept can
deflect the conversation in the wrong direction. Borneo was not the exporter
of forest products. It was the exporter of wealth. Trade accounts compiled
in 1829 tell us that in one year, the Borneo to Singapore trade had a value
of a quarter-million Spanish dollars. And that was only the first stop of
many before the goods reached their final destination, producing what one
speculator estimated as a profit of a hundredfold.1 Even in 1911, the Chinese
would buy a pound and half of crystalized camphor from Borneo for fifty
dollars—equivalent to about two ounces of gold.2 One can only imagine its
“palace-value cost” in China at that time.3 “[The] Chinaman does a thriving
trade in the wild produce of the country, and makes huge profits out of the
Dayaks and other natives on this river.”4 As to bezoar stones, the gall bladder
of a long-tailed monkey (Semnopithecus pruinosus)—a late 19th-century
ethnographer noted:

A curious industry is the collection of galiga, or bezoar stones, which

are also mostly secured by the Orang Poonan [Borneo’s forest tribes].
These galiga are highly prized for medicinal purposes, and are sold at
fabulous prices to the Boegis [Celebe traders from Sulawesi who settled
in Koetei], who resell them to the Chinese.5

A chronicle of the Banjar kingdoms of south Borneo dating from about 1663
notes that a representative from Banjar was sent to China, “taking with him
ten diamonds, forty pearls, forty emeralds, forty red corals, forty rubies,
forty opals, forty loads of beeswax, forty bags of damar, and thousand coils
of rattan, a hundred gallons of honey, and ten orangutans.”6
Statements like this before the 16th century are extremely rare, meaning
that working our way backward in time is to work into the realm of
conjecture, but there can be no doubt that Borneo was a powerful “pull” on
southeast Asian trade from the early centuries of the first millennium BCE.
Gold, dried bark, diamonds and the other goods that came out of Borneo
were established parts of Indian spiritual needs and based on lore that seems
to have almost been written by—or at least written to the benefit of long-
distance, luxury product merchants. Already ancient Vedic priests required
incense and gold, even though gold, for example, did not come from India,
but from the fabled Suvarnabh≠mi, the name of a land mentioned in ancient
˙
Indic sources.7 Suvarnabh≠mi means “Golden Land” and is described as
˙
82 Mark Jarzombek
“an island in the ocean, the furthest extremity towards the east of the
inhabited world, lying under the rising sun itself.”8
Over time, of course, the geography of the Indian Ocean became more
concrete, but it was not until the rise of the great Hindu kingdoms in India
and the Buddhist kingdom at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka that east Indian
Ocean trade began to seriously escalate. This, together with the end of the
Roman Empire, produced a type of “turn” to the east. West-facing ports
were supplanted in primacy by east-facing ones. Furthermore, the various
kingdoms in India, feeding on the newfound trade opportunities, began
to organize themselves by building and endowing large-scaled temples to
which an increasing number of devotees were expected to shower wealth.
This devotional economy and its trickle-down effect significantly increased
the demand for luxury items.9 From that perspective, one can argue that the
mythologically- and spiritually-induced “pull” toward Borneo and similarly
far-off places created in its wake a civilizational gap that had to be filled and
thickened for it to be a more effective producer of wealth. By the 9th cen-
tury, the luxury trade was in full swing. When the artists designed the reliefs
on the walls of Borobudur that represented the life of Buddha, they added
an image showing the forest tribes of Borneo, who can be identified by
their tell-tale blowpipes. The men are portrayed clustered on the forest
floor shooting darts at the long-tailed monkeys in the trees. On their own,
the Borneo forest people do not kill monkeys. Is it possible that they are
collecting bezoar stones to trade with?
One of Borneo’s first exports in ancient times was probably camphor,
which had a wide range of medicinal, spiritual, and especially aphrodisiacal
properties. Irrelevant today as a global commodity, we can forget that even
in the centuries BCE it was valued as a gift worthy of sovereigns and more
expensive even that gold; it figures, for example, among the items sent by
the emperor of China to Alexander. The treasure house at Ctesiphon inclu-
ded one hundred sacks of camphor, a royal fortune!10 There is no way to
know where that camphor came from, but the name that the Indian merch-
ants had for Borneo was Karpuradvipa (Camphor Island).11 As for diamonds,
they were extracted from the riverbeds in the southwest part of the island.
It is, of course, not known when diamonds were first discovered on Borneo,
but the name that the Javanese gave the island was Puradvipa or Diamond
Island. Then there was gold, which was associated with immortality in
the Vedas.12 Gold was not a commodity one finds in India itself. In fact, the
Roman author Pliny complained that India was draining Rome of all its
gold which it used to pay for Indian luxury goods.13 With the collapse of the
Roman Empire in the fourth century, south Asians were desperate to find
other sources.14 George Coedes even speculated that Indian exploration of
southeast Asia might well in fact have been stimulated by the search for gold
when western sources dried up.15 Another valuable, but rarely mentioned
commodity was cinnabar ore, out of which mercury is made. It came from
mines in Bau, just west of Kuching in northwest Borneo.16 It was used for
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 83
medicine, gold-smithing and lacquer. Once again, there is no way of know-
ing when cinnabar was first mined, but when Magellan’s boats arrived in
Brunei in 1521, they reported that the chiefs ingested mercury, a treatment
particularly common to the Chinese world since ancient times. It was
certainly exported to India, which had no local sources.17
Gold, diamonds, camphor and cinnabar were only a small part of Borneo’s
portfolio of offerings. There were tortoise shells (used by the Chinese as
oracle bones); hornbill ivory (which the Chinese valued above true ivory, or
even jade, to make belt buckles for high officials); rhinoceros horn (used to
treat fever, rheumatism, gout and other disorders); crane crest (used to make
dagger crane crest scabbards and rings); beeswax (which has numerous
uses, including medicinal, but also for cloth-dyeing in Java); lakawood (a
scented heartwood and root wood of a thick liana, Dalbergia parviflora);
and Dragon’s Blood, a resin produced from the rattan palms of the genus
Daemonorops gathered by breaking off the layer of red resin encasing the
unripe fruit of the rattan. Rolled into balls, it was used for Hindu ceremonies
in India; in China, especially during the Ming Dynasty, as a red varnish
for wooden furniture; and almost everywhere as a cure-all. The rubber of
the gutta-percha tree was an important medicinal commodity exported to
China.18 Last but not least, there were the edible bird nests, something that
the Chinese emperor and his elites had a particular fondness for.19 These
nests are still today the world’s most expensive food.20 English naturalist
H. Wilfrid Walker described his arduous voyage into the highlands to
witness the death-defying harvesting of the nests from the roof of a cave.21
Standing knee deep in guano at the bottom of the cave, he mused to himself
that if only he had the courage to dangle on the flimsy ropes to get a nest or
two, he “might have come away a wealthy man.”22
Despite its undeniable status as wealth producer, the island does not figure
with any prominence in the scholarly literature on Indianization. It is not
mentioned in the foundational book The Making of South East Asia,23 by
George Coedés, nor is it mentioned in The Indian Ocean in World History.24
There are several reasons for this absence. Camphor, diamonds and gold
were all lightweight and easily transferable. A few bags of gems and some
gold nuggets along with sacks of dried bark and perhaps a sampling of
exotic bird feathers to top things off could make a fortune and easily fit in
the long, tube-shaped holds of a typical outrigger boat, for example.25 There
were also many players operating at different scales and with different types
of masters with dozens of possible transit ports, not to mention the innu-
merable bays and deltas with their own micro-economies. By the time the
goods reached India and China, they had changed hands numerous times.
The most important reason for the absence of Borneo from our discussions
is that the goods moving about in southeast Asian maritime flows make
their appearance in the historical records only at the end of their movement
across space and time, in other words when they become jewelry, gifts,
incense and payments as registered in official proclamations or inscriptions.
84 Mark Jarzombek
Since scholars rely heavily on this type of documentation, their perspective
can only be on the end-game. The name of camphor reflects the problem.
The word derives from the Italian camfora, which was a medieval Italian
word from the Arabic kapur, which was in turn from kapur barus, which
means “the chalk of Barus,” Barus being the port located near the modern
city of Sibolga on the western coast of Sumatra. Though the entire world
thought that camphor came from Barus, it was only the staging point for
camphor, much of which came from Borneo.26
Borneo should, of course, not be considered in isolation. Trade between
India and the Indonesian kingdoms was well-established by the 3rd cen-
tury CE.27 The same for Funan on the Mekong Delta, which served as an
intermediary between India and China. But in all of these discussions, scholar-
ship on southeast Asian trade tends to bring us to the shores of Borneo,
but not further inland.28 To get past the problem, we have to differentiate
geographies of trade from geographies of extraction. This means that I have
no choice but to turn to the reports written by English, American, or
European ethnographers, naturalists, geologists and government officials
who came to Borneo beginning in the early 19th century for shorter or
longer stays depending on their purpose. Apart from the flora and fauna,
they wrote on marriage customs, tattooing, head hunting, war craft and
religion, and had viewpoints typical for that period. It was a land, as one
commentator wrote in 1821, “infested by numerous races of barbarians or
savages, differing from each other in language and ever in a state of
hostility.”29 William Walker, who travelled in southeast Asia collecting bird
and insect specimens, had a more positive impression of Borneo’s cultures,
but the title of his book was the rather intimidating: Wanderings Among
South Sea Savages (1909). Some of the perspectives sound more innocuous.
The self-proclaimed anthropologist Owen Rutter, for example, wrote in
1929 that in Borneo, “the pagan village is a self-contained, self-sufficing
community, independent, if need be, of the outer world.”30 Similarly, the
naturalist Carl Bock argues in his book The Head Hunters of Borneo that
“they live in utter wildness, . . . almost entirely isolated from all commu-
nication with the rest of the world.”31 These Romantic Era interpretations
place the emphasis on tribal isolation. Such views aside, there is enough in
the various reports in combination with more recent ethnographic studies—
particularly those of James Scott and Michael Dove—to begin to stitch
together a general picture of what Borneo trade might have looked like
before the 18th century and by extrapolation, even during the period of
Indianization.

River worlds
The ancient cultures of Borneo were numerous and their ethnographic
backgrounds complex, but on the question of trade, the situation becomes
somewhat simpler, as there were basically three different zones of interaction.
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 85
The river mouth, the upstream areas and the forests. Today, the remnants of
the latter two, the upriver and forest communities, are often lumped together
under the rubric Dayak. Though Dayak is a Borneo word for one of the
tribes, it probably means something akin to “man.” Calling everyone Dayak
was a convenience for the English, who also differentiated between Sea Dayak
and Land Dayak. This is problematic since Borneo communities did not differ-
entiate themselves in this way. Yes, those who lived along the sea were different
in many respects from those who lived in the uplands, but the name of a
particular community was derived from the sacred river along which it lived.
So deep is the river embedded in consciousness, that in almost all the ancient
languages of Borneo the word for water is the same as the word for river;
“when water is brought up into the house it is still the river when they drink,
they drink the river; when they boil their rice they boil in the river when they
name their children they pour the river over them.”32 Even the names of most
villages were river-based. Long-glat meant “at the mouth of the river Glat.”
Orang Sungei meant “River People.” Furthermore, the world was organized
as an up-and-down to these rivers. Ngadju meant “Upstream.” Uma-Tempai
meant “House at the Tepai” (a tributary of the Mahakam). Further upstream,
one found more mobile, forest-based societies, known generally today as the
Penan. Though they did not make boats, they too were usually known by the
river around which they migrated. The Penan called the traders who ventured
into their territory “from the river-mouth.”33
The ancient Borneo river cultures did not see themselves as living on an
island in a vast sea. The sea—even for the so-called Sea Dayak—was nothing
but yet another widening of the river mouth of which the particular river on
which they lived was a tributary.34 The global imaginary—if one could
phrase it thus—would be drawn in the form of an ever-widening river with
the Malay, the Chinese and the others living at the widest part. The world
was not a globe, but an increasingly wider plane sloping downhill. Toward
the upper reaches there would be the sacred landscapes of mountains, hills
and areas where the spirits live.

There are . . . many sacred hills, rivers, and lakes wherein dwell certain
powerful demons who govern the spirits. In this nether world, some say
that there are trees and plants and animals . . .; this point, however,
seemed open to considerable doubt in the minds of some whom I
questioned, while others had so definite an idea of it that they drew
maps to show the positions of the different regions. They seemed to
regard it as a large river, along whose tributaries dwelt the various
classes of departed spirits.35

Borneo cultures were animist, meaning that humans exist in a complex

relationship to a world that includes sacred landscapes and the spirits of
ancestors. Shamans served as the key mediators between the human and
spiritual world. Birds were consulted before any kind of activity. Gold, for
86 Mark Jarzombek
example, was a living spirit and was used not as money, but was buried in
the earth near rice paddies to invigorate its productivity.36 Camphor was
also a spirit, and because it knows in advance what the camphor hunters are
after, it can punish them in any number of ways. As a result, the men had to
take great precaution and, for example, not mention the word camphor, but
instead use the phrase “the thing that smells.”37 If the hunt went well, the
workers could find a hollow trunk with several feet of crystallized camphor,
a veritable fortune. If something went wrong, all they would find was an
empty log with liquid gum at the bottom, which was quite useless.38
The same was true for nests made by swallows (Hirundo esculenta) that
were seen as bringing good luck, thus they were not to be hunted or harmed.
Though guards lived in the cave to protect the nests, their work was made
much easier by the fact that the caves were watched over “by an army of
ghosts” so fearsome that the porters who brought Walker to see the nests
would not venture near.39 The harvesting was done only after “a good omen
in the shape of a good dream [came] to one of the chief owners of the caves.”40
People lived in longhouses set up on stilts high above the river shores,
each longhouse an economic unit unto itself containing two hundred or
more people. Villages consisted of one or more of these longhouses headed
by lineages of elders (Figure 4.1). There were also commoners and slaves,
all of whom play their respective roles in the tight-knit world.41 Upriver
longhouse cultures, however, did not trade directly with arriving boats. That
was done by shore-based people, whose descendants are now usually called
the Malays, and were originally from places in Vietnam, Java, China and
Burma. It has been suggested that the Funan elites from Vietnam were the
first coastal intermediaries—the first Malays, so to speak—dating maybe
back to 100 BCE or as is quite likely, even earlier.42 These intermediaries had,
upon their arrival, married the daughters and sons of the various local chiefs
in order to secure tribal “buy in” to their efforts. In this way, they developed
shared aristocratic lineages that allowed them to dominate the upstream
trade. We get a glimpse of how this worked when the Spanish ships from
the Magellan expedition arrived at Brunei in 1521. Their discussion with the
sultan who controlled the northern shores took place in his palace, in which
a statement from the Europeans was repeated from a lower-ranked chief to a
higher-ranked chief up to the king.43
The shore communities were all excellent boat-builders, but the primary
role of boats was not to travel long distances, but to control arriving boats and
protect them as they approached the shore. The two-level war boats of
the so-called Sea Dayak were certainly marvels and described by the English in
the 19th century; “as well constructed and very fast, holding sixty or seventy
men . . . It is no uncommon thing for the Dayaks to pull [at the oars] for
eighteen hours with only short intervals of rest sufficient to boil and cook their
rice.”44 Much of the trade was in fact done on the arriving boats, though larger
items were traded on the docks.45 As to the voyagers, who in later centuries
consisted primarily of Malay and the Bugis from Sulawesi, of course they had
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 87

Figure 4.1 River longhouse. The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (London: Macmillan and
Co., 1912).

their representatives in the shore communities with each river mouth, and
generally speaking, exported different sets of goods.46 The English in the
early 19th century identified a robust cross-oceanic trade with fleets of many
dozen boats, each carrying about fifty men, travelling to and from Borneo
twice a year. “Few persons would like to trust themselves in one of these crazy
tubs during a run of 900 or 1000 leagues, without a nautical instrument of
any kind.”47 One of the fundamental realities of sea trade was that the more
successful a port became, the more pirate communities sprung up in neighbor-
ing inlets. Borneo’s river-mouth cultures played the double-edged game
depending on circumstances; protecting their interests by suppressing local
competition; and themselves exploiting the shipping lanes of others.
Scholars have used the term thalassocracy to describe this type of culture,
one that we see developing in various parts of southeast Asia. But the word
can be misleading in the Borneo context since it emphasizes maritime
economics. In Borneo, the core mission of the river-mouth communities was
to control access to the rivers, not to impose a will onto people across the
sea. Furthermore, different elites developed at the different coastal regions,
specializing in different commodities.48 Instead of a thalassocracy, perhaps
one can coin the word “aktisocracy” from ĮțIJȒ (aktí ) meaning “shore,”
and țȡĮIJİ Ȟ (kratein) meaning “to rule”.
88 Mark Jarzombek
The hybridic shore-elites organized the acquisition of goods in preparation
for the trading season, and this meant that they had to negotiate with
the various upriver communities that provided the forest goods. It was a
distinctly two-sided enterprise. Since most of the river mouths were quite
wide, the first upriver longhouse could be a hundred miles or more from the
port, and usually at a distinctive moment in the landscape where the forest
closes in on the narrowing river.
The upriver communities who supplied many of the goods had a relatively
short list of needs, the most important being jars (Figure 4.2). In ancient
times, some form of basket was certainly used, but in the period already
before the Song Dynasty, the longhouse communities began to have a parti-
cular fondness for large, colorful Chinese, kiln-fired jars.49 The jars held
special foods, oils and salt. In China such jars—Martaban jars as they are
now known—were made to serve as durable, water-tight transportation
containers. 50 The Islamic traveler, Ibn Battuta, who visited lower Myanmar
in 1350 CE wrote: “The Princess made me a present consisting of . . . four
huge Martaban jars filled with ginger, pepper, citron and mango, all prepared
with salt, as for a sea-voyage.”51 In Borneo, the jars were not just containers,
but valued in and for themselves. They were key to the life and identity
of the longhouse.52 Along with gongs that were used to announce various
events, jars and other items were displayed in the longhouse on a raised plat-
form across the entrance, transforming the longhouse into the cosmological,
spiritual center for its group.
A longhouse elder did not care where a jar or gong came from, but
bringing it up from the shore increased its owner’s semangat. Semangat,

Figure 4.2 Jars. The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (1912).

 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 89
which historian Anthony Reid has characterized as “soul-stuff,” is a type of
vital principle that permeates the universe.53 Somewhat equivalent to the
idea of kami in Japan, it is present in everything from rocks and plants to
animals, and even man. Semangat is not static. In the human, for example,
it can rise and fall depending on circumstances; when it rises in the soul of a
man, it improves his quality of leadership to become something akin to
what we might call charisma. The wealth that derived from semangat was
considered not in terms of property, but in services rendered. The potency of
a man’s semangat is thus not acquired by work in the form of sweat and
labor, but by its apparent effortlessness (which the English misdiagnosed as
laziness when they arrived due to the hot weather). For a chief or elder, it
was this “effortlessness” that brought the jars
One can imagine the jars as battery packs that brought life—in a very real
sense—to the longhouse. The more jars, the stronger the life-force. Unlike
batteries, however, the older the jars were, the stronger they became. Some
jars possessed oracular powers. A late 19th-century English description
reads as such:

One very valuable jar, named Gusi, was brought, a common-looking

article, small, and one that would certainly have been trampled on by
strangers, but it is supposed to possess mysterious qualities – one of
them being, that if anything be placed in it over night, the quantity will
increase before morning; even water will be found several inches deeper.
It is wrapped in cloth and treated with every mark of respect. People
crawl in its presence, and touch and kiss it with the greatest care.54

During the period of the Sultanate of Brunei, from the 14th century onward,
even the Sultan had a jar. It was covered with a golden cloth and could
actually speak to him.55
Beads played an equally important role.56 Imparting physical strength and
inner brilliance, they were signs of status, marking out social rankings
within tribes. Lower classes were rarely allowed to wear beads. Beads were
also used in exchange for slaves. If a person was captured during a tribal
conflict, a family could use beads as ransom payment. Some beads possessed
powerful healing properties, especially among the upriver tribes where
beads protected the soul, allayed the spells of enemies and fought against
armies of malevolent spirits. Beads were also used as gifts to the spirit world.

It is the custom among the Bukits, one of the most primitive tribes, for
the youths, when they reach the bank of a new river, to divest themselves
of every article of clothing, save a chaplet of leaves, which they twist
from the vines near at hand; then crouching at the edge of the water,
they toss some personal ornament, such as a brass ear-ring or a bright
bead, far out into mid-stream, and at the same instant scoop up a
handful of the water; gazing earnestly into the few drops which they
90 Mark Jarzombek
hold, they invoke the spirits of the river to protect them, and implore
permission to enter the new territory.57

Though the people of Borneo could easily have made their own beads,
imported beads had special value, particularly small glass beads brought
by traders from distant lands. Not any beads would do. Particular tribes
needed particular colors for particular purposes. In marriage ceremonies,
for example, yellow, black, blue, dark blue and so forth, all had specific
meanings.58
Another commodity that most of the longhouses held in high esteem was
salt, not in granular form, but as a brick. There are numerous salt seeps in
Borneo, so it was not salt as such that was needed, but the imported brick.
Its owner would store it in the sacred jars and would in fact, only use it
rarely. Salt was most likely imported from what is today south China, from
Nanzhoa, or later, Dali. The cakes were brought down to shore, with the
Funan traders finishing the deal.59 When they reached Borneo, the further
upstream, the greater the value. As one commentator noted, a trader could
make “a gross profit of over $200 on every sack of salt the trader cared to
take to the Labao country.”60 And finally, there are a range of specialty items
that one or the other tribe needed, as remarked upon by Charles Hose, an
amateur zoologist, writing in 1912,

It is worthy of note that the Kayans have long used and highly prize for
the decoration of their swords the hair of the Tibetan goat dyed a dark
red, and have continued to obtain the hair at a great price form the
Malay and Chinese traders.61

Jars, beads, salt and other specialty items, including copper or brass wire for
bracelets, and later, iron as part of a package deal, were very much real and
valuable as they were needed by the lun do (“people of quality”) who headed
up longhouse society. To be successful, these lun do had to provision big
feasts, equip raiding parties, lead migrations, or build longhouses. Their
marriages involved a complicated exchange of these prestige objects, such as
slaves, livestock and money, but also jars, beads and weapons.62
Though the usual word to describe this in modern anthropology is status,
the word does not imply a puffed-up culture of ostentation. Status here is an
inner quality that allows the person to navigate the complexity of the spirit
world more easily than those without it. A person with high status is seen as
a person who has a stronger connection to the spirit world. But there are no
guarantees and a spate of bad luck, as we might phrase it, can reduce a
person’s semangat. Obviously, the kings in Vietnam and India also worked
on the principle of status, but those people had alternative and secondary
means by which to acquire and enforce it. For the lun do, it was the only
game along the river. It was acquired, not required. It allowed an elder
clearer access to the spirit world. It gave him a path within that complexity
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 91
that others did not have. Stated differently, semangat was the oil in the
system. It was what kept the goods flowing, and just as important to
Indianization as the needs of Hindu priests and kings.

Forest exchanges
Imagine boats arriving at the shores of Borneo with jars filled with beads
and salt, with later boats adding iron, textiles and other commodities to the
mix. From the shore, the goods made their way upriver in boats still under
the control of shore communities with perhaps an occasional Chinese or
Malay intermediary. Where the river became impassable, there was a trading
post and the goods were unloaded. A description of the goods was sent out
to the nearby villages in a four- to five-day journey’s radius. The men of the
village arrive to take the goods and disappear with them to the village
longhouse “without the slightest article being pilfered,” as the English wrote
back in their reports.63 There the tribe assembles and the goods are inspected.
Presents are made to the headman, who takes precedence in choosing what
he would like, and on down the rank. The price is fixed and an agreement is
reach regarding payments.64 The traders, however, are not interested in craft
items, nor does the tribe produce craft items for trade. Payment is made in
the form of bee’s wax, camphor, bird’s nest, or whatever the local community
mines and can procure from the forest.
We come to what will become the crux of the matter. The longhouse does
not have these goods in waiting on the shelves. Instead, men are sent out to
the forest to gather the goods. In the meantime, the trader has to wait,
remaining at the longhouse at the expense of the community for a month or
more until everything is assembled. The goods are then brought to his boat
and he leaves to finish the journey back down to the shore.65
The story does not end here. These communities in turn brought the
goods even further upstream in dugouts of shallow draught, pushing and
pulling them past the rapids to designated exchange spots. The nomadic
forest tribes were hardly isolated cultures. Anthropologist Bernard Sellato,
one of the few contemporary scholars who has looked at tribal trade, found
that the nomadic forest tribes were not remote primitives as described in
early 20th-century anthropology, but an integral part of the extractional pro-
cesses.66 The exchange of goods would take place at particular times, usually
around the period of rice harvest.67 In that way, the forest tribes could get rice
without—from their point of view—having to do much work for it. It has
been reported that the contact between the forest tribes and their down-
stream traders did not take place face-to-face. Rather, the goods are set out
on a log and the traders would remove themselves by hiding behind some
nearby trees. The forest men would inspect the goods and leave what they
thought was a fair exchange. They would then also retire behind the trees. If
the Dayak did not like the result, they would make some adjustment, adding
or subtracting goods back and forth until everyone walked away satisfied.68
92 Mark Jarzombek
Like their downriver cousins, the nomadic forest tribe wanted the usual
status enhancement items: salt, beads, iron axe blades, items of copper or
brass and even jars, though the jars were hidden in caves. Ethnographers
have pointed out that some of the river longhouse groups had their own
forest group contacts, thus enhancing their trade capacity.

The settled tribesmen of any region find this trade so profitable that
they regard the harmless nomads with friendly feelings, learn their
language and avoid and reprobate any harsh treatment of them that
might drive to leave their district.69

The exchanges do not go as easily as outlined here, for the group of men
who set out to acquire the goods often had to travel far from the village.
And the further from the village they went, the greater the likelihood that
the group would encounter various type of dangerous spirits. Adherence to
omens regarding these spirits would inevitably slow the group or even stop
it from proceeding until favorable omens were noticed. As a rather irritated
American “explorer” wrote:

I am very sure that [their divinity] saddled them with a dire affliction
when he introduced to them the omen-birds; more procrastination,
failure of expeditions, and exasperation of soul can be laid to the
score of these birds than to anything else on earth. There is hardly an
undertaking, however slight, that can be begun without first consulting
these wretched birds. Yet it is hardly to be wondered at, that all tribes
should hold the birds to be little prophets of the jungle, dashing
across man’s path, at critical moments, to bless or to ban . . . Once our
whole party of eight or ten boats had to pull up at the bank and walk
through the jungle for a quarter of a mile or so to make a bothersome
white-headed hawk think that he had mistaken the object of our
expedition.70

An impatient twenty-one-year-old English ornithologist recalled during an

expedition in 1932:

All the local tribes are very superstitious. Good and bad omens can
interfere with the best-laid plans, especially when an unpleasant or
difficult job is on hand. Our first week in the Base Camp was completely
disorganized by an unfortunate omen snake, which was finally placated
with much ceremony – hens, eggs and borak rice-spirit. Spider-hunters
(Aracnotherea), which are perhaps the commonest bird in the rain-
forest, are the main omens. Normally, no particular notice is taken
of then, but on an expedition into new country or up an unclimbed
mountain, where the natives are unwilling to go, bad omens are always
available.71
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 93
From the longhouse point of view, the men had to work in concert with
the bird and animal spirits in order to gain proper access to forest pro-
ducts, which were often under the control of other tribes.72 The Penans, for
example, were generally considered expert in locating camphor, so groups
requiring camphor would have to deal with them. And even then, they could
do it only after a favorable dream. Odoardo Beccari, an Italian naturalist
who visited the island in the 1870s, noted that his guide, Kam-Uan, “was of
opinion that this tree ought to be now rich in camphor, judging by the smell
given off by the chips of its wood.” But Kam-Uan would not let Beccari
chop the tree down. The guide promised that “he would return to look for
it as soon as he had dreamt a favourable dream.” It was, Beccari wrote
somewhat sarcastically, only “the fortunate one who has dreamt the dream
of good omen begins to tap the chosen trunk.”73 To prove to his guides the
invalidity of their procedures, Beccari opened up a tree that he thought had
camphor only to find a useless goo at the bottom. In other words, forest
goods, even for the locals, were not just for the taking. The rules of engage-
ment in a spirit-saturated economy were complex, time-consuming and not
to be trifled with.
The whole process of exchange was conducted without markets, which
only appeared in downstream areas with the Muslim and Chinese, who
were generally loath to travel upstream.74 The process was also conducted
without warehouses or any particular preplanning and storage of goods.
For the shore cultures, who played both sides of the game, knowing how it
all worked combined with a good sense of patience lay at the heart of a
successful extraction policy. Knowing the forest was not just being good
“animist,” as we might phrase it today—it was a form of knowing, in its
own right. The longhouses were not extracting material from the forest, but
from the spirit world, a distinction that is usually lost in discussion on trade.

Ancestor spirit millionaires

The above substantiates the argument made by Bennet Bronson, who
proposed a useful model to understand the coastal states of southeast Asia,
particularly the more thinly settled areas with limited agricultural cul-
tivation.75 These river-mouth societies prospered because they controlled
internal and external trade. By supplying goods to distant elites, in return,
these distant, more advanced realms “supplied goods which may themselves
serve as political instruments, as emblems of rank or legitimation, and as
gifts through which the loyalty of subordinate centers can be maintained.”76
The model was an important step in identifying river-based economies, such
as the ones in Borneo, as having a dynamic that was separate and distinct
from, and just subservient to palace-based economies.
Borneo presents us with an added question that might not be so relevant
in other places. Why did the system work so well and for so long? Contrast
Borneo with Vietnam, where, according to William Southworth, the river
94 Mark Jarzombek
system “remained the key component of political power until the eighth and
ninth centuries, when an expansion of agriculture and settlement into the
interfluvial plains, and the increasing development of road networks and
communication, allowed more powerful, regional state systems to emerge.”77
Though Borneo did change in other respects, as I will discuss later, Borneo
did not experience these types of changes until the 19th and 20th centuries.
To argue that the lack of change was a result of its isolation and lack of
relevance to southeast Asian trade is wrong. As we know, it was not only not
isolated, it was also extremely relevant to southeast Asian trade. At first, the
answer seems relatively simple: The shore-based cultures, and their various
non-Borneo backers exploited an inherent imbalance of desires. It was what
made Borneo so lucrative to begin with. The traders who arrived in Borneo,
like the Europeans who arrived in the Americas, would exchange what for
them were trinkets for items of more value. Gold, for example, was easily
panned in several places. A 19th-century English geologist who analyzed
gold deposits in Borneo wrote that, “so much gold is reported to occur in this
[area of the] country, that when a stick smeared with gum is pushed into the
ground, it comes out covered with gold-dust.”78 Still today, a lucky hiker can
find gold nuggets along forest river edges.79 But gold was not valued by the
longhouse communities, a fact that the early traders from India noticed (just
like the later-day English). It was, one can say, their lucky day.80 In fact, as the
naturalist A. H. Everett wrote in the early 19th century, “None of the savage
tribes of this [northern] part of Borneo seem ever to have made use of this
metal, notwithstanding their intercourse with the Malays, and in a less degree
with the Chinese . . . I have never known an instance of a Sea Dayak or
Land Dayak, a Kyan or Bakatan, seeking gold of his own account, and
manufacturing it into any description of ornament, however rude.”81
An English report notes that the Dayak’s “ignorance and simplicity are
often taken advantage of by a lot of Malaya for their own ends, who cheat
and swindle these aborigines to their heart’s content,” as if the English were
not doing the same and worse!82 Another writer describes how “an ignorant
customer” bought a jar for the astonishing amount of £400.83 Yet another
observer wrote in 1912:

Besides these old jars there are now to be found in most of the Sea Dayak
houses many jars of modern Chinese manufacture, some of which are
very skilful [sic] imitations of the old types; and though the Dayak is a
connoisseur in these matters, and can usually distinguish the new from
the old, he purchases willingly the cheap modern imitations of the old,
because they are readily mistaken by the casual observer for the more
valuable varieties.84

There can be no doubt that the history of the assumption of easy money and
easy deception dates back to the very beginning of the Borneo trade in the
first centuries BCE when traders could get gold for beads. A large part of
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 95
the wealth generated by southeast Asian “trade” was, in fact, of this asym-
metrical nature. Beads were mass-produced in India, in Cambay mostly,
where they were already made out of carnelian, onyx and agate in the first
millennium BCE.85 Bead-making was, however, a highly-protected enterprise,
since it was such a key element in southeast Asia profit-making. It expanded
from south India, which had established an early monopoly on its production
to the Funan in Vietnam then by the ninth century to Java, and at some
moment the Chinese got into the act. Though they made beads since early
on, they were not part of the southeast Asia trade networks until the tenth
century possibly, as evidenced by a distinctive glass style that one finds in
Borneo. Clearly once the Dayak acquired the taste for Chinese-styled jars,
the jars and beads were mass-produced in China and then later, closer to the
action, in Burma, Thailand and Vietnam, one such site being the kilns at
Vijaya, located in the Bình Ðӏnh province.86 By the 17th century, the Chinese
had even sent a bead-maker to Borneo itself, thus cutting down transportation
cost. The English observer noted, of course, “They say that in his matters
there is much profit.”87
In his own way, even the Sultan got into the act. As the Sea Dayak became
Islamisized, they had to give up their former beliefs and sell or destroy their
jars and beads. But the Sultan, as we saw, did not destroy his, and for good
reason. The fewer the number of jars, the more important his was. When
tribesmen would come to give him ritual gifts, some bird’s nests for example,
he would give in return “a little water from [his] sacred jar with which to
besprinkle their fields.” 88 It is a brilliant example of the cunning of exchange.
The Sultan of Brunei knew not only where his bread was buttered, but how
to butter it.
However, if the trade in jars, beads, salt and miracle water was part of the
civilizational cunning (often discussed in the scholarly literature under
the flattening rubric of “trade”), both sides thought that they were making
a bargain, especially since many of the things that the downstream cultures
wanted were of lesser or no value to upstream communities and were, from
their perspectives, almost free if only, of course, they could trick the spirits
long enough to get what they needed. When an Englishman in the early 20th
century commented in his notes that “so little does the Orang Idan [Ibans]
know of the extreme value of [camphor], that a bamboo of camphor may be
procured in exchange for a bamboo of salt,” he did not realize that the Orang
Idan did know the value of camphor. 89 Salt, for reasons unique to their
culture, was valued higher than gold.90 When that Orang Iban man went
home be probably said to his friends, “so little does the White man know of
the extreme value of salt, that I can give him a bamboo of camphor for a
bamboo of salt.” The same is true for bird’s nest. The Dayak were certainly
puzzled that anyone would want to eat a bird’s nest and thought it to their
good fortune to possess such a thing. And indeed, the chief who controlled
that area had become rich.91 His daughter was well provided for in beads.
As one traveler in the mid-19th century noted:
96 Mark Jarzombek
Were I to endeavor to estimate the price in produce she and the parents
had paid for this hip-lace (of beads), the amount would appear fabulous.
She showed me one for which they had given eleven pound’s weight of
the finest bird’s nests, or at the Singapore market price, thirty-five
pounds sterling.92

Even Beccari remarked that:

The evident prosperity, I might say opulence, of the Tubao Kayans was
due to their camphor and guttapercha, which they trade for cotton cloth,
glass Venetian beads, and especially for gongs and thick brass wire,
which are highly valued by them . . . Nipa salt is also in high estimation,
but less so than amongst tribes who live farther from the sea.93

So when we—scholars—discuss the history of trade we might fail to realize

that Borneo longhouses were not trading in the narrow sense of the term.
From their point of view, they were extracting status out of the downriver
people. Just as there was a “pull” that brought Indian, Funan, Malay and
Chinese traders to the shores of Borneo, the pull driven by the promise of
easy profit, there was a reverse “pull” that brought sacred jars, salt and
beads—the status-producing/enhancing package—up into the forest. It can
be called the River Effect. One can contrast the perspective of India and
China with the perspective of the longhouse. The former sees forest goods
and easy wealth, the latter sees spirit intensifiers and semangat. Navigating
the dangerous ocean has to be linked with navigating the dangerous forest.
Since it was the amount of semangat an elder had in his community that
allowed him to put together hunting parties to acquire forest material, the
higher an elder’s status, the more he could acquire. The word that came to
indicate a man of high semangat was “Orang Kaya,” which the English
translated as “rich man.” And there were many. But even they were not the
richest people in the land. The entities with the greatest semangat were
the ancestors. They “received all the wealth lost in rivers by the capsizing of
boats in the rapids,” and as such were described as “exceedingly rich.” They
were the island’s millionaires, so to speak.94
O.W. Wolters has pointed out how in southeast Asia, foreign materials
become incorporated into local realities, but in Borneo, I argue, we have to
see the spirit world not as the recipient of “foreign” items, but as the force
driving the economy in the first place.95 The spirits in that sense generated
wealth not just for the elites in Vietnam, Malaysia, India and China, but
also for the people living on the slopes of the mountains. These wealthy
spirit ancestors produced just as much pull on the system as the kings
of India. From the perspective of these ancestor spirits, places that we call
India, Malaysia and China were not great civilizations, but nothing more
than their downriver suppliers. Ancestrality was, therefore, not just part of
an animist belief system. It was, to change the terms, an economic system in
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 97
its own right. Though its magic, so to speak, worked throughout the Asian
world, in Borneo it developed a unique type of logic.
The problem then from a historiographic point of view is that today, no
historian of trade would dare to include ancestor spirits as viable trading
entities.96 Ancestors do not provide ledgers, make inscriptions, commission
temples, or go to war. And yet, in the context of southeast Asian trade,
without these wealthy, invisible entities as a motor in the system, the flow of
goods to India and China would have taken on a significantly less dramatic
role in history.

The failure of Kutai Martadipur

In the fifth century, one of the island’s aktisocracies tried to develop a more
proper palace culture, bringing in the usual contingent of Brahmin, ritual
specialists who set up shop as religious overlords.97 It is here that historians
of Indianization will usually mention Borneo for the first time. The kingdom
was the Kutai Martadipur (not its original name, which is unknown) and it
was created around 350 on the southern flank of the island. Its location was
no accident—it is close to the extraction sites of edible bird’s nests and gold.
Stone pillars with Sanskrit inscriptions indicate that the first ruler was a
local Dayak chieftain and that it was his son who took on an Indian name,
A¬wawarman, and who was also called van¬a-kartr (“dynasty-founder/
priest”). Since -varman was in common use by the ˙ Pallavas
˙ (with their capital
at Kanchi), it could be conjectured that these merchants stemmed from
south-central India.98
The rise of Kutai Martadipur was directly related to the expansion of
the Silk Route luxury trade.99 The greater the wealth-consuming needs at the
civilizational end, the greater the urgency to push upstream at the other end.
The expanding economy created in its wake the great palace-cultures on
Java, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere, and yet, as far as we know, the
attempted “Indianization” of Borneo fizzled out.100 It seems that the main
impediment was the failure to develop large-scale, rice cultivation (which
only developed much later). This might have been the result of the terrain
and inadequate soils. The soils of Kalimantan, unlike those of central Java,
were seemingly too acidic to support extensive rice cultivation without
modern drainage techniques.101
There could also have been cultural factors in that the major rivers had
their own longhouse polities that could not only exist independently of each
other, but that probably resisted the efforts to unify themselves into a dutiful,
rice-paddy people. Though it is not sure when rice came to Borneo, rice
remained stubbornly rooted to the scale of the longhouse. And the further
one moves upstream, the less likely the longhouse would acquiesce to
a palace-based worldview. In a traditional Dayak world, if the people of a
longhouse are dissatisfied with the conduct of their chief, they will retire to
their paddy fields and build temporary houses there. If over time the matter
98 Mark Jarzombek
is not resolved, a new longhouse will be built and a new chief elected to rule
over it, while the old chief remains in the old house with a reduced following,
consisting mainly of his near relatives.102 The forest longhouse groups were
even more egalitarian in nature.
We can now read an inscription at Kutai Martadipur in context. It proudly
states that the king conquered his neighbors in battle. But what the king
quickly learned, and what was not on the inscription, was that his control
was extremely limited. Even the English had difficulty asserting themselves
beyond the river deltas.103
The experiment at Indianization may have failed, but that does not mean
that the role Borneo played in larger geopolitical parameters of Indianization
was any less important. Much to the contrary! It was only just beginning,
for what remained durable, were the aktisocracies of various scales, most
of them dominated in one way or another through shifting trade alliances
by non-Bornean regional powers. This arrangement had been established
and accepted by the locals who had integrated it into their spirit world
economy as far back as 200 BCE. In other words, the local tribal communities
with their aktisocratic encirclement were sufficient for the task of wealth
extraction. The result is similar to what James C. Scott in The Art of Not
Being Governed, an Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009)
calls a state-repelling feature: Egalitarianism is a social structure that often
makes it difficult for a state to extend its rule into forest communities.104
However, it was not just internal momentum that swayed events. The
various nouveau riche rulers of Sumatra, Java and Vietnam were less-than-
eager to see the rise of a rival kingdom to their east. This might help explain
the mystery of Borneo gold. Robert S. Wicks, in his study of southeast
Asian trade networks, produced a telling map in this respect. It shows where
gold coins were found and used in southeast Asia. By the 13th century, they
are almost everywhere, from Java to Burma and across to the Philippines.105
Not a single dot on Borneo. Among the most obvious reasons is that the
longhouse cultures did not see coins as a status symbol and the idea of
accumulating money to pay for goods was anathema to their exchange
perspectives, which were designed not around trade, but around spirit world
enhancement. The elders may have well understood the magical aspects of
gold, but most evidence points to the circumstance that here too it was
searched for mainly as a means to ends.106
It is also more than possible that the powers that worked the gold did not
want Borneo cultures to develop the skill of smithing. Skilled jobs had to
remain at the level of the palace cultures. Scholars now argue, in fact, that
what was formerly known as Java gold, was, in actuality, gold that came
from Borneo, since gold sources on Java were limited.107 There is no doubt
that Java’s rapid rise had much to do with its capacity to control the Borneo
gold trade and to separate extraction from manufacturing. In the eighth
century, the Shailendra Dynasty on Java was one of several nouveau riche
kingdoms that emerged on this principle. Famous for their goldsmithing,
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 99
they even produced their own gold coins, the mas, or the larger tahil (which
equal 16 mas).108 This might help explain why the Majapahit from Java
invaded south Borneo in the 14th century, not just to suppress the rise of the
potential state of Nansarunai, which was established by the Ma’anyan
Dayaks, but to keep Borneo within well-established parameters. In essence
it was in Java’s best economic interest to make sure that Borneo’s aktisocratic
system remained a local one, thinly positioned around the island’s shores.
Maximum profit could be gained not by controlling the resources, but
simply by placing the island in a containment field that, though messy,
polyvalent and certainly porous, could be sufficiently manipulated by the
major regional players from across the water.
The Malay-connected Banjar kingdom came to dominate the south,
whereas the Chinese developed their points of contact mainly along the north
coast, especially once they decided to bypass the Champa ports such as Oc
Eo and Indrapura on the coast of Vietnam. By the tenth century, a micro-
state had emerged on the northeast coast of Borneo, Po-ni, as it was called in
China, had contacts with the Song Dynasty, and at some point, even entered
into a tributary relationship with China.109 Unlike the Javanese, who seem-
ingly looked suspiciously at state formation in the island’s southern reaches,
the Chinese viewed it more favorably, since it better matched their bureau-
cratic expectations. When the Majapahit came to control the southern shores
in the 14th century, Po-ni fell into decline, only to be revived with the estab-
lishment of the Malay-originating, Sultanate of Brunei in 1368, which had
connections to both China and the Sultanate of Malacca, and in the mid-
15th century had expanded its influence to Sumatra and beyond. Almost
every discussion of southeast Asian trade will point this out, but neither
Po-ni nor the Sultanate controlled anything beyond the shore communities.
It was not the forests that made the island so impenetrable to Indianization
or early Islamization, nor the presumed savagery of its inhabitants. It was the
affluence of its animist communities, which produced a type of stand-off, so
to speak, against civilizational encroachments.

Upstream affluence
We can now create a working image of Borneo in the pre-modern era. Borneo
possessed a structured and self-organized forest culture in the interior, tuned
in its own particular way to the extractional needs of the “civilized” world
across the water. The genius of the system was that the things that the Chinese
and Indians and their intermediaries wanted did not match with the things
that the Borneo tribes wanted. There was no direct competition for resources.
This basic principle is not to be overlooked.
However, since the two worlds needed each other, the result was a hybridic
shore culture that served as a containment field—a tertiary element, so to
speak—purposefully isolating the inland tribes from the civilizations over
the horizon so as to better master the necessary exchanges in the forests; nor
100 Mark Jarzombek
were these aktisocracies ever allowed to be really strong enough to call the
shots. Though they contributed substantially to the luxury trade of southeast
Asia, they were themselves never truly “Indianized.” They were containing
and themselves contained, betwixt and between—a type of glue that allowed
the “cunning of exchange” to work both ways. And so to concentrate
on the issue of “state formation”—around which so much of the history of
southeast Asia revolves—is to miss the fact that sea-based trade operated in
a proportional relationship with upstream river and forest cultures. The
productive, if not foundational, role that forest cultures had in shaping
southeast Asian trade was studied by James Scott.110 At Borneo, we can go
further to argue that Indianization needed the forest cultures to remain
un-Indianized so that the transaction between civilization and upriver
society could remain productive at both ends. Indianization, therefore, was
vested just as much in establishing robust palace cultures as in self-limiting
its reach into the forests. After all, as long as the upriver and forest cultures
remained un-Indianized, the prices of the commodities remained simply the
price of transportation plus beads! There was an ecological-style balance to
the up-and-down movement of desires that linked palace, shore and forest,
each feeding from and sustaining the other. The upriver tribes of Borneo
probably never realized just how the coherency of their spirit world protected
them from civilizational encroachments.
I would like to add to Scott’s thesis the concept of a spirit world affluence,
even if that affluence is not written in ways that any of us can comprehend
anymore. Affluence might seem like an unusual word to use in the context
of ancestor spirits, but it helps us move past our received image of “animist”
cultures living in concert with their forest environments. Before Indianization,
Borneo’s communities, like so many First Society cultures, lived in relative
isolation and benefited from their position within an extraordinarily rich
ecological zone. In this way, the Borneo cultures were not unlike the Haida
on the northwest coast of Canada where there was no dearth of food and
resources. And indeed, food was never a problem on Borneo. That many
hunter-gatherers should be considered affluent in this respect was first pro-
posed by Marshall Sahlins in 1966. The argument went against the grain of
the assumption that hunter-gathering was a fight against starvation. Sahlins
noted that hunter-gatherers lived in a society in which “all the people’s
wants are easily satisfied.”111 And indeed, his thesis with some modifications
has born itself out, especially in environments like Borneo’s where there was
a rich ecological diversity. The pre-contact Borneo people were in that sense
certainly “affluent.”
I want to take Sahlins’ argument into the domain of the post-contact,
starting from the early days of Indianization, perhaps already in the early
centuries BCE. The Borneoians quickly learned that their forest provided
more than just food. They learned that the increasingly powerful river-
mouth people had a particular interest in their forest, and that by supplying
forest goods to the downriver people, they could upriver a different set of
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 101
goods. Affluence-of-existence, so to speak, was enhanced by the presence of
spirit world intensifiers.
The River Effect did not develop all at once. The first commodities in this
exchange were beads, but over time, the portfolio of up-rivered goods
expanded. Maybe around the ninth century, salt and jars were added to the
list. According to Robert Finlay, huge quantities of jars were brought to
Borneo’s ports along the Sarawak River during the Song Dynasty in the
tenth century.112 The portfolio of down-rivered goods also expanded.
Scholars have argued that iron ore was first mined during this period as well,
becoming established around 1000 CE in the river delta area of Sarawak
near the port of Santubong.113 The Chinese traded iron for jars. At some
moment, the rubbery sap of the gutta-percha tree was added to the down-
rivered commodities. By this time, Borneo had become one of the region’s
prime sources of pharmaceutical products in Chinese medicine cabinets.
More prosaic items like rattan were also added to the list of down-rivered
elements.114 In response, coming upriver, there was now copper wire, then
goat hair, cloth from India and so forth. Probably by the 11th century, long-
house chiefs, having now moved to rice paddy cultivation, which intensified
the spirit world even more, had compounded the ways to differentiate them-
selves from others. The more items that were added to the list in both direc-
tions, the greater the resultant dynamic within Borneo’s status system and
thus the more complex the associated spirit world became. At some moment,
burial structures and headhunting were integrated into this spirit system, but
why the buildings that housed the heads were round and what shaped that
development is not known. Regardless of which product appeared when, the
general drift was toward an increased expertise culture, if one can use that
concept, by longhouse elders who differentiated themselves by their higher
ability to “know” the complex ways of the spirit world.
Meanwhile, by the 13th century, the southeast Asian palace economies on
Java, or in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand were becoming more recogniz-
ably modern, with bureaucracies, warehouses, treatises, religions, warships,
etc. It was a world that differentiated itself increasingly from the forest-
world economies which were associated, as in Borneo, with tribal communi-
ties. In the first centuries CE, these poles were probably relatively close.
The shore communities of Borneo might not have been all that different
from shore communities, even in India. By the 13th century, they were
clearly distinct, with Borneo as one of the places where the distinction
remained in play well into the 19th century. Even money, which began to
come into circulation in the centuries before the 13th century, never pene-
trated Borneo culture and only barely during the Sultanate. But what might
be seen as an indication of the backwardness of the tribes could also be
seen as a system that as time went on, was increasingly “constructed” by the
shore-based communities to disenfranchise the tribes, so as to keep the profit
margin high. 115 What is certain is that in the period during which Indianization
intensified, namely between the 9th and 13th centuries, the spirit world
102 Mark Jarzombek
needs of Borneo intensified as a commensurate response to the increased
extractional requirements—of this there can be no doubt. In other words,
while the Indianized world of southeast Asia became more thickly industrial-
ized, the upriver communities in Borneo became more thickly spirit-saturated.
The epistemological productions of the one have a parallel with and are in
fact bound up with the epistemological productions of the other.

Dénouement
It was, of course, not destined to last.
As the scale of the down-rivered extraction increased, the cheapness of the
up-rivered commodities remained constant. The cost of manufacturing beads,
jars, and salt, if anything, went down. Chinese and Indian buying power
increased and the profit potential ballooned, and with the upscaling of the
civilizational world in terms of wealth-demand along with the introduction
of monotheistic world views, it was only a matter of time before there was a
breakthrough. There was simply too much at stake. By the early 19th century,
in fact, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars were in play. In
essence the bipolar arrangement that existed between king and ancestor spirit
had to be replaced by a world that aimed to fully disenfranchise ancestor
spirits from their control of the forest.
Ancestrality is not something that disappears overnight. The transition
began in the 14th century with the Islamization of the coastal communities
where jars and beads were destroyed or discarded as part of a liberation
from superstition. Even more substantial change occurred in the 18th
century when the Sultanate imported Chinese workers to man the gold
mines—in essence, to circumvent the predictably slow process of longhouse-
spirit exchanges. From the longhouse perspective, it meant that gold was
removed from their trading mats as a medium of exchange. The addition of
a large group of Chinese also introduced a people with different cultural
perspectives and world views. The Chinese revolted under the sultan, who
called in the English. When they arrived in 1842 under the flag of the English
adventurer James Brooke, they picked up where the sultan had left off,
securing the gold and diamond fields along with the Dutch, who used the
Borneo diamonds as the foundation for their Amsterdam diamond trade.
The English imported coffee and rubber trees in the usual disastrous attempt
to make dutiful plantation workers out of the “savages.” Ships brought in
boatloads of cheap glass beads, resulting in a massive devaluation of their
importance for the upriver communities. Christian missionaries offered
their alternatives. The last remaining forest millionaires were the chiefs
controlling the remote caves of bird nests. But the English already had even
them in their sites. By the end of the 19th century, headhunting and piracy
ballooned, not because of the inherent savagery of the people, but because
there were fewer and fewer ways for the upstream river cultures to maintain
contact with their ancestors on whom their identity depended. Captain
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 103
Rodney Mundy, who was placed in charge of suppressing piracy among the
Sea Dayaks does not disguise the profit-making imperative at stake:

Turning from the vegetable to the mineral riches of the country, we have
diamonds, gold, tin, iron, and antimony-ore certain; I have lately sent
what I believe to be a specimen of lead-ore to Calcutta; and copper is
reported . . . A profit can be made a hundred fold.116

But first things first:

How long will that great beneficent Being permit this beauteous land,
endowed by nature with every requisite for the happiness of man, to be
the dwelling place of demons in human form?117

The burning of the longhouses—which Mundy dutifully describes in his

reports—meant the destruction of the jars, and without the jars, inhabitants
were rendered practically invisible in the spirit world. The spirit world, not
designed for such compounded stresses, literally fell apart. Tribal refugees
headed to the shores to populate vast squatter communities. Cholera spread,
as did smallpox. The prime source of money turned out to be opium and
gambling. The English noticed, but never bothered to explain the rise of
insanity in the ballooning shore communities. By the 1860s, 100-ton ships
were waiting impatiently at the docks. In the 20th century, the creation of
modern states that divided Borneo into three zones hardly improved matters
from the longhouse perspective. And it was not just technologies of power
and exploitation that were at play here. In 1911, Freud published Totem and
Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics,
in which he argued that aboriginals, whom he called “Wild People” (Wilden),
share an overvaluation of psychical acts governed by an omnipotence of
thoughts with modern-day neurotics. They project their inner mental life
onto the external world without any of the usual checks and balances. The
practices of animism were for Freud merely a cover up of instinctual
repression. How can a reader not be disgusted when Freud writes:

When the Sea-Dayaks of Sarawak bring home a head from a war

expedition, they treat it for months with the greatest kindness and
courtesy and address it with the most endearing names in their language.
The best morsels from their meals are put into its mouth, together with
titbits and cigars.118

Colonial arrogance reinforced by a theory of civilizational disrespect.

Today the oracle birds still flutter through the forests, but no one knows
what they are saying anymore. So when we read today that the Dayak are
“small tribal minorities living in [this] most remote nook of the Borneo hinter-
lands,” we should not for a moment assume that this ethnocentric, near-view
104 Mark Jarzombek
description does justice to the situation in the tenth century—it’s just another
check mark in the long column of “lost cultures.”119 This brings us, obviously,
into the maw of a different type of conversation. My focus was on an earlier,
more subtle moment in history in which Borneo had a unique place in pre-
colonial trade, not because of its “civilizational culture,” but as a source of
a whole range of low-extraction-cost, luxury commodities; for a while, for a
long while, in fact—almost a thousand years, this longhouse world was a prac-
tically invisible, yet key player in the southeast Asian economic system, itself
responding to the intensification of desires placed upon it with an intensifica-
tion of its own spirit world economy. I tried to suggest that just as we tend
to write the history of trade from the civilizational perspective, it is possible to
write a history, though the conjectural, that takes the longhouse perspective
into account, treating it not as the abstract source of civilizational wealth, but
as an economic motor in its own right. From the beginning, however, the
system conspired to return as little wealth as possible to Borneo—gold for a
few beads or some drops of sacred water—exploiting, but also in a way pre-
serving (if one can use that word) the island’s cultures well into modern times,
only to expose Borneo’s longhouse communities in the 20th century, almost
unprotected from the self-legitimizing and intrusive forces of monotheism,
colonialism, capitalism, nation-centrism and modernization.

Notes
1 A Spanish dollar was roughly equivalent to the US dollar in the early 19th
century. Today, this amount is worth on the order of ten million dollars. But its
true value would be significantly greater, for Singapore was only the first stop in
a long series of exchanges. Author unknown, “Trade with the West Coast of
Borneo” (from Singapore Chronicle, 1829) in Notices of the Indian Archipelago,
Edited by J.H. Moor (Singapore Chronicle, 1837), p. 13. To get a sense of the
mid-19th century trade see: Peter Lund Simmonds, “On the Trade and Commerce
of the Eastern Archipelago,” Journal of the Society of Arts 9 (May 10, 1861),
p. 451–466.
2 Edwin Herbert Gomes, Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: A
Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean Jungles
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1911), p. 239.
3 It was so precious that in the early18th century, the camphor trees in Formosa—
now Taiwan—were owned by the Chinese state and the penalty for chopping
one of them down was nothing less than death. Author unknown, “The Camphor
Industry,” Meyer Brothers Druggist 22/2 (1901), p. 51.
4 H. Wilfrid Walker, Wanderings Among South Sea Savages and in Borneo and the
Philippines (London: Witherby & Co., 1909), p. 193.
5 Carl Bock, Headhunters of Borneo, A Narrative of Travel up the Mahakkam
and Down the Barito (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington,
1882), p. 205.
6 Johannes Jacobus Ras and Hikayat Banjar, A Study in Maya Historiography
(The Hague: Martijnus Nijhof, 1968), p. 255.
7 The point here is to challenge the usual idea that trade emerged naturally from
small, local beginnings and developed to more technologically proficient ends,
dominated by state actors. Though this might be useful in context where there
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 105
are strong state actors like in China and India, it does not work all that well for
southeast Asia. Furthermore, if we assume that Indianization was an export of
various forms of Hinduism and Buddhism from India, we will only follow the
more “official” self-narratives of the states. My point here is to emphasize
the ancient, tight relationship between the economic and spiritual worlds and
suggest that for India in particular this relationship created a specific set of
“spiritually” mandated pull mechanisms that were just as important as pushes.
8 Lionel Casson (ed.), Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1989), p. 91. The actual location of this land has preoccupied
many scholars and may indeed include Borneo, but for me this conversation is
irrelevant. The main point is that it was extremely far away. Suvannabhumı̃
should, therefore, not be seen as the product of mythological fantasy,˙ ˙but as a
significant and real element in the blueprint of a maritime-oriented, devotional
practice that was foundational to the Vedic world view.
9 The Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram is estimated to possess
$22-billion worth of gold and jewels stored in underground vaults. The accumu-
lation of spiritual wealth had no other purpose than to enhance the potency of
the presiding deity. Kings and merchants, competing with each other in show-
manship, added to this “wealth” not only to gain punyam (“religious merit”)
but also to acquire legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The Padmanabhaswamy
Temple is an extreme case, but it helps to remind us of the cultural relationship
between wealth and punyam.
10 Mas˛udi, Moruj al-dahab wa ma˛åden al-jawhar, Edited and Translated by Barbier
de Meynard and ¯Pavet de Courteille as Les Prairies d’or (Paris, 1861–77).
Translation revised by Charles Pellat, Al-Mas’udi, Abul Hassan Ali, Vol. I (Beirut
Libanaise: Université, 1966), p. 308 para. 623.
11 Jan O. M. Broek, “Place Names in 16th and 17th Century Borneo,” Imago
Mundi 16 (1962), p. 129–148.
12 Jan Gonda, The Functions and Significance of Gold in the Veda (Leiden: Brill,
1991), p. 22.
13 “India, China and the Arabian peninsula take one hundred million sesterces from
our empire per annum at a conservative estimate: that is what our luxuries and
women cost us. For what percentage of these imports is intended for sacrifices to
the gods or the spirits of the dead?” (Pliny, Historia Naturae 12.41.84).
14 Nupur Dasgupta, “Rasa, Rasayana, Rasatantra: Exploring Concepts and
Practices,” An Ancient Indian System of Rasayana: Suvarnatantra a Treatise on
Alchemy, Edited by Chittabrata Palit (Delhi: Kalpaz, 2009), p. 11. See: Hymn
XXVI, A hymn accompanying investiture with an amulet of gold, “The men of
ancient time with children round them longed for this Gold, bright with the Sun’s
own colour, This shall endow thee, as it shines, with splendour, and long shall be
the life of him who wears it” (The Hymns of the Atharvaved, Translation by
Ralph T.H. Griffith, 1895–96).
15 Anna T. N. Bennett, “Gold in Early Southeast Asia,” ArcheoSciences 33 (2009),
p. 99–107; J. Miksic, “Clustered Gold Finds: Hoards or Sub-Assemblages?”
Precious Metals in Early South East Asia, Edited by W.H. Kal (Amsterdam:
Royal Tropical Institute, 1999), p. 19. See: G. Coedes, The Indonesian States of
Southeast Asia, (Honolulu, 1969). A. Manning, E.E. McKinnon, and F.E.
Treloar, “Analysis of Gold Artefacts from Kota Cina Site near Medan, Sumatra,”
Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asian Society 53/2 (1980),
p. 102–116. Gold could be found in north Sumatra as well. Along the Batang
Gadis it is still panned by the locals.
16 Charles Strachan Hutchison, Geology of North-West Borneo: Sarawak, Brunei
and Sabah (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005), p. 156.
106 Mark Jarzombek
17 S.R.N. Murthy “An Occurrence of Cinnabar in Rasarnavakalpa” (Hyderabad:
Geological Survey of India, 1978), p. 1. Cinnabar remained a major export well
into the 19th century. See Tivadar Posewitz, Borneo: Its Geology and Mineral
Resources, Translated by Frederick H. Hatch (London: Edward Stanford, 1892),
p. 419–425.
18 Eucommmia bark of the tree Eucommia ulmoides is commonly called the gutta-
percha tree. The Chinese name for the bark is Du Zhong. This name refers to a
Taoist monk who was said to be immortal, suggesting that the herb provides
long life, good health, and vitality. The tree is a member of the rubber family and
is native to the mountainous regions of China. The outer bark is peeled away
and the smooth inner bark is dried. This inner bark contains a white, elastic
latex that is thought to contain the compounds that account for the bark’s
healing properties. Older, thicker inner bark with more latex is considered more
desirable for the herbalist to use than younger, thinner bark. Generally, this
elastic concoction, sweet and slightly acrid in taste, is combined with other herbs
and extracts to create yang enhancing tonics to treat kidney and liver deficiencies
as well as impotence. The bark has been used in traditional Chinese herbalism
for over 3,000 years. The tree does not grow widely outside China, but it grows
in Borneo and thus the trade. Once again, it is impossible to know if this trade
dates back to the era BCE or was a consequence of more recent post-14th century
contact with Chinese traders.
19 Mohamed Yusoff Ismail, “Sacred Food from the Ancestors, Edible Bird Nest
Harvesting among the Idohan,” The Globalization of Chinese Food, Edited by
David Y.H. Wu and Sidney C.H. Cheung (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 43–55.
20 William Marsden, The History of Sumatra, Containing an Account of The
Government, Laws, Customs and Manners of The Native Inhabitants (London:
Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1811).
21 Wanderings Among South Sea Savages, p. 231–242.
22 Wanderings Among South Sea Savages, p. 241; Henry Keppel, The Expedition
to Borneo of H. M. S. Dido for the Suppression of Piracy: With Extracts from
the Journal of James Brooke, Esq., of Sarawak (London: Chapman and Hall,
1874), p. 75.
23 See also Amitav Acharya, The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations
of the Region (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).
24 Edward A. Alpers, The Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
25 Chinese boats, by way of contrast, were usually larger and more technologically
complex. But one has to remember that Chinese boats had to be designed to
carry iron, bronze, grain, porcelain, silk and even people. Proper documentation
and port-side controls were essential. This was not the case in southeast Asian
trade where boats were designed to be fast and lightweight.
26 Edwards McKinnon, “Medieval Landfall Sites in Aceh, North Sumatra,”
Uncovering Southeast Asia’s Past: Selected Papers from the 10th International
Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists: The
British Museum, London, 14th–17th September 2004, Edited by Elisabeth A.
Bacus, Ian Glover and Vincent C. Pigott (Singapore: NUS Publishing, 2006),
p. 325–334.
27 O.W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce: A Study of the Origins of Srivijaya
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967) p. 152–159.
28 Gin’s otherwise excellent article does just that, brings us only to the shore of
Borneo with no reference to upstream trade. See: Ooi Keat Gin, “Borneo in the
Early Modern Period c. Late Fourteenth to c. Late Eighteenth Centuries,” Early
Modern Southeast Asia, 1350–1800, Edited by Ooi Keat Gin and Hoang Anh
Tuan (New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 88–102. Ricklefs distinguishes between
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 107
an inner- and an outer-Indonesia. This is useful, but in that division, Borneo is
“outer.” See: Merle Calvin Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia ca. 1300 to
the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
29 Author unknown, “Borneo Proper” (from Singapore Chronicle, 1821) in Notices
of the Indian Archipelago, p. 2.
30 Edward Owen Rutter, The Pagans of North Borneo (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1929), p. 62. Rutter (1889–1944) was an English historian, novelist and
travel writer. He served with the North Borneo Civil Service from 1910 to 1915.
After serving in WWI he became a travel writer. Accompanied by his wife, who also
took many of the photographs for his books, he traveled around the globe, making
extended stops in Borneo, Hong Kong and Japan among other places. He was
fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Royal Anthropological Society.
31 Headhunters of Borneo, p. 76.
32 William Henry Furness III, Folklore in Borneo, A Sketch (Wallingford, PA:
1899), p. 25. Furness III (1866–1920) was a US physician and ethnographer.
Furness made four expeditions to southeast Asia and Oceania between 1895 and
1901. Artifacts he collected were among the founding collections of the University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He returned to the
South Pacific in 1903, and spent two months among the Wa’ab people on the
island of Uap (Yap). Furness served as curator of the University of Pennsylvania
Museum’s general ethnology section, 1903–05.
33 Heidi Munan, Beads of Borneo (Kuala Lumpur: Editions Didier Millet, 2004),
p. 34.
34 Charles Hose and William McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Vol. 2
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1912), p. 213. Hose (1863–1929) was an amateur
zoologist who, in 1884, took up an administrative position in Sarawak under the
second Rajah Sir Charles Brooke. His large collection of ethnographic objects
from Borneo was purchased by the British Museum in 1905.
35 Folklore in Borneo, p. 18.
36 J.H. Walker, Power and Prowess, The Origin of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), p. 65.
37 Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dayaks of Borneo, p. 238.
38 Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dayaks of Borneo, p. 238.
39 Anton Willem Nieuwenhuis, Quer Durch Borneo, Ergebnisse seiner Reisen in
den Jahren 1894, 1896–97 und 1898–1900 (Leiden: Brill, 1904), p. 218–219.
Nieuwenhuis (1864–1953) was a Dutch explorer and medical officer who trave-
led extensively in central Borneo in the 1890s, recording ethnographic informa-
tion about the Dayak and making biological collections. He participated in three
major expeditions to parts of Borneo not then under Dutch control, the first of
which took place under the leadership of Professor Gustaaf Adolf Frederik
Molengraaff in 1893–94. He then became the first European to cross Borneo
from Pontianak to Samarinda in 1896–97. His third expedition took place in
1898–1900. In 1904, Nieuwenhuis was appointed professor of geography and
ethnology at Leiden University and became the editor of the journal Internationales
Archiv für Ethnographie.
40 The relationship between man and bird was pointed out to Walker by the locals.
“We were told that if they missed one season’s nest collecting, most of the birds
would forsake these caves, possibly because there would be so little room for
them to build again . . . The white kind [of nest] build their first nests about
March, and the black kind in May, and, as these nests are all collected before
they have time to hatch their eggs, there are no young birds till later in the year,
when the nests are not disturbed, but the old nests are collected with the new
ones the following year . . . It made one quite giddy even to watch the men
descending these frail swaying ladders with over five hundred feet of space below
them” (Wanderings Among South Sea Savages, p. 231–242).
108 Mark Jarzombek
41 The classification of the Borneo people is complex given the amount of inter-
connection. The usually accepted modern-day classification differentiates between
the Malays, the Dayak, the Punan-Penan and the Chinese. The Malays are
descendants from the shore-based non-Borneo communities that derived from
southeast Asia. Many of these, of course, have long-standing relations to the
Dayak and other upriver communities. The Dayak is a collective term for many
of the ethnic groups living near the coast or along the rivers. There are probably
about three hundred separate tribes still today. The Punan-Penan are mostly
forest tribes. They are usually defined as “migratory,” but this is a rather mislead-
ing term, since they do not migrate, but circulate within their various areas. This
paper can make no contribution to the ethnographic question. It is safe to say,
however, that the shore-based trading communities consisted of what we today
would call Malays. Their interconnections to the Dayak are foundational in
Ngadju representation in their death posts, which portray important figures
in the community, some of which have Chinese, Malay or even European fea-
tures. See: Philip Goldman, The Divine Gifts, Dayak Sculpture from Kalimantan,
Indonesian Borneo (London: Gallery 43, 1975) p. 28–29. The early history of
Borneo’s population is not known with any certainty. Clearly Borneo was part
of the great Polynesian expansion and so its shore communities were from the
start tied into the other islands, especially when it came to ceremonial trade.
A rock shelter habitation on the east coast of Borneo dated to from 1000 and 300
BCE contained, for example, obsidian from New Britain in western Melanesia,
1,500 miles to the east. This is one of any number of tangible evidences that
point to a robust exchange of goods already before the first contact through
Indianization. See: Nicholas Tarling, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia,
Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 128.
42 An elaborate set of customs and rules regulated the behavior of the ranks to one
another and most other aspects of social life. However, no single elder was
superior to the others, though he might have special knowledge or skill that
fitted him for a particular task. A village might consist of several such longhouses.
It is clear that Brunei, from images and descriptions consisted of dozens or more
of these houses. It is not too hard to see how Funan or Java early arrivals could
set up camp and integrate themselves into such a community, where one or the
other “longhouse” group begins to dominate at a particular location. There are,
however, limits to a longhouse’s social elevation, and it was not really until the
arrival of the Chinese that we see a more extensive lengthening of the relationships
between high and low. See: H. Stephen Morris, “Shamanism Among the Oya
Melaneu,” The Seen and the Unseen: Shamanism, Mediumship and Possession
in Borneo, Edited by Robert L. Winzeler (Williamsburg: Department of
Anthropology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, Borneo Research
Council, 1993), p. 102–103.
43 Antonio Pigafetta, First Voyage Round the World by Magellan: Translated from
the Accounts of Pigafetta by Lord Stanley of Alderley (London: Hakluyt Society,
1874), p. 112.
44 Henry Ling Roth and Hugh Brooke Low, The Natives of Sarawak and British
North Borneo (London: Truslove & Hanson, 1896), p. 246, 249.
45 Author unknown, “Memoir on the Residency of the North-West Coast of
Borneo,” (from Singapore Chronicle, 1827) in Notices of the Indian Archipelago,
p. 10.
46 According to reports from the early 19th century, Malays and Bugis ships moved
between Borneo and Singapore, each ship carrying between 40 and 60 men, with
15 to 20 of these vessels making two voyages in the course of a year. They carried
pearls, bird’s nests, wax and camphor. The value of the goods was between
60,000 and 70,000 Spanish dollars. A similar sized group from a different river
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 109
traded primarily in gold and gold dust and yet another group exported diamonds,
tin and rattan. Author unknown, “Trade with the West Coast of Borneo,” (from
Singapore Chronicle, 1829) in Notices of the Indian Archipelago, p. 13.
47 Author unknown, “Mr. Dalton’s Journal of a Voyage from Singapore to
Coti,” (from Singapore Chronicle, 1831) in Notices of the Indian Archipelago,
p. 30.
48 Graham Saunders, A History of Brunei (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 26–27.
49 www.asianart.com/phpforum/index.php?method=detailAll&Id=95006&PHPS
ESSID=pfl7ahf6d9kocbeni8ejcpl370
50 They are named after the Port of Martaban, in the ancient kingdom of Pegu and
current Myanmar. They probably acquired the name however, from the Spanish
and Portuguese who used the jars and picked them up there. The specific places
of production and origin of these jars in south China and the chronology of its
development is still unknown. Some authorities believe that “Martaban” wares,
custom made for export, originated as early as the Tang dynasty; other experts
think that they started to be made during the Song period.
51 Henri Cordier, Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval
notices of China, Vol. II, Translated by Henry Yule (London: Harkluyt Society,
1866), p. 467.
52 William Robert Geddes, Nine Dayak Nights (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1957), p. 43. See also: M. Geiger-Ho, “Vessels of Life and Death: Heirloom
Jars of Borneo,” Malaysia-Brunei Forum Proceedings (2014), p. 49–56: The
Manunggul Jar, uncovered in a cave in the Philippines and dated to the eighth
century BCE, added some light to the question of dating. It is a secondary burial
jar that has on top of the lid the representation of a boat with two human figures
paddling. The question before us is simply when might the jar have become an
important part of Borneo’s spirit world. The answer technically is that we have
no way of knowing. But Palawan Island, where the jar was discovered, is just to
the north of Borneo and basically an extension of its northern coast. This means
that such jars could have entered Borneo along the coast of the Philippines. This
suggests that jars had currency in Borneo before the Song Dynasty, though they
were at the time still quite rare and might not have been more common until
much later. Though almost all upriver communities used jars in their longhouses,
and in burial rituals, not all used them for bodies. In some places, the corpse was
placed in a log coffin. In other places the body of the longhouse elder was placed
in specially elevated platforms. During the Song Dynasty, jars became more
democratized, so to speak. Every longhouse had to have one, meaning that every
longhouse participated to some degree in the extractional economy.
53 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680: Vol. 1, The
Lands Below the Winds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 6. See
also “Embodied Sumangé in Luwu,” Journal of Asia Studies, 42/3 (May 1983),
p. 545–570 at page 545fn. See also: Power and Prowess, p. 18.
54 The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, p. 285.
55 The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, p. 286.
56 Heidi Munan, “Lun Bawang Beads,” BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead
Researchers 5 (1993), p. 45–60. Already in the centuries BCE, there were
exchanges between Borneo and the Sa Huyuh culture (1000 BCE and 200 CE) in
southern Vietnam. Ritual beads found in Vietnam were made from glass,
carnelian, agate, olivine, zircon, gold and garnet, and since most of these materials
were not local to the region, they were most likely imported from India. This
means, of course, the presence of a gift and trade economy. The Sa Huyuh culture
also used jars as burial containers, much like some of the Dayak. This begs the
question of cross-cultural borrowings.
57 Folklore in Borneo, p. 26–27.
110 Mark Jarzombek
58 The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Vol. 2, p. 171–172.
59 There could have been other sources, but I am following the lead here from
Wicks, who notes that the Nanshao Culture treated salt as a measure of value. It
was produced in the form of cakes otherwise it was valueless, much like in
Borneo. Robert S. Wicks, Money, Markets, and Trade in Early Southeast Asia,
The Development of Indigenous Monetary Systems to AD 1400 (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 307.
60 The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Vol. 2, p. 132.
61 The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Vol. 2, p. 241.
62 J. B. Crain, “The Lun Dayeh,” Essays on Borneo Societies, Edited by Victor T.
King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 122–142.
63 The Natives of Sarawak, p. 232.
64 In one case, an English traveler visited a longhouse and was pleased to find that
his presence took precedence over a Chinese trader. “A Chinese trader was in the
house, and he, too, wanted men the next day [to help him go to the next
longhouse]; but on his hinting this to the Orang Kaya, he was sternly told that a
white man’s business was now being discussed, and he must wait another day
before his could be thought about,” as quoted in: A. R. Wallace, The Malay
Archipelago: The Land of the Orangutan and the Bird of Paradise (1869).
65 The trade more or less remained identical even with the arrival of the English.
Keppel lists the items that he would like to get from Singapore to trade with the
Dayak. They include salt, cotton, brass wire and iron pans, cloth, Chinese
crockery, Java tobacco, candy, biscuits silk and “little things” such as Venetian
beads. In exchange, he planned to get timber, rattan bird’s nests, gold, tin and
bees wax. The Expedition to Borneo of H. M. S. Dido, p. 75.
66 Bernard Sellato, Nomads of the Borneo Rainforest, The Economics, Politics,
and Ideology of Settling Down, Translated by Stephanie Morgan (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1994), p. 57–59.
67 Quer Durch Borneo, p. 256.
68 Quer Durch Borneo, p. 256.
69 The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Vol. 2, p. 178.
70 Folklore in Borneo, p. 22.
71 Tom Harrisson, “Remembered Jungle,” Borneo Jungle: An Account of the
Oxford University Expedition of 1932, Edited by Tom Harrisson (Singapore:
Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 55. Tom Harnett Harrisson (1911–1976) was
a British ornithologist, explorer, journalist, broadcaster, soldier, archaeologist,
and documentarian. He was curator of the Sarawak State Museum (1947–66).
He conducted ornithological and anthropological research in Sarawak (1932)
and the New Hebrides (1933–35), and spent much of his life in Borneo.
72 The Seen and the Unseen, p. 123–126.
73 Odoardo Beccari, Wanderings in the Great Forest of Borneo [Nelle Foreste di
Borneo. Viaggi e ricerche di un naturalista (Florence: S. Landi, 1902)], Translated
by Enrico H. Giglioli (London: Archibald Constable, 1904), p. 272, 274. “The
camphor hunters must only talk of women and erotic subjects; they must wear
no article of dress besides the jaw at. The friok—the vessel for cooking rice—
must not be used; and they must not indulge either in siri or tobacco. This is
saying a good deal, for the Kayans, like the Dyaks, prefer going without rice to
depriving themselves of tobacco.” Beccari (1843–1920) was an Italian naturalist
who spent thirteen years from 1865 to 1878 undertaking research in Borneo,
Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
74 The Pagans of North Borneo, Vol. 2, p. 132–134.
75 Bennet Bronson, “Exchange at the Upstream and Downstream Ends, Notes
Toward a Functional Model of the Coastal State in Southeast Asia,” Economic
Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia: Perspectives from Prehistory:
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 111
History and Ethnography, Edited by Karl L. Hutterer (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1977), p. 35–52.
76 “Exchange at the Upstream and Downstream Ends,’’ p. 46.
77 William A. Southworth, “River Settlement and Coast Trade: Towards a Specific
Model for Early State Development in Champa,” The Cham of Vietnam, History,
Society and Art, Edited by Trҫn KǤ Phѭѫng and Bruce Lockhart (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2011), p. 116.
78 Tivadar Posewitz, Borneo: Its Geology and Mineral Resources, Translated by
Frederick H. Hatch (London: Edward Stanford, 1892), p. 323. Another report
notes that it took about two hours to pan for quarter of an ounce of gold. See:
Rodney Mundy, Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebe, Down to the
Occupation of Labuan, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1848), p. 385.
79 www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVIv6gK3mKA. From the 18th century on-ward,
gold was mined in more methodical ways, the evidence of large amounts of gold
from southeast Asia in the literary accounts, makes it clear that panning though
leaving no archaeological trace was not an insignificant activity.
80 Tom Harrisson, Gold and Megalithic Activity in Prehistoric and Recent West
Borneo (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1970), p. 27.
81 Alfred Hart Everett, “Notes on the Distribution of the Useful Minerals in
Sarawak,” Journal Straits Asiatic Society, 1 (1878), p. 19. In 1869, Everett went
to Sarawak in northwestern Borneo to collect natural history specimens. He even-
tually entered the service of the Kingdom of Sarawak under the White Rajahs. In
1878 and 1879 he was engaged by the Royal Society to search for the remains of
ancient man. In 1885, he was appointed the Rajah’s Consul to the Court of the
Sultan of Brunei. He later served in the administration of the British North Borneo
Company.
82 The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, p. 232.
83 The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, p. 284.
84 The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Vol. 1, p. 62.
85 Peter Francis, Jr., Asia’s Maritime Bead Trade (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 2002). See also: James W. Lankton, Laure Dussubieux and Thilo Rehren,
“A Study of Mid-First Millennium CE Southeast Asian Specialized Glass
Beadmaking Tradition,” Uncovering Southeast Asia’s Past, p. 335–356.
86 Allison I. Diem, “The Significance of Ceramic Evidence for Assessing Contacts
between Vijaya and Other Southeast Asian Polities in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries CE,” The Cham of Vietnam, History, Society and Art, p. 204–237.
87 This was authored by George Coyayne, of the East India Company in 1617,
See: William Foster, Letters Received by the East India Company from its Servants
in the East, Vol V – 1617 (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1901), p. 303.
88 The Natives of Sarawak, p. 286.
89 The Expedition to Borneo of H. M. S. Dido, p. 370.
90 Riska Orpa Sari, Riska: Memories of a Dayak Girlhood, Edited by Linda
Spalding (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), p. 10.
91 William Henry Furness III, “Glimpses of Borneo,” Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 35 (1897), p. 314.
92 Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East (London: Smith, Elder and
Co., 1862), p. 119. St. John (1825–1910) was British Consul General in Brunei
from 1856 and to 1858.
93 Wanderings in the Great Forest of Borneo, p. 283. Nipa is a palm that grows in
salt marshes. Salt is extracted from its leaves by burning them.
94 Folklore in Borneo, p. 17–18.
95 Wolters discusses how heirloom possessions are placed into new cultural
“wholes” as a process of “localization.” See: Oliver William Wolters, History,
112 Mark Jarzombek
Culture, and Religion in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore and Ithaca,
NY: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Cornell Southeast Asia Program,
1999), p. 55, 173–244. My point is that the spirit world has to be understood
as more than just the end station of local burial and ritual custom.
96 Nicholas Tarling does an excellent job describing the parameters of the trade
involving “hunter gatherers who exchanged their forest products . . . and ser-
vices with lowland rice cultivators . . . Coastal-based traders returned goods of
foreign origin or specialized services . . . to the hinterland producers” (The
Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. 1, p. 190). This seems to imply that
all people like to trade for more or less the same purposes. My argument is that
just as the states needed to solve technical and political questions about ocean
navigation, they had to solve equally thorny questions about forest extraction.
97 E. Edwards McKinnon, “Buddhism and Pre-Islamic Archaeology of Kutei in
Mahakam Valley of East Kalimantan,” Studies in Southeast Asian Art, Essays
in Honor of Stanley J. O’Connor, Edited by Nora A. Taylor (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 217–240.
98 Studies in Southeast Asian Art, p. 238.
99 Faxian (337–422), a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled to India, stopped off
here in 414 on his way back to China. Michel Jacq-Hergoualc’h, The Malay
Peninsula: Crossroads of the Maritime Silk-Road (100 BC–1300 AD), Translated
by Victoria Hobson (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 51.
100 The transition from chiefdom to statehood is brilliantly described by Nicholas
Traling in his study of Palembang and the Srivijaya Empire in its dealings with
upriver and down shore communities. The Palembang elites had to play an
increasingly complex game as their power expanded. Forest communities had
elaborate cultural rhythms and ritual expectations that needed to be dealt with
through a tangle of marriages, loyalty oaths, taboos and promises of richness.
Buddhism and Hinduism with their inbuilt theocentric imaginaries played their
various roles. Occasionally, enforcement was required. Then there were down
shore communities who would prey on arriving ships. Palembang’s solution
was in essence to buy the pirates out. With promises of a piece of the profit, the
pirates become Srivijaya’s enforcers patrolling the waters and protecting
Srivijaya ships. At the core of this activity was an extensive and ostentatious
palace culture and an emerging bureaucracy and theocentric expectations. See
Sulu and Sabah: a study of British policy towards the Philippines and North
Borneo from the late eighteenth century (New York: Oxford University Press,
1978); The State, Development and Identity in Multi-ethnic Societies: Ethnicity,
Equity and the Nation (London: Routledge, 2010)
101 According to Roger Scott, the soil on Java is formed from fresh, nutrient-rich
volcanic rock. The soils on Borneo are from the weathering of intrusive granitic
rock, gabbro intrusions, and andesitic lavas, and are poor in nutrients. http://
slideplayer.com/slide/5702509/
102 The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Vol. 1, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912),
p. 65–67.
103 Ritual violence was a small but accepted part of Dayak life. The greater the
imbalances, the greater the waves of secondary violence that move through
the communities. When the English arrived they only added to a century-long
history of tribal conflict. Needless to say, they systemically failed to recognize
this. So when they replaced Dayak canoes with motorized steamers to make
extraction more efficient, it was only natural that they encounter Dayak resist-
ance, which they put down with cannons and guns while complaining about
their live among “the savages.” Nothing is a better testament to the white
man’s civilizational arrogance than Walker’s Wanderings Among South Sea
Savages.
 The river effect in Borneo’s spirit world 113
104 James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, An Anarchist History of
Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 279.
105 Money, Markets, and Trade in Early Southeast Asia, p. 302.
106 “Indeed the latter [gold] is only sought for as a means of procuring foreign
articles for which they acquired a taste” (The Natives of Sarawak, p. 234).
107 Martowikrido Wahyono, “The Gold of Wonoboyo,” Old Javanese Gold (4th–
15th Century), Edited by W.H. Kal (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute,
1994), p. 30–45.
108 John Crawford, History of the Indian Archipelago Containing an Account of
the Manners, Arts, Languages, Religions, Institutions, and Commerce of Its
Inhabitants (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1820).
109 Another important center was Santubong on a bay north of Kuching, closer to
gold extraction sites.
110 The Art of Not Being Governed, An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast
Asia. There has been excellent work done recently on animist cultures in
southeast Asia. See: Nikolas Århem, Forests, Spirits, and High Modernist
Development: A Study of Cosmology and Change Among the Katuic Peoples
in the Uplands of Laos and Vietnam (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis,
2014).
111 Marshall Sahlins, “Notes on the Original Affluent Society,” Man the Hunter,
Edited by R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (New York: Aldine Publishing Company,
1986), p. 85–89. It now seems that one should not equate affluence with a higher
mortality rate. It is also important to identify those ecological niches that are
more diverse than others. Certainly, Borneo falls into that group.
112 Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art Cultures of Porcelain in World History,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
113 Jan B. Avé and Victor T. King, People of the Weeping Forest: Tradition and
Change in Borneo (Leiden: National Museum of Ethnology, 1985), p. 15.
114 At the end of the 19th century, rattan “was piled high on enormous rafts
measuring 300 or 400 feet long and 60 or 70 feet wide . . . gliding slowly down
the stream, like a floating fortress” (Headhunters of Borneo, p. 203).
115 Admittedly, in some places such cultures were effectively subsumed into the
Indianized world, as in Sri Lanka, but the further east we move, the less “com-
plete” the integration is. In Java, Vietnam and elsewhere, for example, pockets
of village worlds exist even today that could not be readily defined as Indianized.
How their relationship with the downriver palace elites was organized is still
largely unknown in most places. The situation is even murkier on Borneo, where
we are dealing with a range of forest societies, sometimes called “nomadic”—
but forever associated with the word “headhunters”—as well as a range of
shore-based societies and sea-oriented cultures, all of which were living in a
complex network of upstream and downstream exchanges.
116 The Expedition to Borneo of H. M. S. Dido, p. 191.
117 Rodney Mundy, Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebe, Down to the
Occupation of Labuan, Vol. 2, (London: John Murray, 1848), p. 219. Mundy,
a much-decorated captain and admiral in Royal Navy, was deployed to the
East Indies Station and was asked to keep the Sultan of Brunei in line until
the British Government made a final decision on whether to take the island of
Labuan.
118 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of
Savages and Neurotics, Translated by A.A. Brill (New York: Moffat, Yard and
Co., 1911), p. 63.
119 Bernard Sellato, Innermost Borneo: Studies in Dayak Cultures (Singapore:
Singapore University Press, 2002), p. 13. Local memory of the time when the
114 Mark Jarzombek
region figured more prominently in regional affairs is, however, not completely
gone as some contemporary ethnographers have noted. The Banana Tree at the
Gate, p. 267–268, see endnote 41. Michael Dove, The Banana Tree at the Gate:
A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2011). Dove studied how contemporary Dayak farmers
have developed a hybrid production environment around such non-monetized
cultivations that a strong relationship with the ritual and cosmological order
and those cash-crop cultivation systems that focus on generating revenue and
are intended for the short-term maximization of profit. Rubber resin, pepper
and cloves, for example, are considered to be “ritually neutral” because they are
quickly harvested, contrary to swidden production that includes rituals during
cultivation. He points out that in Borneo the two are complementary realities.
Dove focuses on the cash-crop system of cultivation since the state has an
interest in regulating and controlling market-oriented cultivation, such as
planting, spacing, weeding and the tapping schedules of rubber. To make
smallholder’s activities visible and compliant, the state created “nucleus estates,”
such as Perkebunan Inti Rakyat (PIR, People’s Nucleus Estate), that not only
ensured the dependence of the smallholders on the state, but also standardized
the authority of the state’s regime of knowledge, a regime that determines rules
and controls knowledge produced by the state apparatus.
5 House as marketplace
Swahili merchant houses and
their urban context in the later
Middle Ages
Thomas Gensheimer

The port cities of the East African coast served as centers of commercial
exchange centuries before the Portuguese arrived at the end of the fifteenth
century. For over a thousand years, traders from Persia, India, and southern
Arabia ventured to the coast, providing the economic foundation for the
development of an indigenous and prosperous Swahili Islamic urban culture,
with cities that shared architectural features commonly found throughout
the western Indian Ocean basin.
Yet despite the importance of trade, its architectural manifestations as
seen in the extensive bazaars characteristic of cities throughout the medieval
Muslim world appear to be largely lacking along the Swahili coast. This
may be due to the nature of interregional trade within East Africa, which
was essentially peripheral to the local economy, involving largely high-status
goods whose exchange was principally embedded within the context of
medieval Swahili society and politics. Therefore, interregional trade func-
tioned outside a purely market-oriented system, resulting in the absence of
established market institutions and structures.
Swahili domestic structures served as a substitute arena for facilitating
interregional exchange between foreign merchants and local elites. The rise
of a growing Swahili merchant class throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries resulted in the prevalence of large, stone-built domestic structures
which served both as a means of providing a space to accommodate trade
and the needs of visiting merchants, but also served as an indicator of the
creditworthiness and success of the individual trader within the Swahili elite
class. As such, the materials used in construction, the scale of construction
and the elegance of design would serve as indicators of status and wealth for
the local merchant, representing his ability to attract foreign merchants and
conduct trade. The prevalence of these elaborate and costly domestic struc-
tures contributed to the unique character of medieval Swahili urban form.
After being given up for dead, Heinrich Barth returned to Tripoli in 1855,
ending five-and-a-half years of explorations in North and Central Africa. He
will go on to write a voluminous and meticulous account of his 12,000-mile
journey, describing in intricate detail the cities and kingdoms he encountered.
One feature he documented consistently and at length was the multitude of
116 Thomas Gensheimer
markets and marketplaces that he observed; describing where and when
they were held, the people he found there, the goods sold at each and the
prices of goods relative to other locations. This should not be surprising,
since the stated purpose of his sub-Saharan expedition was to open com-
mercial relations with central Africa. In addition to recording such technical
information, Barth often vividly depicted the life within the markets and
even the physical structures he found there. In the “great market” held every
Monday at Kukawa, the capital of the kingdom of Bornu in northeastern
Nigeria, Barth recounts that “there are only a few very light sheds or stalls
(kaudi) erected here and there. In general, besides a few of the retail dealers,
only the dilemma or broker has a stall, . . . and, no shady trees being found,
both buyers and sellers are exposed to the whole force of the sun during the
very hottest hours of the day, between eleven and three o’clock, when the
market is most full and busy, and the crowd is often so dense that it is diffi-
cult to make one’s way through it; for the place not being regularly laid out,
nor the thoroughfares limited by rows of stalls, each dealer squats down
with his merchandise where he likes.”1
Barth’s account also notes that not all trade was conducted within estab-
lished market settings. In his visit to the market at Massena, the capital of
the kingdom of Bigirmi in present day southern Chad, Barth notes that: “No
slaves (‘béli’) were brought into the market, all being sold in the houses,”
and continues, stating that, “Ivory is not brought into the market, but the
little which is sold is disposed of in the houses; but sometimes the Arabs who
visit this country do a very profitable business in this article.”2 It appears
that the exchange of certain commodities, in particular goods intended
largely for external or interregional trade, occurred outside established
market spaces where more commonplace items were exchanged. Such spe-
cialized trade was peripheral to the local economy and indigenous market
institutions, with domestic structures providing a substitute venue for this
type of commercial activity.
A similar strategy for interregional trade was also present along the medi-
eval East African coast, where for centuries before the arrival of the
Portuguese in 1498, the port cities of the Swahili served as centers of com-
mercial and cultural exchange, resulting in the development of a unique and
prosperous Islamic culture. For over a thousand years, traders from Persia,
India and southern Arabia sailed the shifting monsoon winds to call on the
cities of Mombasa, Kilwa, Mogadishu and others along this coast, providing
the economic foundation for the development of extensive urban settlements
on the off-shore islands and up tidal inlets from southern Somalia to north-
ern Mozambique. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Swahili
settlements functioned as significant ports within the western Indian Ocean
trading network, with evidence of increasing dependence on overseas trade
even supplanting many local craft industries.3 Yet despite evidence of the
large-scale exchange of goods, there is only meager archaeological evidence
of market places or market structures within Swahili cities.4
 Swahili home markets and their urban context 117
One explanation for the apparent absence of markets along the Swahili
coast may be due to the general lack of permanent structures often associated
with marketplaces and market institutions within East Africa, as similarly
noted in Barth’s earlier account from Central Africa. To this day, marketplaces
often consist of makeshift stalls built with impermanent materials using
timber poles and palm thatched roofs, which are often located in open
spaces within the city or along the larger streets. At times, marketplaces lack
any permanent or specialized structures at all, such as periodic markets
which are regularly held in designated open areas within or on the outskirts
of the settlement (Figure 5.1). Likewise, consumers were traditionally more
likely to be in direct contact with the producers of goods, and therefore less
in need of established markets to acquire goods. In his ethnographic study
of the Swahili town of Lamu, Zein states that the market in Lamu was
historically “not intended to serve the local population. Since each group
was self-sufficient, local people did not depend on the market for their
everyday needs.”5 In the past, the established market for overseas traders
was “solely a storage area,” one that was generally “seasonal and peripheral
to Lamu’s society,” 6 and deserted once the trading season was over. Such
patterns of trade would deemphasize the establishment and maintenance of
formal and permanent market structures.
Along the medieval East African coast, the particular nature of inter-
regional trade may also have limited the need for commercial structures, as
overseas commercial exchange was inextricably embedded within social

Figure 5.1 Market in space outside Lamu fort, Lamu, north Kenya coast (Photo by
Author).
118 Thomas Gensheimer
processes, with the acquisition of foreign goods to a large extent serving to
maintain status relationships rather than to accommodate the material
needs of the community. The mechanism of this trade was conducted as part
of a social contract and did not function purely in accordance with market
principles. Ibn Battuta, the eminent medieval Muslim traveler of the early
fourteenth century, provides a glimpse into this exchange in his description
of Mogadishu, where he writes:

. . . when a ship comes into port, it is boarded from sanbuqs, that is to

say, little boats. Each sanbuq carries a crowd of young men, each
carrying a covered dish, containing food. Each one of them presents his
dish to a merchant on board, and calls out: ‘This man is my guest.’ And
his fellows do the same. Not one of the merchants disembarks except to
go to the house of his host among the young men . . . When a merchant
has settled in his host’s house, the latter sells for him what he has
brought and makes his purchases for him. Buying anything except in his
host’s presence is disapproved of by the people of Mogadishu.7

Ibn Battuta’s account reveals how social relationships determined the nature
of commercial interactions between foreign merchants and local Swahili
traders, which minimized the need for independent market institutions and
commercial structures to facilitate the exchange of goods. Instead, commer-
cial activities occurred within the domestic sphere, as opposed to designated
public spaces. As a result, domestic architecture developed to accommodate
these mercantile activities.
The design of the palace complex of Husuni Kubwa at Kilwa, reflects this
type of commercial processes. Built by Sultan al-Hasan ibn Suleiman in the
first half of the fourteenth century at a time when Kilwa was the prominent
political and commercial center along the coast, Husuni Kubwa is the largest
and most architecturally sophisticated structure in pre-colonial East Africa,
unique in its design and in the scale of construction. Its plan was a complex
array of formal courtyards, around which were arranged over 100 rooms
providing spaces for public audiences, living spaces for the sultan’s family
and servants, and even an elaborate octagonal bathing pool. Its size and
scale were not only a reflection of the wealth generated by interregional
trade; but it was designed to facilitate commercial activities on a grand
scale, which at the time of its construction may have been largely in the
hands of the Sultan. The evidence for this can be seen in the extremely large
courtyard at the rear of this complex, which was surrounded by a double
ring of windowless rooms, some of which carried second stories and were
fitted with storage racks designed to stockpile a large quantity of goods.
Access to this court was restricted and entered through an apartment at the
southwest corner, which was presumably the living or working space of an
official designated to oversee trade on behalf of the sultan. This apartment
was approached through an impressive forecourt and broad flight of stairs,
 Swahili home markets and their urban context 119
providing a place to receive visitors (presumably merchants) and to conduct
commercial affairs.8 Interestingly, this grand courtyard was never completed,
and construction at the site ceased entirely by the middle of the fourteenth
century.
While interregional trade at Kilwa in the early fourteenth century may
have been to a large extent controlled by the sultan, by the fifteenth century
trade throughout the coast was controlled by a growing merchant elite within
Swahili urban centers. In later times, during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, these elites were known as the wa-ungwana, who reinforced their
status within the community through the display of prestige items and in
particular through the construction of large stone built mansions which
represented their wealth ability to conduct trade. The houses of these wa-
ungwana merchants were often multi-story structures, consisting of a series
of long narrow rooms contiguously arranged along their long side, progress-
ing into more restrictive interior spaces. They were entered from an external
porch, through heavily constructed doors with elaborately carved frames
and lintels which served as symbols of wealth and represent both the physical
and symbolic barrier to the private spaces within (Figure 5.2a). The inner-
most rooms were reserved for women, with rear walls often decorated with

Figure 5.2 Left (a): Carved wooden door, Lamu, north Kenya coast, 19th century.
Right (b): Entrance leading to innermost room with zidaka niches, Lamu,
north Kenya coast, 19th century (Photos by Author).
120 Thomas Gensheimer
carved stucco surfaces and rows of plaster niches, used to display objects of
wealth and status, often in the form of imported ceramics, whose shiny
glazed surfaces are believed to reflect evil spirits and protect the purity of the
women residing within (Figure 5.2b).
In earlier times, the merchant elites of the fifteenth century similarly
displayed their status through the building of elaborate stone-built houses,
many of which became quite refined in detail and construction, while the
majority of the population lived in dwellings built of mud, timber and thatch.
The walls of these stone houses were constructed of quarried coral rag which
was bound together by a generous supply of lime mortar, attained through
the burning of fossilized coral stone to make quick-lime. Carefully shaped
blocks and corner pieces were carved from fine-grain porites coral mined
from underwater deposits, and used to form well-defined lines and sharp
edges around doorways, niches and other architectural details (Figure 5.3a).
These would be covered with a coat of lime plaster, creating smooth, white
surfaces. Houses were generally single-story structures with flat roofs,
spanned by mangrove poles harvested from the tidal fringes which due to
their structural limitations, restricted the depth of the rooms to a maximum
of around eight feet (Figure 5.3b).
House plans from the medieval period were consistently organized
around a large sunken courtyard, open to the sky and provided with a drains
and sumps to remove any accumulated water (Figure 5.4). A series of long
narrow chambers were arranged along one side of the court, similar in size
and arrangement to later eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Swahili houses,
where access to inner rooms required passing through the outer rooms, often
through richly decorated arched doorways. At times, inner rooms were
decorated with elaborate niches made from carefully shaped and fitted coral
blocks, then covered in lime plaster (Figure 5.5). Some of these may have

Figure 5.3 Left (a): Arched doorway of Swahili house, Gedi, central Kenya coast,
15th century. Right (b): Interior room, Gedi palace, central Kenya coast,
15th century (Photos by Author).
Figure 5.4 Sunken courtyard, Gedi Palace, central Kenya coast, 15th century (Photo
by Author).

Figure 5.5 Inner room with niches, Ungwana, north Kenya coast, 15th century
(Photo by Author).
122 Thomas Gensheimer
held oil lamps, while others may have been used to display imported ceramics
and other objects of status and wealth as in later times, creating a private and
protected inner space reserved for women, typical of Islamic cultures. In
many houses, lavatories containing a latrine and bathing facilities were
located off the courtyard or the inner rooms, with deeply dug pits designed to
collect waste materials and disperse bath water.9 Arched alcoves located near
the entrance provided decorative furnishings to store and display ceramic
water jugs for easy access during the course of the day. Wooden doors may
have graced house entrances, as was a common feature of the medieval port
cities throughout the Indian Ocean basin and a tradition found along the East
African coast in later times.10
The construction of these medieval merchant mansions were specifically
designed to support Swahili interregional trade. Their grandeur served as a
means of attracting foreign merchants, serving as indicators of wealth and
creditworthiness, and therefore the ability to conduct interregional trade.
The large sunken courtyards would facilitate commercial activity, serving as
places for social interaction and to display and exchange goods. Their large
scale and multiple rooms could have accommodated visiting merchants, who
needed to spend extended time along the coast while awaiting the shift in the
seasonal monsoon winds for their return journey to ports in Arabia and
southwest Asia. Inner rooms were often divided, creating smaller rooms
with trap doors located high up on the wall, providing secure spaces for the
storage of valuable goods for trade.
The nature of interregional trade within East Africa and the occurrence of
commercial activities within the domestic setting would significantly shape
the Swahili urban environment. Specialized market structures were a common
feature Islamic cities throughout the medieval period, providing the major
public space where buyers and sellers could come together and exchange
goods in a market dominated system. At Siraf, within the Persian Gulf, the
market consisted of a chain of shops beginning at the Great Mosque and
extending over a kilometer in length along the street running parallel to the
waterfront.11 This formed the “commercial quarter” of the city, and contained
many specialized structures which included: a large warehouse for receiving,
loading and possibly the display of merchandise, a hammam, or bath-house,
a small private mosque, and numerous single roomed shops lining the main
street which was covered, at least in part.12 These large public markets formed
a defining urban feature of port cities throughout the Western Indian Ocean,
where merchants from Arabia, the Persian Gulf and Western India could
participate in commercial exchange.
Benjamin of Tudela provides a glimpse into the activities of such spaces
in his description of the medieval trading center of Kish, an island in the
Persian Gulf in 1170 CE:

It was a considerable market, being the place to which the Indian mer-
chants and those of the Islands bring their commodities; while the traders
 Swahili home markets and their urban context 123
of Iraq, Yemen, and Fars import all sorts of silk and purple cloths, flax,
cotton, hemp, mash (a type of pulse), wheat, barley, millet, rye and all
other sorts of foodstuffs and pulses, which are objects of exchange;
those from India import great quantities of spices and the inhabitants
of the islands live by what they gain in their capacity as brokers for both
parties.13

Such markets were extremely important, due to the segmented nature of the
Indian Ocean trade network, which required making bulk commodity
transactions at central locations where goods were then transshipped to
further destinations. This was an established feature of emporia trade and
resulted as a way of speeding up turnaround time and maximizing profits
given the risky nature of long voyages and the uncertainties associated with
speculative market transactions.14 Since the East African coast was a terminal
branch off the main trading routes, Swahili cities did not function as
intermediary points for the transshipment of goods, but rather served as
consumers of imported goods and collection points which funneled local
resources from indigenous exchange networks into the interregional system.
The large quantities of imported beads, Chinese porcelains and Islamic
glazed wares found at Swahili settlements, and the repeated Portuguese ref-
erences to the importation of fine cloths of silk and cotton, often with gold
threads, suggest that many of the goods imported into East Africa were
luxury items exchanged among the elite. These largely serve symbolic or
status-related functions to reinforce the social hierarchy through the acqui-
sition of exotic goods and the emulation of preferences and consumption
patterns of the larger Islamic world. This trade was less likely to be based on
purely market forces or require independent market institutions with spe-
cific market structures, but rather was embedded within Swahili social insti-
tutions. Therefore, the occurrence of these commercial activities within the
domestic setting eliminated the need for specialized commercial structures
such as the suq, khan and qaysariyya which are characteristic of cities
throughout the medieval Islamic world.
The apparent absence of major market structures within Swahili cities
may have also been influenced by the architectural and urban traditions of
foreign traders who came to East Africa from western India. Evidence sug-
gests that Indian merchants and immigrants may have visited and settled in
Swahili cities throughout the medieval period. Oral traditions recorded
during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often refer to the pres-
ence of the Dabuli or Diba, who were said to have visited or settled along
the coast, and who have been credited with the building of certain mosques
and the introduction of certain architectural styles or building technologies
to the region.15 Although the origin of these visitors is the source of some
debate, it is generally believed that they originated from India, most likely
from the great trading center of Daybul (a.k.a. as Banbhore) along the
Makran coast of western India in early medieval times.16 Likewise, recent
124 Thomas Gensheimer
archaeological evidence in the form of pottery, beads, textiles and artworks
also suggests that communities of Indian artisans came and settled within
the ports of the East African coast from the eleventh through the fifteenth
centuries.17
Although the nature of Indian contacts with East Africa in the early
medieval period needs further investigation, there is little question of cul-
tural contacts and the presence of Indian traders within East Africa during
the later Middle Ages. During the fifteenth century, there was a significant
realignment of the Indian Ocean trading network with the rise of the
Muslim Sultanate of Gujarat in 1392 and the loss of monopoly control over
the lucrative spice trade by the Karimi merchants in 1429, resulting in the
domination of the Indian Ocean trade by Gujarati merchants.18 These
Gujarati merchants included many of the main Muslim trading communi-
ties found throughout Western Asia, however the most significant included
a large number of Hindu and Jain merchants, with Cambay forming the
principal international trading port. Gujarat also became a significant man-
ufacturing center, producing items such as cotton cloth, beads, silk and
indigo which became widely traded throughout the Indian Ocean in the
fifteenth century.19
By the end of the fifteenth century, Gujarati traders were known to have
been heavily involved in trade with East Africa and their presence in Swahili
cities has been documented by the Portuguese in early sixteenth-century
accounts which mentioned both Muslim and “Banian” (a.k.a. Hindu) mer-
chants in residence at Swahili cities.20 Indian merchants were established
even as far as the Red Sea, where at Massawa trade was known to have been
controlled by Banian merchants from the sixteenth century onwards.21
The “millionaire” merchants of medieval Gujarat were known to have
built large mansions from the vast wealth they accumulated as middlemen
traders in medieval times.22 The prevalence of imposing stone-built domestic
structures among the Swahili traders of the East African coast may have
resulted from emulating the economic and consumption patterns of these
wealthy Indian merchants, serving as symbols of their status within the local
community and their access to foreign trade.
Likewise the pattern of mercantile activities typical of medieval India may
have influenced the Swahili urban and commercial environment. In medieval
Indian cities, planned and formalized market structures were often lacking
and generally underdeveloped, as costly goods were kept in warehouses and
seldom displayed in shops, with the exchange of more expensive goods
resulting from the direct interaction between merchants and elite buyers.23 In
the towns of Gujarat, Pramar states that there were traditionally no perma-
nent market structures and the “bazaar was merely an open ground around
which petty traders and shopkeepers set up their temporary stalls.”24 Despite
extensive commercial activities “there was no provision for any permanent
market place and commercial buildings” as commerce and manufacture were
traditionally “carried out strictly in the domestic sphere.”25 Consequently, the
 Swahili home markets and their urban context 125
large-scale urban houses built by these merchants were organized around a
central courtyard, or chowk, designed to separate commercial areas within
the house from its strictly domestic spaces.26 The front entrance room, the
khadki, would provide a place where clients were received, where artisans
worked and where goods could be sold, removed from family and living
spaces within the house.27
Swahili medieval merchants appear to have followed a somewhat similar
pattern, where localized markets for necessities were conducted in non-
permanent structures and more significant and costly commercial activities
occurred within domestic structures. The architectural manifestations of
interregional trade within the East African coast, like in the towns of Gujarat,
were not the extensive bazaars and specialized commercial structures common
to the enterpots of Arabia and Western Asia, but rather the creation of large
stone houses designed to serve added commercial functions; to attract and
impress visiting merchants and thereby attest to the merchants’ wealth, to
provide a place for exchange to occur, to accommodate the accumulation and
storage of goods, and potentially, to furnish living quarters for foreign visitors
during their long layover on the coast.
The particular nature of interregional trade and the economy of the East
African coast was a determining factor in forming the Swahili city. Under-
developed market institutions and role of domestic structures as a substitute
venue for market structures lead to the ubiquitous presence of elaborate
stone-built houses which became the defining feature of the Swahili urban
environment of the later medieval period. This urban pattern may have been
influenced by foreign traders and settlers, yet it was founded on indigenous
economic institutions and commercial practices, and reinforced by the larger
cultural context within which Swahili communities operated. As such, the
miji, or traditional Swahili settlement came to be defined by the presence
of the stone-built mansions of the merchant elites, and it was the presence of
these houses and the activities associated with them that became the unique
and fundamental feature that defines and differentiated Swahili culture up
until the colonial period.

Notes
1 Barth, Henry, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: Being a
Journal of an Expedition Undertaken under the Auspices of H.B. Majesty’s
Government, Volume II, New York: Drallop Publishing Co., 1896 and New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1857:54.
2 Barth, Vol. II, 1896 and 1897: 513–14.
3 Kusimba, Chapurukha Makokha, The Archaeology and Ethnography of Iron
Metallurgy on the Kenya Coast, Ph.D. Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College,
1993:65 and Horton, Mark, The Early Settlement of the Northern Swahili
Coast, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1984:264.
4 Gensheimer, Thomas R., At the Boundaries of Dar-al-Islam: Cities of the East
African Coast in the Late Middle Ages, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
California, Berkeley, 1997:198–201.
126 Thomas Gensheimer
5 Zein, Abdul Hamid M. el., Sacred Meadows: A Structural Analysis of Religious
Symbolism in an East African Town, Chicago: Northwestern University Press,
1974:38–9.
6 Ibid.
7 Freemen-Grenville, G.S.P., The East African Coast: Selected Documents
from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975:27–8.
8 See Chittick, H. Neville, Kilwa: An Islamic Trading City on the East African
Coast, Vol. 1 [Memoir no. 5], Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa,
1974:174–205 for the excavation and interpretation of these spaces.
9 At the House of the Dhow at Gedi, on the central Kenya coast, the pit latrine
was excavated to a depth of 27 feet and “carefully revetted and plastered” (see
Kirkman, James, Gedi: The Palace, The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1963:18).
10 Little architectural evidence of such doors remains; however Duarte Barbosa’s
account of Kilwa in 1517–18 states that “The doors are of wood, well carved,
with excellent joinery” (see Freeman-Grenville, 1975:131).
11 Whitehouse, David, “Maritime Trade in the Arabian Sea: The 9th and 10th
Centuries AD,” South Asian Archaeology 1977, vol. 2, Maurizio Taddei (ed.),
Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1979:870.
12 Whitehouse, David, “Excavations at Siraf: Fourth Interim Report,” Iran,
vol. IX, 1971:10–12.
13 Whitehouse, David, “Maritime Trade in the Gulf: the 11th and 12th Centuries,”
World Archaeology, vol. 14, 1983:330 citing Sir A.T. Wilson, The Persian Gulf,
London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959:98–9.
14 Chaudhari, K.N., Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1985:103–10.
15 Freeman-Grenville, 1975:202–4 and Horton, Mark, 1984:330.
16 Horton, Mark, “Artisans, Communities and Commodities: Medieval Exchanges
between Northwestern India and East Africa,” Ars Orientalis, vol. 34, 2004:68.
17 Horton, 2004.
18 Meyer, Carol, Glass from Quseir al-Qadim and the Indian Ocean Trade,
Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1992:101 and
Alpers, Edward A. “Gujarat and the Trade of East Africa, c. 1500–1800,” The
International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. IX, 1, 1976:24.
19 Alpers, 1976:25–6.
20 Damiao de Goes states of Malindi “The greater number of the merchants who
live in this town are from Guzerat in the Kingdom Cambaya” (Theal, George
McCall, Records of South-Eastern Africa, vol. 3, 1964. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press), and that at Mombasa Dom Francisco d’Almeida attempted
to burn ships also from Cambaya (see Theal vol. 3, 1964:81 & 115). It should
also be noted that the pilot which Vasco de Gama obtained at Malindi and who
taught him how to sail to India using the monsoon winds was a sailor from
Gujarat, Ibn Majid. Likewise the king installed at Kilwa after d’Almeida con-
quered the city in 1505 was a resident Indian, named interestingly Mohammed
Rukn al Din al-Dabuli (a.k.a. Mohmed Ancony).
21 Mollat, Michel, “Historical Contacts of African and Madagascar with South
and South-east Asia: The Role of the Indian Ocean,” Historical Relations Across
the Indian Ocean, Report and papers of the meeting of experts organized by
UNESCO at Port Louis, Mauritius 1974, 1980:51.
22 Jain, V. K., “The Role of the Arab Traders in Western India During Early
Medieval Period,” Essays in Ancient Indian Economic History, Brajadulal
Chattopadhyaya (ed.), New Delhi: Primus Books, 2014:158.
23 Pramar, V.S., A Social History of Indian Architecture, London: Oxford University
Press, 2005:38–9.
 Swahili home markets and their urban context 127
24 Ibid.
25 Pramar, V.S., Haveli: Wooden Houses and Mansions of Gujarat, Ahmedabad:
Marpin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1989:86–7.
26 Pramar, 1989:91–8.
27 Pramar, 2005:52.
6 An anachronism of trade
The Mercato Nuovo in
Florence (1546–1551)
Lauren Jacobi

In recent years, late medieval loggias used for mercantile purposes have
received attention as venues in which architecture and evolving economic
practices coincided. Indeed, this building type has been seen as a formid-
able measure of the potency of mercantile commerce across cultures that
were, or had become, monetized. As Olivia Constable noted in Housing
the Stranger in the Mediterranean World, during the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, loggias became the site of choice for communal lodging,
storage, and trade, in part because their confined yet liminal space made
it easy for local officials to monitor, control, and tax the commercial trans-
actions that took place there.1 For such reasons, in the middle of the thir-
teenth century, when the Genoese reaffirmed their commercial privileges in
Constantinople, the Byzantine magistrates gave them legal access to a
loggia.2 Trade loggias became increasingly common during the thirteenth
century, in Italy itself and for communities of Italians in both Byzantium
and in territories in the eastern Mediterranean. The Venetian merchant
Emmanuel Piloti commented that in Famagusta, one of the main commer-
cial streets was “filled with magnificent loggias belonging to every Christian
nation with power.”3
Yet by the end of the fifteenth century, many types of loggias (including
mercantile ones), along with porticoed spaces, had fallen out of favor. While
family loggias continued to be used, and some new ones were even built
(witness the papal Piccolomini Loggia in Siena, built 1460–62, and the
Ruccelai Loggia in Florence, built after 1463), loggias built purposely for
civic ceremony and trade became noticeably less popular during this period.4
In Rome, arcades (porticati) were targeted in the urban statutes of 1452
as being “dangerous to public welfare.”5 Echoing the remarks of a sixteenth-
century chronicler who implied that in his day, loggias appeared less
frequently,6 Jacob Burckhardt, author of the influential Architecture of
the Italian Ren, remarked, “By the sixteenth century the custom [of building
family loggias] obviously had gone out.”7 Benedetto Varchi noted that
in sixteenth-century Florence, only twenty-six loggias and porticos, which
had once been a prominent aspect of the medieval environment, remained.8
His contemporary, Vincenzo Borghini would put that number at fifteen.9
 Florence’s Mercato Nuovo in 1546–1551 129

Figure 6.1 Giovanni Battista del Tasso, Mercato Nuovo Loggia, Florence, 1546–51.
Source: Ralph Lieberman.

At times, loggias were even purposely destroyed or covered over. A well-

known example is the once-accessible corner loggia of the Palazzo Medici,
which was walled up with dressed masonry under the direction of
Michelangelo circa 1518. The architectural historian Charles Burroughs has
written that the elimination of loggias and porticos during the Renaissance
had a significant implication: their absence “clarified and emphasized the
articulation between the space of the house itself and that of the street or
piazza, [or] what we have come to call the distinction between public and
private.”10
Curiously, however, by the middle of the sixteenth century the mercantile
loggia had reemerged in Florence as a building type that was once again
used to spatially demarcate places of commerce. This essay builds on recent
analyses of medieval mercantile loggias, examining the afterlife of the
loggia through a focus on the loggia in Florence’s Mercato Nuovo, built
1546–51 (Figure. 6.1).11 Stressing the historicism and deep referential power
of this monumental structure, this chapter insists that it was designed and
constructed to be deliberately anachronistic—specifically, atavistic—in its
modality.
130 Lauren Jacobi
The Mercato Nuovo: “Il più frequentato luogo della città”12
To this day, the Mercato Nuovo in Florence is defined by the loggia designed
by Giovan Battista di Marco del Tasso (d. 1555) and built under the patron-
age of Cosimo I (1519–74), a member of the Medici family.13 Cosimo
unexpectedly came to power as the head of the Florentine government at
the young age of seventeen, due to the assassination of his relative, Duke
Alessandro de’ Medici. While Florentine factionalism and legal questions
about what he rightfully possessed initially stripped Cosimo of the wealth
that his predecessor had enjoyed, the new appointee eventually reinvigorated
Florence’s position within the political hierarchy of Europe. Over the course
of his tenure as leader of the city, Cosimo cultivated and positioned perma-
nent officials of the new regime and other magistrates so that the republican
administration was controlled from the top.14 He consolidated Florence’s
scattered territories, expanded the city’s domain well beyond the present size
of Tuscany, and asserted near-absolute rule over the city.15 In undertaking the
work on the Mercato Nuovo, Cosimo reaffirmed the endurance of Medicean
political ambition by yoking his rule to that of the Florentine Republic,
making his duchy a seemingly inevitable culmination of tradition and using a
doubly referential iconography to underscore his and Florence’s power.16
Other scholars have seen Cosimo’s patronage as deeply invested in invoking
Florence’s republican past in his architectural and artistic commissions. As
Howard Burns has written, Cosimo “had himself represented as a ruler who
embodied continuity with the traditions of the Florentine Republic, but the
creation of a distinctive Tuscan, Florentine and Medicean architecture.”17
The Mercato Nuovo should be situated within that orbit.18
Historically, Florence’s Mercato Nuovo was the site where local, as
opposed to international, banking occurred. The piazza surrounding it gives
access to another area important to Renaissance banking, the Via Porto
Rosso, a street that connects the Mercato Nuovo to Piazza della Signoria
and its Palazzo, the center of Florentine government. Attesting to the type of
commercial activities that took place at the Mercato Nuovo, in the middle
of the fifteenth century the mendicant preacher San Bernardino da Siena
specifically targeted the Mercato Nuovo in a Lenten sermon as the depraved
Florentine locale where the city’s bankers, like flies, drank the blood of the
poor, little by little.19
While the Mercato Nuovo’s association with filthy lucre might not have
been entirely erased, Cosimo’s new loggia was embedded in a project of
attempting to bolster Florence’s economy and its reputation as a producer
and consumer of goods. As Eric Cochrane has written, Cosimo “was
willing to do all he could for the economic recovery of his dominions,”
although the success of his endeavors is debated.20 He reissued regulations
originally approved in 1476 and 1487 that strove to maintain the ancient
reputation of manufactured trade goods; he fixed prices; and he banned
foreign coins from circulating within Florence’s territories.21 At Cosimo’s
 Florence’s Mercato Nuovo in 1546–1551 131
instigation, the Mercato Nuovo itself became the city’s central location for
exchanging both gold and silk, specifically.22 (Silk had become an important
component of Florentine trade during the second half of the fifteenth
century, when it was added to wool as one of the textile goods sold in large
quantities in Florence or exported elsewhere.) When Tasso’s loggia began
in 1546, Florence was in the midst of a decade of strong economic growth
that would last until the onset of war with Siena in 1552, at which point
the city redirected its resources and took on large debts to finance the
military conflict.23
Both Cosimo’s administrative reorganization and his architectural and
urban projects took as their goal the ambition of making Florence a locale
that the principate could manage in both political and spatial terms, and the
Mercato Nuovo’s loggia was key to those ambitions.24 The loggia aligns with
many of Cosimo’s other urban projects that, considered as a whole, were
an explicit means of bolstering economic interests while simultaneously
constructing a Medicean visual identity for the city. Indeed, Giorgio Spini
has written of an “architecture of the regime” that was meant to promote its
political totality.25 Under Cosimo, key changes and embellishments were
made to the Palazzo della Signoria, motivated by Cosimo’s transfer of his
official residence there from the Palazzo Medici, on the Via Larga. A related
project was the construction of the Uffizi, which allowed Cosimo to consoli-
date the meeting places of various arms of the Florentine government, on the
one hand reinforcing certain elements of Florence’s conventional system of
governance and on the other allowing for a centralized bureaucracy overseen
by the Medici. Eight magistracies and five guilds were given offices in the
newly built Uffizi.26 Corporate bodies, including the bankers’ guild, the silk
guild, and the merchants’ guild, which had all previously maintained meeting
halls around Orsanmichele, the Mercato Vecchio, and the Mercato Nuovo,
were uprooted and rehoused in the Uffizi, underscoring the weakened stature
of Florence’s once potent guild structure.27
Other restructuring projects ranged from regrouping Florence’s fourteen
minor guilds into four università, compelling the wool and silk guilds to
rewrite their statutes, and taking extensive surveys that were finalized in
1551 and 1562 and measured everything from the consumption of meat and
grain to population statistics, as a means of both understanding the Tuscan
domain, and being able to more efficiently tax it.28 The loggia at the Mercato
Nuovo was implicated in such policies, in both a symbolic and a physical
sense: the level of the building between its vaulting and the roof, prized for
its secure location, was intended for the state’s archive of notarial documents,
the Archivio degli Atti originali Notariali.29 In this function, the Mercato
Nuovo’s loggia evokes precedents such as Rovigo’s Loggia dei Notari, where
local notaries used the upper floor of the town’s loggia for transactions.30
With the Mercato Nuovo project, Cosimo fully recognized the value of
mythologizing Tuscan history, showing that he understood the uses of that
history as a way to create meaning in the present.31
132 Lauren Jacobi
The cost of the construction of the loggia was partially covered by a new
tax on a number of guilds, including the guild of the bankers, the wool
sellers and workers, the doctors and pharmacists, and the merchants.32
Florentine merchants living elsewhere were also asked to help cover the
costs of the loggia; however, consortia of Florentine merchants in Lyon,
Naples, Rome, Venice, and elsewhere protested that they were not able to
contribute to the cause.33 Yet the inscription that is repeated on the east and
west sides of the building does little to acknowledge the contributions of the
guilds; instead, it links Cosimo to the loggia and lauds the magnificent and
salubrious columned portico.34 The inscriptions also praise the loggia for its
openness, which provides views in all directions while protecting merchants.
Finally, bosses in each ceiling vault, sculpted with Medici rings and their
motto, “semper,” also associated the building with the Medici (Figure 6.2).
The de facto leaders of many of the collaborative artistic enterprises
undertaken in conjunction with Medici patronage, including several projects
at the Palazzo Vecchio, were Tasso (the architect of the loggia) and Niccolò
Tribolo, a favored artisan who was not connected to the Mercato Nuovo
project.35 Tasso was a masterful woodcarver who made poop decks for the

Figure 6.2 Giovanni Battista del Tasso, Boss in the Mercato Nuovo Loggia, Florence,
1546–51 (Photo by Author).
 Florence’s Mercato Nuovo in 1546–1551 133
Genovese naval hero Andrea Doria, the ceiling and benches for Michelangelo’s
Biblioteca Laurenziana, and, purportedly, a bed for the goldsmith Benvenuto
Cellini.36 His first venture into architecture seems to have been generating
the idea and partial execution of a project that unified the eastern wall of
Palazzo Vecchio along Via dei Leoni and the design of a monumental portal
on that side of the building.37 Vasari later commemorated Tasso as architect
of the Mercato Nuovo loggia on a tondo in a ceiling alcove at the Palazzo
Vecchio, structured to assert Cosimo’s liberality towards the arts and the
city within an overall program that was meant to be a propagandistic image
of statecraft demonstrating the supremacy of Tuscany (Figure 6.3a).38 Tasso
is shown holding a model of the loggia with an inscription affirming his
authorial link to the building (Figure 6.3b).39 Vasari’s frescoed representation
of the Mercato Nuovo building largely parallels the material structure as
executed. The image accurately depicts the loggia’s physical space as a
rectangular edifice, three bays wide and four bays deep. The monumental
shed-like structure has piers with niches that encase an inner building, which
has monolithic columns that carry arches defining the bays, each contain-
ing a domical vault, typically Brunelleschian and thereby Florentine by
association, and these two points—that the building is seemingly encased
and the deep referentiality of its structure—are issues that I will focus on for
the remainder of this essay.40

Figure 6.3 Left (a): Giorgio Vasari, Cosimo I de’ Medici seated among architects
and engineers, Sala di Cosimo I, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 1559. Right
(b): Giorgio Vasari, Detail of Cosimo I de’ Medici seated among architects
and engineers, Sala di Cosimo I, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 1559.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
134 Lauren Jacobi
Architectural atavism
While it has been generally neglected in literature on Florentine buildings,
Tasso’s structure has received attention from Henk van Veen, who sees the
loggia as one of several projects that demonstrate Cosimo’s interest in
cultivating an “emphatically . . . dynastic and territorial imagery” in the
early years of his political tenure, though his interest shifted course radically
as his rule became more secure and he began to identify his reign with
republican concepts of virtue and the “good commune.”41 Van Veen writes:

Cosimo’s conception of the Piazza della Signoria and its environs

bespeaks a thoroughly antagonistic attitude toward the architectural
heritage of Florence. Nor is it the only evidence of the new ruler’s
opposition of the city’s administrative, political, and cultural past. The
Mercato Nuovo . . . evoke[s] the same princely grandeur. The Mercato
Nuovo was . . . an expression of royal magnificence.42

At the outset of the passage, van Veen alludes to a scheme developed by Baccio
Bandinelli and Giuliano di Baccio d’Agnolo (but that probably was never
presented to Cosimo) to radically alter the piazza and the neighborhood
surrounding the Palazzo della Signoria.43 He then moves on to note that the
loggia at the Mercato Nuovo embodied Cosimo’s desire to ignore Florentine
building tradition. I suggest that we can add nuance to van Veen’s recognition
by addressing the materiality of the loggia and the history of the formal articu-
lation of the piazza. What emerges is a building that is atavistic in its form and
typology and that complicates reading the loggia as a synecdoche for Cosimo’s
antagonism to the historicism of Florence’s built heritage. The Mercato Nuovo
loggia shows a marked cultural desire to affirm and appropriate the legacy of
Florentine architecture and the form of the loggia itself.
Florence had a tradition of constructing improved loggias near to or atop
older structures, as might have occurred at Orsanmichele, where it has been
speculated that a smaller loggia for the city’s grain merchants served as a
precursor to the larger monumental oratory that was built later during the
fourteenth century (1336 to circa 1390).44 While no specific documentary
evidence has surfaced to support the idea that Tasso’s loggia replaced and
thereby referred to an earlier informal structure on the piazza, and we there-
fore do not know what such a building might have looked like, it remains
possible that the new loggia was built in relationship to a previous loggia on
the piazza.45 If indeed Tasso’s new loggia for the Mercato Nuovo replaced
an older structure, that would be another reason to see the new loggia as a
measure of continuity. But in the absence of such evidence, the mercantile
building traditions and the structure and form of the building for which we
do have evidence speak loudly enough.46
The articulation of Tasso’s loggia situates it within a strong, if generic,
tradition of semi-enclosed spaces erected to create a designated place for
 Florence’s Mercato Nuovo in 1546–1551 135
mercantile exchange.47 As Kim Sexton has demonstrated, the spread of the
loggia and arched portico in Italy coincides with the affirmation of the liberal
commune and self-governing rule; these structures were among the first that
were built and paid for by independent communes.48 It was probably this class
of loggias, rather than private ones belonging to the nobility, alongside ante-
cedent classical forms, as well as early medieval laubiae, meant to frame judi-
ciary spectacles, that then became the model for Italian public loggias.49 Early
loggias built into the underbellies of communal palaces were a conscious
index of commercial productivity, as is demonstrated by the loggias and bro-
lettos erected in Bergamo (ca. 1185–98), Brescia (began 1198), Pavia (1198–
99) Cremona (1206), Como (1215), Padua (1218), Milan (1218), and Monza
(1293).50 At this stage, loggias were commonly appended to the Palazzo
Comunale or at least positioned close to it. Barring exceptions such as the
Palazzo del Comune in Todi, completed in 1206, loggias in general appeared
in central Italy roughly half a century after they became distinct buildings in
northern Italy.51 Though perhaps linked in form to a possible previous loggia
on the piazza, Tasso’s loggia at the Mercato Nuovo was, equally, a revival of
older form. It is a reinsertion of a building type that had dwindled in appeal.
Though it is more complex in its articulation, the building for the Mercato
Nuovo ought to be seen beside another proximate commercial loggia in
Florence, Giorgio Vasari’s nine-bay-long structure, constructed for the sale of
fish, that once stood in the Mercato Vecchio (Figure 6.4).52 Significantly, while
the built form of the Florentine loggia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

Figure 6.4 Giorgio Vasari, The Loggia del Pesce in the Piazza dei Ciompi, Florence,
1568.
Source: Alinari Archives, Florence.
136 Lauren Jacobi
demonstrated a tendency towards intercity and interinstitutional competition
—as witnessed for example in the distinctive forms of Orsanmichele (1337–
67), the Bigallo (1352–58), and the Loggia della Signoria (1378–81)—under
the Medici’s sixteenth-century domination of Florence, the material form
of commercial loggias was naturalized, iterating a common identity with the
Medici.
Both Florentine loggias were part of a larger project undertaken by
Cosimo to systematize a number of spaces in towns controlled by Florence:
new or restored loggias became part of the city fabric in Barga built for the
sale of silk and salt (1546); Castiglion Fiorentino (1513, restored 1571);
Lari (1565); Montepulciano (by 1570); Monte San Savino (1517–20 and ca.
1550–55?); and Savona (after 1572), for example.53 Some of these projects,
notably, involved submitting a petition to the Florentines for permission
to repair or alter the structure.54 At Castiglio Fiorentino, the community
requested permission in 1560 to repair their mercantile loggia.55 When the
restorations were completed in 1571, a Medici stemma was added.56 Cosimo
visited Savona in 1572, after which time a number of modifications were
made to the Loggia del Palazzo Bourbon del Monte there.57
While it is clearly a Medicean project, the spatial and architectural logic
of Tasso’s structure is firmly rooted in Florentine architectural tradition, as
Caroline Elam and Howard Burns have recognized, suggesting that the
commission was meant to resonate deeply along a historical continuum.58 In
a departure from the pictorial representation of the loggia, which suggests
that it is of a unified stone, the inner zone of the building is constructed
largely of pietra serena (a material that celebrates a multiplicity of Florentine
projects, ranging from the Ospedale degli Innocenti to the Old Sacristy, as
well as Michelangelo’s work for the Medici at San Lorenzo), but these pietra
serena columns are enfolded in a structure of yellow-ochre pietra forte, the
sandstone common to so many Florentine palaces and public edifices. This
alludes to a material duality witnessed in numerous Florentine buildings,
often seen in plays between exterior and interior. The loggia’s pietra serena
columns and its monumentally massed shell are joined abruptly, highlight-
ing the disjunction between shell and support. Cosimo tightly controlled the
use of pietra serena; in The Lives of the Artists, Vasari writes that it was
reserved for use on public buildings unless special sanction was given and
that Cosimo owned a major pietra serena quarry near San Martino, encour-
aging its use in several projects executed under his reign, including Baccio
Bandinelli’s audience hall in the Palazzo della Signoria, the Udienza.59 The
liminal space of the open loggia, then, built with the pietra serena so closely
associated with Cosimo, provides telling structural support for the pietra
forte commercial loggia, the traditional mark of the republican commune.
By way of conclusion, it is useful to note that a reproduction does not just
reproduce an object. Instead, the process of mimesis transforms an imagined
“original” to create something that can be experienced by analogy. This is a
useful framework for considering the Mercato Nuovo. I suggest that the
 Florence’s Mercato Nuovo in 1546–1551 137

Figure 6.5 Gold coins, Cosimo I, 1536–55 (1995,0706.24, Courtesy of The Trustees
of the British Museum).

loggia there was anchored in the present while simultaneously replicating a

temporarily repressed architectural form. As a replica, it was meant to evoke
the economic potency of a stage of commercial power that was not yet
entirely bygone, visibly signifying and appropriating the past life and historic
vitality of Florentine architecture and trade. Somewhat perversely, the same
might be said of the coins that flowed through the hands of the bankers and
merchants who practiced in and around Tasso’s loggia. Under Cosimo’s
regime, gold Florentine florins were imprinted with the Medici’s vivid
familial coat of arms (Figure 6.5). This new imagery on an “old” coin—also
a type of replica—was a striking departure from the specie issued over the
course of the Republic, which depicted an image of St. John the Baptist on
its verso. As replicas, Tasso’s loggia and the coins that moved through it
were designed to evoke a specific temporal stage of Florentine economic
power, visibly signifying the past life of the community, but emptying the
form of the political orientation of the medieval corporate body.

Notes
1 Olivia Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World:
Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 156, 311.
2 Ibid., 155.
3 Emmanuel Piloti, Traité d’Emmanuel Piloti sur le Passage en Terre Sainte (1420)
(Louvain and Paris: Editions E. Nauwelaerts, 1958), 76.
4 Francis William Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The
Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1977), 244 n. 57; Charles Burroughs, “Spaces of Arbitration,”
138 Lauren Jacobi
in Medieval Practices of Space, ed. Barbara Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka
(Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), n. 66.
5 Manfredo Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects
(Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press in association with Harvard University
Graduate School of Design, 2006), 33.
6 “Nelle loggie, che in questi tempi qualche poco ancor si frequentavano,” in
Filippo Nerli, Commentari dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze
dall’anno 1215 al 1537, vol. 1 (Florence, 1859), 62. As quoted in Richard A.
Goldthwaite, “The Florentine Palace as Domestic Architecture,” The American
Historical Review 77, no. 4 (1972), 988–989.
7 Jacob Burckhardt, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance, trans. James
Palmes, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 154.
8 As cited in Burroughs, “Spaces of Arbitration,” 76.
9 F. Becchi, “Marzo: Delle logge e dei fanali,” in L’illustratore fiorentino, calendario
per l’anno 1838 (Florence: Tipografia Galileiana, 1837), 22.
10 Burroughs, “Spaces of Arbitration,” 86.
11 For literature on the loggia, see Kim Susan Sexton, “A History of Renaissance
Civic Loggias in Italy from the Loggia dei Lanzi to Sansovino’s Loggetta” (PhD
thesis, Yale University, 1997); Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean
World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages; Sexton,
“Justice Seen: Loggias and Ethnicity in Early Medieval Italy,” Journal of the
Society of Archtitectural Historians 68, no. 3 (2009); Sexton, “Political Portico:
Exhibiting Self-Rule in Early Communal Italy,” The Art Bulletin 97, no. 3 (2015).
On the loggia of Mercato Nuovo, see Emanuele Barletti, “Ipotesi di lavoro su
Giovan Battista del Tasso,” Critica d’arte 55 (1990), 55–61; Andrew Morrogh,
Disegni di architetti fiorentini, 1540–1640: Catalogo (Florence: L.S. Olschki,
1985), 30–31, cat. 9; Caroline Elam, “Firenze 1500–50,” in Il primo Cinquecento,
ed. Arnaldo Bruschi (Milan: Electa, 2002), 230–32, 239 n. 129; and Howard
Burns, “The 1540s: A Turning Point in the Development of European Architecture,”
in Les années 1540: regards croisés sur les arts et les lettres, ed. Lorenz Baumer,
Frédéric Elsig, and Sabine Frommel (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 40–42.
12 Federico Fantozzi, Nuova guida, ovvero descrizione storico-artistico-critica
della città e contorni di Firenze (Florence: Gius. e fratelli Ducci, 1842), 582.
13 Elam, “Firenze 1500–50,” 232.
14 R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians,
1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 77–83.
15 Elizabeth Pilliod, “Cosimo I and the Arts,” in Florence, ed. Francis Ames-Lewis
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 330–31.
16 The literature on Medician political ideology and patronage is vast. See in
particular: Kurt W. Forster, “Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History
in the Portraits of Cosimo I De’ Medici,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen
Institutes in Florenz 15, no. 1 (1971), 65–104; Roger Crum, “Lessons from the
Past: The Palazzo Medici as Political ‘Mentor’ in Sixteenth-Century Florence,”
in The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2001), 47–62; Pilliod, “Cosimo I and the Arts,” 330–73.
17 Burns, “The 1540s: A Turning Point in the Development of European
Architecture,” 40.
18 Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and
the Two Cosimos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 6; Crum,
“Lessons from the Past: The Palazzo Medici as Political ‘Mentor’ in Sixteenth-
Century Florence,” 50.
19 Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari, ed. Ciro Cannarozzi, vol. I (Pistoia:
Alberto Pacinotti, 1934), 113–15.
 Florence’s Mercato Nuovo in 1546–1551 139
20 Eric W. Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800; A History
of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1973), 54.
21 Ibid., 55.
22 Ferdinando Leopoldo del Migliore, Firenze città nobilissima (Florence: Stamp.
della Stella, 1684), 562; Franco Borsi, Firenze del cinquecento (Rome: Editalia,
1974), 100–03; Morrogh, Disegni di architetti fiorentini, 1540–1640, 30–31;
Leon Satkowski, Giorgio Vasari: Architect and Courtier (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1993), 28; Adrienne Atwell, “Ritual Trading: Florentine Wool-
Cloth Botteghe,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger Crum and
John Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 202 and n. 76.
23 Arnaldo d’Addario, “Burocrazia, economia e finanze dello stato fiorentino alla
metà del cinquecento,” Archivio Storico Italiano 121 (1963), 382; Cochrane,
Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800; A History of Florence and the
Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes, 53–56.
24 Donatella Calabi, The Market and the City: Square, Street and Architecture in
Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 61.
25 Giorgio Spini, “Architettura e politica nel principato Mediceo del cinquecento,”
Rivista Storica Italiana 83, no. 4 (1971), 795, 801; Donatella Calabi, Il Mercato
e la città: piazze, strade, architetture d’europe in età moderna (Venice: Marsilio,
1993), 169.
26 D’Addario, “Burocrazia, economia e finanze dello stato fiorentino alla metà del
cinquecento”; Furio Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana: i Medici (Turin: UTET,
1976); Carlo M. Cipolla, Money in Sixteenth-century Florence (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989); Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of
Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009),
491. The Uffizi also became the place of residence for thirteen of the city’s administr-
ative arms, which had formerly been dispersed throughout Florence. The branches
consolidated included the nine Conservatori (whose subdivisions included the
Scriptori, the Audienza and the Cancelleria), the Tribunale commerciale, the
offices of the Milizia, the Conservatori dei Leggi, the Pupilli, the Grascia, the
Decime, and the Vendite.
27 Calabi, The Market and the City: Square, Street and Architecture in Early
Modern Europe, 61.
28 D’Addario, “Burocrazia, economia e finanze dello stato fiorentino alla metà del
cinquecento,” 366; Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence, 491.
29 Fantozzi, Nuova guida, ovvero descrizione storico-artistico-critica della città e
contorni di Firenze.
30 Leobaldo Traniello, Rovigo: Ritratto di una città (Padua: Edizioni Minelliana,
1988), 92; Olivia Remie Constable, Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian,
Muslim, and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1997), 187; Sexton, “A History of Renaissance Civic Loggias in Italy from the
Loggia dei Lanzi to Sansovino’s Loggetta,” 105.
31 Forster, “Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of
Cosimo I De’ Medici,” 67.
32 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo 629, c., 1 v., 23 November 1546.
33 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Medici Archive Project, 20201, 659a, fols. 228–234.
34 The inscription reads: COSMVS MEDICES FLOREN. DVX II / PVBLICAE
MAGNIFICENTIAE ET SALVBRITATIS / ERGO PORTICVM TRANSVERSO
COLVMNARVM / ORDINE VNDIQUE PERMEABILEM / ADVERSVS
OMNEN COELI / CONTVMELIAM / NEGOCIANTIBVS IN FORO CIVIBUS
SVIS / EXTRVXIT MDXLVIII.
35 Fantozzi, Nuova guida, ovvero descrizione storico-artistico-critica della città e
contorni di Firenze, 581–83; Borsi, Firenze del cinquecento, 99; Claudia Conforti,
140 Lauren Jacobi
Vasari architetto (Milan: Electa, 1993), 48, 70, 74; Satkowski, Giorgio Vasari:
Architect and Courtier, 25–28, 51. Tasso likely received the commission because
the favored Medici architect, Tribolo, was preoccupied with projects for diverting
rivers, building bridges in and outside of Florence.
36 Pilliod, “Cosimo I and the Arts,” 338. As Pilliod notes, Vasari offered occasional
comments about Tasso in the Lives of the Artists, most of which were negative,
including the charge that he controlled Cosimo’s advisor and secretary,
Pierfrancesco Riccio. It is likely this was because of Vasari’s jealousy; Tasso
occupied posts that Vasari would only assume after Tasso’s death.
37 Barletti, “Ipotesi di lavoro su Giovan Battista del Tasso,” 55–57.
38 Forster, “Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of
Cosimo I de’ Medici,” 96, 102. For the dating and commentary identifying the
artists, see William Chandler Kirwin, “Vasari’s Tondo of ‘Cosimo I with His
Architects, Engineers and Sculptors’ in the Palazzo Vecchio,” Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15, no. 1 (1971), 105–22; Charles Davis,
“Benvenuto Cellini and the Scuola Fiorentina: Notes on Florentine Sculpture
around 1550 for the 500th Anniversary of Michelangelo’s Birth,” North Carolina
Museum of Art Bulletin 13, no. 4 (1976), 65–67; Elizabeth Pilliod, “Representation,
Misrepresentation, and Non-Representation, Vasari and his Competitors,” in
Vasari’s Florence, Artists and Literati at the Medicean Court, ed. Philip Jacks
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 46.
39 The inscription reads: IL T . . . ARCHITETTO; GIANBATI.; DEL.; TASSO, see
Kirwin, “Vasari’s Tondo of ‘Cosimo I with His Architects, Engineers and
Sculptors’ in the Palazzo Vecchio,” 116, n. 34.
40 Piero and Ennio Guarnieri Bargellini, Le strade di Firenze, vol. 3 (Florence:
Bonechi, 1985), 185.
41 Henk Th. van Veen, Cosimo I de’ Medici and His Self-Representation in
Florentine Art and Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 5.
42 Ibid., 12–13.
43 It remains possible that the Mercato Nuovo was the only realized component of
the new precinct surrounding Palazzo della Signoria; see Giorgio Vasari, Le
opere di Giorgio Vasari, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 6 (Florence: Sansoni, 1881),
171–72; Satkowski, Giorgio Vasari: Architect and Courtier, 26–28.
44 Atwell, “Ritual Trading: Florentine Wool-Cloth Botteghe,” 189–90.
45 Bargellini, Le strade di Firenze, vol. 3, 184; Mariano Bianca, I mercati nella
storia di Firenze (Florence: Tipografia Polistampa di Firenze, 1995), 75.
46 Atwell, “Ritual Trading: Florentine Wool-Cloth Botteghe,” 189–90.
47 Giancarlo Cataldi, Logge e/y Lonjas, ed. Giancarlo Cataldi and Roberto Corona
(Florence: Alinea Editrice, 2002), 9.
48 Sexton, “A History of Renaissance Civic Loggias in Italy from the Loggia dei
Lanzi to Sansovino’s Loggetta,” 81–82; Sexton, “Political Portico: Exhibiting
Self-Rule in Early Communal Italy,” 258.
49 Sexton, “A History of Renaissance Civic Loggias in Italy from the Loggia dei
Lanzi to Sansovino’s Loggetta,” 132; Sexton, “Justice Seen: Loggias and
Ethnicity in early Medieval Italy,” 329–30.
50 Laura and Gaia Rinaldi Ferrario, “Le logge mercantili del Granducato di Toscana:
campionature a confronto,” in Logge e/y Lonjas: i luoghi del commercio nella
storia della città, ed. Giancarlo Cataldi e Roberto Corona (Florence: Alinea,
2002), 161.
51 Sexton, “Political Portico: Exhibiting Self-Rule in Early Communal Italy,” 268;
Sexton, “Justice Seen: Loggias and Ethnicity in Early Medieval Italy,” 259.
52 Atwell, “Ritual Trading: Florentine Wool-Cloth Botteghe,” 191.
53 Spini, “Architettura e politica nel principato Mediceo del cinquecento,” 799;
Ferrario, “Le logge mercantili del Granducato di Toscana: campionature a
confronto,” 161.
 Florence’s Mercato Nuovo in 1546–1551 141
54 Ferrario, “Le logge mercantili del Granducato di Toscana: campionature a
confronto,” 162, 164.
55 Ibid., 176.
56 Sexton, “A History of Renaissance Civic Loggias in Italy from the Loggia dei
Lanzi to Sansovino’s Loggetta,” 214. As Sexton notes, such loggias were
constructed in Certaldo, Cutigliano, Castelfranco di Sopra, Pescia, and Batignano,
where they were used as a place for a foreign magistrate (the podestà) to administer
justice, hand down sentences, make pronouncements, explain new legislation or
treatises, and as places for leisure activities. This strategy of domination evoked a
similar practice seen in the trecento when Florence provisioned some of its subject
towns with self-contained loggias that were modeled on the civic loggias of larger
cities.
57 Ferrario, “Le logge mercantili del Granducato di Toscana: campionature a
confronto,” 176.
58 Elam, “Firenze 1500–50,” 232; Burns, “The 1540s: A Turning Point in the
Development of European Architecture,” 41–42.
59 Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architetti (Florence:
Heirs of Filippo da Giunta, 1568), 1, 125–26; Satkowski, Giorgio Vasari:
Architect and Courtier (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 40.
7 Merchant identity
The cartographic impulse in the
architectural sculpture of the
Llotja of Palma de Mallorca
Doron Bauer

The Llotja of Palma de Mallorca is a late medieval building built in the

gothic style. Llotja in Catalan means “exchange,” and as its name suggests,
the Llotja served as a stock exchange mainly for merchants engaged in
maritime trade. Its construction was carried out throughout the first half
of the fifteenth century under the supervision of the architect Guillem
Sagrera. The Llotja’s importance lies in the fact that it set new standards for
Mediterranean trade architecture in terms of its design and aesthetics, and
consequently different aspects of the building were copied and appropriated.
The Llotja of Valencia, built between 1482 and the middle of the sixteenth
century, serves as a conspicuous example as it clearly attempts to imitate
the Llotja of Palma.1 The patron of the Llotja of Palma was the Colegio de
Mercaderes or the local merchant guild.2 In 1409, the merchants of Palma
petitioned Martin the Humane, King of Aragon, asking his permission “to
build a Llotja that will ennoble the merchant profession and the whole city.”3
Due to the identity of its patron and its innovative character, the Llotja
provides a rare opportunity to examine the manner in which the architecture
of trade expresses, or better put, negotiates, the identity or self-perception of
the fifteenth-century merchant class.
The departure point of this chapter is the tension engendered by a widely
spread modern conception regarding the merchant class and an observation
made by a sixteenth-century emperor. In the eyes of many prominent histo-
riographical studies, fifteenth-century merchants are cast as the forerunners
and “heroes of self-centered modernity,” humanism, and individualism.4
The rise of the merchant class, among other things, marks the birth of free
individual spirit and the beginning of a long trajectory leading away from
the alleged rigid religiosity and conformity of the Middle Ages. Such a view
may find justification in the sculptural decoration of some late medieval
and early modern buildings associated with merchants. The Bourges palace
of Jacques Coeur—a prominent and wealthy fifteenth-century French
merchant—features motifs alluding to Jacques’ trade with North Africa and
the Levant, including among other things, a magnificent ship, a monkey,
and “negroids”. And in the Llotja of Valencia, profane motifs, many of
them focusing on buttocks, no less, are profuse.
 The Llotja: Cartography and architecture 143
However, the Llotja of Palma is different. To understand its difference, it
is perhaps best to look at the Llotja through the eyes of the Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V. In 1541, Charles set sail to capture the city of Algiers
from the Ottomans. On its way to North Africa, the fleet anchored in the
bay of Palma and the Emperor visited the city:

So on entering the city and moving from the plaça del moll to the plaça
de Lonja he saw many people in the streets and in the windows and still
on the housetops and roofs, that as a sign of the great content he appears
to have from so many people and from the place he turns and leads the
horse around all parts [of the stretch between the Moll and the Lonja],
to see and be seen by all. And walking to the entrance of [or around] the
Lonja examining the purpose of the building, he asked if it was a church.5

For the well-traveled and well-educated emperor, then, the Llotja seemed like
a church. The church-like appearance of an important building commis-
sioned by the merchant guild contrasts with the view of merchants as a
driving force of “secularism.” I would like to show that this contradiction
can be reconciled by carefully examining the Llotja’s architectural sculpture.

The corners sculptures

One of the items listed in the contract signed by the merchant guild and
Guillem Sagrera in 1426 concerns the sculptural decoration of the new
building.6 It says:

Also, that the said Guillem is required to make in each of the four
corners of the said Llotja, a great figure, each one in its own tabernacle
which corresponds to the other tabernacles of the angels; that is, the one
on the corner that watches over the port of Portupi, St. Nicholas; and on
the corner that watches over the church of St. John, St. John the Baptist;
and on the corner that watches over the Darasana, St. Catherine; on the
corner that watches over the said Castell Reyal, St. Clare.7

Why did the merchant guild make these particular iconographic choices?
Why St. Nicholas, St. John, St. Catherine, and St. Clare, and not other
religious or secular figures? The key to the answer lies in the wording of the
contract itself. The merchants took care to state the position of each
sculpture in relation to a particular landmark. By doing so, the merchants
linked each statue with a landmark by means of imaginary vectors.

St. John
The most evident connection, as well as the shortest linear distance, is the
one between the statue of St. John the Baptist and the church of St. John
144 Doron Bauer

Figure 7.1 Antonio Garau’s 1644 map of Palma de Mallorca, Biblioteca Bartolomé
March (La Fundación Bartolomé March).

the Baptist (Aon Figure 7.1). The church of St. John was associated with the
Knights Hospitaller, frequently referred to in the fifteenth century as
the Knights of Rhodes. The church, which gave its name to the eponymous
city gate facing the “moll” (the pier), is located across the street, east of the
Llotja. The Hospitaller church of St. John the Baptist served as the meeting
place of the guild before the construction of the Llotja, hence its importance
to the merchants.8

St. Nicholas
Of the four corner statues, the statue of St. Nicholas is the only one that did
not survive. It was mysteriously stolen in the nineteenth century and shipped
to Genoa by a boat, its traces lost.9 The contract states that St. Nicholas
should be placed at the corner facing the Portopí. The significance of the
Portopí to the merchants of Palma is exemplified by one of the more famous
paintings from Majorca, the retable of Sant Jordi by Pere Niçard, which was
painted around 1470, not too long after the Llotja was already standing.10
The retable shows St. George killing the dragon in the foreground. Behind
them, an unidentified noble damsel watches the scene. Further back, a port
city is portrayed. This portrayal is of significant historical value since it
 The Llotja: Cartography and architecture 145
provides a rare and relatively accurate representation of the bay of Palma
and its port in the fifteenth century, even though Pere Niçard applied the
Flemish style, in which he was versed, to his depiction of the Mediterranean
city. Protruding into the bay, right beneath a windmill, one can see a low,
fortified structure. The road between this low tower and the city gate is busy
with people going out of and into the city. This is most probably the “moll,”
or the pier leading to the St. John Gate (compare with the low tower on the
pier in Antonio Garau’s map of 1644, Figure 7.1). The Portopí is shown on
the upper right side of the painting as an inlet enclosed by four towers
(Figure. 7.2). The bigger ships are concentrated in the area of the Portopí,
while smaller boats are shown in the vicinity of the walled city. The fact that
most of the big merchant ships anchored in this area demonstrates that the
Portopí was the major port of Palma.11 Palma’s port authority, the guardi-
nant del port, ordered ships to withdraw to the Portopí because their ships
could have been sheltered and protected by means of defensive towers and
a boom. It is no surprise, then, that the merchant guild wanted to “connect”
its newly built headquarters—the Llotja—with the port, the center of mari-
time trade. (B on Figure 7.1 indicates the general direction of the Portopí;
however, the Portopí itself is not included in Garau’s map.)
The merchant guild chose St. Nicholas to mediate this connection because
St. Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and merchants. For example, in

Figure 7.2 Sant Jordi retable (detail), Museo diocesano de Mallorca.

146 Doron Bauer
one of the miracle stories attributed to the saint in The Golden Legend,
sailors pray to St. Nicholas in a time of turmoil:

One day some seamen, threatened by a violent storm at sea, shed tears
and prayed as follows: “Nicholas, servant of God, if what we have
heard about you is true, let us experience your help now.”12

Moreover, In Pere Niçard’s Sant Jordi, the building adjacent to the four
towers of Portopí is a church that served the seamen, merchants, and port
workers. The church, which was destroyed in the nineteenth century, was
dedicated to St. Nicholas, and was called Sant Nicolauet Vell de Portopí to
differentiate it from the church of St. Nicholas within the city walls.
The statue of St. Nicholas, then, substantiated the imaginary vector
between the Llotja and Palma’s major port by means of its position on the
western corner of the building facing the Portopí, by the fact of St. Nicholas
being the patron saint of merchants and sailors, and also by alluding to the
saint’s church at the port.13

St. Catherine
The statue of St. Catherine (Figure 7.3) was placed at the corner that, accord-
ing to the contract, watches over the Drassana. The Drassana in Catalan is
a shipyard and indeed the square bearing that name, about 200 feet north-
west of the Llotja, once served as one. A shipyard is, of course, directly
related to trade and mercantile interests. However, to judge by the square’s
relatively small size and by the square’s depiction in Garau’s map, the
Drassana in Palma was intended for small boats rather than bigger merchant
ships. In addition, there is apparently nothing in the Drassana to connect
it with St. Catherine. And as we saw in the previous two cases—those of
St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas—the statues were intended to point
towards structures bearing the saints’ names. The city gate of St. Catherine
is located a little further to the northwest of the Drassana. The gate marked
the start of the main road connecting the city and the major port—the
Portopí. Furthermore, following a vow he made during a shipwreck, in 1343
a wealthy merchant named Ramon de Salelles founded the Hospital of
Santa Catalina dels Pobres outside the city walls next to the road leading to
the Portopí. The hospital’s primary function was to serve poor sailors.14
Therefore, the statue of St. Catherine was most probably meant to point to
the gate and to the hospital outside of it (C on Figure 7.1).
The choice of St. Catherine was possibly meaningful to Palma’s merchants
in yet another manner. The Balearics underwent a substantial economic
transformation starting from the late fourteenth century. They became a
major wool-producing region and the center of a successful textile industry
aimed at the upper-middle part of the market.15 The building of the Llotja is
coextensive with the economic transformation that placed wool and textiles
Figure 7.3 St. Catherine, The Llotja of Palma (Photo by Author).
148 Doron Bauer
at the core of Majorcan mercantile activity. Emperor Maxentius sentenced
St. Catherine to death by a spiked wheel that broke as soon as the saint
touched it. The wheel became an attribute of St. Catherine and as a result,
she became the patron saint of craftsmen working with a wheel, spinners
among them (a wheel is shown on the side of the Llotja’s St. Catherine as
well, see Figure 7.3). It was only natural that the merchants of Palma sought
to pay homage to the patron saint of the industry that provided them with
a major source of income.

St. Clare
The saints’ statues were meant to point to structures bearing their names.
However, the language of the contract does not always disclose the structure’s
identity. Instead, the layout of the statues assumes that a beholder familiar
with the Palma’s urban setting will be able to determine the statue-structure
connection based on the general direction and the identity of the given saint.
Such is the case with the statue of Santa Clara, which the contract states
should face the “Castell Reyal” or the Almudaina. Nevertheless, the convent
of Santa Clara is located further to the east of the Llotja in the general
direction in which the statue of St. Clare points, and the name of the saint
and the name of the institution match (D on Figure 7.1).16 Yet why did the
merchants choose to symbolically connect the Llotja and the convent of
the “Poor Clares”?
The altarpiece of the previously mentioned port church of St. Nicholas of
Portopí has survived and is now on display at the Museu de Mallorca
(Figure 7.4). The altarpiece shows St. Nicholas at the center with six hagio-
graphic scenes from his life.17 To his right, St. Nicholas is flanked by
St. Anthony, and to his left by St. Clare of Assisi—the founder of the Poor
Clares. The depiction of St. Clare next to the patron saint of merchants on
an altarpiece from a port church suggests that St. Clare was of special
importance to the merchants of Palma.
The Poor Clares in the Crown of Aragon were particularly attractive for
women with mercantile backgrounds. For example, around 1236, two
such women—Berenguela of Antich and Guillerma of Poliña—founded
the monastery of Santa Clara in Barcelona (initially dedicated to Sant
Antoni).18 More specifically, we know that at least one prominent merchant
was associated with the convent of Santa Clara in Palma at the beginning
of the fifteenth century.19 Bartolome de Bassis, or Bartomeu de Bassers, was
in 1402 one of six jurats—the highest-ranking representative position in
Majorca. In 1416, he was allowed to build a chapel in the church of Santa
Clara and inside it a tomb for himself and members of his family.20 Sixty-
nine parchments that document the professional activity of Bartomeu and
his eponymous son are now part of the monastery’s archive.21
The twisted columns supporting the vault cones are one the Llotja’s most
conspicuous hallmarks (Figure 7.5a). The columns resemble ropes. In the
 The Llotja: Cartography and architecture 149

Figure 7.4 The altarpiece of St. Nicholas of Portopí, Museo de Mallorca (NIG
DA05/09/011) (Museo de Mallorca).

Figure 7.5 Left (a): Twisted columns. Right (b): Boss, The Llotja of Valencia (Photos
by Author).

Llotja of Valencia, the columns are even further modeled as ropes showing
“strands” exposed towards the base. Ropes were a trademark of ships, and
therefore a sign referring to the merchants’ maritime activities. More realistic
representations of ropes are carved on a ceiling boss in the Llotja of Valencia
150 Doron Bauer
(Figure 7.5b), substantiating the validity of such symbolical reading. Not
long after their incorporation in the Llotja, the Manueline style made profuse
use of carved ropes as an architectural ornament symbolizing maritime
activities. The columns may also allude to the importance of the wool
industry, as they may represent the spinning of fibers. In the Llotja de la Seda
(silk) in Valencia, the reference is more explicit since the art of silk production
was called l’art de torzedor—the art of twisting.22
Considering the strong association between the Poor Clares and the mer-
chants, the remarkable columns may have carried additional symbolical
meaning. The columns do not only represent ropes, but they are also verti-
cal. In the late medieval imagination, vertical ropes evoked a very common
image, that of the Franciscan cord. The Poor Clares wore such cord as well,
and the cord was one of St. Clare’s main attributes, as can be seen in the
corner statue of the saint and in the altarpiece from the church of St. Nicholas
of Portopí (Figure 7.4). The Franciscan cord was employed as an architec-
tural element and decorative motif in the late fifteenth-century palace of the
Velasco family in Burgos, popularly known as Casa del Cordón (a literal
reference to the Franciscan cord embellishing its façade).23 Later on in
the sixteenth century, the motif gained popularity in Latin America, as can
be seen in the Casa del Cordón in Santo Domingo and the posa chapels of
the Convent of San Miguel de Huejotzingo in Mexico. In the Divine
Comedy—interestingly enough—the Franciscan cord fluctuates between
religious and secular domains. In Canto XVI of the Inferno, Virgil borrows
Dante’s Franciscan cord “to use as an enormous fishing line for catching
the monster Geryon.”24 The Llotja’s twisted columns demonstrate similar
fluctuation by referring simultaneously to ships, fibers, and the Poor Clares.25

The political context

The four corner statues of St. John, St. Nicholas, St. Catherine, and St. Clare
transgress their iconographical function and serve as topographical pointers
highlighting urban landmarks that held particular value for the merchants.
The configuration of the statues is thus site-specific, and more so, city-
specific, and thus cannot function in the same fashion in any other place.
Such an act of “pointing to” creates a topographical network, circumscribes
territories, and as a result generates an imaginary map that forms only a
slice of the city’s geographic reality. It is, therefore, an act that aims to
introduce hierarchy into the urban fabric by highlighting certain structures
and districts while disregarding others, and by placing the Llotja at the
nexus of that imaginary map as its very author. The question that follows is:
What motivated the merchants to pursue such a strategy of differentiation?
Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the political, social, and eco-
nomical situation in Majorca became more and more unstable. The events
of 1391, most notably the pogrom, accentuated social strife and led to
considerable political reconfigurations.26 After 1391, the political map was
 The Llotja: Cartography and architecture 151
largely divided into two. On the one hand was the Aragonese faction, which
represented the interests of the aristocracy, and on the other, the Mallorcan
faction, which was supported by more “popular” elements. The conflict
between the two defined political life on the island. Classes were not nece-
ssarily wholly associated with one faction or the other, as was the case with
the merchants, who were members of both factions. However, classes
tended to disregard the dichotomous political divide when the interests of
the class were at stake. Both “aristocratic” and “popular” merchants, for
instance, voted almost in unison on certain financial issues.27 Therefore,
parallel to the formation of bipartisanship, classes sought further cohesion
in social and political matters.28 Against this unstable and contentious
climate, political factions and social classes sought to fortify capital and
buttress interests at the expense of their rivals. In short, the situation in
Majorca was one of partisan politics anchored to a large degree in class
consciousness.
The case of the corner statues demonstrates that the merchants subscribed
to this type of politics as they were concerned with asserting ownership,
making territorial claims, and identifying allies. Moreover, as Joan Domenge
i Mesquida suggested, the plan of the Llotja was probably influenced by that
of the Tour Maubergeon, the donjon of the Palais de Justice of Poitiers
(Guillem Sagrera likely witnessed the contemporary reconstruction of the
palace by Guy de Dammartin, the Duke of Berry’s architect).29 In many
respects, the Llotja resembles a keep (in addition to its resemblance to a
church), with its four corner towers, square plan, overall robustness, and
conspicuous crenellations. These fortification elements contribute to the
sense of the Llotja being a manifestation of the merchants’ effort to secure,
fortify, and buttress assets in view of the confrontational and tense politics
they faced.
The differentiation or entrenchment strategy of the merchants could also
be interpreted as an act of defiance whose target was the King of Aragon and
his deputies in particular. Hostility towards the king grew stronger in
Majorca during the first decades of the fifteenth century. In 1401, King
Martin the Humane even deposed and replaced the elected jurats.30 Martin
died in 1410, leaving no legitimate descendants. In the ensuing succession
struggle, many Mallorcans, especially those belonging to the “popular”
party, supported the candidacy of James II, Count of Urgell. When Ferdinand
of Antequera was finally elected as King in 1412, he ordered the island’s
lieutenant to arrest prominent Mallorcans who, fearing royal prosecution,
planned on leaving the island.31 Thus, it is no surprise that none of the corner
statues point to the Almudaina—the royal palace and the seat of the king’s
representatives—despite its importance and adjacency to the Llotja. The
royal outposts were purposefully ignored. Interestingly, St. Catherine was
known for defying emperor Maxentius, who eventually ordered her torture
and execution. At the Llotja, her statue is shown trampling a vanquished
king under her feet (Figure 7.3). Moreover, the language of the contract pays
152 Doron Bauer
lip service to the king by stating that St. Clare should face the Almudaina,
but in reality (and perhaps even subversively), it points to the convent of
Santa Clara. Also in the contract, the merchant guild dictates that a statue
of the Virgin should be placed over one of the two main portals and an
angel—the merchants’ emblem—over the second.32 Once again directions
are specified—the statue of the Virgin should face the Almudaina. However,
the actual portals are reversed: it is the angel of the merchants rather
than the Virgin that faces the Almudaina. The vane that topped the highest
tower of the Almudaina may explain this unplanned change of orientation.
The vane was, in fact, a statue of an angel that was one of the most well-
known features of the city of Palma. The vane-angel was the source of the
tower’s name—La Torre del Angel. Due to their height, the tower of the angel
together with the cathedral’s campanile offered the first view of the city to
mariners approaching the port.33 The tower of the angel became the symbol
of the Almudaina and as a result, a symbol of royal power.34 The post-
contract decision to place the “angel of the merchants” on the side facing the
“royal” angel could be read as a mise-en-scène of a duel between the two.
The angel, as defender of trade and tradesmen, challenges the royal angel
over the political dominance of the city.35
The tension between Emperor Charles V’s description of the Llotja as a
church and the modern conception of the merchants as forerunners of
secularism is resolved, then, by realizing that the merchants employed
religious imagery like the corner statues not just for religious purposes,
but also as symbolical topographical pointers. By doing so, the merchants
employed cartographic thinking to transform religious iconography into a
potent political tool. Majorca was the home of one of the most important
and advanced cartographic schools in the Late Middle Ages, and therefore,
it was only natural that the merchants of Palma were aware of the power of
maps to make political arguments.36

Notes
1 S. Aldana Fernández, La Lonja de Valencia (Valencia: Valencia Biblioteca
Valenciana, 1988).
2 R. S. Smith, The Spanish Guild Merchant: A History of the Consulado, 1250–
1700 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1940).
3 G. Alomar Esteve, Guillem Sagrera y la arquitectura gótica del siglo XV
(Barcelona: Editorial Blume, 1970), 117.
4 G. Todeschini, “Theological Roots of the Medieval/Modern Merchants’ Self-
Representation,” in The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, ed. M. C.
Jacob and C. Secretan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 17–46.
5 “De modo que entrant en ciutat y discorrent de la plaça del moll fins a la plaça
de Lonja veya tanta gent per les carreras y finestras, y encara per los terrats y
teuladas, que en senyal de la gran contentacio que mostra tenir de tans pobles y
del loch se gira y volta lo cauall per totas parts, per veure y esser vist de tots.
Y acaminant a la volta de Lonja veent lo objecte del edifici de aquella, demana
si era yglesia.” In J. Odón Gomis, Libre de la benaventurada vinguda del
 The Llotja: Cartography and architecture 153
Emperador y Rey don Carlos en la sua ciutat d’Mallorque y del recebiment que
li fonch fet (Palma de Mallorca: Imprenta Mossen Alcover, 1973), 15.
6 On the sculptural program of the Lonja, see T. Sabater, “El programa escultórico,”
in La Lonja de Palma, ed. F. Climent Guimerá, C. Cantarellas Camps, and
J. Vellés (Palma de Mallorca: Govern de les Illes Balears, Conselleria d’Obres
Públiques i Transport, Direcció General d’Arquitectura i Habitatge, 2003),
107–25.
7 “Item, que lo dit Guillerm dege é sia tengut fer en quascun dels quatre cantons de
la dita Lotge de par de fore, una gran figura, quescuna en son Tabernacla
corresponent als alters Tabernaclas dels Angells, ço es en lo cantó que sesgarda
vers lo port de Portupi, San Nicolau; é en lo cantó qui sesgarda vers la Iglesia de
Sant Juan, Sant Juan Bautista; è en lo cantó qui sesgarda vers la Darasana, Santa
Catalina; en lo cantó qui sesgarda vers lo dit Castell Reyal, Santa Clara.” In
D. A. Frau, “La Lonja de Palma: Documentos,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica
Lulliana 1, no. 22 (1885), 4–5; Idem, “La Lonja de Palma,” Bolletí de la Societat
Arqueològica Lulliana 1, no. 14 (1885), 2; Alomar Esteve, Guillem Sagrera, 124.
8 Alomar Esteve, Guillem Sagrera, 117. The church was known also as Sant Joan
del Mar or Sant Joan de Malta.
9 Ibid., 131, and B. Ferrá, “Nuestra lámina,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica
Lulliana 1, no. 21 (1885), 5.
10 Gabriel Llompart, El Cavaller i la princesa: El Sant Jordi de Pere Nisard i la
ciutat de Mallorca (Palma de Mallorca: Consell de Mallorca, Departament de
Cultura Sa Nostra, Caixa de Balears, 2001).
11 F. Sevillano Colom, and J. Pou Muntaner, Historia del puerto de Palma de Mallorca
(Palma de Mallorca: Diputación Provincial de Baleares, 1974); G. Llompart,
“País, paisatge i paisanatge a la taula de Sant Jordi de Pere Niçard,” in El Cavaller
i la princesa: El Sant Jordi de Pere Nisard i la ciutat de Mallorca (Palma de
Mallorca: Consell de Mallorca, Departament de Cultura Sa Nostra, Caixa
de Balears, 2001), 63–64.
12 J. de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1993), 22.
13 Interestingly, in the thirteenth century, a Majorcan merchant ship named after
St. Nicholas was to appear frequently in archival records. See R. Vose, “Friars
on the Edge: Socio-Economic Networking and the Dominicans of Conquered
Mallorca,” in Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed.
T. E. L. Chubb and E. D. Kelley (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 70 n. 35, 72.
14 E. de Kotska Aguiló, “Fundació y documents relatius al hospital de Sta. Catalina
de Pobres,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 10 (1904), 365–88.
15 D. Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 216–34, esp. 229.
16 On the convent of Santa Clara, see J. C. Sastre i Barceló, Espiritualitat i vida
quotidiana al Monestir de Santa Clara: Ciutat de Mallorca, segles XIII–XV
(Palma de Mallorca: Lleonard Muntaner, 2006).
17 The altarpiece includes one scene that takes place at sea, alluding to the saint’s
role as the patron of seamen. The miracle depicted is that of St. Nicholas Cutting
Down Diana’s Tree. See de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 23.
18 F. Fita, “Fundación y primer periodo del Monasterio de Santa Clara en
Barcelona,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 27 (1895), 273–314,
436–89; B. Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares Between Foundation
and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 90.
19 A. Campaner y Fuertes, Cronicón mayoricense: noticias y relaciones históricas de
Mallorca desde 1229 á 1800 (Palma de Mallorca: Juan Colamar y Salas, 1881),
198; J. Serra i Barceló, “Un procés per faltes de 1417 i el context de les banderies
(Mallorca-Segle XV),” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 61 (2005), 17.
154 Doron Bauer
20 L. Lliteras, “Pergaminos del archivo del convento de Santa Clara de Palma,”
Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 16 (1916–17), 132–33.
21 J. C. Sastre i Barceló, “L’arxiu del monestir de Santa Clara: Notes per a la seva
catalogació, conservació i difusió,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana
48 (1992), 284–85.
22 For example, E. Fajarnés, “Fabricacion de sedas y treceopelos en Mallorca
(siglos XVI al XVIII),” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 22 (1929),
193. At least from the fifteenth century, the authorities made a substantial effort
to develop silk industry in Majorca; see M. J. Deyá Bauzá, “Extranjeros en el
comercio y la manufactura del Reino de Mallorca en los siglos XVI y XVII,”
Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 62 (2006), 43–68.
23 E. Paulino Montero, El patrocinio arquitectónico de los Velasco (1313–1512):
Construcción y contexto de un linaje en la Corona de Castilla (PhD diss.,
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2015).
24 J. Pelikan, “The Otherworldly World of the Paradiso,” in Dante Alighieri,
ed. H. Bloom (Philadelphia: InfoBase Publishing, 2004), 171.
25 A. Zaragozà Catalàn argues that the twisted columns allude to the columns in
Solomon’s Temple in “Inspiración bíblica y presencia de la Antigüedad en el
episodio tardogótico valenciano,” in Historia de la ciudad II: Territorio, sociedad
y patrimonio, ed. S. Dauksis Ortolá and F. Taberner Pastor (Valencia: Universitat
de Valencia, 2002), 165–83. See also J. Domenge i Mesquida, “Guillem Sagrera,”
in Gli ultimi indipendenti: Architetti del gotico nel Mediterraneo tra XV e XVI
secolo, ed. M. R. Nobile and E. Garofalo (Palermo: Caracol, 2007), 73.
26 A. Santamaría Arández, El reino de Mallorca en la primera mitad del siglo XV
(Palma de Mallorca: Diputación provincial de Baleares, 1955); Idem, “Mallorca
en el siglo XIV,” Anuario de estudios medievales 7 (1970–71), 253–78; P. Cateura
Bennàsser, “El bipartidismo en la Mallorca de comienzos del siglo XV,” Bolletí de
la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana 41 (1985), 157–70; Serra i Barceló, “Un procés
per faltes de 1417.”
27 Bennàsser, “El bipartidismo.”
28 Despite their central role in Majorca since the conquest, the caballeros, for
example, began to further coordinate their actions by means of the confraternity
of Sant Jordi only in the fourteenth century and especially at the beginning of the
fifteenth. C. Pons Llabrés, La condición de los caballeros en el reino de Mallorca,
Siglos XIII–XV (Universitat de les Illes Balears, 1985).
29 Domenge i Mesquida, “Guillem Sagrera,” 70–71.
30 Santamaría Arández, El reino de Mallorca, 24; Serra i Barceló, “Un procés per
faltes de 1417,” 16–17.
31 Bennàsser, “El bipartidismo,” 165–66.
32 Two more angel statues were placed at the center of the Llotja’s northeastern and
southwestern sides. The merchants appropriated the angel as their emblem in
1409. Both the monumental angel that crowns the Llotja’s eastern entrance and
an angel on a plaque commemorating the building of a portico in 1444 on
the façade of the Consulado del Mar carry a phylactery that identify them as the
“Defender of Trade.” Several angels are to be found on the ceiling bosses as well.
See Sabater, “El programa escultórico,” 121; Alomar Esteve, Guillem Sagrera,
118–24; A. Juan Vicens, “La actividad escultórica de Huguet Barxa: Nuevas
perspectivas,” Archivo Español de Arte 87, no. 347 (2014), 209–26.
33 G. Llompart, “El angel-veleta de la Almudaina de Mallorca (siglo XIV),” Studia
Luliana 15 (1971), 211–20.
34 For example, the banner of the city and Kingdom of Majorca featured the angel.
See the unnumbered figure between pages 12–13 in B. Pons i Fàbregues, La
Bandera de la ciudad de Mallorca (Palma de Mallorca: Establ. Tip. de Francisco
Soler Prats, 1907).
 The Llotja: Cartography and architecture 155
35 According to the contract, the three statues of the angels were supposed to be
accompanied by the royal coat of arms and the city’s coat of arms. There are no
traces of these coats of arms, which means they were either lost or never realized.
If the latter is true then the decision not to place the royal coat of arms next to
that of the city might be read as an act of defiance against royal power as well.
See Frau, “La Lonja de Palma.”
36 In the fifteenth century, the majority of Palma’s mapmakers lived in the area of
the Llotja. See G. Llompart, “Registro de los cartógrafos medievales activos en
el puerto de Mallorca,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 27 (1997), 1117–48.
8 The travels of a merchant
throughout the Islamic World1
Cecilia Fumagalli

When the night falls, the merchant traveling with his camels through deserts
and mountains stops at a caravanserai along the roadside. This is where he
can find all the services he needs for himself and for his animals, including
a room, public bath, mosques, stables, food and storage facilities. Once
rested, the merchant can continue his travel to the town. Here, after going
through the city gate that physically cuts the town from the surrounding
territory, the merchant has finally arrived. First, he will look for a place to
stay, to store his goods before selling them and to let the camels rest. Walking
though the suq streets, the merchant finds another caravanserai. This one is
different because of its location within the city. Here there is no public bath
or mosque as these are already present in the urban structure. In order to find
them, the merchant will have to find them along the suq.
One could argue that the Islamic urban world is based on the idea of suq,
or market, which is the most visible part of the urban structure aside from
the mosque. The town is, in fact, a meeting point for commercial trade. The
cities and towns of the Islamic world are connected by caravan routes.
Goods travel along these routes to suqs and bazars in the cities that are
part of a larger territorial system. In order to understand the Islamic urban
and territorial structure, we will put ourselves in the shoes of a merchant
traveling from town to town to sell his goods.
This chapter aims to define the essential structure of the Islamic cities
from a specific and particular point of view by analyzing the mechanisms of
trading and commerce, which represent one of the main activities in the
Islamic urban world. First, there is an important and essential clarification
to be made in order to avoid misinterpretations about the meaning of
“Islamic city,” to which scholars and researchers have devoted a great
number of books and essays.2 This chapter acknowledges that the adjective
“Islamic” in relation to the noun “city” is here adopted only to refer to a
specific cultural (the diffusion of a religion) and geographic (a territory
extending from Maghreb to India) milieu. In a few words, the adjective
“Islamic” is a shorthand to “denote the civilization . . . of the societies
whose people profess adherence in some manner to Islam.”3 Therefore, the
purpose of this chapter is to understand the urban fabric of the cities of
 A merchant’s travels in the Islamic World 157
the Islamic world, starting from their founding feature: the market, which,
according to the different local cultures and languages, assumes different
terms (suq in Arabic, bazar in Persian), yet maintains its primary meaning
and essence.4 Here, I will not refer to a particular city or town, but to all of
them, because, as Roberto Berardi affirmed, “each city is all cities.”5 Any
possible reference to a specific city of the Islamic world in this text should,
in fact, be considered as a practical example able to demonstrate, through
mental images, the general characters. This chapter will try to put the reader,
and the author, in the shoes of a merchant traveling throughout the Islamic
world, from one city to another, to sell and buy goods. Along the journey,
we—the merchants—will virtually experience the urban settlement of the
Islamic world in its built form, and the territory in which it is located.
The importance in investigating the urban artifact in this specific cultural
and religious context lies in the acknowledgment of what William Marçais
affirmed in 1928: “L’Islam . . . s’affirme dès son apparition comme une
religion essentiellement citadine.”6 By relating the religion to an extended
physical space, which is not only the congregational mosque, but the entire
urban artifact, Marçais highlights the importance of the city both from a
religious—the city as the place where the believer could comprehensively
experience its religion—and a social point of view—the city as the place for
social relations and exchanges.
Many researchers (not only in the field of architecture and urban studies,
but also in the fields of economics, law, social studies, etc.) have associated
the city of the Islamic world to the idea of market as the basic, fundamental
element upon and from which the entire urban artifact is generated and
shaped.7 Louis Massignon, one of the first Orientalists to have devoted his
work to this problem, affirms that “the Muslim city is . . . a market at the
intersection of streets” and that the city in the Islamic world “is essentially
based on the idea of market.”8 Moreover, the French scholar, in a lecture
given in Paris in 1920, expressed the idea that “the city functions merely as
an extension of the markets. It is a crystallization of the market, which is
transformed into a centre where the various materials bought and sold are
crafted by artisans.”9 The archaeologist Jean Sauvaget seems to agree with
Massignon, when, in his masterpiece on Damascus, he wrote that “the suqs
. . . are finally the chief raison d’être of the agglomeration.”10 Years later,
Eugen Wirth states that “the cities of the Middle East are specifically marked
out by their suq, which is the main commercial quarter” and, further on in
his essay, that “the suq is, indeed, the characteristic sign and almost striking
distinctive feature of cities of Islamic culture.”11 George Marçais, following
Ibn Khaldun’s theories, argues that an urban agglomeration, in order to be
considered a city, should have a market as well as the congregational
mosque.12
The market is not, obviously, the sole distinguishing element of the Arab-
Islamic city, but it is, according to the vast literature produced since the
beginning of the last century, the most important element around which
158 Cecilia Fumagalli
the city is planned and shaped, both from spatial and social points of view
(Figure 8.1). Georges Marçais clarifies this attitude:

I have said that the center was occupied by the Great Mosque, the old
political center, the religious and intellectual center of the city, where
the courses were given to students from the various schools. Near the
mosque, the religious center, we find the furnishers of sacred items,
the suqs of the candle sellers, the merchants of incense and other perfume.
Near the Mosque, the intellectual center, we find also the bookstores, the
bookbinders and, near the latter, the suq of the merchants of leather and
the slipper [babouche]-makers which also use leather. This introduces us
to the clothing industries and the commerce in cloth, which occupy so
large a place in the life of Islamic cities. The essential organ is a great
market, a group of markets that carry the mysterious name, Qaiçariya.
The Qaiçariya . . . is a secure place encircled by walls where foreign mer-
chants, above all Christians, come to display their cloth materials brought
from all European countries. The Qaiçariya, placed not far from the
great Mosque, as in Fez or in Marrakech, for example, is a vital centre of
economic activity in the city. Beyond the commerce of textiles, of the
jewelers, the makers of hats [chechias], we find the makers of furniture
and of kitchen utensils . . . Farther out are the blacksmiths. Approaching
the gates one finds places for caravans . . . then the sellers of provisions
brought in from the countryside . . . In the quarters of the periphery were
the dyers, the tanners, and, almost outside the city, the potters.13

Gustave von Grunebaum has largely drawn on Marçais’s theories on the

urbanism of the Islamic world (even if mostly referred to are the Maghreb
cities) in his essay on the urban structure of Muslim towns.14
The journey begins outside a city gate (in Arabic båb, pl. åb≠åb) of an
undefined town. The merchant is in the undetermined and unlimited space
represented by the desert ready to leave, with his camels and goods, for the
suq of another city, some miles away. 15 The territory in which the two cities
are located is organized and structured around many commercial routes
linking one city to the other, one market to the other. By observing any map
illustrating the caravan routes throughout the Islamic world, one can
understand how commerce has a prominent role in the structure and in the
construction of the in-between cities territory. The urban settlements are, in
fact, all connected to one another through precise caravan routes formalizing
a polarized network of paths and nodes. Within this network many people
travel. They are not only merchants, but also students and scholars visiting
schools and universities, as well as pilgrims on their journey to Mecca (hajj).
For each of these travelers, for each of the caravan routes, the market is the
final stop-over of this worldwide vast territorial system connecting Europe
to North Africa, Near East and Middle East, up to India and China, often
crossing arid lands and open water.
 A merchant’s travels in the Islamic World 159
The caravan trade was fundamental for the survival of the urbanized life
of the entire Islamic world and, for this reason, it was soon organized to
support travelers in their journeys. Authorities and wealthy individuals
were, in fact, occupied in the construction of roads, water cisterns and
shelters, while the nomads of the deserts and the steppes were in charge of
the security and the sustenance of the travelers.16
After a long journey through the dusty roads, the merchants (and all the
other travelers) need shelter to rest with their camels and their goods could be
protected from robberies. This is possible in the caravanserais located all
along the commercial routes, often spaced a one-day journey from one
another. The caravanserai is a small, fortified city, and therefore presents most
of the elements characterizing the urban Islamic environment. In fact, inside
this building, one can find most of the typical functions hosted and offered by
the city. There is a thick wall to protect its inhabitants and define a limit
between an inside and an outside. Within the caravanserai there are a number
of services to sustain the life of the users during their stay. Around a court-
yard, in the middle of which is often located a fountain or a water basin, are
arranged, in form of elemental and repetitive cells, bedrooms, stables, and a
series of services for the stay, such as lavatories, kitchens, public baths
(hammam) and small mosques or prayer rooms. Paraphrasing Leon Battista
Alberti, the caravanserai is a big city and the city is a small caravanserai.17
Protected overnight from the dangers of the desert, and rested and clean
after the first morning prayer, travelers leave the caravanserai to continue
their journey toward the suq in the city. Compared to the limitless space of
the desert, the city offers to the gaze of the traveler a well-defined, protected,
and measurable form. Before reaching the walls, outside one of the seven
gates of the city, there is a livestock market. This market is not included
within the urban walls since the nomads, who are those in charge of livestock
in the extended spaces of the desert, rarely enter the city.18
The merchant is now close to the city. A high wall stands out in front of
him, while behind the wall is the town from which noise and odors
emanate. The wall is the first and the main element dividing the space of
the city from the immeasurable space of the desert. It defines the limit
between the inner and the outer space, as well as the maximum extension
of the urban fabric. The merchant enters the wall through its gate, whose
articulated configuration is not far from that of a true building. Within
the city the suq continues to the opposite gate. The formal arrangement
of the markets in the Islamic world differs from town to town, but it gener-
ally consists of one or more streets, often covered, leading from one gate
to the opposite one and giving access to hammams, mosques, foundouq
and, by more articulated spatial mechanisms, to residential areas. This
road network is the backbone upon which the structure of the city is built
and progressively shaped.
Upon arrival the merchant must find a place to stay, to store the
merchandise, and to let the camels rest.
160 Cecilia Fumagalli
The streets become more crowded as we approach the Great Mosque.
The merchant is looking for a foundouq if in Maghreb; a khan, if in Persia
or Syria; a han, if in Turkey; or a wakala, if in Egypt.19 Although sharing
with the extra-urban caravanserai a set of formal and functional principles,
the foundouq is an inner space adapted to a specific urban topography, since
it can be interpreted as the continuation of the suq in a semi-private environ-
ment. There is a central courtyard gathering at the ground floor, as well as
warehouses, commercial spaces for trade wholesale, laboratories for the
transformation of raw goods, stables, and close to the entrance, small cells
dedicated to personnel charged with surveillance and services provision. On
the main floor, around the open-air walkway running around the courtyard,
there are private rooms for the merchants and offices for negotiations. In the
urban caravanserai there is no place for bathing, cooking or praying. All
these functions are, in fact, performed outside the foundouq in dedicated
buildings located in the space of the city. The foundouq is an offshoot, or a
fold, of the suq structure, therefore it is subject to the same rules. As the suq
was divided into specialized sectors according to the activity performed, it
happened sometimes that the merchants of a certain country or a specific
city chose a specific foundouq for their headquarters, which became a sort
of embassy or, at least, a meeting point for the travelers of a particular
region who found themselves in that city.20
Once the goods and animals are in the foundouq, it is time for the
merchant to freshen up and, if Muslim, to make the ritual ablutions before
the prayer. The merchant then walks along the suq to find the public bath
(hammam), which, together with the suq and the mosque, “is one of the
essential part of the Muslim city.”21 Inherited from the hellenized urban
cultures of the Middle and Near East, the hammam has gradually been
assimilated in the Islamic society and, with the spread of Islam, has been
exported to new territories, becoming an important part of daily life and a
fundamental element in the construction of the city of the Islamic world
from Maghreb to India.
The public bath fulfills the needs of citizens in multiple ways. The water
ritual has always been essential to get back to a condition of purity of the
believer, after travel, disease, release from prison, before wearing new
clothes or getting married. Moreover, the hammam was also a meeting point
for both men and women (separately) used as a gathering place to spend
time or to negotiate new deals, as it was for the Romans and the Greeks.
From the classical public bath, the hammam took, with some major
adaptations, the spatial composition. But, if the former was organized along
the rigid functional and spatial sequence of apodyterium (dressing room),
frigidarium (cold pool), tepidarium (lukewarm pool), calidarium (hot
pool), and laconicum (steam bath), the Islamic hammam doesn’t have the
tepidarium and gives more importance to the maslah (the ancient
apodyterium), which becomes a place to stay—it is here, in fact, that the
users spend most of their time—thus it is more crowded and larger than
 A merchant’s travels in the Islamic World 161
other cells of which the hammam consists. Once in the maslah, the merchant
undresses and heads to the bayt al-awwal (the ancient tepidarium) and,
through the wastani (a small space for the ablutions) before reaching the
bayt al-harara (the ancient calidarium), usually domed and surrounded by
small rooms and steam baths. Here, in a quiet environment, the merchant
and others are protected from the chaos dominating the city.
On Friday, clean and rested, the merchant heads to the mosque for prayer.
“The mosque is the center of the Muslim life and, at the beginning, of the
entire life.”22 Although the role and architecture of the mosque has changed,
depending on the dynasty or religious needs, the mosque remains the center
of public life as well as the meeting point between the ruling elites and the
entire urban community. Beyond its role as a sacred space, the mosque in its
earliest form was a multifunctional space. While the public assemblies took
place, panhandlers and wayfarers were sheltered, commercial negotiations
were concluded, savants discussed religion and jurisprudence, students were
taught. Given its established role within the civic and religious life of the
Muslim society, the masjid al-jami (the Friday Mosque) occupies a pivotal
place in the construction of the city. The Mosque is usually oriented towards
Mecca, the Holy City, towards which each believer should pray. From a
morphological point of view, even in the most spatially complex cases, the
mosque consists of two main recurrent elements: the enclosure wall defining
an empty space and the qibla wall, which orients the mosque to Mecca.
With the passing of time, in order to fulfill the needs of an evolving society,
all the different civic functions performed in the mosque were gradually
relocated to be hosted in new and specific buildings, whose architectural
configuration, however, directly originates from that of the mosque. This
happened, for example, in the case of the madrasa (the school), which arose
as an independent institution, physically separated but always close to the
mosque. Given their common functional purposes, as for the mosque,
the morphological layout of the madrasa is based on a large courtyard
around which classrooms and bedrooms are arranged, in a protected and
exclusive environment. However, if compared to the essential spatial struc-
ture of the mosque, the madrasa represents an advancement in terms
of typological articulation and complexity. The wall encircling the large
courtyard is thicker to host students’ cells which are in turn arranged, in
some extremely mature examples, around secondary and smaller courtyards
crowning the central one.
In the course of his journey through the Islamic trading world, the
merchant will have visited many buildings, each one hosting different func-
tions. It is, indeed, on the differentiation of functions that the Islamic city is
based. The architectural layout characterizing the foundouq, the hammam,
the mosque or the madrasa, are based on similar schemes, where the court-
yard, intended as the boundary element defining an inner and an outer space,
whether covered or open to the sky, is the most intimate element of the design
composition.
162 Cecilia Fumagalli
A merchant’s journey experiences at once both the inner and the outer
parts of the city. Moving from a point to another, what was an ‘‘inside’’
turns into an ‘‘outside’’ and, vice-versa, what was an ‘‘outside’’ becomes an
‘‘inside.” It is on such couples of sequential dichotomies, on the opposition
of an ‘‘inside’’ against an ‘‘outside,’’ that the city of the Islamic world is
based.23 This first opposition of terms raises a second: the one between
‘‘visible’’ and ‘‘invisible,’’ since what is ‘‘inside’’ is generally invisible from
outside and vice-versa, as a consequence of the so-called ‘‘principle of
progressive and mutual exclusion’’ that governs the physical pattern of the
Islamic urban fabric. According to the exclusion mechanism, merchants
walked through the city experiencing the urban space and the architectural
forms, but they weren’t allowed into residential quarters or private houses.
Merchants, in fact, are a particular kind of urban users and, for this reason,
they are not allowed in the most protected and thus invisible part of the
urban fabric.
The proposed schemes try to simplify and clarify these mechanisms of
oppositions, which are organized according to successive levels of exclusion
from the territorial scale to that of the house, the basic cell composing the
fabric (Figure 8.1).24 The shift from one level to the other one occurs through
the reiteration of the same mechanism, in other words through the continuous
opposition between “outside” and “inside” and vice-versa. At the first level
we have a number of cities linked to one another inside the Oumma, which is
the entire community of the believers. What is included within in the Oumma
is an “inside” if compared to the “outside,” corresponding to the lands of the
non-believers. At the second level the “inside-outside” mechanism repeats the
Islamic spatial order, although within an inverted perspective. The space
formerly intended as an “inside,” crossed by the trade routes for caravans and
included within the Oumma, now becomes the “outside” that surrounds each
city. Consequently, each walled city becomes an “inside.” The city is a closed
setting and the urban wall is what divides it from the outside, from the desert
surrounding the city. The urban walls divide, but at once mutually connect
through the urban gates the inner and the outer sides characterizing the second
level of that multi-scalar reading. At the third level the merchant discovers
the same opposition between “inside” and “outside.” The “islands” for they
are not blocks—or quarters—cluster the urban environment becoming the
inner place reserved the inhabitants, and the urban voids, the main streets
connecting one gate to the other, together with the buildings overlooking
them are an outside This is where the suqs are and this is what the merchants,
or the foreigners, are allowed to witness within the “visible” part of the city.
The fourth level concerns the built urban fabric. In this case the “outside”
is the built strip overlooking the main streets crossing the city. The “inside” is
the inner nucleus of the residential urban fabric that is accessible via narrow
pedestrian paths, often blind-alleys (darb). In this sense, there is a “visible”
city—the “outside,” that is open to everyone’s gaze and there is also a
privileged or “invisible” city. This “inside” is visible only to those who
Figure 8.1 Five levels of the Islamic City from the merchant’s perspective (Image by Author).
164 Cecilia Fumagalli
actually live in that area, mainly accessible via a private blind-alley. The fifth
and last level is the residential unit. In this case, contrary to what one may
think, the central courtyard is the “inside,” being at once the heart as well
as the most regular and geometrical part of the house. The courtyard is a
distribution space and the place where the family spend the greatest part of
their life. The rooms surounding the courtyard are inside the residential
district, yet outside the courtyard defining the central space while protecting
the interior from the urban spaces beyond.
This narrative and spatial analysis demonstrates how in the Islamic city,
the composing elements have different connotations, almost antithetical,
changing with the distance and perspective from which the merchant
observes the urban fabric: “the Muslim citizen is not properly a citizen . . .
Depending on the circumstances, his horizon is narrower or wider; if
narrower, it is limited to his family group, to the people of his house, to the
clan to which he is related by blood; if wider, it is extended beyond the urban
walls, beyond the region or nation borders, because it embraces the Oumma,
the limitless world of the brothers of Islam.”25

Notes
1 The present essay is indebted to many theories elaborated by renowned scholars
and researchers. Among them, it is worth citing the work of the Italians (listed
in alphabetical order) Paolo Cuneo (Storia dell’urbanistica. Il mondo islamico,
Laterza, 1986), Florindo Fusaro (La città islamica, Laterza, 1984), Ludovico
Micara (Architetture e spazi dell’Islam. Le istituzioni collettive e la vita urbana,
Rome: Carruci, 1985), and Attilio Petruccioli (Dar-al-Islam: architetture del
territorio nei paesi islamici, Rome: Carruci, 1985) on the urban fabric of the
Islamic world.
2 An interesting and detailed study providing an overview on this matter is the one
by André Raymond. See André Raymond, “Islamic City, Arab City: Orientalist
Myths and Recent Views,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 21, no. 1
(1994): 3–18. For first-hand readings, see the texts cited in the following notes
and Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, eds.,
Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1250 (New Haven, CT, London: Yale
University Press, 2001); Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum, “The Structure of
the Muslim Town,” in Islam: Essays on the Nature and Growth of a Cultural
Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955): 52–75; Ira Lapidus,
“Traditional Muslim Cities: Structure and Change,” in L. Carl Brown, ed., From
Madina to Metropolis (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press Inc., 1973): 51–72;
George’s Marçais, “La conception des villes dans l’Islam,” Revue d’Alger no. 2
(1956): 517–533.
3 Cited from Hasan-Uddin Khan, “Editorial: Towards a New Paradigm for the
Architecture and Arts of Islam,” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 1
(2012): 5–22.
4 Usually the bazar is a covered marketplace (in the Middle East), while the suq is
a street market (in Arabic speaking regions).
5 The original Italian quote (“ogni città è in sé tutte le città”) has been translated
by the author. See Roberto Berardi, Saggi su città arabe del Mediterraneo sud
orientale (Florence: Alinea, 2005): 98. For an interesting interpretation of this
 A merchant’s travels in the Islamic World 165
idea, see Filippo De Dominicis, “Landscapes of Desert Architecture and City
Around the Islamic Sahara,” L’architettura delle città—The Journal of the
Scientific Society Ludovico Quaroni 3–4–5 (2014): 61–73, www.academia.
edu/10651247/Landscapes_of_Desert._Architecture_and_City_Around_the_
Islamic_Sahara
6 From William Marçais, “L’islamisme et la vie urbaine,” Comptes rendus des
séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 1 (1928): 89. English
translation by the author: “From its inception, Islam established itself as an
essentially urban religion.”
7 On this subject, see Louis Massignon, “Les corps des métiers et la cité islamique,”
Revue Internationale de la Sociologie 28 (1920): 473–489; William Marçais,
“L’islamisme et la vie urbaine,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 1 (1928): 86–100; Jean Sauvaget, “Esquisse d’une
histoire de la ville de Damas,” Revue des études islamiques 4 (1934): 421–480;
Eugen Wirth, “Villes islamiques, villes arabes, villes orientales? Abdelwahab
Bouhdiba and Dominique Chevalier, in, eds., La ville arabe dans l’Islam: Histoire
et mutations. Une problématique face au changement” (Tunis: Imprimerie
Al-Asria, 1982): 194–197; Florindo Fusaro, “La struttura urbana pubblica: il
suq, strada e mercato,” in Florindo Fusaro, eds., La città islamica (Bari: Editori
Laterza, 1984): 71–90; Ludovico Micara, “Bazar, caravanserragli e spazi
pubblici aperti,” in, Ludovico Micara, ed., Architetture e spazi dell’Islam. Le
istituzioni collettive e la vita urbana (Rome: Carucci Editore, 1985): 123–173.
8 Translated from French by the author. Louis Massignon, “Les corps des métiers
et la cité islamique,” Revue Internationale de la Sociologie 28 (1920): 473.
9 The translation from French is contained in Roberto Berardi “The Spatial
Organization of Tunis Medina,” in Salma K. Jayyusi et al, eds., Human Rights
in Arab Thought: A Reader (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008): 282. For the original
quote, see Louis Massignon, “Les corps des métiers et la cité islamique,” Revue
Des Etudes Islamiques (1950). The article is an adaptation of a lecture given by
Louis Massignon at the Collège de France on 4/2/1920).
10 Quoted from André Raymond, “The Economy of the Traditional City,” in Salma
K. Jayyusi, et al. eds., Human Rights in Arab Thought: A Reader (Leiden,
Boston: Brill, 2008): 731. The original French quote is from Jean Sauvaget,
“Esquisse d’une histoire de la ville de Damas,” Revue des études islamiques 4
(1934): 454.
11 Quoted from André Raymond, “The Economy of the Traditional City,” in Salma
K. Jayyusi et al., eds., Human Rights in Arab Thought: A Reader (Leiden,
Boston: Brill, 2008): 731. The original French quote is from Eugen Wirth, “Villes
islamiques, villes arabes, villes orientales? Une problématique face au change-
ment,” in Abdelwahab Bouhdiba and Dominique Chevalier, eds., La ville arabe
dans l’Islam: Histoire et mutations (Tunis: Imprimerie Al-Asria, 1982): 197.
12 Ibn Khaldun is a Muslim historian from the 15th century. His Muqaddimah,
An Introduction to History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958) represents today
a first-hand source for the understanding of the physical, social and religious
relations structuring the Islamic urban phenomenon. Even if dated back to 1402,
his book is fundamental in order to have a clear view on the “purest” Islamic
society, not yet corrupted by external contaminations. Most of the theories and
the notions contained in this book are at the base of many esteemed 19th-
and 20th-century studies.
13 The original quote, in French, is from Georges Marçais, “L’urbanisme musul-
man,” in Mélanges d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’occident musulman, tome I
“Articles et conférences de Georges Marçais” (Alger: 1957): 230–231. The text
was first published in 1939/1940 in the Revue Africaine, after a conference held
166 Cecilia Fumagalli
in Tunis in 1939. The English translation is from Janet L. Abu-Lughod, “The
Islamic City. Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, no. 2 (1987): 156–157.
14 Gustave von Grunebaum, “The Structure of the Muslim Town,” in Islam.
Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1955): 141–157.
15 Here, the term ‘‘desert’’ doesn’t refer to the common image or idea of an expanse
of sand, but, more precisely, to a vast territory, unmeasurable and undefined
which assumes the appearance of a sandy land.
16 See Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri, “The Economy in Muslim Societies,” in Francis
Robinson, ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 124–163.
17 Leon Battista Alberti wrote: “If the city is like a great house, and the house in its
turn a small city, cannot the varied parts of the house be considered miniature
buildings?” See Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria. On the Art of
Building in Ten Books (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
18 It is important to note here the differences historically and religiously set between
the sedentary inhabitants of towns and the nomads of the desert, the latter not
considered part of the Oumma (i.e. the believers community), as they do not live
following the social rules of the settled. Islamic religion and culture mark a
pronounced separation between nomadic life—in the tents of the desert without
rules—and sedentary life: nomads, because of their settlement models and habits,
are considered as barbarian savages, as opposed to the Muslims, who, by living
in cities, could experience justice and cultural, scientific and political progress. In
a few words: to be Muslim one must live in the city (that is why nomads, when
converting to Islam, move to towns). On the opposition between citizens and
nomads, see Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1958). On the opposition between urban structure and
desert, see Attilio Petruccioli, Dar-al-Islam: architetture del territorio nei paesi
islamici (Rome: Carucci Editore, 1985).
19 In the Italian Maritime Republics (Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa and Venice) there were
similar buildings, called fondaci (sing. fondaco). The function and the organiza-
tion of the Italian caravanserai was very similar to that of the Arab and Middle
Eastern regions. See Ennio Concina, Fondaci. Architettura, arte e mercatura tra
Levante, Venezia e Alemagna (Venice: Marsilio, 1997).
20 The same thing happened in Venice, for example, where Germans and Turks had
their fondaco travelers (Fondaco dei Tedeschi and Fondaco dei Turchi).
21 The French quote was translated by the author. William Marçais, “L’islamisme
et la vie urbaine,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres 1 (1928): 97. See also Ugo Monneret de Villard, Introduzione allo
studio dell’archeologia islamica (Venice, Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione
culturale, 1962).
22 Translated from Italian by the author. Ugo Monneret de Villard, Introduzione
allo studio dell’archeologia islamica (Venice, Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione
culturale, 1962): 105.
23 The following theories are based on the studies of the Italian architect Roberto
Berardi, who has devoted his work to the analysis of the Tunis Medina and Sfax
since the 1950s, with the aim to extend his conclusions to other cities of the
Arab-Islamic world. See Roberto Berardi, “Espace et ville en pays d’Islam,” in
Dominique Chevallier, ed., L’espace social de la ville arabe (Paris: Maisonneuve
& Larose, 1979): 99–123. See also Roberto Berardi, Saggi su città arabe del
Mediterraneo sud orientale (Florence: Alinea, 2005).
24 Roberto Berardi, cited in the previous note, named the basic unit “élément
discrét” and the city, composed of the “éléments discréts,” “organisme complex.”
 A merchant’s travels in the Islamic World 167
See Roberto Berardi, “Espace et ville en pays d’Islam,” in Dominique Chevallier,
ed., L’espace social de la ville arabe (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1979): 101.
25 Translated from the Italian by the author. The original quote is: “Il cittadino
musulmano non è propriamente un cittadino. L’orgoglio municipale e lo spirito
civico gli sono estranei. . . . Il suo orizzonte è, secondo i casi, più stretto o più
vasto; se più stretto si limita al gruppo familiare, alla gente della sua casa, al clan
cui è legato da vincoli di sangue; se più vasto esso si estende ben al di là della
cinta urbana, dei limiti della provincia o della nazione stessa, perché abbraccia
la oumma, il mondo immenso dei fratelli nell’Islam.” It has not been possible to
have access to the original source in French. The quote from Georges Marçais,
“Considérations sur les villes musulmanes et notamment sur le rôle du
Mohtasib,” La Ville 6 (1955): 249–262 has been found in Ludovico Micara,
Architettura e spazi dell’Islam. Istituzioni collettive e la vita urbana (Rome:
Carucci Editore, 1985): 56.
9 Savannah’s Custom House
A peculiar construction of
galvanized iron, apparently
durable and well-adapted to
a southern climate
Dennis De Witt

Isaiah Rogers’ Boston Merchants Exchange (1840–43, demolished) and John

S. Norris’ Savannah Custom House (1846–52) share a unique, accordion-
pleated, self-spanning wrought iron roof structure.1 The technical signifi-
cance of this unusual roof construction has only recently been recognized.
This chapter explores and compares the “peculiar” roof design shared by
these two buildings, together with other shared early fireproof features,
including iron staircases, iron floor beams supporting masonry vaulting,
and trabeated Quincy granite construction. While the Savannah Custom
House has long been part of a National Historic Landmark District, it
merits additional recognition for its bold structural design choices hidden
within an exceptionally well-crafted, if stylistically conservative, monumen-
tal Greek Revival building. The Savannah Custom House remains in use as a
Federal office building for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Department of Homeland Security. It now supplants William Strickland’s
Tennessee State Capital of 1845–59 as having the oldest known extant, major
US wrought iron roof structure.

A brush with history

The Savannah Custom House roof also played a small, supporting role in
an important symbolic event, leading towards the conclusion of the Civil
War. As General William Tecumseh Sherman subsequently recounted it:
“On the morning of December 22nd [1864], I . . . rode down Bull Street to
the Custom House . . .” [There he dismounted, strode across its lobby’s
iron beam-supported, self-spanning granite-slab floor, mounted first the
granite flying main staircase, then the iron winder leading to the attic, and
climbed up onto the iron roof.] “From . . . which we had an extensive view
over the city . . .” That day he dispatched his famous telegram to Abraham
Lincoln.2
 Savannah’s Custom House 169
To his Excellency
President Lincoln
I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy
guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.
W.T. Sherman,
Maj. Gen’l

“Entirely different from any other”

In December 1865, A.B. Mullett, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury
Department, who was in charge of most civil Federal buildings, reported to
the Secretary of the Treasury on an inspection of buildings in the South,
following their return to Federal control. He singled out the iron roof of the
Savannah Custom House, of 1846–52, (Figure 9.1) as being different from
the conventionally corrugated, often relatively low, sloped iron roofs used
on many other Federal buildings constructed over the previous dozen years
by Mullett’s predecessors, Ammi B. Young (1852–62) and Isaiah Rogers
(1862–65), although Rogers neither commenced nor completed much
during his brief wartime tenure.3 Mullett noted that the Savannah “roof is
of galvanized-iron constructed in a manner entirely different from any other

Figure 9.1 1901 The Savannah Custom House and its roof (Library of Congress).
170 Dennis De Witt
building owned by the Government (of which I am aware) it is in excellent
condition, and appears to combine economy with durability to a greater
degree than any roof I have ever inspected and I would recommend that the
plan be tested on other Buildings”4 (Figure 9.2a). There seems no evidence
that he replicated it.5
Two years later, in a report to Congress, Mullett castigated his predecessors’
conventional corrugated iron roofs, while noting: “[T]hough scarcely in
accordance with modern taste, [the Savannah Custom House] is a well
-constructed and durable building. The exterior is of granite and the roof is
of a peculiar construction of galvanized iron apparently durable and well
adapted to a southern climate.”6 He failed to note that the Custom House
also had iron floor beams; most support brick jack arches in its office areas
and attic, while others carry its entrance lobby’s self-spanning granite floor
slabs. Nor perhaps did he know that, like its Quincy granite exterior, its iron
roof, so “well adapted to a southern climate,” came from the north.
More particularly, Mullett seems not to have known that the Savannah
roof, he deemed unique (“peculiar”7) was closely related to an earlier, and
once perhaps truly unique, roof on Isaiah Rogers’ Boston Merchants
Exchange, of 1840–43 (now demolished) (Figure 9.3). And, while the unmen-
tioned iron floor beams in the Savannah Custom House were no longer as
novel in 1865, they certainly had been when installed in 1850.8
Just as the Savannah Custom House was being completed in 1852, Ammi
B. Young, of Vermont and Boston, became the first Supervising Architect of
the US Treasury.9 He was thus the first person to have the consolidated
responsibility for the design and construction of most civil Federal buildings.
Previously, local officials and committees had influenced the choice of
architect, the design, and construction oversight, as was true of Norris’ two
Custom Houses.10 From 1852 to 1862 Young’s office designed and built
throughout the country numerous Federal buildings incorporating iron
roofs, beams, columns, stairs, shutters, and trim.11 He also published some
fifty sets of drawings of these buildings and their iron construction details
(Figure 9.2a).12 While Young’s use of iron reflected its increasing availability,
its rapid incorporation onto American architectural construction, beginning
in the 1850s, was certainly encouraged by the example of his Federal
buildings. Thus, Young has been long recognized as having pioneered US
architectural uses of iron, or at least as having fostered its wider adoption.
Subsequently, from 1863 to 1865, Isaiah Rogers of Boston, New York, and
Cincinnati served three years as de facto Supervising Architect of the
Treasury, until Mullett’s political maneuverings caused Rogers to resign.13
As it happens, Mullett had worked for, and probably to some extent, trained
under Rogers in Cincinnati, beginning in 1856 and concluding in a brief
partnership with him there that ended in 1860.14
Unlike the substantial structurally continuous folded-plate iron roofs of
the Savannah Custom House and the Boston Merchants Exchange, Young’s
and Rogers’ post-1852 Federal buildings had structurally non-continuous
Figures 9.2 Top (a): Iron roof details, Custom House, Wheeling, [West] Virginia.
Ammi B. Young, Architect of the Treasury. The fireproof top floor ceiling
consists of wrought iron bulb-tee beams (or railroad rails) supporting
brick vaulting. The beams are supported by girders, carried on columns.
The corrugated iron roofing rests on light wrought iron tee-beams
supported by cast iron props resting on the bulb-tee beams—elegant, but
the corrugated roofing is too flat. From Plans of Public Buildings in the
Course of Construction Under the Direction of the Secretary of the
Treasury [etc.], Washington, 1855 (Library of Congress). Bottom (b):
Assembly details of Cornell Iron Works’ girder, Bank of the State of New
York, James Renwick, architect, 1855–56, Engineering News, September
10, 1903 (PD).
172 Dennis De Witt

Figure 9.3 Roof of the Boston Merchants Exchange, blown up during the Great Boston
Fire of 1872. Photo by James Wallace Black, 1872 (Boston Public Library).

roofs of lapped, conventional corrugated iron. Unfortunately, these roofs

often had a very low pitch, dictated by their Italianate style.15 Unlike the
Savannah roof, those low sloped, conventional corrugated roofs generally
proved unsatisfactory. Mullett noted that what he referred to as the “frames”
carrying them (often not true trusses) were too light to support slate, so that
lighter, more expensive copper had to be used as a replacement.16
Corrugated iron, little different from that still made, was patented in
Britain in 1829. Those corrugations were, as they remain, of a relative
shallow sine wave form with a relatively small amplitude. The pitch distance
between valleys normally did not exceed about six inches, and the corruga-
tions had about a 4:1 pitch to depth ratio. Most commonly, corrugated iron
sheets have simply self-spanned a limited distance between supporting
purlins, typically without sufficient fastening to create structural continuity
from sheet to sheet—nor to render the seams watertight, depending instead
on sufficient overlap and pitch. Conventional corrugated iron’s great advan-
tage is in combining roofing and roof deck in one building component; that
said, unlike the Savannah roof, it does not normally function as part of the
 Savannah’s Custom House 173
primary spanning structure. Due to patent control, conventional corrugated
iron was not widely manufactured or exported from Britain until the 1840s.17
There seems no documented US use of it before 1849.18

The earliest US iron roof structures

Typically in the nineteenth century, “iron roof” meant an iron roof struc-
ture. A non-structural, iron roof covering was usually called a “tin” or
“metal” roof. Less than a dozen identified US iron roof structures, of which
only two survive, pre-date the Savannah Custom House roof. The earliest
US wrought iron roof trusses were on gas works’ retort houses. Four exam-
ples predating circa 1850 (all now lost) are known. In such buildings, an
often-inflammatory process cooked coal to generate gas for illumination.
William Strickland’s 1835–37 Philadelphia Gas Works retort house roofs
spanned approximately 50 feet and apparently were covered with slate. In
1834, just before their construction, Strickland described and may have
built an iron market hall and “shambles” in Philadelphia.
Purportedly, its iron roof structure was to have supported a corrugated
iron roof; proffered evidence for its construction is less than convincing.19
The earliest well-documented US iron roof trusses (detailed drawings were
published), were two composite cast iron and wrought iron trusses, of prob-
ably circa 1840–41, designed by John Rudolph Niernsee for the Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad.20
Two pre-1850 buildings in or near Boston, Isaiah Rogers’ 1840–43
Merchants Exchange, and the Principal Gate House of the Cochituate
Aqueduct, are the only previous ones to combine iron roof trusses with a
structural self-spanning iron roof surface. The Merchants Exchange’s roof,
clearly related to that of the Savannah Custom House, was also one of only
two known and actually built pre-1850, US iron roof structures on non-
industrial buildings. The other, also near Boston, was on Gore Hall, the
Harvard College library, of 1837–40.21
The oldest known extant US wrought iron roof trusses are those of the two,
relatively small 1848 gatehouses at the ends of the Cochituate Aqueduct,
Boston’s first municipal water supply.22 They differ in character from each
other. The influent gatehouse has alternating trusses and purlin-supported
iron rafters, with the sloping truss chords also serving as rafters. Its ana-
chronistic connection details suggest the sensibility of a blacksmith or a
structural carpenter.23 Its designer was T.E. Sickels, later Chief Engineer and
Superintendent of the Union Pacific Railroad.24 That roof structure probably
carried a non- structural tin roof.25 The aqueduct’s principal gatehouse has 21
simple, repetitive trusses constructed of unmodified bar stock with straight-
forward single-rivet connections reflecting a more confident, “modern” form
of manufacture. They support and are braced by a continuous, wrought iron,
self-spanning, non-corrugated roof of rectangular plates, continuously stitch
rived together, including the bent plates forming the ridge and built-in
174 Dennis De Witt
“Yankee” gutters. While the engineer in charge of the aqueduct was E.S.
Chesbrough, nothing connects him with the specifically design of these
trusses.26 On the other hand, Charles E. Parker, architect of the Brookline
gatehouse, had worked for Richard Bond, architect of Gore Hall, and must
have known its roof. The closely spaced, light Brookline trusses might be
akin to the light construction and apparently “rafter”-like spacing of Bond’s
trusses, of which it was said:

The place of rafters is supplied throughout, by trusses made of light

bars of wrought iron, which are supported by the walls and by iron
purlins ranged through the building on the tops of the Gothic columns,
which rise through the ceiling for this purpose. The thrust of these
trusses is prevented by iron rods, which take the place of tie beams of a
wooden roof.27

The form of these trusses is unknown—and their being supported by

“purlins” seems to invert normal structural logic or at least nomenclature.
It is possible that Bond’s “trusses” were closer in character to the truss-form
“frames” (Mullet’s term) later employed in A.B. Young’s Federal buildings?
(Figure 9.2b).
Prior to the recent recognition of the importance of Savannah Custom
House’s roof system, the oldest known extant US wrought iron roof trusses
on a major building were those of William Strickland’s Tennessee State
capital that were installed in 1852.28 Strickland’s trusses are assembled from
simple, heavy, flat wrought iron bar stock bolted together, not riveted, with
the upper chords loosely braced by purlins of round, wrought iron bars.
They carry a wood plank roof substructure.29

The Boston Merchants Exchange

Isaiah Rogers’ Boston Merchants Exchange, of 1840–43 (roof partly
destroyed 1872, building demolished 1889), was one of antebellum Boston’s
most important and most grandly scaled commercial buildings. It was built
as three differentiated building volumes, collectively extending between two
streets. Party-wall sections facing the streets at either end were linked by a
100- by 56-foot semi-freestanding, rectangular center section.30 The center
section housed Boston’s central Post Office on the ground floor. Above that
was a two-story colonnaded subscribers “reading room”-cum-exchange
hall—which at the time of the Great Boston Fire of 1872 was temporarily
serving as Boston’s US Sub-Treasury.31 The Merchants Exchange was adver-
tised as “fire-proof,” and its roof routinely described as “constructed of
wrought iron and covered with galvanized sheet iron.”32
The Post Office had cast iron columns supporting masonry vaulting, very
probably carried on iron beams. The staircases were “iron and stone,”
suggesting something like the stone-treaded iron stairs of the, then just
 Savannah’s Custom House 175
completed, Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, the earliest such identified
in the US33 By contrast, the one cast iron circular staircase in the Savannah
Custom House leads from the second floor to the attic. Despite the structural
iron used throughout that building, its principal staircase is stone.34
Until recently, the Boston Merchants Exchange roof could have been
known, if at all, only though, technically vague references. A newly recogn-
ized, misleadingly identified, photograph by J.W. Black, at the Boston Public
Library, shows part of the roof subsequent to a gunpowder explosion that
was set off to fight the Great Boston Fire of 1872 (Figure 9.3). The photo-
graph is identified as showing the US Sub-Treasury.35 While technically and
temporarily correct, as of that date, that identification may have led to the
image being understood to show the, yet to be occupied, Sub-Treasury space
in Boston’s new Post Office building—as it happens, designed by Mullett—
that was still under construction in 1872.
The photograph provides the only evidence of the roof’s design and con-
struction. It shows the semi-collapsed roof at one end the 58- by 80-foot,
two-story, reading room-exchange hall. There seems to have been an acces-
sible space containing the roof trusses between the iron roof surface and the
exchange hall’s suspended domed ceiling. That space may have been at
the top floor levels of the office block that was at the front of the building
and of the hotel block that constituted its rear.36 The building also had a
roof-top semaphore-telegraph station and observatory, access to which
would have passed through the roof structure.
Hanging down in the photo is a large section of roof, including a raised
10-foot square clearstory monitor, with the central ventilator. There had been
gas chandeliers at each end of the exchange hall. By extrapolation, it appears
that this monitor may have been one of two flanking the dome that incorpo-
rated ventilators for the two gas chandeliers. The monitor had iron-framed
clearstory glazing on all sides. Assuming it spanned between the two collapsed
trusses seen in the photo and that the trusses were aligned with the columns’
10-foot spacing, the ridges of the roof’s pleats were 15 inches apart. The roof’s
seams, which were just below the pleat ridges, were stitch-riveted, like the flat-
surfaced Brookline roof and the Savannah roof. Continuous iron bars bridged
between the tops of the pleating ridges. There is no indication in the photo of
what was below them on the underside of the roof. However, as discussed
below, they undoubtedly functioned, like some of those on the Savannah roof,
as the upper chords of purlin trusses (Figure 9.6b).
Clearly visible are two spanning trusses whose upper and lower chords
were T-sections fabricated from flat bars apparently joined by angle-clips. A
continuous bar that wrapped around the narrowed ends of the trusses,
served as the “top” of the “T” of both the upper and lower chord T-sections.
By 1848 some angle-irons and T-irons were reportedly rolled in the US, but
these may have been fabricated from flat stock due to size limitations.37
The trusses’ chords were held apart by overlapping flat wrought iron
rings of graduated sizes that decreased in diameter as the trusses’ depth
176 Dennis De Witt
tapered to no more than that of the chords at their ends. The rings were
spaced a half-diameter on center, with each riveted to the upper and lower
chords, and at mid-height to the abutting rings to which it was tangent on
either side—creating something between a double-Warren and a Vierendeel
truss, with mandorla shaped panel openings, half as wide as high. The
trusses peculiar and difficult to fabricate system of multiple sized rings of
rectangular bars bent on edge, rather than a more easily fabricated design
with straight diagonals, reflects Rogers’ interest in such circular structural
forms.38 He patented and built at least two examples of a tubular lattice
bridge fabricated in a similar manner.39 At their deepest, the trusses seem
shallow in relation to the 36-foot span between the columns. The hall’s
plan, and that of the Post Office space below it suggests six or seven trusses,
10 feet apart. (The end columns at one end of the room must have been non-
structural, being located over beams at the Post Office level, rather than
over columns or piers.)40
The trusses appear to be orientated parallel to the roof’s pleats. They
must have carried both the single mid-slope purlins and the monitors. At
least with respect to the roof above the exchange hall, the discontinuities in
the roof plate created by the monitors precluded the folded plate roof from
fully serving as part of a self-spanning structure. This roof also could not
have benefitted from the substantial, larger scale, folded-plate structural
stiffness that the Savannah roof gains from its rigid hips and valleys.
Three tie rods, with turnbuckles and what appear to be wall anchors at
their ends, are visible on the floor. It is not clear how they related to the
trusses. The trusses’ taper and the tie rods suggest they possibly functioned
together with king-posts or queen-posts not visible in the photo (the roof
seems rather flat for the trusses to have functioned as tied trussed rafters).
The span from column line to monitor was about thirteen feet and to the
ridge about eighteen feet. The mid-slope purlins’ bridging bars’ locations
indicate nine-foot roof plate spans between lines of stiffening or support. In
relation to the corrugations’ pitch-width, the larger scaled pleats of the
Savannah roof plate have 25% longer spans between supports/stiffeners
compared to the Boston example.
Although the building’s “iron roof” was well advertised, none of this may
have been generally visible, except from atop the two-level roof semaphore
telegraph station observatory that was mentioned in all descriptions of the
building and may well have attracted visitors.41

Floors carried on iron beams

The post office on the ground floor of the Merchants Exchange was described
as a “large vaulted, fire-proof room, lighted on every side by spacious
windows, and having a superficies of 4,000 feet.”42 Its ceiling had 10- by
10-foot vaulted structural bays between the exterior walls and a row of iron
columns that aligned with the monumental columns in the exchange hall
 Savannah’s Custom House 177
above. Between those side columns was a larger area, divided down the
center by columns and/or a wall. That space was spanned by two rows of
what appear to have been 10- by 18-foot vaulted structural bays.43 Given
the apparently approximately 8–10-foot height of the building’s ground
floor and the required construction depth of masonry supported vaults of
that dimension, it most likely had jack-arch floor vaults carried on cast-iron
beams.44
In addition to the probable Merchants Exchange vaults, there are only
three other known US buildings pre-dating the Savannah Custom House
with brick jack-vaulted floor construction carried on cast iron beams. They
were: the headhouse engine room of Alexander Parris’ Charlestown Naval
Shipyard ropewalk in Boston, of 1834–38 (vaulted floor later removed),
whose approximately 30-foot beam spans would have been known to Isaiah
Rogers; John Notman’s Academy of Natural History in Philadelphia, of
1839–40 (demolished), which most likely had approximately 23-foot beam
spans; and the still extant Winder Building in Washington, D.C., of 1847–48,
variously attributed to Richard Gilpin or Robert Mills, with approximately
21-foot beam spans.45 In addition, the Bowen & McNamee store in New
York, by J.C. Wells of 1849–50 (demolished), was described as having
33-foot span wrought iron (rather that cast iron) beams supporting vaults.46
Other such floor structures were proposed but not built. These include
Alexander Parris’ unsuccessful entry in the 1837 competition for the Boston
Custom House, for which he suggested iron beams carrying spanning granite
slabs or brick vaults.47 Two drawings by James Dakin, dated January 1, 1846,
for his unrealized proposal for the New Orleans Custom House clearly show
iron roof trusses, iron floor beams, iron columns, and probably an iron
staircase.48

John Norris and the Savannah Custom House

John Norris, who began his career as a mason, was from New York and
maintained connections there.49 His known work is all in Savannah and the
South, beginning in 1839 with St. James Episcopal Church in Wilmington,
N.C., designed by Thomas U. Walter, for which Norris was supervising
architect. Walter is closely identified with the use of iron, but principally
only beginning in the 1850s. In 1843, Norris, with local backing in the
Wilmington, N.C. community, was commissioned to design and supervise
construction of its new Custom House (demolished). As noted above,
before 1852 there was no systematic central selection, and limited direct
oversight, of the architects who designed and supervised the construction of
custom houses and federal court houses. Although Norris gained the
Savannah commission against local opposition, parochial lobbying often
carried the day. Norris’ “local” competitor was Charles B. Cluskey. Cluskey
was a Scottish immigrant, and like Norris was a trained mason. He also
arrived in Savannah from New York where he had trained in the office of
178 Dennis De Witt
Ithiel Town & Alexander Jackson Davis. Cluskey had already completed a
number of municipal projects in Savannah including the Vaults on the
Factors Walk (1849).
Norris’ Wilmington Custom House was roofed with thick, tin plated
copper.50 As late as July 1848 the Savannah Custom House’s proposed roof
was to be “rafters of iron, covered with plates of copper.”51 There is no
suggestion that Norris’ proposed roofing reflected a Treasury Department
preference—although lighthouses often had copper cupolas on iron
armatures.
The Savannah Custom House was initially intended for, and construction
was begun on, a lot always considered too small, at the western end of its
present site, at the corner of Bull and East Bay Streets. While the Georgia
congressional delegation was lobbying for Norris’ replacement by Cluskey,
it was also lobbying for expansion of the site and the use of Quincy
Massachusetts granite as the most suitable material for Savannah’s humid
climate.52 Quincy granite’s fine texture and uniform grey color was a highly
prized adjunct to the sort of reserved Classicism represented by both this
building and Isaiah Rogers’ Boston and New York Merchants Exchanges.
Perhaps due to cost considerations, Norris’ specification and quotes for his
original 1846 design for the smaller site, referenced a non-specific granite
and Connecticut sandstone.53 From an early date, Norris’ plans, and the
foundations begun on the original site, were designed for incorporation into
a more expansive design, if the adjacent lot was acquired.54
Construction apparently stopped for a while, in anticipation of appropria-
tions for the adjacent lot and the Quincy Granite. By September 1847 the (at
grade) “basement” story, at least on the original lot, had been completed
using Quincy Granite. The Quincy granite for the entire building was sup-
plied by O.T. Rogers & Co., the lowest bidder on each of several successive
quotes (no evident relation to Isaiah Rogers).55 In late 1847 or early 1848,
Norris prepared a set of very demanding specification for the more refined
granite work required for upper stories, including the columns.56 This single
sheet is almost the only truly technical construction-related document surviv-
ing from the project—as opposed to his summary lists of quoted prices for
broadly categorized items. Incomplete and much worn, it makes clear that
the stones were to be delivered in crates, completely finished per detailed
drawings, ready for erection in the proper sequence. It called for deliveries
“commencing in December next [1848] and continuing until May 1849.” All
of the stone was to be “the best quality of Quincy granite, all of one shade of
color . . .” It was to be “cut to shape and size as shown on plans and eleva-
tions.” And “without exception . . . dressed true with full square beds & of
the full thickness of the stone, and the quality of the workmanship to be equal
to that of the granite of the first story of Morton’s block in Milk Street,
Boston . . .”57 Lastly, it was to be “box’d and delivered in the best order . . .”58
Also included in the specification sheet was a lengthy list of various types
of hammers as well as drills, “chiples,” and other stone working tools that
 Savannah’s Custom House 179
were to be supplied. In sum, this document suggests both a lack of skilled
labor able to acceptably finish dress façade granite that might otherwise
have been delivered uncrated and “en bloc,” rather than pre-finished, and
an absence of what Norris considered suitable tools in Savannah or the
nearby south. Similarly, Norris indicated that delivery of needed window
glass would take 90 days—whether from London or Philadelphia.59
On November 21, 1849, Norris reported: “The walls of the basement and
principal story are completed. The walls of the 2nd story will be ready for
the cornice by the 1st of febr. next. There is granite cut and on the ground
for that purpose, the roof will be on by June next [1850] and I presume the
building will be completed by Aug. 1851. I am now waiting your approval
for the granite for the cornice and columns and for the iron roof.”60 The
Custom House was in fact completed on July 24, 1852.61
The building’s most commented upon masonry components are its three-
foot diameter, 30-foot high, 15-ton, monolithic columns (Figure 9.1 and
cover image).62 More structurally elegant is its granite, double “flying”
staircase, set within a masonry partial cylinder.63 A lower straight run splits
at a landing against the back wall of the cylinder, from whence two half-arcs
of cantilevered treads turn and continue up to meet again at the second floor.
The secret of such seemingly unsupported masonry staircases is that the
front (riser side) of each tread block rests upon, and is keyed into, the rear
edge of the tread below—and each tread is so rigidly and precisely socketed
into the enclosing cylindrical wall that it can neither rotate nor deflect. The
uppermost steps would have been particularly challenging; the cylindrical
wall from which the upper steps project rises only to the second floor level,
leaving just the weight of the encircling spanning corridor/balcony floor
slabs to counter balance the cantilevered tread blocks.
Below the staircase at basement level, the foundation of this masonry
semi-cylinder is a vault-like cylindrical room.64 In its center is a single,
roughly dressed, baseless, straight octagonal column, capped by a compara-
bly faceted and similarly rough dressed substantial capital. This Ur column
supports the circle of wedge-shaped spanning-granite slabs that floor the
cylindrical space at the base of the stairs above. Thus, balanced on that sin-
gular column, is the lower straight run of the staircase. Like the building’s
roof structure, this remarkable spatial and structural conceit was never
meant to be seen.

Masonry floors carried on iron beams

Concerning the floor beams, upon completion of the project in 1852, John
Norris was quoted, but perhaps not fully or entirely correctly, as stating:

All [sic] the floors are arched with brick the kind called barrel arches,
built between iron beams. The effect of using iron beams, and arches of
this construction is that it enables the architect to have walls of less
180 Dennis De Witt
thickness to sustain the diminished thrust of the arches . . . The cast iron
beams are eighteen feet in length and one foot high—weighing nine
hundred pounds each and will sustain a weight of fifteen tons spread
over them. The iron beams in the Collector’s office [ceiling] are thirty-
seven hundred pounds each, and are capable of sustaining a weight of
one hundred and fifty [sic] tons over them.65

There appear to be 46 of the 18-foot beams within the ceilings of the

basement, main floor, and upper floor.66 All span from the building’s front
and rear walls to paired east-west interior corridor walls and colonnades
(Figures 9.4). In addition, above part of the basement Post Office in the
west wing there are five, approximately 9-foot long, cast iron beams that
Norris did not mention (Figure 9.4a). These span the corridor-like space
between two colonnades of five, 1-foot square granite posts in the original
Post Office space. The southern set of posts support an arcade of six brick
arches. The ends of the long and short cast iron beams supporting the floor
above are received, end-to-end, into the opposite sides of the brick wall
above the posts. The northern set of posts are spanned by six granite lintels.
These receive the iron beams, set end-to-end into a notch in the upper surface
of the ends of the lintels, which rest on the granite posts. The sides of these
northern posts and bottoms of the lintels are rabbeted where they originally
received a partition wall containing service windows, which separated the

Figure 9.4 Upper left (a): Main floor reflected ceiling plan. Lower left (b): Basement
reflected ceiling plan. Upper right (c): floor reflected ceiling plan. Lower
right (d): Roof framing plan (Drawings by Author).
 Savannah’s Custom House 181
Post Office’s “public vestibule” from its workspace. Norris presumably could
have encountered this type of granite trabeated (post and beam) construction
in Boston, where it was part of that city’s tradition of spanning granite
technology. Throughout the building, the doorframes, including those in the
basement, also have trabeated monolithic granite jambs and lintels.
The 51 cast iron beams carry a total of 64 jack-arch brick vaults, most of
an approximately six-foot span. About half the vaults span between beams
and half between a beam and a wall. In addition, the first floor lobby, second
floor stair hall, and east wing corridor on both floors have self-spanning
granite slab floors (Figures 9.4b and c). In the 20- by 30-foot entrance hall
these slabs are, in part, carried by two pairs of the 18-foot beams seen in the
basement ceiling plan (Figure 9.4a). Most of Norris’ slabs span about nine
feet between masonry walls or arcades. Norris referred to this spanning slab
material as “platform,” regardless of where used. He specified 2,000 square
feet of it.67 Such spanning floor slabs are consistent with Boston’s trabeated
granite construction technology. Similar spanning granite floor slabs occur,
for instance, in the Brookline Reservoir Gatehouse.
Norris said the 18-foot beams could carry 15 tons—approximately 250
pounds per square foot—at the spacing generally used in the building.
Conservatively, if the vaults and flooring weigh 80 pounds per square foot,
then the live load could be 170 pounds per square foot—a substantial safety
margin.68 While the granite slabs have somewhat longer spans and are
heavier than most of the brick jack-arch vaults, the beams carrying them
are used in pairs. Thus their combined capacity is about 330 pounds per
square foot. As the “platform” slabs are ten-inches thick, their dead load
would be about 140 pounds per square foot, resulting in a similar 190 pounds
per square foot live load beam capacity.69
Where the cast iron beams support the granite slabs, the slabs rest atop
the beams, leaving their vertical webs exposed (Figure 9.5a). It appears that
the beams are not I-shaped but rather an inverted-T in section. If there is any
top flange, it is small enough to be hidden in the coat of plaster applied
directly to the underside of the granite slabs. Unlike many cast iron beams
of the period, no substantial upper bulb is visible. Only the bottoms of the
flanges of those beams carrying the brick vaults are exposed, because the
vaults rest on the upper face of the horizontal flange and cover the web.
There are no evident tie bars. The flanges at the bottoms of both the long
and short cast iron beams are semi-elliptical in plan. They are wider, but not
thicker, mid-span than at the ends, responding to the greater mid-span
bending stress—and slightly wider again where they transfer their loads to
the wall masonry. Given the granite slabs resting atop some of the 18-foot
beams, it appears that they are straight-topped.
Four wrought iron beams carry the upper floor courtroom over the
partition-free collector’s office on the main floor (Figure 9.4a). These beams
have an impressive 36-foot 6-inch clear span. Their overall length must be
about 40 feet. They almost undoubtedly are constructed in the same manner
182 Dennis De Witt

Figure 9.5 Left (a): Granite floor slab carried on an eighteen-foot cast iron beam
(Photo by Author). Right (b): Section through a Cornell Iron Works’
wrought iron girder and pleated iron plate floor construction, with a
secondary beam, Bank of the State of New York, James Renwick,
architect, 1855–56, Engineering News, September 10, 1903 (PD).

as the wrought iron I-beams carrying the roof’s valleys (Figure 9.7b).70 Norris
reported these floor beams could carry a surprising 150 tons, which would
mean a live load of about 830 pounds per square foot. While wrought iron,
with approximately four times the tensile strength of cast iron, offered great
structural advantage, this capacity is so large as to seem possibly erroneous—
perhaps, a mis-transcription. At their approximately 9-foot spacing, even
one-third of this capacity would exceed per square foot that of the cast
beams. The distance between these beams might be spanned directly by
brick vaulting or, as one slightly later Cornell wrought iron framed structure
suggests, there could be secondary beams, which would allow vault spans
approximating those between the cast iron beams. That later iron floor
structure, supplied by Cornell in 1855–56 for James Renwick’s Bank of the
State of New York, had wrought iron primary girders of approximately
the same span and spacing, discussed below (Figure 9.5b). Spanning between
Renwick’s girders were secondary beams whose spacing approximated that of
the Savannah cast iron beams. Unlike the Custom House, Renwick’s building
employed neither cast-iron beams nor brick vaults.71

Two similar “unique” roofs

The Savannah Custom House and the Boston Merchants Exchange are the
only US buildings thus far identified as having stitch-riveted, unified struc-
tural iron plate roof surfaces, stiffened by large-scale pleating. Notwithstanding
a significant difference in cross-section from what would now be considered
corrugation, the Savannah roof was identified as “corrugated” by Norris.72
 Savannah’s Custom House 183
Both roofs are characterized by flat-faced pleated surfaces, rather than the
typical corrugated plate’s curvilinear sine-wave surface. The pleats have three
to four times the pitch width of the largest conventional corrugations—but
like them have an approximately 4:1 pitch to depth ratio. While each pleat is
one iron plate wide, the entire roof is stitch riveted (“boiler riveted”) into a
single unified structure—as is also true of the flat-surfaced Brookline gate-
house iron roof but was not so then (or now) of the typical corrugated iron
roof. The spans between supports of the Boston and Savannah, pleated,
iron roofs are commensurately larger than for conventional corrugated iron.
The structural innovation they represent appears not to have been recognized
in the literature until recently.73 Both roofs also involve unusual supporting or
stiffening wrought iron trusses—but of differing designs.
If Norris had known the eminent, Philadelphia architect Thomas U.
Walter in 1839, it is reasonable that by 1849 he may have known Isaiah
Rogers, who had just left New York for Cincinnati. It is almost inconceiv-
able that Norris’ never visited Rogers’ Boston Merchants Exchange (not to
mention Boston’s Post Office which it housed) during his six known trips
there in connection with the Savannah project—three trips before December
1846 as well as in March and December, 1847 and November, 1848.74
Although construction of Rogers’ New York and Boston Merchants
Exchanges overlapped and both were then notable for being fireproof, the
larger New York building apparently had a flat, probably masonry, roof
supported on brick vaulting with a central, metal covered brick dome, and
it apparently did not employ iron beams.75
All the iron components in the Savannah Custom House, including its
roof system, its iron circular staircase to the attic, iron window frames, and
the iron beams, were supplied by the J.B. & W.W. Cornell Iron Works of
New York.76 Given the similarity of the unusual Norris and Rogers roofs, it
is tempting to assume that a related or predecessor firm to the Cornell Iron
Works might also have supplied Rogers’ roof, although it may well have
been made in Boston.
Thomas was an important designer of New York’s commercial “palaces”
who often used structural iron and iron facades. His Moffat Building, of
1847–48, was said to have had an “iron roof [that] utilized a new technique
of iron plates in ridges.”77 That suggests a kinship to the Boston and
Savannah roofs, although his ironwork was supplied by Althause & Co.
But, the Moffat roof was described, elsewhere, as “wholly of iron and
cement.”78 The pleated iron floor structure supplied by Cornell in 1855–56
for James Renwick’s Bank of the State of New York, shows the Moffat
roof’s likely form of construction.79 The most notable difference between
Renwick’s floor structure and the Rogers and Norris roofs is its deeper
pleating, appropriate for the greater loads it had to carry (Figure 9.7b).
While the J.B & W.W. Cornell Iron works was not formed until 1847,
its partners, John Black Cornell and William Wesley Cornell, had an
older brother, George, who had been in partnership with S.B. Althause, as
184 Dennis De Witt
Cornell-Althause & Co., an ironworks, from 1821 to 1841. And from
approximately 1844 to 1847 the three Cornell brothers had been in partner-
ship as “housesmiths.”80 Thus, despite Cornell Iron Works having only been
formed in 1847 with, as reported years later, “one [hired] man and a boy,”
there could possibly have been a Cornell-Althause & Co. connection when
the Boston roof was made.81 And, as their firm was new in 1848, J.B. and
W.W Cornell, who were well connected, might have jobbed out some of the
work to a firm, such as Althause.82 An early description of Cornell’s contribu-
tion the Savannah Custom House mentions its iron beams (and misidentifies
it as the first US fireproof building) but fails to mention its unusual roof.83
Norris also reported Cornell as low bidder out of three suspiciously close bids
for the “Iron staircase” leading up to the attic.84
Cornell is still in business. A Cornell advertisement, apparently of 1848,
in the possession of Andrew Cornell, its current president, featured iron
bedsteads, but also offered “iron roofs” and “irons stairs.” No job specific
records of the firm survive from that period.85
Upon the completion of the Custom House in 1852, Norris wrote, “The
roof is corrugated. The rafters [sic: ridge and purlin trusses] of wrought iron
lattice work [are] covered with [a] galvanized iron [roof] three-sixteenths
of an inch thick, riveted boiler fashion . . .”86 The roof’s pleats are about
20 inches wide, ridge to ridge—each pleat is one iron plate wide, with the
plates lapped and riveted to their neighbors just below the pleat ridges and
having about 24 inches of exposed surface, ridge to ridge. Mullett also noted
the Savannah roof was galvanized. Its upper surface is presently thickly
coated with an aluminized material, through which seams and rivet heads
remain discernable (Figure 9.6a). Most of the lower surfaces and trusses have
red paint (possibly iron oxide) over the original galvanizing. The galvanizing
remains exposed in the pediment area. The roof generally appears to be in
remarkably good condition.
Contrary to the apparent orientation of the Boston Merchants Exchange’s
roof trusses, which spanned from wall to wall and carried both the purlins
and large clearstory monitors, the Savannah trusses generally run perpen-
dicular (not parallel) to the pleats. They have different forms consistent with
differing functions and loads (Figure 9.4a). Those in the attics of the portico
and the east and south wings are consistent because the spans and loads are
similar. Light purlin trusses, at mid-span between ridge and eaves seem too
small to act as much more than stiffeners for the pleated roof plates’ 30-foot
eves-to-ridge spans. The same seems true of the light ridge trusses. Because
the masonry partitions in these three wings rise to roof level, the spans of
these wing’s trusses’ and the valley beams are limited. However, it is unclear
to what extent they were designed with support from those walls in mind.
They appear to pass through the masonry walls, as if constructed without
reference to them—or, at least, to their specific locations.
In these three wings, the typical ridge truss is a rectangular bar surmounted
by overlapping smaller rectangular bars bent edgewise into chevrons that
 Savannah’s Custom House 185

Figure 9.6 Left (a): Exterior of the roof, covered with aluminized coating. Right (b):
Valley gutter with straps along sides, similar to those forming the upper
chords of the purlin trusses. On the upper right, you can see the Purlin
truss strap with electric conduit attached (Photos by Author).

collectively match the profile of the roof plate.87 The chevrons being riveted
together, they create a sort of lattice truss, with the conjoined bent parts
functioning collectively as the upper chord. The roof plate rests on it,
not consistently attached. The load capacity of these ridge trusses would not
seem significant. The hip trusses are similar but have two parallel straight
bars sandwiched between a pair of zigzag bars that alternately rise to meet
the pleats, matching the longer profile of their 45-degree plane of intersection
(Figure 9.6b). The two straight bars and lower portion of the zigzag bars
constitute a more convincing truss. It is intermittently attached to the roof
in a similar manner to the purlin trusses, as discussed below, but with no
exterior strap. It is unclear how necessary these ridge and hip trusses are,
given the inherent form rigidity of the juncture of the folded plates at the
ridges and hips, not to mention the roof being only minimally anchored to
the ridge trusses.
Each roof plane has a single, mid-slope purlin truss, whose upper chord is
a continuous flat bar lying atop the ridges of the roof’s pleats (Figure 9.6a).
Again, excluding the west wing, that part of the purlin trusses below the roof
plate is a single deep rectangular bar surmounted by smaller non-overlapping
chevrons (Figure 9.7b). Hook-ended bolts clamp the top of each chevron
through each pleat ridge of the roof plate to the bar atop the roof, which
serves as the upper chord of the truss. These strap-like upper bars are similar
to those on the Boston Merchants Exchange roof, which presumably served
the same purpose. They also occur at each side of the roof’s four valleys,
attaching the roof to the wrought iron valley beam below (Figures 9.7).
Above the west wing’s upper floor courtroom is a pair of mid-slope, lattice
purlin trusses, approximately three feet deep, which extend past the hip to
the far end of the wing. They were sized to carry the courtroom’s domed
plaster ceiling, in addition to supporting the roof (they now carry a later flat
186 Dennis De Witt

Figure 9.7 Left (a): Panoramic montage of the trusses over the west (courtroom)
wing. Deep lattice purlin trusses are on the right, far left, and far end. A
curved trussed bracket supports the ridge truss on the immediate left.
A ceiling dome was originally in the center. Right (b): Fabricated wrought
iron roof valley beam. Paired rivets hold web plates together. The group
of four rivets is at a splice (Photos by Author).

plaster ceiling on deep wood joists, from which is suspended ductwork and
a newer hung ceiling system) (Figure 9.7a). Rising from these two trusses to
each roof plate valley-fold are approximately six-inch tall upright bars
supporting a zigzag bent bar matching the roof’s profile, to which the flat
bar above the roof is attached. At the hips in this wing, an approximately
18-inch high lattice purlin truss spans between the upper chords of the two
deep, long purlin trusses, supporting the hipped end roof, mid-slope. The
ridge-truss over this wing is supported for most of its length by a latticed
truss brace, whose lower chord is curved to clear the former courtroom
dome.
The four valleys are supported by wrought iron I-beams, assembled from
flat plates (Figure 9.7a). Wrought iron rail-shaped floor beams were not
rolled in the US until 1854, with true I-beams following in 1856.88 Far more
substantial than most of the roof trusses, these valley beams are, like the
wrought iron floor beams, about 40 feet long. They meet above the center
of the building, at a stout ring beam, to which is also attached the ridge
trusses. The valley beams are about 3-Ǫ inches wide by 6-Ǭ inches high. The
flanges are about Ǫ inch thick. The webs appear to be three layers, totaling
about 1-Ǫ inch thick. If the face layers of the webs are Ǫ inch thick, like the
flanges, that leaves about ǫ inch between them. The top and bottom flanges
are held to the webs by rivets along their centerlines. These flange rivets
align with paired sets of rivets that hold the web’s outer plates together.
Clearly, these beams were assembled in the same manner as the major
girders Cornell supplied for the 1855–56 Bank of the State of New York
(Figure 9.2b).89 Sandwiched between the web’s outer structural plates are
small connector plates, each with two punched holes for the paired rivets
holding the web’s structural plates together, and with tenons top and bottom
that pass through punched holes in the flanges and are “headed” to rivet the
flanges to the web plates. Because these beams are longer than the wrought
iron bar stock then available, the flange and web plates also have lapped
 Savannah’s Custom House 187
riveted joints to achieve the required length. These beams appear to weigh
about 30 pounds per foot, about one third the weight per foot of the
approximately 40-foot-long wrought iron courtroom floor beams that
Norris said weigh “thirty-seven hundred pounds each.”90
The self-spanning folded-plate roof structures of the Boston Merchants
Exchange and even more of the Savannah Custom House were not depend-
ent on substantial structural members but rather on the roof’s relatively
lightweight, structurally stiff, folded form. Suggestive of a basic Bauhaus
studio design exercise, these folded plate forms anticipated by a century, the
mid-twentieth-century explorations, in thin ferro-concrete, of folded-plate
roof structures.
Structurally continuous, self-spanning, roofs of flat, curved, or pleated
iron plate probably were always extremely rare—perhaps, in part, because
of the difficulty and expense of stitch riveting and assembling a roof the
size of a ship’s hull.91 In addition, there was the post-1840s diffusion of
conventional corrugated iron—widely used for industrial structures. Also,
the mid-nineteenth century saw the development and rapid adoption in the
US of cheap asphaltic flat roofing. Ironically, tarpaper was first developed to
utilize the coal tar that was a waste byproduct of the same coal gasification
process whose retort houses were the earliest US buildings with iron roof
trusses. The Boston Merchants Exchange and Savannah Custom House
roofs, as well as their unique internal structural designs, appear to have no
surviving direct progeny, while any roof structures that may have influenced
them to remain unknown.

Notes
This paper would not have been possible without the friendly cooperation of James
Lackey of the GSA and his helpful staff who provided access on three occasions. I am
also deeply indebted to Prof. Patrick Haughey and Prof. Robin Williams, both of
SCAD. Their willingness to explore above hung ceilings in the west wing basement
(originally the Post Office), clarified the configuration of its granite-post colonnades
and revealed the unexpected short iron beams. Prof. James R. Abrahamson of SCAD
provided a copy of the unpublished 2004 student group project, “US Customs [sic]
House Restoration Survey Report.” Concerned with the lost courtroom ceiling, it
includes a highly useful half-plan of the building. Roger Reed reviewed a draft of this
study. Peter Stott also provided helpful comments and corrections. Sara Wermiel
insightfully commented, contextualized, and brought to our attention the invaluable
confirmatory 1903 Engineering News article cited in note 71, page 192.

1 The author had previously identified a photo of Rogers’ Boston roof, which had
been confusingly (although correctly) captioned—rendering it easily misconstrued
as part of a later building. Norris’ Savannah roof was, in effect, known only to
its owner, the GSA, until the author noticed its similar distinctive design in a ca.
1901 photo of Savannah’s Bull Street.
2 William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman V2, (New
York, D. Appleton & Co., 1875), 217.
188 Dennis De Witt
3 For more detailed consideration of many of the background topics touched upon
see: Dennis J. De Witt, “Conspicuous Iron and the Cochituate Aqueduct
Gatehouses,” IA, the Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology 38, no. 1
(2012) [published 2015]: 27–54; [Dennis J. De Witt], Brookline Reservoir
Gatehouse National Historic Landmark Nomination, (Washington D.C.,
National Park Service, ), 2015.
4 A.B. Mullett, Assistant Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Report to W.E.
Chandler, Secretary of the Treasury, December 4, 1865, Record Group 121,
Records of the Public Buildings Service, (National Archives, PI 110 Entry 26,
Letters Received by the Supervising Architect 1843–1910, box 1196), (hereafter
cited as “Letters: Supervising Architect.”).
5 Antoinette J. Lee, Architects to the Nation: The Rise and Decline of the Supervising
Architect’s Office, (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000), 80. [Having access
to Mullet’s diary, she touches on the replacement of his predecessor’s low-pitched
corrugated iron roofs with sheet copper but mentions no other iron roof]; The
Congressional Globe, 45, part 5, (May 22, 1872): 3747. During a debate in
the House of Representatives, Rep. James A. Platt, Jr. stated that, aside from
copper used both to replace Mullett’s predecessors’ roofs and for the “cheeks” of
Mullett’s own Mansard roofs, every building designed by Mullett’s office for the
prior three years had a slate roof. Almost all published references to Mullett with
respect to any iron roof relate only to the 1877 failure of iron roof trusses at the
New York Post Office that were overloaded with concrete during the building’s
construction.
6 A.B. Mullett, “Report of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department,”
in “Papers Accompanying the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury,” Message
of the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress at the
Commencement of the Thirty-Ninth Congress [etc.], Ed. Ben. Perley Poore,
(Washington D.C., Government Printing Office, 1867), 172; The “Historic
Buildings,” section, General Services Administration (GSA) web site: www.gsa.
gov/portal/ext/html/site/hb/category/25431/actionParameter/exploreBy Building/
buildingId/881#. The GSA website provides information on the building, not all
entirely accurate. (One photo captioned “basement” is of the pediment attic
space.) As Sara Wermiel has correctly noted to the author in correspondence,
Mullett’s assertions concerning Young’s roofs are partly self-serving; while most of
Young’s surviving Federal buildings appear to have replaced roofs, Young’s cor-
rugated roofs, perhaps covered with other material, do survive at least in Norfolk
VA, and Portsmouth, NH.
7 Ibid.
8 Lee, Architects to the Nation; John S. Norris, letter to Robert S. Walker, Secretary
of the Treasury, October 25, 1848, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’ It includes a
suggested approximate installation date for the iron beams.
9 Lawrence Wodehouse, “Ammi Burnham Young, 1798–1874,” The Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians 25, no. 4 (December, 1966): 269ff.
10 As the correspondence from Norris to successive Secretaries of the Treasury makes
clear, both affirmatively and in the absence of contradictory statements, he seems
to have had unimpeded control over both the construction process and the faithful
execution of his intended design. Norris’ experience in Savannah is very different
from that of other professional architects at that time with respect to private com-
missions, including Rogers’ Boston Merchants Exchange—even as attentive as
Rogers attempted to be in overseeing construction. See: James F. O’Gorman,
Isaiah Rogers: Architectural Practice in Antebellum America, (Amherst and
Boston, University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), and specifically 236.
11 Sara Wermiel, The Fireproof Building (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000), 54–57, 62–65; Specifications for the Rebuilding of a
 Savannah’s Custom House 189
Custom House at Portland Maine [etc.], (Washington D.C., 1855 & 1856).
Despite its cover title, Specifications is a collection of separately issued
specifications for the construction of 27 Federal buildings bound together with a
common index.
12 Plans of Public Buildings in the Course of Construction Under the Direction of
the Secretary of the Treasury [etc.], (Washington D.C., Treasury Department,
1855.)
13 O’Gorman, Isaiah Rogers, 222.
14 O’Gorman, Isaiah Rogers, 207.
15 Plans of Public Buildings.
16 Mullett, “Report of the Supervising Architect,” 190 ff. This aspect of his attack
upon these roofs conveniently ignores the fact that slate requires a steeper slope
than corrugated iron.
17 Adam Mornement and Simon Holloway, Corrugated Iron: Building on the
Frontier, (New York, W.W. Norton, 2007), 20, 30–32.
18 Charles E. Peterson, “Iron in Early American Roofs,” Smithsonian Journal of
History 3, no. 3 (1968): 41, 45–47.
19 De Witt, “Conspicuous,” 50, n. 44.
20 De Witt, “Conspicuous,”34, n. 49.
21 De Witt, “Conspicuous,” 34–35.
22 [De Witt], “Brookline,”; De Witt, “Conspicuous,” 27–31, 37–40.
23 De Witt, “Conspicuous,” Fig 11.
24 Sickels, the divisional engineer, was responsible for the engineering design of the
building, including the roof. (Charles E. Parker may have designed its facades.)
What appears to be its definitive sub-floor engineering design drawing is in the
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority archives. While it does not detail
the roof structure, it was made and signed by Sickels, not by a draftsman.
25 De Witt, “Conspicuous,” 39–40.
26 De Witt, “Conspicuous,” 31–32, 34–35.
27 Isaac Smith Homans and Isaac F. Shepard, Sketches of Boston, Past and Present
[etc.], (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, and Co.; Crosby & Nichols, 1851), 76–77.
28 Correspondence with James Hoobler, Senior Curator of Art and Architecture,
Tennessee State Museum, October 6, 2009.
29 Historic American Buildings Survey, photo TN-SI-11.
30 Between the south side of State Street and the north side of Lindall (now
Exchange) Street, mid-block between Congress and Kilby Streets. The rear was
on Lindall Street.
31 N.J. Bradlee & W.J. Winslow, [Post-fire ground floor plan of the Boston
Merchants Exchange], dated February, 1873, Boston Athenaeum Archive.
32 “The New Exchange,” Boston Evening Transcript, (July 22, 1842); “Merchants’
Exchange,” Boston Evening Transcript, (December 31, 1842); “The
Merchants Exchange,” The Boston Directory Containing the City Record [etc.],
(Boston, George Adams, 1850), 7.
33 De Witt, “Conspicuous Iron,” 42–43, and Fig. 14; O’Gorman, Isaiah Rogers,
120. Rogers’ Female [Orphan] Asylum in Boston, of 1844–45, had stairs of
wrought and cast iron.
34 [De Witt], “Brookline,” 39, 44. In Britain at that time iron staircases continued
to be a rare noteworthy item and iron framed mills and warehouses typically had
stone staircases.
35 “Interior – Sub Treasury Office,” J.W. Black Photographs of the Great Fire of
1872, Boston Public Library.
36 Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Investigate the Cause and
Management of the Great Fire in Boston (Boston Rockwell & Church, 1873),
163, 172, 262, 338, 432–36. Only the rear of the building (denoted in the report
190 Dennis De Witt
as “the L”), which contained the hotel, burned. (A wing on the rear of a row
house was commonly called an “ell.”) The exchange hall and front of the
building did not burn. While the front block and the Post Office were vaulted,
one witness stated the floors in the rear “L” were of wood, burned through, and
“the whole of the material” collapsed into the exchange hall. That is not entirely
evident in the photo, which may be looking towards the front of the building.
Other testimony indicated there was a solid masonry bearing-wall between the
“L” and the exchange hall section of the building, with an iron door, through
which some burning debris passed. The iron roof on the burned ‘‘L” was not
blown up and remained intact after the fire. However, the suspended plaster
domed ceiling of the exchange room, hanging below the iron roof of the central
section, did fall. That happened prior to the explosion and could have produced
the visible debris. Presumably the plaster ceiling was attached to a substantial,
suspended structural timber and lath armature that burned.
37 [De Witt], “Brookline,” 37, n. 87.
38 Bending flat rectangular bars on edge (“the hard way”) without distortion is
technically much more difficult, even when bent hot, as these must have been.
39 David Guise, “Isaiah Rogers Tubular Bridges and Boston’s Mechanics Fairs,”
Structure (September 2014): 50–52.
40 Bradlee & Winslow, [Post-fire ground floor plan].
41 O’Gorman, Isaiah Rogers, 98. While noting that Rogers’ diary states he started
construction on the observatory, O’Gorman questions whether it was built,
because it appears only in versions of Rogers’ original 1842 perspective view
(Fig. 2). However, that view shows the observatory placed well back on the
building and provides an impossible viewpoint from a fictionally widened State
Street. Multiple references to it (albeit formulaic) in guides and gazetteers suggest
it was built.
42 “The Boston Post Office,” Hunt’s Merchants Magazine and Commercial Review
14 (January–June 1846): 129, lengthy footnote; John Hayward, A Gazetteer of
Massachusetts [etc.], (Boston, John Haywood, 1846), 50 [Concerning the
vaulting].
43 Bradlee & Winslow, [Post–fire ground floor plan].
44 The building’s “main” or “principal” floor level (second floor in current US
terminology), accessed through its centermost State Street entrance (of five), was
aligned with its conventionally framed neighbors, appearing to leave only about
eight to ten feet floor-to-floor for the ground floor post office space. Such a
height would be consistent with the ground floor of the Savannah Custom
House. As steps lead up to the four flanking side entrances, it seems unlikely the
ground floor was below or even at grade.
45 Wermiel, The Fireproof Building, 47–50.
46 The (New York) Evening Post, Sept. 22, 1849, 2.
47 Wermiel, The Fireproof Building, 48.
48 “Longitudinal Section of Design for New Orleans Custom House J.H. Dakin,
Archt. 1/1/46” and “Transverse Section of a Design for the N.O. Custom
House Jas. H. Dakin, Archt. N.O., 1/1/46,” James Harrison Dakin Collection of
Architectural Drawings, New Orleans Public Library.
49 Mary Lane Morrison, John S. Norris: Architect in Savannah, 1846–1860,
(Savannah, The Beehive Press, 1979). Although limited with respect to
architectural analysis, this is the best biographical source for Norris.
50 Mullett, “Report of the Supervising Architect,” 199.
51 The Savannah Weekly Georgian, July 20, 1848.
52 R. Butler King, Member of the House of Representatives, letter to Robert S.
Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, February 12, 1848, 1, “Letters: Supervising
Architect” [Representative King advocating for the use of Quincy Granite];
 Savannah’s Custom House 191
R. Butler King, Member of the House of Representatives, to Robert S. Walker,
Secretary of the Treasury, April 3, 1848, “Letters: Supervising Architect.”
[Representative King’s cover letter for a petition to President Polk by Savannah
citizens, against Norris as an outside architect and favoring Cluskey]; “Residents
of Savannah” petition to “His Excellency James K. Polk President of the US,”
February 22, 1847, “Letters: Supervising Architect.”
53 John S. Norris, “Estimated cost of Constructing the Savannah Custom House
According to my Plan,” January 20, 1846, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect’’; John
S. Norris, letter to unidentified recipient, September 26, 1846, ‘‘Letters:
Supervising Architect’’ [first page only].
54 John S. Norris, letter to Robert S. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, March 20,
1847, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’
55 John S. Norris, letter to Robert S. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, September
31, 1847 [one page only], ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect’’ [Quotes received for
Quincy Granite for the Basement Storey]; John S. Norris, letter to Robert S.
Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, October 25, 1848, ‘‘Letters: Supervising
Architect.’’
56 John S. Norris, letter to Robert S. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, February 6,
1849, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect’’ [Request for reimbursement; three trips,
Savannah to New York to Boston and return]; [John S. Norris], “Specifications
for the granite to be used in the construction of the first and second stories
(above the basement story) of the Custom House” [n.d.], [one page only],
‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’ Hereafter: [Norris], “Specifications.” Although
the specification document is undated, it probably dates from no later than his
last trip to Boston in November, 1848, made apparently for the purpose of
negotiating a contract for building stone.
57 The Morton Block, 1845, destroyed in the Great Fire of 1872, was built by Pliny
Cutler et al. Perhaps with a principal address at 45 Milk St., it was opposite
Devonshire St. with five “warehouse” storefronts between 33 Milk St and
Morton Place.
58 [Norris], “Specifications.”
59 [Norris], “Specifications.”
60 John S. Norris, letter to William M. Meredith, Secretary of the Treasury,
November 21, 1849, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’
61 John S. Norris, letter to William L. Hodge, Acting Secretary of the Treasury,
August 4, 1852, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’
62 Rogers’ Boston Merchants Exchange had six monolithic façade piers that were
42-feet high and weighed 52 tons.
63 John S. Norris, letter to Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury, November
13, 1850, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect’’ [Low bid from O.T. Rogers.]
64 [Mullett, sketch plan of existing conditions, 1865], ‘‘Letters: Supervising
Architect’’ [It labels this space “furnace,” although it is not immediately adjacent
to a chimney stack.]
65 John. S. Norris, “Dimensions of the Custom House.” The [Savannah] Daily
Morning News, July 31, 1852; John S. Norris, letter to Thomas Corwin, Secretary
of the Treasury, October 25, 1850, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’ It includes
“West Point Foundry offer to supply the cast iron beams delivered in New York
at 3-½/100 per # [i.e. 3.5 cents per pound]” but “J.B. & W.W Cornell offer 3-Ǫ
/100 per #.” Cornell would later absorb West Point Foundry.
66 John S. Norris, letter to William M. Meredith, Secretary of the Treasury,
November 19, 1849, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’ It indicates the spacious,
usable attic was not contemplated originally: “By an additional outlay of $6,000,
I could without altering the exterior plans make an attic story over three fifths of
the building for the purpose of storing documents . . .” Presumably, this would
192 Dennis De Witt
have been the cost of iron beams and brick jack vaulting for the (now concrete
paved) attic floor.
67 John S. Norris, letter to Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury, October 28,
1848, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’ It lists ten quotes for “2000 feet” of
granite “for platforms in 1 & 2 story halls”—matching lowest bids were from
O.T. Rogers and the Granite Railway Co.—Rogers’ price for other granite items
was consistently lowest.
68 One 18-foot beam in the post office work area has a modern I-beam below it,
suggesting a structural problem.
69 See: http://netschcampus.uic.edu/Netsch_Walking_Tour_03.pdf, accessed May 2,
2016. In the 1960s, Walter Netsch, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designed an
elevated pedestrian walkway for the University of Illinois at Chicago. After a
careful engineering study, he did something then unheard of and built it using
12 inch thick, unsupported granite slabs spanning 20 feet (a 1:20 span:thickness
ratio). Norris’ 10-inch thick slabs have a far more conservative 1:12 ratio.
70 The bottom flange of one of these beams is visible above the hung ceiling in a
small area where some plaster is missing.
71 “Early Iron Building Construction,” Engineering News L, no. 11 (Sept. 10,
1903): 214–15. That building employed, as a spanning system between the
secondary beams, pleated iron plates covered by concrete fill. But it seems more
likely Norris would have used brick vaulting consistently throughout the build-
ing as he stated. While, the article mistakenly references “J.B. & J.M. Cornell,”
the firm’s post-1870 name, “J.B. & W.W. Cornell” is painted on a beam shown
in the article.
72 Norris, “Dimensions.” In the 1840s the word “corrugated” seems to have
commonly meant wrinkled shriveled or furrowed and often applied to skin.
(And at that time, our modern sense of a “pleated” material applied more to
paper than to cloth.)
73 [De Witt], “Brookline,” 34.
74 [John S. Norris], Itemized “traveling expenses,” notarized December 12, 1846,
‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect’’; John S. Norris, Letter to Robert S. Walker,
Secretary of the Treasury, February 16, 1849, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’
75 [De Witt], “Brookline,” 33–36.
76 John S. Norris, letter to William M. Meredith, Secretary of the Treasury,
November 19, 1849, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.’’ For the “Iron Roof,
Copper Gutters & Leaders complete,” [Cornell (marked with an “X”) was the
low bidder out of three]; “Death of William W. Cornell,” Engineering (April 15,
1870): 258. This also states Cornell supplied the ironwork.
77 Sarah B. Landau and Carl W. Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper,
(New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1999), 44, 404.
78 Winston Weisman, “Commercial Palaces of New York: 1845–1875,” The Art
Bulletin 36, no. 4 (December, 1954): 290.
79 “Early Iron Building Construction,” Fig. 2.
80 Walter Crutchfield, “J.B. & W.W. Cornell & Co., 143 Centre St” (www.
waltergrutchfield.net/cornell.htm, accessed April 26, 2016).
81 J. Leander Bishop, A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860
[etc.], (Philadelphia, Edward Young & Co., 1868), V. III, 145–46.
82 Sheldon & Co.’s Business or Advertising Directory [etc], (New York, John F.
Trow & Co., 1845), 118. An advertisement for S.B. Althause & Co. included
“. . . the newly invented Wrought Iron Roofs,” although, these may have been
for the “telegraphs, observatories, and domes,” subsequently mentioned in the
advertisement; in this context “telegraph” presumably meant semaphore, not
electric.
 Savannah’s Custom House 193
83 Bishop, A History of American Manufactures, 145–46.
84 John S. Norris, letter to Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury, November
13, 1850, ‘‘Letters: Supervising Architect.” Cornell’s was the lowest for “iron
staircase from 2 story to attic complete” and “the railing for granite staircase to
2 story.”
85 Communications from Andrew Cornell, November 21, 2011. The 1848 date is
an annotation on the advertisement.
86 Norris, “Dimensions.”
87 As with the edge-bent rings in Norris’ trusses, the hundreds of tight radii, “hard-
way” edge-bends used in most of these trusses must have been forged hot, given
the cold bending technology then available.
88 Charles E. Peterson, “Inventing the I-Beam [etc],” APT Bulletin XII, no. 4
(1980): 13ff. Sara E. Wermiel, The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public
Safety in the Nineteenth-Century American City (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000).
89 “Early Iron Building Construction,” Fig. 3.
90 Norris, “Dimensions.” The “typical” floor girder used in the Bank of the State
of New York is described as having 8" x ¾" flanges and a pair of 18" x ¼" web
plates. For a 40-foot length, it would have weighed in excess of 2,500 pounds,
two-thirds the weight of an apparently comparably tasked beam supplied to
Norris.
91 The only contemporaneous example of a self-supporting iron plate roof form—
one in which, as it happens, the roof forms are actually like inverted ships’
hulls—is on Jesse Hartley’s well known Royal Albert Dock, of 1841–45, in
Liverpool.
10 The modernization of a
port in British India
Calcutta, 1870–1880
Aniruddha Bose

At the height of British power in India, in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, in addition to being the capital of the Raj, Calcutta was
also a significant hub of commerce, manufacturing, and trade. Located on
the Hooghly River, the Calcutta Port functioned as the Eastern India region’s
gateway to the world.1 This chapter examines the changing architecture of
trade and its impact on the port workforce in the period 1870–1880. In this
decade, the port’s administrators oversaw a remarkable transformation of
the port’s infrastructure designed to facilitate overseas trade. In particular,
port authorities invested in the construction of several jetties and jetty sheds,
overseen by the Commissioners, between the years 1870 and 1878.2 The
port authorities also made substantial changes to the management of
the port workforce. In particular, port managers gave the police substantial
authority in enforcing the port’s rules and regulations.3 This chapter asks
how these changes affected the port’s workforce. In particular, it asks what
part did modernization in this form play in class formation.
Since its establishment as the headquarters of the English East India
Company in the early seventeenth century, traders used the port of Calcutta
to export a wide variety of goods while a large number of men, women, and
children labored to load and unload cargoes at the port. The 1891 census of
India classified some 5,311 dockworkers living in Calcutta. It estimated the
number of female dockworkers living in Calcutta at 2,258. Of these, 612
were children aged below four. The total number of laborers working at the
port however, was, in all likelihood significantly greater. During this period,
a substantial portion of goods were loaded and unloaded first onto cargo
boats and then onto visiting ships or landed on shore. The census stated that
there were no less that 22,159 male boat and bargemen living in Calcutta.
An additional 10,031 were listed as living in Howrah. The total number of
female boat and bargemen living in Calcutta and Howrah added up to a
total of 5,842.4
These dockworkers loaded and unloaded a variety of goods. Exports
included a variety of semi-manufactures, the most important of which was
jute. In the years 1881–1882, Calcutta’s dockworkers shipped out no less
than 24 million jute bags destined for the United States alone. They loaded
 Modernizing British India’s ports, 1870–1880 195
a further 22 million for Australia, and just under nine-million for the
Straights Settlements in British South-East Asia; other exports also included
tea.5
In the 1890s, dockworkers in Calcutta were packing upwards of 150
million pounds of jute for consumption in Europe and America. Imports, on
the other hand, consisted of largely manufactured items. The collapse of
manufacturing in India under British rule provided an opening for British
industries to supply Indian consumers with finished products, the most
important of which was cloth. Although specific data for the Calcutta port
is unavailable, Indian dockworkers in the late nineteenth century were
unloading around two billion yards of cotton textiles every year. In addi-
tion, the dockworkers also unloaded substantial quantities of unwrought
metals, railway material, machinery, and more recently, mineral oil.6 The
dockworkers also unloaded substantial quantities of arms and armaments
for the British Indian army.7
The Calcutta port modernization project of the mid-nineteenth century
commenced with the construction of jetties on the port waterfront. Through
the last days of sail, the men, women, and children who loaded and unloaded
visiting ships had to perform part of their work mid-stream. When a ship-
ment of goods arrived at the port, importers had to arrange for empty cargo
boats to sail out to the incoming ships, and receive their cargos mid-stream.
Similarly, when exporters sought to load departing ships with their goods,
they had to first arrange for cargo boats to carry their merchandise to the
waiting ships anchored mid-stream.8 The process was cumbersome and diffi-
cult as boatmen had to navigate considerable traffic on the river.9 It was also
quite dangerous. Boatmen often crashed into other vessels, and sank with
fatal results.10 Unfortunately, this was also the only viable option for traders.
The Hooghly River, on which the Calcutta port was located, had a narrow
channel of navigation. Its sloping banks were too shallow to permit ships to
berth close enough to the shore to land or load cargoes directly between ship
and shore. Pilots navigating ships into Calcutta had to anchor their vessels in
the middle of the river to prevent them from running aground (Figure 10.1).11
Jetties were wooden platforms raised on water designed to permit ships to
load and unload their cargoes directly between ship and shore without the
aid of cargo boats. Since they extended out into the water considerably,
jetties presented the port’s managers and users with a viable alternative to
their loading and unloading work processes.
Laborers began construction in 1868. According to the Port Commissioners
records, the Government of India issued orders for the construction of four
jetties equipped with cranes and sheds. A British Indian engineering firm,
Messrs, Marillier and Edwards won the contract, under the terms that they
were expected to complete all work by August 1869. The project was
completed two months behind schedule, in October 1869, during which time
the jetties of Calcutta remained in operation. Simultaneously, the Government
of India had also sanctioned construction work on the Calcutta side of the
196 Aniruddha Bose

Figure 10.1 Traders loading and unloading cargoes mid-stream, Bourne and
Shepherd, View of Ships on the Hooghly River, 1860s, Historical
Photos of the Indian Subcontinent.12

riverbank. Teams of laborers began work on a stretch of shorefront that lay

between the city mints and the landing area known as the Aheeritolla Ghats.
The workers laid down a riverside road, and a wharf that served cargo boat
traffic. The laborers completed the project in August 1870.13
Traders began using these jetties as soon as they were completed (Figure
10.2). According to the Calcutta Port Trust’s records, 52 ships discharged
cargoes at the jetties between October 1870 and March 1871. For the first
full year for which the Calcutta Port Trust had records, 1871–1872, 143
ships landed or loaded goods at the jetties. The traffic was much greater than
anticipated, and the port commissioners found it necessary to begin work on
expanding the jetty facilities. Laborers began work on doubling the size of all
existing sheds, as well as constructing new sheds for two additional jetties
that had been completed in 1871. The port commissioners also began work
on extending the short T-shaped jetty heads towards each other, with plans
for the eventual construction of a single jetty extending through the length of
the port.14
 Modernizing British India’s ports, 1870–1880 197

Figure 10.2 A View of the then newly built jetties, Calcutta Port Trust, The Jetties
in the Eighties, c. 1880s, from the Calcutta Port Commissioners, The
Calcutta Port Trust: A Brief History of Fifty Years’ Work (Calcutta:
Thacker & Spink, 1920).

Over the course of the 1870s, traffic expanded at a steady pace. During the
years 1879–1880, a total of 192 ships used the jetties. By then, the number of
jetties had increased to eight. They were also equipped with even more
advanced machinery. Shippers were able to move cargoes using hydraulic
cranes, which had replaced the old steam-powered cranes installed when
the first jetties were completed. In at least three of the jetties, shippers had the
option to move cargoes directly from incoming ships to the jetty sheds without
them landing on the ground even once. All of this constituted a significant
transformation from the old cumbersome methods of mid-stream loading
and unloading.15
This new architecture of trade represented a significant change from the
old ways of work. Many laborers were affected. For some, the changes
brought opportunity. The Calcutta Port Trust and the Government of
Bengal’s Marine Branch records indicate that the Calcutta port commission-
ers recruited many laborers to work at the jetties. While there are no com-
prehensive statistics to show just how many workers found work as “Jetty
Coolies,” the records do shed some light on some aspects of their work,
especially their terms of employment. For instance, the Calcutta port com-
missioners’ proceedings from 1871 suggest that the Calcutta Port Trust
employed laborers on at least two differing terms of employment. The
Trust hired one group of laborers on a permanent basis, and referred to
them in their records as “regular establishment.”16 These laborers were
called “Khallassies.” When necessary, however, these khallassies brought in
additional laborers to supplement the regular establishment. The record
in question states, “The extra establishment of coolies will only be necessary
when a ship is being discharged at any of the jetties.” The records also state
that the laborers were able to make use of the cranes located on the jetties
for their work. One record contains cost estimates for the working of six
jetty cranes. This particular record also notes that each crane required teams
of six to operate.17
198 Aniruddha Bose
For many workers, however, the jetties and the newfangled cranes made
little difference. Despite some of the advantages presented by the jetties,
many traders preferred to load and unload their cargoes the old-fashioned
way. One particular set of documents dated 1870 provide a glimpse into the
motivations of traders who chose to avoid the jetties. These documents,
“Proceedings of the Marine Branch of the Bengal Government,” indicate
that in this period, some port officials had noticed that many consignments
purchased by the government were being discharged using the old-fashioned
method. The government officials in charge of discharging government
consignments explained their decision in a series of correspondences.
The Superintendent of the Calcutta Dockyard (where workmen repaired
ships) was one such official. He had been landing stores using cargo boats
instead of the jetties. He provided the officiating Master Attendant of
the port, H. Howe, with tables comparing the cost of landing goods via the
jetty and cargo boats. The Dockyard Superintendent landed some goods
from the St. Lawrence using cargo boats, and some through the jetties. His
table tallied the costs of fees paid to land goods at the jetties and the cost of
carriage from the jetties to the dockyard and compared them with the cost
of boat hire and labor costs to transport goods from cargo boats to the
dockyard. The Superintendent estimated that the cost of unloading the old-
fashioned way was 57% of what it cost to land goods using the jetties.18
The tone of some of the correspondence suggests that the Calcutta Port
Trust may have been putting considerable pressure on government offi-
cials to unload their cargoes using the jetties. Another government official,
T. M. Philbrik, defended his old-fashioned landing policies, “I have no
wish to avoid using the jetties, or to place any obstacles in the way of the
easy and expeditious discharge of the vessels making use of them, my
only object being to save expense to Government in the landing of their
stores.”19
In addition to changes in port infrastructure, there is evidence to suggest
that the modernization process also included changes in labor management.
There are at least three sets of records that suggest a changed policing environ-
ment at the port in this period. The first two are in the form of petitions
authored by cargo boat owners who claimed that a new harsh regime of
policing was disrupting work at the port. The third is a police report defend-
ing their conduct against the charges of the cargo boat owners. The signifi-
cance of these records lies in their content. The records indicate that in this
period, the Government of Bengal, and subsequently the Calcutta Port Trust
established a strict licensing and monitoring establishment to cover all
cargo boats operating in the port area. Subsequently, the Calcutta Port Trust
requested the services of the Calcutta Police to enforce the rules and regula-
tions that came along with the new licensing establishment. The records go on
to indicate that the police acted on this request and established a permanent
presence in the port area. The boatmen operating in the port, from this time
on, had to negotiate their presence as a constant reality.
 Modernizing British India’s ports, 1870–1880 199
The first of these records is dated February 1st, 1875. Authored by a
number of predominantly Indian cargo boat owners, the petition is addressed
to Sir Richard Temple, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. The petition notes
that the Government of Bengal had created a new licensing regime in 1869,
to which all the petitioners had submitted. It states, “in accordance with the
provisions of section 162, of Act VI of 1863, and the Rules dated the 24th
day of June 1869, which one of your Honor’s predecessors was pleased to
prescribe for the issue of licenses for, and the registration of, cargo boats by
the Collector of Customs at Calcutta, your memorialists have obtained
licenses for their boats.” The petition goes on to claim that the licensing
regime came with specific manning requirements that established a minimum
number of crewmen for each cargo boat. The Government fixed these
numbers based on the tonnage of each boat. The petitioners claimed that
they had fulfilled these requirements. The petition states, “in pursuance
of the licenses granted to your memorialists they have respectively employed
the full number of crew required by the same.”20
The petition indicates that the port authorities were enforcing their
licensing regime with the full support of the police. The petitioners state that
the police had arrested manjhees (captains) of cargo boats that did not have
their required component of crewmen. The petition states that “since the
publication of the said Rules the authorities of the River Police have
frequently arrested the manjhees of the said cargo boats, which had not on
board their boats the number of crew required by their licenses.” The
petitioners went on to claim that the police had presented the manjhees
arrested in court, where they had been tried and fined for their mistakes.
The petition states, “After their arrest the manjhees are prosecuted before
one of the Magistrates of Calcutta under the provision of Section 188 of the
Indian Penal Code, and are generally punished by fines.” The petitioners
also claimed that the police were getting the licensing authorities to cancel
the manjhees’ licenses. The petition states, “in many cases upon representation
made to the Collector of Customs the licenses are cancelled.”21
The second such record is also a petition authored by cargo boat owners,
this time addressing the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. This petition too,
indicates a heightened policing regime active in the port. The petition repeats
the claims that the police were unduly harassing boatmen over manning
requirements. The petition states, “If a member of the crew happens to be
absent from a boat, the manjhee is summarily arrested, taken off to the
police, brought before the Magistrate the next day, fined on the evidence of
a single policeman, and his license taken from him,” the petition reiterates
the claim that the police were behaving unreasonably as “it is frequently
rendered necessary for one of the crew to go ashore, either to report the
movements of his boat, or on some other matter connected with the cargo
he is carrying, or the business on which he is employed, or for the purpose
of procuring the necessaries of life; or a man may suddenly be taken ill and
sent ashore.” Authored largely by British cargo boat owners, the petition is
200 Aniruddha Bose
angrier and sarcastic in tone. It states, “we would be relieved of a great
cause of anxiety were the police to take upon themselves that portion of our
duty, in seeing that our boats are properly manned, but this voluntary and
zealous watch on our property may be, and is being carried to such an
extent that it becomes a perfect nuisance.”22
Provocatively, the petitioners also accused the police of running an extor-
tion racket. The petitioners wrote, “Another complaint generally made by
the boatmen is that these raids made against them on the part of the police
are frequently made for the purpose of levying ‘black mail.’ When a manjhee
is arrested by the police, he has only to make a successful bargain with the
arresting officer, generally a native to affect his release.” The petitioners even
provided a specific instance to demonstrate the widespread nature of the
extortion racket. They wrote, “a few days ago, a boat was coming out of
the canal, and a policeman hailed the manjhee, and demanded his khorakee
– a common occurrence we are given to understand. The manjhee knowing
what his fate would be if he refused, asked how it was to be given. The
policeman threw a cloth on board, and told the manjhee to fill it with rice.”
The petitioners claimed that the policeman, unable to collect the rice then
and there, instructed the manjhee to hand it over to a beggar, who was clearly
an associate. The petitioners brought up this particular incident because in
this case, the policeman was caught. The petitioners wrote, “The manjhee
did as he was told, but it so happened that just at that moment another
policeman was passing by, who arrested the beggar and the manjhee. The
manjhee then made a clean statement of the whole case, and the result was
that the first policeman was also arrested, and eventually the policeman and
manjhee were convicted by the Magistrate.” The boat owners concluded
their petition with a plea, “We trust the Chamber will agree with us that the
cargo boat owners and cargo boat manjhees have just and reasonable
grounds to protest against this abuse of power and tyrannical treatment.”23
A third record testifying to the changed policing environment at the port
comes from the Calcutta police. Authored by the Superintendent of the
Calcutta River Police, the record consists of material presented in the form
of a report. The Superintendent, G. A. Robertson, submitted the report on
April 25th, 1878, in response to the complaints of the cargo boat owners. In
his report, Robertson states that the police had begun enforcing the port’s
licensing requirements on the request of the port customs office. He wrote,
“The Collector of Customs, in his letters, Nos. 1871 and 1873, dated
respectively the 6th and 8th October 1874, to the Deputy Commissioners of
Police, asked that the River Police be directed to exercise supervision over
cargo boats, and to arrest manjhees of boats found plying with a lesser
number crew than registered for.” Robertson confirmed that the police had
acted on the request, and had been arresting manjhees who were caught
operating boats with insufficient crew. He wrote, “Since November 1874,
the Port Police have arrested cargo boats found plying with less crew, and in
no case has an arrest ever been made when the boat was not plying and
 Modernizing British India’s ports, 1870–1880 201
in motion.” Robertson laid out their standard operating procedures, in the
process refuting the cargo boat owners’ claims that the manjhees were
prosecuted and had their licenses taken away. Robertson wrote, “in every
case where the manjhee has been arrested and his license detained by the
police, the manjhee is released at once on bail or recognizance, and a
memorial is given to the manjhee showing the number of his license, and
that it has been detained by the police.” Robertson even included some
numbers demonstrating the extent of the policing regime. He wrote, “During
the year 1877 91 manjees were arrested for plying their cargo and country
boats short-handed, less crew. Of this number 74 were convicted and fined,
and the remaining warned and discharged by Mr. Dickens, late Northern
Division Magistrate, when the defendants were only one crew less.”24
Superintendent Robertson also confirmed that the police had been
arresting manjhees for violating traffic regulations. He wrote, “During 1877
there were 416 cargo and country boats arrested for obstructing the public
line of navigation between ships’ moorings and the foreshore. These arrests
were from Watgunge Ghat on the South to Nimtolla Ghat on the north; the
defendants were all convicted and fined by Magistrates.” Robertson claimed
that this current round of arrests was unusual, prompted by heavy traffic.
However, this does not contradict the claim made in this chapter that a
new policing regime had come into existence. Robertson wrote, “the Port
Commissioners have been compelled for the past six months to send daily
notices to the River Police . . . A River Police officer in a police boat with
eight or nine crew has to go to the moorings an hour before the time notified,
and to clear the hauling space of all obstruction from cargo boats before the
vessel can enter her moorings.”25
Superintendent Robertson also angrily denied the charges of police extor-
tion. Writing unequivocally, Robertson stated that “During the year 1877
not a single complaint of extortion or bribery was made by any owner or
manjhee of a cargo boat against the River Police.” Robertson did acknowl-
edge the specific instance mentioned by the cargo boat owners, but pointed
out that the police officer was not a member of the River Police. He wrote:

Possibly the case of K. Suburban Police, Alipore Thana, is alluded to,

where a manjhee was detected giving rice out of a cargo in his boat to a
constable of that section. The constable was a countryman of the
manjhee, and a beggar who was also on the boat. This occurred about
two miles inside the canals, the manjhee, the constable, and the beggar
were all three convicted and imprisoned by Magistrate.26

Robertson reiterated his denial of the allegation of police extortion stating,

“No constable attached to the River Police was ever charged or convicted
for demanding or obtaining rice from a cargo boat coming out of the canal.”
Despite his denials of this specific instance, Robertson’s report does provide
evidence to suggest that police extortion was fairly rampant at the port.
202 Aniruddha Bose
He wrote, “Two Mahomeddans were arrested for personating the River
Police constables, and with attempting to extort rice, &c, from cargo boats.
They were both arrested by the River Police, and convicted by Magistrate,
one sent to jail for three months and the other fined.”27 Unsurprisingly, this
new intensive and harsh policing regime led to considerable conflict between
the port workers, their employers, and the port authorities.
There are several records describing many different forms of everyday
conflict dating from this period. Of these however, thievery or pilferage
is one form that generated more discussion than others. Superintendent
Robertson’s police report is the single most comprehensive record on the
subject. Robertson claimed that theft was endemic and systematic amongst
the port boatmen. He wrote:

The cargo boat manjees generally contract with the owners of boats to
supply the crew from Rs. 49 to 56 per boat according to the number of
crew licensed to carry. The amount of wages are all paid into the hands
of the manjees, who when engaging the dandies, instead of agreeing to
pay them Rs. 7 each for wages, which is paid by owner, find dandies at
Rs. 3 or 3-8 per month and free food which they obtain by bleeding bags
out of cargo, and eating and bartering the rice or grain thus obtained.

Robertson provided some statistics on the number of manjhees arrested on

charges of theft to indicate the scale of the problem. He wrote, “During the
year 1877 182 manjhees and dandies (oarsmen) of cargo boats were detected
and arrested by the River Police for stealing cargo shipped on their boats. Of
this number 142 were convicted and fined, and 32 discharged by Magistrate.
The cargo grain stolen was valued at Rs. 2,372-13-3, of which Rs. 2,045-
0-9 was recovered and restored to shippers and owners after conviction of
the thieves.”28
In his report, Robertson even hinted that the boatmen were operating in
cahoots with the cargo boat owners. He noted that the latter benefitted from
the process since it allowed them to pay lower wages to their boatmen.
Robertson wrote, “the river is overcrowded and over stacked with the cargo
boats. Owners can get little or no hire, not sufficient to pay hire of crew; the
crew of boats are clamorous for increase of pay as food is scarce. Of course,
if they are allowed to bleed bags of grain shipped in their boats to the loss
of shippers, they would, instead of demanding more wages, agree to work
for less wages until freight rises.”29 Whether the Superintendent had specific
intelligence on this point or not, his report leaves little doubt that thievery
had become a significant concern.
The port boatmen also resisted the police’s drive to enforce manning
requirements. Robertson claimed that sometimes manjhees operated their
boats with barely half the required crewmen. He described “the reckless
manner in which manjhees of cargo boats often ply their boats, with about
one-half the licensed number of crew.” More often though, the manjhees
 Modernizing British India’s ports, 1870–1880 203
took care to sail only one crewman short. It was in such cases that he noticed
the manjhees use a particular trick to get away with their infractions.
Robertson wrote, “Very frequently, laden cargo boats are found plying with
one crew less. The police, on boarding the boat, the manjhee puts forward
a churrundar [cabin boy], or a lad that is a cook for the crew, as a dandy;
the churrundar or cook boy takes an oar, and the police do not even arrest
in such cases.”30
There are fewer records discussing everyday conflict involving laborers
who worked on the shore or on board ships. However, one document from
1875 referred to some of the difficulties traders faced when loading and
unloading their cargoes at the port jetties. The record, authored by the
Secretary to the Bengal Chamber of Commerce discussed the possibility of
loading and unloading cargoes at the port jetties at night. Expressing skepti-
cism, the Secretary to the Bengal Chamber of Commerce claimed that traders
faced “numberless inconveniences, which already attend the discharge of
cargo,” and that night work would make the situation worse. Specifically, he
listed the “rough handling of packages, damages, and pilfering” as serious
problems.31 Addressing the same problem, the Vice Chairman of the CPT
responded through an official note where he included details of all such
cases. Instances of rough handling and damages included:

1. A casting for Messrs. Jardine and Skinner for which the Commissioners
had to pay Rs. 75
2. A stone slab for Llewellyn and Company, for which the Commissioners
had to pay Rs. 150
3. A coolie fell with a box of beer bottles, for which the Commissioners
had to pay Rs. 10
4. Another casting has lately been broken, and will cost the Commissioners
Rs. 75 to Rs. 10032

The Vice Chairman also listed four instances of theft:

1. A theft of two seers of lead belonging to the Port Commissioners, the

thief having been caught and punished.
2. A theft of six bottles of beer and six bottles of lozenges from a lock-
fast godown, supposed to have been taken by a shed officer and three
tallymen.
3. A theft of a shawl of which the Commissioners have already heard.
4. A theft of a piece of Spelter by a thief from the outside.33

In addition to these records discussing everyday conflict, there are also

references to one instance of organized, collective action. This is dated 1878,
a year later. The cargo boat owners, Macalister & Co. and others, referred
to this strike in their petition addressed to the Bengal Chamber of Commerce.
The petitioners wrote, “the boatmen as a body struck work last Friday and
204 Aniruddha Bose
the shipping of the port was suddenly suspended all that forenoon, until the
men were persuaded to return to work on the assurance that their grievances
would be presented through the proper channel.” The petitioners listed
four grievances as motivating the strike. Three of these were long-running
conflicts. First, the petitioners brought up the police raids, ensuring that
manjhees were fulfilling their manning requirements. “The police are conti-
nually persecuting them,” the petitioners wrote. Second, the petitioners
pointed out how the police arrested manjhees over minor traffic infractions.
The petitioners complained, “the interference of the police, which is
exercised without any judicious discretion, falls with great severity on the
poor boatmen.” Third, the petitioners brought up police extortion, referring
to the “black mail” racket that was ruining the lives of boatmen.34
The petitioners added a fourth grievance. They claimed that, “by some
new rule, no boat is allowed to carry more than 7½ seers of rice for the use
of the crew.” In the absence of sufficient information to permit conversion of
this amount to modern day scales, it is impossible to determine precisely
how much this meant. However, from the tone of the petitioners writing, it
is clear that the amount was very little for a working crew: “It is needless
for us to make any comment on the absurdity and unreasonableness of the
new rule.” The petitioners also complained that the police were enforcing
the rule with undue harshness. They wrote, “the arbitrary way in which the
police attempt to enforce it is such that no one however humble in position
could tolerate it. The police go into a boat, upset the crews pots and pans,
otherwise ill treat the men and their property in a most arbitrary and ruthless
way.”35
The strike is also discussed in a police report dated March 1st, 1878 and
submitted by the 1st Division of the River Police includig a first-person
eyewitness narrative of the strike. The police officer who authored the report
claimed that when informed about the strike, “I went down to the ghats.”
The author refuted the cargo boat owners’ claims that the manjees had gone
on strike because of the 7½ seers of rice restriction. He wrote: “We saw a
number of manjees and ghat manjees of cargo boats: they said that they had
heard from other manjees that there is a recent order issued by the police
that no cargo boat is to keep more than seven seers of rice on their boats at
one time. I asked these men from whom they got this information, and to
point them out to me; they are unable to do so.’’36 In fact, the police officer
claimed, “no such notification has ever been issued by the police.” The
officer claimed that there were entirely different reasons for the strike: “the
only reason I can assign is that between the 9th and 15th February 1878,
29 manjees and dandies of cargo boats were arrested by the River Police
for bleeding bags of rice out of cargo entrusted to them to ship on board of
vessels lying within the port of Calcutta . . . The conviction of so large a
number of men (29) have seriously alarmed the cargo boat men.”37
The police report also includes information on a labor organizer, and his
confrontation with a strike-breaker. The report states, “Yesterday, at noon,
 Modernizing British India’s ports, 1870–1880 205
one Aliimooddee manjee, an old offender, went on board a cargo boat
of Tofanny manjee with a cargo of sugar being shipped, and tried to induce
Tofanny manjee to strike work: he refused, on which the old thief manjee
threatened the man saying that it was ordered by the police [emphasis in
original] that no cargo boats were to receive cargo.” The police officer went
on to claim that Allimooddee manjee even threatened to have Tofanny
manjee arrested. He wrote, “if Tofanny manjee did not stop loading, he
would be hauled over to the police.”38 From the perspective of the police,
the situation was resolved most satisfactorily. The police officer wrote, “The
defendant, Allimooddee manjee, was taken into custody, and charged with
criminal trespass and intimidation, sections 477, 448, and 506, Indian Penal
Code. He was placed before the Chief Magistrate, found guilty, and
sentenced to two months’ rigorous imprisonment.”39
The modernization of Calcutta’s port during the British Raj had a number
of impacts on both the port and its people. First, the evidence indicates that
the modernization of the Calcutta port created opportunities for certain
portions of the port workforce, which therefore benefitted a segment of the
Indian population. Second, modernization consisted of infrastructure devel-
opment as well as new methods of labor management. In particular, these
new methods of labor management included an intensification of policing.
Although, there is no documentation demonstrating a linkage between the
two streams of modernization, it is probable that the latter were made to
protect the investments in the former. In the case of the Calcutta port, it is
very likely that port managers felt that their workforce needed better
management in light of the heavy investments that they made in port infra-
structure. Finally, the evidence indicates that the intensification of policing at
the Calcutta port led to considerable conflict. The increased policing pitted
laborers against the police in particular, but also against traders from whom
the port workers stole. This suggests that the modernization process may
have worsened class conflict in this period.

Notes
1 The historiography of Calcutta and its place in the British Raj is quite substantial.
But, an excellent and easily available primary source introduction to the city in
this period is Evan Cotton’s Calcutta, Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive
Handbook to the City (Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 4 Dalhousie Square, 1907)
(Available on Google Books).
2 The Commissioners for the Port of Calcutta, The Calcutta Port Trust: A Brief
History of Fifty Years’ Work 1870–1920 (Calcutta: Thacker & Spink, 1920), 12,
16–17, 19, 28, 34, 37.
3 For instance, see “Memorial of Nicaichi and Co. et al.,” File 13-2, Proceedings
of the Marine-Calcutta Port Trust Department, January 1875, 20.
4 The Census Commissioner of India, Census of India 1891: The Lower Provinces
of Bengal and their Feudatories Vol. IV (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press,
1893), 478–479, 544–545, 670–671.
5 Ibid.
206 Aniruddha Bose
6 See K. N. Chaudhuri, “Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments (1757–1947)” in
Dharma Kumar and Meghnad Desai, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of
India 1751–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 852, 854–
855, 858–859.
7 There are many references to the import of gunpowder at the port of Calcutta.
For instance, see G. H. Kiernander to J. H. Linton, Proceedings of the Marine
Department, April 1866, P. No 16, State Archives of West Bengal, Kolkata.
8 References to this work process can be found in the testimonial of Captain
Taylor from the “Proceedings of the Committee Appointed to Consider and
Report on the Junction of the East Indian Railway with the Eastern Bengal
Railway by a Bridge Over the Hooghly,” Proceedings of the Marine Department,
July 1865, State Archives of West Bengal, Kolkata.
9 See C. Chapman to the Junior Secretary to the Board of Revenue, Proceedings
of the Marine Department, April 1862, P. No. 42, 37, State Archives of West
Bengal, Kolkata.
10 See Rajah Issur Chunder Sing to W. S. Seton-Karr, Proceedings of the Marine
Department, August 1861, P. No. 98, 49, State Archives of West Bengal, Kolkata.
11 For a glimpse into the challenges of navigating the Hooghly in the early twentieth
century, see Commissioners for the Port of Calcutta, The Calcutta Port Trust:
A Brief History of Fifty Years’ Work 1870–1920 (Calcutta: Thacker & Spink,
1920), 4–6.
12 www.oldindianphotos.in/2016/03/view-of-ships-on-hooghly-river-calcutta.html
13 “Commissioners,” The Calcutta Port Trust, 14.
14 Ibid, 17.
15 Ibid, 17.
16 CPT Commissioners, Proceedings, 1870–1871, 5, Kolkata Port Trust Library,
Kolkata.
17 Ibid.
18 “Proceedings no. 90 & 93,” Proceedings of the Marine Branch, 1870, State
Archives of West Bengal, Kolkata.
19 “T. M. Philbrik, Proceeding” no. 40, Proceedings of the Marine Branch,
May 1870, State Archives of West Bengal, Kolkata, 21.
20 “Memorial of Nicaichi and Co. et al, File 13-2,” Proceedings of the Marine-
Calcutta Port Trust Department, January 1875, 20.
21 Ibid.
22 “Messrs. R. Macalister & Co.,” Proceedings of the Commissioners, 1878–1879,
Kolkata Port Trust Library, Kolkata, 29–30.
23 Ibid, 30–31.
24 “Report by Superintendent, River Police,” Proceedings of the Commissioners,
1878–1879, 44.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid, 45, 47.
29 Ibid, 47.
30 Ibid, 44.
31 “W. J. Wood to Secretary to the Port Commissioners,” Proceedings of the Port
Commissioners, 1875–1876, Kolkata Port Trust Library, Kolkata, 175.
32 “Note by Official Vice Chairman,” Proceedings of the Port Commissioners,
1875–1876, Kolkata Port Trust Library, Kolkata, 178.
33 Ibid.
34 ‘‘Messrs. R. Macalister & Co.,’’ Proceedings of the Commissioners, 1878–1879,
Kolkata Port Trust Library, Kolkata, 30–31.
35 Ibid, 30.
 Modernizing British India’s ports, 1870–1880 207
36 “Copy of a Report, case no. 415, dated 1st March 1878, of the 1st Division
River Police,” Proceedings of the Commissioners, 1878–1879 Kolkata Port
Trust Library, Kolkata, 45.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
11 Building the marble elephant
The creation of Philadelphia’s
iconic City Hall
Glen Umberger

This chapter considers how political resolve and a determined Building

Commission managed to produce a monumental municipal building symbol-
izing the city’s image of itself as the manufacturing capital of the world,
without any mortgage, liens, or encumbrances1 and how, in spite of its cost
and size, is still one of the most overlooked architectural landmarks in the
United States. In the 1870s, Philadelphia, arguably the most important indus-
trial city in the United States at the time, began the most ambitious municipal
building project ever attempted on the North American continent in order to
announce its importance to the global economy
For the next thirty years, Philadelphia would be involved in the construc-
tion of the new public buildings, which were designed by a small, dedicated
group of world class architects and artists whose goal was to create an
iconic architectural masterpiece that “in some far off future day be all that
remains to tell the story of our civilization, and to testify to the dignity and
public spirit of our people.” Boasting a didactic sculptural program designed
“to express American ideas and develop American genius,”2 the new City
Hall featured a multitude of allegorical representations including commerce,
industry and trade. Remarkably, although conceived during the national
financial crisis surrounding the Panic of 1873, the city officially completed
their monumental task in July 1901, producing the largest and most expen-
sive municipal building in North America, the cost of which was funded
entirely through special taxes levied against Philadelphia’s vast wealth
created by her superior manufacturing and industrial prowess as the self-
proclaimed “Workshop of the World.”3
In January 1871, the City of Philadelphia began the most ambitious
municipal building campaign yet attempted on the North American conti-
nent. The result was a stunning work of architecture. Philadelphia City
Hall, officially known as the Public Buildings of the City of Philadelphia, is
one of the grandest, yet obscure public buildings of the nineteenth century,
built as a reflection of the forces that shaped the modern American city
(Figure 11.1). Philadelphia’s aspiration for civic greatness was not hers
alone; across North America during the waning years of the nineteenth
century, local politicians and business leaders sought to redefine the image
 Building Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall 209

Figure 11.1 Philadelphia City Hall, 1899 (Library of Congress).

of their respective cities through the construction of grandiose municipal

buildings, often including both a city hall and county courthouse. Yet more
than any other building of the period, Philadelphia City Hall illustrates how
the image of the city was impacted by the growth of commerce, trade and
manufacturing.
The exponential growth of the American city in the years following the
Civil War was the result of several factors including politics, economics and
mechanization associated with the Industrial Revolution, and Philadelphia’s
transformation was not unlike other cities. During this period, Philadelphia
210 Glen Umberger
“shed its old identity as a seaport city on the eighteenth-century model and
became definitely a nineteenth-century industrial city.”4 So successful was
Philadelphia that it earned the nickname, “Workshop of the World,” having
a diverse portfolio of manufacturing including bookbinding, boot and
shoes, clothing, confectionery, furniture, hosiery, iron working, paper boxes,
printing, silk, and umbrella making.5 The growth of the city was not just
measured in economic terms or in area (approximately 140 square miles),
but also in a burgeoning population with the arrival of foreign-born immi-
grants seeking a better life in the United States. In 1860, Philadelphia was
the second-largest city in the country with a population of 565,529; the
populace would more than double to 1,293,697 by 1900.6
The growth of American cities during these years directly correlated
to the growth of municipal governments and, in the case of Philadelphia,
the evolution of its municipal government began modestly with William
Penn’s Charter of Privileges in 1701, which established a legal framework
for a local government including the creation of the office of mayor and a
legislative mechanism: this framework would undergo several modifications
over the next century and a half, culminating with the Act of Consolidation,
which merged the City and County of Philadelphia on February 2, 1854.
The Act vested power in a more powerful Executive Branch (Mayor) and
restrained the power of the Legislative Branch (Select and Common
Councils) to “make the booming city governable.”7 The newly enlarged
Philadelphia required an even larger and more politically powerful central
government than what Penn could ever have imagined and city leaders
sought to express this new municipal authority through their new public
buildings.
The Act also created the need for new facilities to support the governmental
functions of a vastly enlarged city.8 Far from being strictly a practical concern
for more space for city government, a monumental city hall on Penn Square
would reflect Philadelphia’s status as one of America’s largest, wealthiest,
and most prominent cities. Unfortunately, as Philadelphia was basking in its
glow of political, economic and commercial greatness, the United States was
about to experience an economic downturn that ultimately resulted in the
Panic of 1857 and Philadelphia, as a center of manufacturing, trade, and
banking, was hit hard by the panic, forcing the city to put all plans for new
public buildings on hold.9
Designs for new public buildings for the post-1854 City of Philadelphia to
be erected at Penn Square, the geographic center of William Penn’s colonial
city were first advertised in 1860. For this competition, architect John
McArthur, Jr., who received his architectural training in the office of Thomas
Ustick Walter, submitted plans for two neo-classical buildings.
The city hall would house the executive and legislative functions of
government and the county courthouse reserved for the judiciary. Both
buildings would occupy lots facing each other. It is interesting to note that
McArthur’s city hall building plan with a dome and central portico showed
 Building Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall 211
remarkable similarities to Walter’s recently completed United States Capitol
Dome and Expansion (Figure 11.2a); the design for the courthouse, by
comparison, featured a clock tower and cupola (Figure 11.2b). McArthur’s
designs illustrate how quickly Walter’s neo-classical temple to democracy
inspired the designs for other state capitols and local city halls. It may also
have been McArthur’s architectural ambition to signify that Philadelphia was
still a prominent American city and evoke the fact that Philadelphia had once
served as the nation’s capital from 1790 to 1800. While construction of the
United States Capitol under Walter’s designs continued during the years of
the Civil War, Philadelphia’s “New Public Buildings” project was abandoned:
McArthur’s two neo-classical temples would not be built and plans for a new
city hall would have to wait almost another ten years.
Thomas Ustick Walter, having returned to his hometown of Philadelphia
following his resignation as Architect of the United States Capitol in the
Spring of 1865, was still highly esteemed in professional circles and although
he was retired from the architectural profession, he was asked to serve as
Chairman of the Committee of Plans and Architecture under the Board of
Commissioners for the Erection of Public Buildings. In that capacity, Walter
served as judge for the design competition for city hall in 1869 for which ten
entries were submitted; the premium was awarded to McArthur, just as it
had in 1860.10
McArthur’s new proposal differed substantially from his earlier plans
for two neo-Classical temples and included one U-shaped city hall and
courthouse building in the flamboyant and fashionable Second Empire style
to be erected adjacent to Independence Hall (Figure 11.1). A rare surviving
photograph of McArthur’s model of this plan shows the height of the new
city hall’s tower height surpassing William Strickland’s tower at Independence
Hall. Locating the new city hall in the center of the Philadelphia’s commercial
center and at the site of the current seat of municipal government was a
marked departure from earlier plans to locate the new public buildings
at Penn Square.11 McArthur’s design not only would have dwarfed the

Figure 11.2 Left (a): “Perspective view of the City Court House proposed for the
Penn Square Site, 1860” (Society Print Collection, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania). Right (b): John McArthur, Jr. “Perspective view of the
City Hall proposed for the Penn Square Site, 1860.”
212 Glen Umberger
red-brick Georgian style statehouse, it would have required the demolition of
both Federal-era wings.12 Yet, surprisingly, the proposal to demolish part
of the historic birthplace of liberty and replace it with a modern building
surrounding the central block of Independence Hall did not initially provoke
alarm at the impending destruction of the Nation’s architectural heritage.
Those who were in favor of this location argued that since the city’s business
district was firmly entrenched in that neighborhood, and since it was within
close proximity to the Port of Philadelphia, there was no reason to construct
the new city hall in another, less desirable and remote part of the city.
Changing the building site from Penn Square to Independence Square,
however, set off a firestorm of political controversy that almost doomed
the project entirely. So as not to interfere with celebrations surrounding the
Centennial Exposition of 1876, and desecrate Independence Square (and
thus mar any celebratory public events), it was proposed to build the
new public buildings on nearby Washington Square.13 Interestingly, as one
of Penn’s five original squares, Washington Square, originally known as
Southeast Square, had been used as a potter’s field dating to the Revolutionary
War and documents from this time period indicate that this was a well-
known fact and building on the site of burial plots of hundreds of indigents
was not a negative factor in proposing the square for the new public
buildings.14
Supporters were highly vocal in their respective preferences over siting
the new public buildings and newspaper editorial pages were filled with
editorials spouting pros and cons, demonstrating that the public was firmly
divided between Penn Square and Washington Square. The City Councils,
which would directly benefit from expanded new quarters, supported the
Penn Square site:

[T]he streets are wide, and the architecture would be more imposing,
and would appear to better advantage than upon a narrow street. Broad
Street must ultimately be the great avenue of the city . . . us commence
the work NOW, and let the buildings to be erected be commensurate
with the dignity and position of a city with its millions of inhabitants,
the seat of manufactures and wealth, and which is justly regarded as the
fountain head of literature, medical lore and jurisprudence.15

Others staunchly disagreed, including one such editorial appearing in the

North American on September 21, 1870 that argued building on the Penn
Square site “would be the ruin of Broad Street and would expose the trade
of Market Street to great damage.”16 Fulfilling the ambition to place the new
city hall at Penn Square, arguably in the most prominent urban location,
required the intervention of the Pennsylvania State Legislature in the spring
of 1870 which definitively resolved the conflict over location.
The Act for the Erection of the Public Buildings for the City of Philadelphia,
signed into law on August 5, 1870, specifically required that the general
 Building Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall 213
electorate choose either Penn Square or Washington Square. The October
1870 referendum saw a majority select the Penn Square option, signaling
the beginning of the evolution of Philadelphia’s civic development from its
colonial proximity to the Delaware River waterfront into a city with a
regional orientation.17 Not only was Philadelphia’s City Hall to be its
political center, it would also serve as an anchor for the city’s newly emerging
hub of transportation, commerce and culture.
By the 1870s, Penn Square was already being transformed in ways that far
exceeded William Penn’s imagination. On the southeast corner of Penn
Square was Pennsylvania Railroad’s Freight Depot, known as the “Grand
Depot,” which in 1875 was renovated by John Wanamaker to expand his
retail operations; it is considered to be the first department store in the United
States.18 On the northeast corner of Penn Square stood the new Masonic
Temple (James H. Windrim, 1868) and to the south, other important cultural
institutions, like the American Academy of Music (Napoleon LeBrun, 1855).
Penn Square was also experiencing a tremendous residential boom as wealthy
citizens sought out larger building lots for their Italianate townhouses and
monumental houses of worship, such as the Arch Street Presbyterian Church
(Hoxie & Button, 1855). Philadelphia’s new city hall accordingly, would be
a prominent architectural feature in this emerging cultural landscape, the
crown jewel of the modern industrial city, and it would also influence future
development nearby including the new Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
building by Frank Furness in 1876, whose notable alumni would include
such celebrated artists as Alexander Stirling Calder, Mary Cassatt, Thomas
Eakins and Maxfield Parrish.
A key to Philadelphia’s growth during the nineteenth century was the
expansion and strength of the railroads, which enabled Philadelphia to thrive:
the railroads were literally the steam engine that drove the local economy.
While the new city hall was under construction, the Pennsylvania Railroad
opened Broad Street Station directly across the street along the west side of
Penn Square. In 1892–1893, the station was expanded by Frank Furness
making it the largest passenger train terminal in the world. The station was
the engineering marvel of its day. The train shed boasted the largest single
span roof, 306-feet across, covering 16 tracks. Other major railroads in the
city included the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, the largest corporation
in the world by the 1870s valued at $170 million, whose new terminal would
be built in 1889 two blocks east of Penn Square.19 Likewise, the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad, opened a new train station to the west of Penn Square in
1888 and was the first railroad to offer both freight and passenger service
directly linking Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Baltimore and Charleston,
South Carolina. City Hall was positioned to be located at the epicenter of
Philadelphia’s vast transportation rail network.
The Act of 1870 ingeniously created a Board of Commissioners to oversee
the construction, which took control of the massive building project away
from the politicians and placed it in the hands of capable and experienced
214 Glen Umberger
businessmen and managers. Samuel Perkins, a Yale-educated lawyer, served
as the President of the Commission for nearly thirty years and William
Strumberg Stokley, the owner of a thriving confectionery business and once
four-term Mayor of Philadelphia, served as a Commissioner for many years;
both brought experience and an ethical resolve to complete the task at
hand.20 Among the Commissioners’ earliest tasks were hiring the architect
and “mak[ing] all needful contracts for the construction of said buildings.”21
The Act also created the financial mechanism to produce the building:
“the Commissioners shall make requisition on the [Select and Common]
Councils of said City, prior to the first day of December in each year, for the
amount of money required by them for the purposes of the Commission for
the succeeding year.”22 Philadelphia’s bi-cameral legislative branch, or the
Select and Common Councils, in turn “shall levy a special tax, sufficient to
raise the amount so required,” providing allocations from City Council can
be made at any time during the year, and that these taxes “shall be strictly
limited to the sum required to satisfy their contracts for the erection of said
buildings, and for the proper and complete furnishing thereof.”23 While this
financial arrangement was straight-forward, it created strife between the
Commission and successive city councils, as each party sought to allocate
funds as they thought most advantageous to their respective interests.
The successful completion of Philadelphia City Hall at Penn Square can be
attributed to the Act of 1870, which not only set forth the ambitious plans
to build a monumental public building in the geographic and symbolic heart
of the city, but also provided the statutory means necessary to raise the
enormous funds required to accomplish that goal.
Building a new city hall would not be cheap, especially given its size, mate-
rials and associated labor costs. McArthur’s original construction budget for
the public buildings was an extraordinary $6 million—a budget far exceed-
ing those of other city halls of the period and the final cost of $24 million was
a full ten times the cost of the city halls then under construction in Baltimore
and Toronto, and seven times that of Minneapolis’ monumental new public
buildings. In 1874, Philadelphia had a strong economy and robust tax reve-
nues, sufficient to finance the construction of the City Hall and the state of
the city’s economic health was lauded during Benjamin Harris Brewster’s
keynote address delivered at the Cornerstone Laying Ceremony:

We have near 9000 manufactories, having a capital of $185,000,000,

employing 145,000 hands, the annual product of whose labor is over
$384,000,000. We exported in 1873, in value, over $34,000,000, and we
imported in value over $26,000,000. The amount paid for duties in gold
was near eight millions and a half. The real estate, as assessed for taxation,
was over $518,000,000, and we collected near $9,000,000 for taxes.24

It is clear that the City’s financial health at the time could justify the
undertaking of this Herculean task and the new City Hall was a reflection
of this robust economy.
 Building Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall 215
Building such an extraordinary public work not only required vast sums of
money, but also the talents of it architect, John McArthur, Jr., who also had
the advantage of the availability of one of the Nation’s premiere architectural
talents of the day in his mentor, Thomas Ustick Walter. Walter, who was
living in Philadelphia since his retirement as the Architect of the Capitol,
was experiencing some personal financial difficulties and was pursuing new
professional opportunities in order to support his family.
On June 1, 1874, Walter was officially hired for the Architect’s Office of the
New Public Buildings in the City of Philadelphia to serve under his former
student, McArthur. Walter’s diary entries and his personal correspondence
after June 1874 provide fascinating insights into his work and the evidence
strongly suggests Walter contributed significantly to the designs for the build-
ing, though he was working under the direction and supervision of McArthur.
In his capacity as “Assistant Architect,” Walter, an architect of national
acclaim having just completed perhaps the most well-recognized building in
the United States, was elected to serve as the second President of the American
Institute of Architects, an organization of which he was a founding member.25
G.E. Kidder Smith remarks in his Source Book of American Architecture: 500
Buildings from the 10th Century to the Present that “[t]he evidence also
seems conclusive that Thomas Ustick Walter had a hand in the design of the
tower and inner decoration.”26 In fact, Walter’s innovative contributions and
superb architectural expertise enabled City Hall to not only be completed but
also to become, for a time, the tallest building in the world.
At this time throughout North America, cities were erecting new city halls
that sought to achieve greater heights as a means of civic self-promotion and
this dynamic shift in municipal architecture was most ambitiously realized
in Philadelphia by the small team of notable architects and artisans who
produced the tallest building in the world, at a record height of 548 feet.
Some have argued that the title of world’s tallest building prior to Philadelphia
City Hall was the 353-foot Milwaukee City Hall, claiming it “was the
second tallest structure in the nation behind the Washington Monument,”
which topped out in 1884.27 Milwaukee City Hall’s pedigree as “tallest”
building is said to have eclipsed the 348-foot tall Manhattan Life Insurance
Building in New York (Kimball and Thompson, 1894) and was only
succeeded by the 391-foot tall Park Row Building at 15 Park Row, New
York (R.H. Robertson, 1899).28 It was, in fact, Philadelphia City Hall, with
an official height of 548 feet, which would hold the title of “World’s Tallest”
until the Singer Building (Ernest Flagg, 1908) in New York.
The Washington Monument is 554 feet, 7 and 11/32 inches tall (completed
in 1884) and the Eiffel Tower is 986 feet tall (completed in 1889) are both
taller than Philadelphia City Hall when its tower was completed in November
1894, but are more properly classified as structures and not as buildings.
These structures also represent a dramatic change to their respective cities’
skylines, becoming dominant secular features that eclipsed church buildings.
Yet, not only was Philadelphia’s City Hall the tallest in the world, it was also
216 Glen Umberger
the largest municipal building constructed on the North American continent,
larger in square footage even than the United States Capitol building in
Washington, D.C. and taller than the 361-foot tall Illinois State Capitol
Building (Alfred H. Piquenard, et al., 1888) in Springfield, Illinois.
In each of John McArthur’s designs for Philadelphia City Hall, of which
there were several, the building always featured a clock tower. In McArthur’s
1860 and 1869 plans, for example, the public buildings featured a modest
tower and similarly, the 1871 design for Penn Square featured a 300-foot-
tall tower, capped by an 18-foot-tall bronze statue of William Penn. Even at
that height, City Hall would have been the tallest building in Philadelphia
and the first building to eclipse the city’s numerous church spires, including
McArthur’s West Spruce Street Presbyterian Church, completed in 1857.
Sometime in 1875, the year after Walter joined the Architect’s Office, the
tower design underwent a substantial change when more than 200 feet
were added to the tower’s height, which at over 500 feet made it the tallest
building in the world, a fact heralded in Turner’s Guide to and Descriptions
of Philadelphia’s New City Hall or Public Buildings with the subtitle: “The
largest and grandest structure in the world.”29 Clearly, Philadelphia’s archi-
tectural ambition to build the “tallest building” was a reflection of civic pride
and while the exact timing of this change to the design of City Hall’s tower
remains uncertain, it is clear from his personal papers that Walter made
significant contributions to the change in design clearly reflecting a desire to
build an even more prominent building than the one that originally had been
conceived. For example, beginning on New Year’s Day 1880, Walter records
in his diary that he “call[ed] at office . . . [and] made some studies of the
foundation of tower” and then spent the entire month of January “at sections
through tower.”30 It is interesting that he is studying the foundations of the
tower as those “foundations” were completed in late June 1874, five-and-a-
half years earlier. Walter’s diary entries for the month of February 1880
continue to record his duties in the design of the tower, but perhaps one of
the most interesting entries is from February 16, in which he records “at
calculations of weight of tower.”31
These entries may indicate that the architects were planning to greatly
expand the height of the tower and wanted to verify that the current found-
ation would support the additional weight. Indeed Walter’s true architectural
genius was an engineering feat completed seven years after his death—the
installation of the colossal bronze statue of William Penn atop City Hall,
which was cast at the Tacony Iron and Metal Company, one of several
foundries in Philadelphia that produced structural and decorative ironwork.
Although Walter did not design the statue, that honor belonging to Alexander
Milne Calder (1846–1923), it was Walter’s engineering skill that allowed
Penn to surmount the tower in November 1894. Based on what is known
about his previous work at the U.S. Capitol, in particular the mechanism by
which Freedom rose to her pedestal in December 1863, it is certain that
Walter employed the same engineering for William Penn’s rise to the top of
the city hall clock tower 31 years later.32
 Building Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall 217
One of the most notable aspects of Philadelphia City Hall is its elaborate
sculptural program. By the mid-nineteenth century, civic architecture and
symbolic ornament had become inextricable, with the most important
buildings possessing the most elaborate decorative program, often co-opting
traditional architectural iconography from houses of worship to articulate a
secular civic identity and authority. Philadelphia City Hall’s didactic program
included themes such as commerce, mechanics, architecture, science, poetry,
music, navigation and botany.33
Instead of promoting nationalism, the iconographic program at
Philadelphia City Hall conveys ideals of civic identity and municipal author-
ity through a multitude of allegorical representations by one sculptor,
Scottish-born Alexander Milne Calder. Calder, who trained in London and
worked on the Albert Memorial, immigrated to the United States in 1868,
and continued his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In
1873, Samuel Perkins and John McArthur, Jr. hired him as a “plaster
modeler;” he was the first tenant of the new building, his studio occupying
space on the basement level in the southwest corner.34 Working under the
direction of the Architect’s Office, Calder molded his works in clay and then
cast them in plaster; these plaster molds would then be translated by carvers
into stone or, in the case of William Penn, cast in bronze at the foundry.
Fortunately, most of these plaster models were photographed before they
were destroyed and the photographs were published in a book, including
one plaster model representing trade with a depiction of a ship with its
anchor, wooden crates stored in a warehouse and in transit topped by a
bunch of bananas (Figure 11.3).35
The sculptural program at Philadelphia City Hall, created to portray a
particular and perpetual civic image of the city, involved more than 250
individual sculptural pieces with depictions of historical and allegorical
figures, designed not only to inform the public as to the building’s multiple
purposes, as each side represents its different governmental function, but
also to teach a lesson. To this end, he employed traditional religious subjects
for secular symbolic purposes.
For example, on the south side of the building, which is the location of the
judicial branch and one of the three homes of the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court, the keystone figure in the central portal is that of the historical figure
of Moses, the lawgiver from the Biblical book of Exodus, presiding over the
entrance to the courts. Similarly, on the western side of the building that
was used as the prisoners’ entrance, the keystone above the central portal
carries the allegorical figure of sympathy. She is flanked in the spandrels by
depictions of the Biblical stories of Cain and Abel from the Old Testament
and the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the New Testament. These panels
are representative of sin and repentance and illustrate the use of religious
themed iconography in a secular, civic setting.
The east portal, designed to be the Mayor’s grand entrance, by contrast,
employed strictly secular iconography (Figure 11.4). Here Calder created
218 Glen Umberger

Figure 11.3 Commission for the Erection of the New Public Buildings of the City of
Philadelphia. Sculptures and Ornamental Details in Bronze and Iron of
the New City Hall, Philadelphia, 1883 (5 volumes), Philadelphia: Office
of City Architect, 1883 (Photo by Author).

two life-sized allegorical panels of the figures “Architecture” and “Science.”

Architecture is represented by a female figure in a reclining pose with
an early representation of the Philadelphia City Hall clock tower over her
shoulder. Science, the corresponding male figure is also in a reclining pose,
with a stack of books representing the pursuit of knowledge and the lamp of
wisdom perched above his head. This allegory is noteworthy in that Calder
modeled the face of “Science” after that of the architect, John McArthur, Jr.
Additionally, Calder provides the viewer with moralizing symbolism by
placing a compass, a masonic symbol “to circumscribe and keep us within
bounds with all mankind” and a tool used by an architect in his right hand.36
These allegorical panels and the symbolism contained therein while noble,
are certainly secular in nature, and were intended to be lessons of identity,
morality and citizenship.37
While Philadelphia City Hall was intended to be an exuberant architect-
ural icon for the city, not everyone agreed with Benjamin Harris Brewster’s
sentiments that “[it was] one of the most majestic structures that adorn, or
have adorned, any city of the world.”38 One representative criticism came
 Building Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall 219

Figure 11.4 “Science” and “Architecture,” plaster models for east portal stair
spandrels, artist Alexander Milne Calder (Courtesy of Philadelphia City
Archives, Photos by Author).

from Alexander K. McClure, editor of the Philadelphia Times, who called it

“The Temple of Philadelphia’s Folly.”39 These sentiments were echoed by
another newspaper which ran a headline from September 20, 1876, deriding
Philadelphia City Hall as “The Folly at Broad and Market [Streets] . . . the
monstrous inchoate municipal palace.”40 Regardless of its style, and in spite
of its cost, Philadelphia City Hall remains an iconic symbol of the city that
harkens back to its commercial, political, and economic past.

Notes
1 Commission for the Erection of the New Public Buildings of the City of
Philadelphia, Proceedings at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the New Public
Buildings on Penn Square, in the City of Philadelphia, July 4, 1874 (Philadelphia:
Henry B. Ashmead, Printer, 1874), 6.
2 Ibid., 52, Oration by Benjamin Brewster.
3 Ibid., 41.
4 Elizabeth M. Geffen, “Industrial Development and Social Crisis: 1841–1854,”
Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, ed. Russel L F. Weigley (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1982), 308.
5 Thomas H. Keels, Forgotten Philadelphia: Lost Architecture of the Quaker City
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 125.
6 Population numbers were found at www.census.gov/history. In 1890, Chicago
replaced Philadelphia as the second largest city in the country, even though its
population was nearly 1.1 million souls.
7 Ibid., 368.
8 The City of Philadelphia, prior to the Consolidation of 1854 had been four
square miles bounded by Vine Street (north), South Street (south), the Schuylkill
River (west), and the Delaware River (east).
9 Philadelphia architects, by this time, had already been experiencing a dramatic
downturn in design commissions due to the failing economy. In order to find
suitable work, William Strickland moved to the frontier town of Nashville,
Tennessee, where he would receive the commission for his masterpiece, the
220 Glen Umberger
Tennessee State Capitol (1845–1859) and Thomas Ustick Walter removed to
Washington to begin work on the United States Capitol Dome and Expansion
(1851–1865).
10 The documentary record offers no evidence that there was any impropriety on
Walter’s part in awarding the commission to McArthur, his friend and former
student. On the contrary, there is evidence to support the fact that Walter simply
believed McArthur to be the best-qualified architect to handle the Herculean
task. McArthur was an accomplished architect, having completed a wide range
of sizeable commissions including churches, private residences, hotels, commer-
cial buildings, academic buildings, and hospitals.
11 Independence Square, which was not one of Penn’s original five squares, was a
full block bordered by Fifth to Sixth Streets, and Chestnut to Walnut Streets, on
which the Old Pennsylvania State House had been erected, facing Chestnut
Street; a large open public green space fronted Walnut Street. It represented the
political and economic center of the city dating from the Colonial period.
12 Thomas Ustick Walter’s correspondence in the Collections at the Athenaeum of
Philadelphia, offers some fascinating insights into this model. This wooden
model was made by Allen Bard, at the direction of Thomas Ustick Walter in his
role as Chairman, Committee on Plans and Architecture pursuant to a letter
dated November 20, 1869 to “make a model of the same, to a scale of 1/8 of an
inch to a foot, by the 29th of December (5 weeks from next Wednesday) without
fail; and if so, whether you can keep the expense with 6 or 700 dollars.” It was
used in a meeting of the Board of Commissioners for the Erection of Public
Buildings on December 27, 1869. The model was kept at Independence Hall
until March 1871 when, according to a March 4 letter from Walter to Jonathan
Pugh, Esq., Commissioner of Markets and City Property it was removed, “[i]n
accordance with our understanding yesterday, please cause to be delivered to the
bearer, Mr. Allen Bard, the Model for new Public buildings, now in Independence
Hall, for the purpose of placing it in the rooms of the Philad[elphia] Chapter of
the American Institute of Architects, in the Atheneum [sic] building, where it will
be preserved subject to orders of the City Authorities.” There is evidence that the
model was moved to the Athenaeum, however no records exist as to its final
disposition.
13 Washington Square lies directly adjacent to Independence Square to the
southwest.
14 In 1954, human remains were discovered during excavations for a new fountain
in Washington Square. The city under the assumption that the remains belonged
to a soldier from the American Revolution, constructed a mausoleum for “The
Unknown Soldier,” in which the remains were reinterred during a military
ceremony held at the site. An “eternal flame” and monument with a bronze
statue of George Washington would also be erected to commemorate the sacrifice
of the war dead.
15 Quote from the Journal of Select Council (1866–1867). Michael P. McCarthy,
“Traditions in Conflict: The Philadelphia City Hall Site Controversy,” Pennsylvania
History 57, no. 4 (October 1990), 308.
16 Howard Gillette, Jr., “Philadelphia’s City Hall: Monument to a New Political
Machine,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 97, no. 2
(April 1973), 237–238.
17 The official results were 51,623 in favor of Penn Square; 32,825 for Washington
Square. Dorothy Gondos Beers, “The Centennial City: 1865–1876,” Philadelphia:
A 300-Year History, ed. Russell F. Weigley (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 426.
18 Among Wanamaker’s mercantile innovations were the “White Sale,” price tags
that were clearly affixed to all items for sale, a money back guarantee for goods
 Building Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall 221
purchased and he was the first to send “buyers” overseas to purchase the latest
fashions for resale in his store.
19 Information taken from Building a Modern Railroad, published by Reading
Railroad, 1958. See www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/
ironhorseusa2000/firsts.htm&date=2009-10-26+00:33:47, accessed May 23,
2015.
20 Stokley’s nickname, “Sweet William” was a tribute to his success in the candy
business, and not to his political persona.
21 Commission for the Erection of the New Public Buildings of the City of
Philadelphia, Proceedings at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the New Public
Buildings on Penn Square, in the City of Philadelphia, July 4, 1874 (Philadelphia:
Henry B. Ashmead, Printer, 1874), 6.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Benjamin Harris Brewster from Keynote at Cornerstone Laying Ceremony, July
4, 1874. Commission for the Erection of the New Public Buildings of the City of
Philadelphia, Proceedings at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the New Public
Buildings on Penn Square, in the City of Philadelphia, July 4, 1874 (Philadelphia:
Henry B. Ashmead, Printer, 1874), 36.
25 He would serve in that capacity during his entire tenure in the Architect’s Office
at Philadelphia City Hall, but interestingly, Walter’s official biography found
in A Legacy of Leadership: The Presidents of the American Institute of Architects,
1857–2007 neglects to include any mention of his employment in this capacity.
See R. Randall Vosbeck, Legacy of Leadership: The Presidents of the American
Institute of Architects, 1857–2007, www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/
pdf/aiab095031.pdf.
26 G.E. Kidder-Smith, Source Book of American Architecture: 500 Buildings from
the 10th Century to the Present (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
1996), 225.
27 City of Milwaukee, “Basic Facts About City Hall,” http://city.milwaukee.gov/
BasicFacts#.VV9RbuupolI.
28 While these are both technically steel framed skyscrapers and office buildings,
I would argue that neither was in fact the tallest building in the world since
Philadelphia City Hall was topped out on November 28, 1894, precisely at
10:00 a.m. with the installation of the 37-foot-tall bronze statue of William
Penn, bringing it to its final height of 548 feet tall. Additionally, Philadelphia
City Hall was at this point, although officially still under construction, already
occupied by all three branches of local city government and accordingly being
used for its intended purpose. Today, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban
Habits, which maintains the official list of the world’s tallest buildings, uses the
following criteria for when a building becomes “complete,” and hence “tallest”:
the date on which it is “topped out architecturally,” “fully clad,” and/or “open
for business, or at least partially occupiable [sic].” For a full description of
the criteria, see www.ctbuh.org/TallBuildings/HeightStatistics/Criteria/tabid/446/
language/en-GB/Default.aspx. Using this method, Philadelphia City Hall was the
tallest building in the world from November 1894 until 1908.
29 Frederick Turner, Jr., ed., Turner’s Guide to and Descriptions of Philadelphia’s
New City Hall or Public Buildings: The Largest and Grandest Structure in the
World (Philadelphia: Frederick Turner, Jr., 1892).
30 Thomas Ustick Walter, “Diary, 1880,” Thomas U. Walter Collection, The
Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
31 Ibid. This notation is noteworthy since the tower at City Hall does not rest on
bedrock, but rather on a concrete slab, eight-and-a-half feet thick, measuring
90 feet square and 20 feet below grade, which was installed in 1874.
222 Glen Umberger
32 A careful study of the few documents in the archives at Philadelphia City Hall
and documents at the United States Capitol reveal almost identical engineering
at work.
33 These eight themes, which appear in allegorical forms in the arch spandrels
inside the North Portal entrance to Conversation Hall, are just a few of the many
sculptural elements found at Philadelphia City Hall. For a more complete
catalog, see Commission for the Erection of the New Public Buildings of the City
of Philadelphia, Sculptures and Ornamental Details in Bronze and Iron of the
New City Hall (Philadelphia: Office of City Architect, 1883), volumes 1–5.
34 The “basement” level is the first floor as McArthur used the European nomen-
clature for above ground floors: Basement, First Floor, First Mezzanine, Second
Floor, Second Mezzanine, Third Floor, and Attic. There are, in fact, two levels
below ground, which today are referred to as the “basement” while the upper
floors are simply known as Floors One through Seven respectively.
35 It should be noted that Calder’s work was not limited to the secular iconographic
program at Philadelphia City Hall; the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia
(1869–1872) commissioned Calder to produce nave columns for their new
church building, located at Twenty-first and Walnut Streets. Calder’s column
capitals for this sacred space are variations on the Corinthian order and include
depictions of corn, wheat, grapes, cotton, tobacco, and sugar, which were the
leading agricultural products of the 1870s. Calder would use variations on this
theme later at Philadelphia City Hall.
36 McArthur and Walter were both Freemasons. This quote comes from Malcolm
C. Duncan, “Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor” (1866), http://sacred-
texts.com/mas/dun/dun02.htm.
37 The proper assignment of gender in sculpting allegorical figures was explained
by Thomas Ustick Walter as follows: “You must not expect to find any where
[sic] established forms and designs for any mythological personifications. Every
artist carries out his own conception as to what will best represent the quality, or
principle he desires to personify.—Should it be War, for example, he will aim at
great fierceness of countenance, combined with fearlessness, and resolution, and
intelligence. War being in the feminine gender he must personify it by a female
figure, but he will seek to invest that figure with all these properties—he will
chose an attitude the most energetic, and at the same time the most appalling,
and he will adopt such arms and implements as make the most havoc in destroy-
ing human life; and he will adopt such surroundings as will convey the most idea
of War, as cannon, broken armor and any other dreadful contrivances for slaugh-
ter that may occur to him. If he is really an artist he will not copy what others
have done—if he searches for examples, modern or ancient, it will be to avoid
repeating them.” “Thomas Ustick Walter letter to R. Fenner, Esq., Cambridge,
Massachusetts, dated May 25, 1869.” Thomas Ustick Walter Collection, The
Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
38 Proceedings at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the New Public Buildings on
Penn Square, in the City of Philadelphia, July 4, 1874 (Philadelphia: Henry B.
Ashmead, Printer, 1874), 32.
39 Dorothy Gondos Beers, “The Centennial City: 1865–1876,” Philadelphia: A
300-Year History, ed. Russell F. Weigley (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 426.
40 This newspaper headline from September 20, 1876 can be found as part of a
permanent exhibition on the history of Philadelphia City Hall, installed on the
ninth floor in the tower elevator waiting room.
Index
Page numbers in italics show illustrations, n indicates an endnote
Abu Dhabi 70, 71, 72
Aden 46
Africa: Dutch East India Company
(VOC) 58; luxury goods traded 63,
142; markets and interregional trade
115–117; Portuguese trading empire
1–2, 4–5; Triangle Trade 31; see also
Swahili Coast
Alberti, Leon Batista 159
Albuquerque, Alfonso de 2
Alexandria 1, 46
Ambon 47, 54, 55
America: American Revolution 24, 33,
212; colonist’s trading grievances
23–24; slavery, Christian justification
33–34; Triangle Trade 31; see also
United States
American Institute of Architects 215
Amsterdam: Batavia-Amsterdam trade
route 53, 55, 58–59; institutions of
trust 50–52, 51, 52, 54; map of 1688
59; port origins 45; trade and
warehousing 48, 49, 50
Ando, Tadao 71
Angola 4–5
Antwerp 2, 47–48
Appleby, Joyce 10, 38n1
Arabian Gulf: British intervention
67; commerce, urbanization and
labor 67–70, 69, 73, 73–74; early
settlements and trade centres 62–63,
64, 65; “Emirate Style” architecture
70, 71; global trade centres 65–66,
66; social-political architecture
71–73, 72
Aragon 142, 148, 151
Archimedes 45
Arkwright, Richard 25–26, 41n50
Arruda, Francisco 2–3
Ashanti 1
Azores 1
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad 173, 213
Banda Islands 54–55
Bantam 53, 54
Barth, Heinrich 115–116
Bartoleme de Bassis 148
Batavia 14, 44–45, 54–56, 55, 57,
58–59, 61n28
Bayly, C.A. 17
bazar (market) 156, 157, 164n4
beads, cultural value 89–90, 94–95,
109n56
Beccari, Odoardo 93, 96, 110n73
Beckert, Sven 17, 30–31
Bengal 18–19, 20–22, 24, 197–200
Benjamin of Tudela 122–123
Berardi, Roberto 157, 166n23,
166–167n24
Berckheyde, Job 51, 52
Bergamo 135
bezoar stones 81
Bigirm (Chad) 116
Bock, Carl 84
Bombay 19
bond market 15
Bond, Richard 174
Borghini, Vincenzo 128
Borneo: ancient export trade 81–84;
Asian and colonial exploitation
102–104, 112n103, 113n115;
classification of peoples 108n41;
contemporary culture 113–114n119;
forest exchanges 91–93, 110n64;
224 Index
imports given value 88, 88–91,
109n52, 109n56; Indianized
kingdoms, influence of 97–99,
112n100; river cultures and trading
conventions 84–88, 87, 99–100,
108n42, 108–109n46; spiritual
prosperity and deceptive trade
93–97, 100–102
Bornu (Nigeria) 116
Boston 23, 173–174, 177
Boston Merchants Exchange: damage,
Fire of 1872 172, 189–190n36;
floors on iron beams 176–177,
190n44; iron roof construction 170,
173, 175–176, 182–183, 187; Isaiah
Roger’s design 174–175, 190n41
Brescia 135
Bretton Woods 36
Brewster, Benjamin Harris 214, 218
Britain: American colonist’s grievances
23–24; Calcutta’s port, governance
of 194, 195, 199; corrugated iron
manufacture 172–173; East India
Company’s economic significance
18–24, 21, 22; exploitation in
Borneo 102–103; influence in Persian
Gulf 67; Pitt’s India Act 1784 24;
Regulating Acts 1773 23; Triangle
Trade and consumerism 31, 32–33;
see also England
Bronson, Bennet 93
Brooke, James 102
Brunei 83, 86, 89, 95, 99
Burckhardt, Jacob 128
Burns, Howard 136
Burroughs, Charles 129
Calcutta: boatman strike and petition,
1878 203–205; East India Company
developments 14, 19, 20, 24;
Palace of the Governor 24, 25; port
licensing regime, policing excesses
198–203, 204; port modernization
and labor expansion 194–197, 196,
197; port operations criticised 198,
203
Calder, Alexander Milne 216, 217–218,
218, 219, 222n35
Calvino, Italo 65
Cambay 95, 124
Cambodia 97, 101
camphor 81, 82, 84, 86, 104n3
Canary Islands 1
Canton 19
capitalism: architectural materials
12; colonialism and economic
inequalities 14, 16–18; consumerism
and the slave economy 30–35; East
India Company’s authoritative reign
18–24; economic and philosophical
roots 12–16, 38n15, 39n20; hyper-
commercialization, Arabian Gulf
67–74, 69, 71–72; industry and
urbanization 29–30; labor
inequalities, Gulf States 68;
neoliberalist rebranding and
inequality 35–36, 43n81; origins
of 10–11
caravanserai 156, 159
Caribbean Islands 32–33
Cartaz System 2
Cartwright, Edmund 25–27
Catherine, Saint 146, 147, 148
Certeau, Michel de 13
Chad 116
Charles II, King of England 18–19
Charleston 31
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 143
Charter of Privileges 1701 210
Chesbrough, E.S. 174
Childe, V. Gordon 71n1
China: asymmetrical trade with Borneo
88, 90, 94–95, 96, 99; medicines
from Borneo 81, 82, 83, 106n18;
spice trade 47; tea trading 19, 21, 23
chocolate 32
Churchill, Winston 67
Cincinnati 170
cinnabar (mercury) 82–83
Civil War, American 168–169, 209,
211
Clare, Saint 148, 149, 150
Classical Political Economy 12
Clive, Robert 20
cloves 47, 55
Cluskey, Charles B. 177–178
Cochituate Aqueduct, Boston 173–174,
189n24
Cochrane, Eric 130
Coedes, George 82, 83
Coen, Jan Pieterszoon 54
Coeur, Jacques 142
coffee 32, 59, 102
colonialism: capitalism and architecture
11–12; capitalism’s inequalities 14,
16–17; East India Company’s
involvement 18–24; slave economy
31–34
 Index 225
Como 135 industry and urbanization 28–30;
Constable, Olivia 128 patent system 26; see also Britain
Constantinople 1, 46, 128 Enlightenment and economics 12,
copper: Borneo’s valued imports 90, 92, 15–16, 17–18, 26, 32
101, 103; Federal building design “entrepot” 50
172, 178; Portuguese trade 1, 4; Eridu 62
role in Capitalism 12, 17 Estado de Indies 2
Cornell Iron Works 171, 182, 182, Everett, Alfred H. 94, 111n81
183–184, 191n65
Cornell, John B. 183–184 fascism 37
Cornell, William W. 183–184 Ferdinand of Antequera 151
Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany Fergusson, Niall 38n3
130–134, 133, 136–137, 137 Fertile Crescent 62
cotton: England’s textile industry financial markets, origins of 14–15
29–30; slave economy 31, 35; trading Finlay, Robert 101
commodity 21, 28, 96, 123, 124, 195 firman (trade rights) 18–19, 20
Cremona 135 First Society cultures 100
Cueta (Morocco) 1 Florence: Cosimo I’s revival and the
Mercato Nuovo 129, 130–137, 132,
Dabuli 123 135, 137; Renaissance banking
Damascus 14 systems 14–15; Uffizi as
Davis, Mike 70 administrative centre 131, 139n26
Dayak 85, 86, 91, 94–95, 97–98, Foster+Partners 71
103–104, 108n41 France 19, 32–33, 215
Deamer, Peggy 11 frankincense 63
Derrida, Jacques 17 Freud, Sigmund 103
diamonds 82, 102 Funan 84, 86, 90, 95
diwani rights 20 Furness, Frank 213
Djenne 1
Doha 66, 71 Gama, Vasco de 2, 4, 46
Domenge i Mesquida, Joan 151 Garau, Antonio 144, 145
Dove, Michael 84 Gedi 120, 121
Dubai 67, 70 Gehry, Frank 71
Dutch colonies 32, 102 Genoa 15, 46, 144
Dutch East India Company (VOC) 18, Gilded Age 13
19, 53–56, 58–59 Gilpin, Richard 177
Dutch West India Company 32 Gliddon, George Robins 12
Goa 2, 24
East Africa: medieval interregional gold: Borneo’s exports 81, 82, 83, 94,
trade 115, 116–119, 122–125; 98–99, 102, 103; Florentine trade
merchant elites’ houses 119, and coinage 131, 137; Java gold
119–120, 120–121, 122 origins 98–99; slave economy 31;
East India Company (EIC) 18–24, 53, 54 spiritual value 85–86, 94; West
Efficient Market Theory 15 African trade 1
Egypt 46, 62, 63, 68 Gold Coast 1
Eiffel Tower, Paris 215 Goree 1
Elam, Caroline 136 Greece 62
Elizabeth I, Queen of England 18 Grunebaum, Gustave von 158
Emirate style 70, 71 Guinea 1
Enclosure Acts, England 26–28, 35 Gujarat 124
Engels, Friedrich 30 Gulfi architecture 68–69
England: capitalism, origins of 10;
Enclosure Acts and industrialization Hadid, Zaha 71
25–28, 35; Glorious Revolution 19; Harrisson, Tom 92, 110n71
226 Index
al-Hasan ibn Suleiman, Sultan 118
Heise, Arne 12–13
Henry, Infante of Portugal 1
Hinduism 80, 82, 83, 124
Holland 45, 48, 53, 58–59; see also
Amsterdam
Hoogly River, India 194, 195
Hose, Charles 90, 107n34
Houtman, Cornelis de 53
Howe, H.H. 198
Hudson, Michael 13
Husuni Kubwa Palace 118–119
Ibn Battuta 88, 118
Ibn Khaldun 157, 165n12
imperialism 16
India: asymmetrical trade with Borneo
83, 94–95, 96, 97, 99–100; British
imperialism 16; Calcutta’s port
modernization 194–205, 196, 197;
devotional economy 82, 105n9;
Dutch East India Company (VOC)
54; East India Company’s trading
and governance 18–22, 24, 53;
merchants’ impact on Swahili Coast
123–125, 126n20; Pitt’s India Act
24; Portuguese trading empire 2, 4,
67; religious imports from Borneo
81, 82, 104–105n7; Swahili Coast
merchants 115, 116; trade from
Southeast Asia 84
Indianization 80–81
indigo 21
Indonesia: Dutch East India Company’s
exploits 54–56, 57, 58; early Dutch
expeditions 53
Industrial Revolution 25–26, 28–30,
35, 209
Iraq 62, 69, 123
Islamic city: foundouq (multi-purpose
building) 160; hammam (public
bath) 122, 159, 160–161; market
(suq/bazar), importance of
156–158; merchant’s experience
159–162, 163, 164; mosque and
the madrasa 161; nomads,
separation of 159, 166n18;
Oumma (community) 162
Islamic trade network: caravan routes
and caravanserai 156, 158–159;
Islamic city, a merchant’s experience
159–162, 163, 164; public markets
port cities 122–123; Swahili Coast
merchants 116–118
Italy: Florence, Cosimo I’s revival 129,
130–134, 133, 135–137; medieval
mercantile loggia 128, 135
ivory 83, 116
Jakarta see Batavia
Jamaica 32, 33
Japan 89
Java 53, 97, 98–99, 101
Jevons, William S. 12
Joao, King of Portugal 1
jute 194–195
Karlin, Mark 37
Keynes, John Maynard 13
Keyser, Hendrik de 50, 51
Khallassies 197
Kilwa Kisiwani 118–119
Kish 122–123
Knights Hospitaller 144
Kukawa 116
Kutai Martadipur, Borneo 97–98
Lagash 62
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste 12
Lamu, Kenya 117, 117, 119, 119–120
Lincoln, Abraham 168–169
Lisbon: Monastery of Saint Jerome 3,
4, 5, 47; pepper trading 1, 46; spice
trade 2, 46–48; Tower of Belem 2–3,
47
Liverpool 28–29
Llotja of Palma: merchant class identity
142–143; political significance
150–152, 155n35; sculptural
decoration and related landmarks
143–146, 147, 148–150, 149,
151–152, 154n32
Llotja of Valencia 142, 149, 149–150
Lo, Andrew 37
loggia: medieval mercantile 128–129,
135–136; Mercato Nuovo, Florence
129, 130–134, 132, 136–137;
Mercato Vecchio, Florence 135,
135–136
London 20, 21, 24
Long Depression 13
Mada’in Saleh 63
Madura 56
Magellan, Ferdinand 47, 83, 86
Majorca 142, 150–151; see also Llotja
of Palma
Malabar Coast 24, 46
 Index 227
Malays 86, 99, 108n41 Newcomen, Thomas 25
Malthus, Thomas 11 Newton, Isaac 12
Manchester 28, 29–30 New York 70, 177, 182, 182, 183, 215
Manhattan Life Insurance Building Niçard, Pere 144–145, 145, 146
1894 215 Nicholas, Saint 145–146, 148, 149
Manueline style 2, 47, 150 Niernsee, John Rudolph 173
Manuel, King of Portugal 4 Nigeria 116
Marçais, George 157, 158 Norris, John 177–182, 180, 182, 183,
Marçais, William 157 184, 188n10
Marco Polo 64 North, Frederick, Lord 23, 24
Mardijkers 56, 57 Notman, John 177
Marginal Revolution 12 Nott, Josiah Clark 12
Martaban jars 88, 88–89, 94, 109n50 Nouvel, Jean 71
Martin, King of Aragon 142, 151 nutmeg 2, 30, 46, 47, 54, 55
Martin, Reinhold 36–37
Marx, Karl 11, 30, 41n60 opium 20, 21, 31, 103
masjid al-jami 161 Ott, Julia 32
Massena 116 Ottoman Empire 46, 67
Massignon, Louis 157
Maxentius, Emperor 148, 151 Padua 135
McArthur, John, Jr. 210–212, 211, 215, Palma, Mallorca: 1644 map of 143;
216, 217, 220n10 Church of St John the Baptist
McClure, Alexander 219 143–144; Convent de Santa
Mecca 158, 161 Clara 148, 149, 150; The Llotja,
Medici family 130, 131, 132 architecture of trade 142–146, 147,
Melaka, Malaysia 46–47 148–152, 149; medieval politics and
mercantilism 31 merchant allegiance 150–152;
Mexico 150 Portopí 144–146, 145, 149, 150;
Michelangelo 129, 133, 136 textile industry and saintly patron
Milan 135 146, 147, 148
Mill, John Stuart 11, 15–16 Parker, Charles E. 174
Mills, Robert 177 Park Row Building 1899 215
Milwaukee 215 Parris, Alexander 177
Mogadishu 116, 118 patent system 26
Mombasa 116 Pavia 135
Monastery of Saint Jerome, Lisbon 3, pearls 81
4, 5, 47 Penan 85, 93, 108n41
Monza 135 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Morocco 1 1876 213
Moscow 14 Pennsylvania Railroad 213
Mossi people 1 Penn, William 210, 216
Mozambique 1, 116 pepper 1, 2, 46–47, 55
Mughals 19, 20 Perkins, Samuel 214, 217
Mullett, A.B. 169–170, 172, 188n5, Persia 115, 116
189n16 Persian Gulf 122–123
Mundy, Rodney, Captain 102–103, Petra 63, 64
113n117 Philadelphia: Academy of Natural
Muslim: Swahili Coast merchants 118, History 177; Act for the Erection of
124; traders 2, 46, 47, 93, 177; see Public Buildings 1870 212–213, 214;
also Islamic city; Islamic trade network Act of Consolidation 1854 210;
myrrh 63 American Academy of Music 1855
213; City Hall, design and location
natural philosophy 12 210–213, 211, 220n17; City Hall,
neoliberalism 35–37 financing and construction 213–215,
228 Index
216, 221n28, 221n31, 222n34;
City Hall, reflection of aspirations
208–209, 209, 210, 215–216,
218–219; City Hall, sculptural
program 216–218, 218, 219,
222n33; Independence Hall
211–212; industrialization and
city growth 209–210, 213; iron
structured buildings 173, 177; Penn
Square 210, 211–212, 214, 216; rail
network 213; Washington Square
212–213, 220n14
Philbrik, T.M. 198
Piketty, Thomas 10–11
Piloti, Emmanuel 128
Plassey 19, 20
Pliny 82
Portugal: Cartaz System 2; Lisbon 1,
2–3, 3, 4, 5, 47; Portuguese trading
empire 1–2, 4–5, 46–48, 52, 53, 124
Puradvipa 82
Qaiçariyya 158
Rational Market Theory 33
Red Sea 62, 164
Reid, Anthony 88–89
Renaissance 14–15, 30, 129, 130
Renwick, James 171, 182, 182, 183
Ricardo, David 11
River Effect 96, 101–102
Robertson, G.A. 200–203
Rogers, Isaiah 169, 170, 172, 173,
174–176, 183
Roman Empire 82
Rome 82, 128, 132
Rutter, Owen 84, 107n30
Rykwert, Joseph 70
Sagrera, Guillem 142, 143, 151
Sahlins, Marshall 100
salt: Borneo import 88, 90, 92, 95, 96,
101, 110n59; trading commodity 1,
30, 45
sanbuq (boat) 118
San Dominique 32–33
Sarawak 101
Saudi Arabia 63
Sauvaget, Jean 157
Savannah Custom House, Georgia:
General Sherman’s telegram
168–169; iron roof construction
169, 169–170, 182–183, 184–187,
185–186; John Norris’s design
177–179, 191–192n66; masonry
floors on iron beams 179–182,
180, 182
Scott, James 80, 98, 100
Sellato, Bernard 91
semangat (status) 88–89, 90–91, 96
Seven Years War 32, 33
Sexton, Kim 135, 141n56
Sherman, William T., General 168–169
Sickels, T.E. 173, 189n24
Siena 131
silk 30, 97, 123, 124, 131, 136, 150,
210
silver 17, 31, 47
Singapore 81
Singer Building 1908 215
Siraf 122
slavery: addictive consumerism
30–35; African trade 116; Christian
justification 33–34; colonialism 12,
21, 24; Liverpool’s role 28;
Mardijkers freedom 56, 57; Triangle
Trade 31–32
Smith, Adam 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 25, 26
Smith, G.E. Kidder 215
Somalia 63, 116
Song Dynasty 88, 91, 101
Southeast Asia: Borneo as trading
nation see Borneo; Dutch East India
Company’s exploits 54–56, 57, 58;
labor supply for Arabian cities 68;
spice trade, Portuguese dominance
46–47
Southworth, William 93–94
Spain 52–53
spice trade 2, 31, 45–47
Spini, Giorgio 131
Sri Lanka 82
Stevin, Simon 56
stock market 15
Stokley, William Strumberg 214
Strickland, William 173, 174, 211,
219–220n9
Suez Canal 67
sugar 1, 17, 31, 32, 33, 35, 59
Sulawesi 81, 86–87
Sumatra 47, 53, 98
sumptuary codes 56, 57, 58
suq (market) 123, 156–158, 159, 160,
162
Swahili coast: Indian merchants’
influential presence 123–125,
126n20; interregional trade within
domestic sphere 115, 117–119, 122,

123; marketplaces, seasonal use
116–117, 117; merchant elites’
houses 119, 119–120, 120–121,
122
Syria 62, 63
Tacony Iron and Metal Company
216
Taiwan 47
Tasso, Giovan Battista di Marco del
130, 132–134, 133, 140n35
tea 21, 23–24, 32
Temple, Richard, Sir 199
Tennessee State Capitol 168, 174
Thailand 95, 101
Thomas, Thomas 183
Timbuktu 1
tobacco 31, 32
tortoise shells 83
Tower of Belem, Lisbon 2–3, 47
Triangle Trade 28, 31
Tribolo, Niccolò 132, 140n35
Twain, Mark 13
United States (US): Boston Merchants
Exchange 170, 172, 173, 174–177,
182, 182–183, 187; Federal building
designs, post-1840 169, 169–170,
171–172, 172, 188n5–6; iron
roof structures, earliest 173–174;
neoliberalism trend 36; Savannah
Custom House, Georgia 168–170,
169, 177–187, 180, 182, 185–186;
tallest buildings, erection of 215,
221n28
Ur 62
urbanization: displacement and
migration 28, 35; England’s
industrialization 28–30; first cities
62, 71n1
Uruk 62
Index 229
Varchi, Benedetto 128
Vasari, Giorgio 132, 133, 135, 135,
136, 140n36
Veblen, Thorstein 13–14
Veen, Henk van 134
Venice 15, 45–46, 47
Vietnam 93–94, 95, 97, 101
Vinoly, Rafael 71
Vintema da Pimenta 4
Vries, Jan de 31–32
Walker, H. Wilfrid 83
Walker, William 84, 86, 107n40
Walrus, Leon 12–13
Walter, Thomas Ustick: architectural
influence 210–211, 221n25; Capitol
Dome and Expansion, Washington
211, 219–220n9; church design 177;
Philadelphia City Hall, contributions
to 215, 216, 220n10, 220n12;
sculptural decoration 222n37
Wanamaker, John 213, 220–221n18
Washington D.C. 70, 177, 216
Washington Monument 215
wa-ungwana (merchant elite) 119–120
Wells, J.C. 177
West Africa 1
Whyte, Ian 28
Wicks, Robert S. 98, 110n59
Wilmington 177, 178
Wirth, Eugen 157
Wolters, O.H. 96
wool 28, 29, 30, 131, 132, 146, 150
Wyatt, Charles 24, 25
Yemen 62, 63, 123
Young, Ammi B. 169, 170, 171, 172,
188n6
Zabala 62
Zein, Abdul Hamid 117