Business Meeting/Internal Workshop: Empire and (Im)mobility in South and South-East Asia (19th and 20th Centuries)
Date: 6-7 February, 2026
Venue: Lecture Room-1, IIC (Annexe), New Delhi
Conveners: Harald Fischer-Tine and Siddharth Pandey
We are pleased to invite you to an internal workshop on Empire and (Im)mobility in South and South-East Asia (19th and 20th Centuries). The workshop is convened by the ICAS:MP (M.S. Merian–R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies Metamorphoses of the Political, Delhi), the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies Delhi (MWF Delhi), and the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, Munich, with both conveners currently serving as fellows at the global dis:connect Centre.
About the Workshop:
In fundamental ways, colonial empires were all about mobility. The functioning of the imperial military and administrative apparatus, the production of colonial knowledge, the economic extraction of local resources, the export of colonial commodities were all based on relentless movement and circulation. This circulation, in turn, relied heavily on the use of various mobility technologies as well as on the creation of mobility infrastructures. It also crucially depended on the spatial movement of segments of the colonized population and/or external labour forces, clerks and military personnel, scientific experts imported from the imperial metropole or other world regions. At the same time, however, imperial formations were at pains to restrict or suppress mobility. Thus, the ideal colonial subject was usually imagined as being sedentary and immobile, whereas ‘subaltern mobilities’ in general and the movements of potentially ‘dangerous’ population groups (such as nomads, ‘criminal tribes’, religious mendicants, diasporic anti-colonialists etc.) were seen as suspicious and in need of close monitoring.
In the spirit of the gd:c’s double emphasis on connectivity and the absence thereof, this workshop wants to bring together scholars of history and neighbouring disciplines that provide fresh and original perspectives on mobilities and immobilities created by/in the British, Dutch, American, Spanish, Portuguese and French colonial empires in South and Southeast Asia (and their respective global entanglements). The temporal focus may also be extended to the early postcolonial states that followed their collapse. While the ambiguities and tensions between forms of mobility and immobility and their relation to power may serve as a leitmotif, the focus of the individual contributions can be on the material, social, cultural, economic and political impact of particular transport technologies (steamships, railways, automobiles bicycles, tongas etc.) and the basic infrastructures (railway tracks, roads, docks) they required, as well on the movement of Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect certain groups of historical actors on both sides − and beyond − the colonial divide (soldiers, sailors, scientists, ‘peripatetic revolutionaries’, tourists and ‘globetrotters’, etc.) and the measures to control and check their mobility (passports, border controls, creation of surveillance networks). Another area of interest lies in the literary and artistic representation of various mobility experiences in travelogues, guidebooks, novels or films.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
icasmp (January 13, 2026). Business Meeting/Internal Workshop: Empire and (Im)mobility in South and South-East Asia (19th and 20th Centuries). ICAS:MP. Retrieved February 11, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15hn5


