GEOGRAPHY OF SMALL SPACES : recasting the architecture of empire

Small Spaces recasts the history of the British empire by focusing on the small spaces that made the empire possible. It takes as its subject a series of small architectural spaces, objects, and landscapes and uses them to narrate the untold stories of the marginalized people-the servants, women, children, subalterns, and racialized minorities-who held up the infrastructure of empire. In so doing it opens up an important new approach to architectural history: an invitation to shift our attention from the large to the small scale. Taking the British empire in India as its primary focus, this book presents eighteen short, readable chapters to explore an array of overlooked places and spaces. From cook rooms and slave quarters to outhouses, go-downs, and medicine cupboards, each chapter reveals how and why these kinds of minor spaces are so important to understanding colonialism. With the focus of history so often on the large scale - global trade networks, vast regions, and architectures of power and domination - Small Spaces shows instead how we need to rethink this aura of magnitude so that our reading is not beholden such imperialist optics. With chapters which can be read separately as individual accounts of objects, spaces, and buildings, and introductions showing how this critical methodology can challenge the methods and theories of urban and architectural history, Small Spaces is a must-read for anyone wishing to decolonize disciplinary practices in the field of architectural, urban, and colonial history. Altogether, it provides a paradigm-breaking account of how to 'unlearn empire', whether in British India or elsewhere. Cover Halftitle page Title page Copyright page Dedication CONTENTS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PART ONE Small Spaces 1 Of Small Spaces Why Small Spaces? In Isolation and Connection Architectural Imagination Axes of Interpretation 2 Empire of Small Spaces Long-distance Trade The Aura of Bigness Scalar Alterity Writing Small Spaces PART TWO Trade and Labor 3 Dependency Separation Centering 4 Locating the Bottlekhana Naming Servants’ Spaces Service Spaces at the Apex The Basement Principle Beyond the Compound 5 Potable Empire Open Seams The Passage of Liquor Liquor Landscape Storage, Sircars, and Coolies Lines of Control Lumpy Geographies 6 Europe Goods Honing Taste Affirming Values “Housekeeping of the Simplest Character” Turab Ali’s Artifice Uneven Exchange 7 Strange Tongues Command Food Axis Culinary Racism Dirt Recalcitrance Extending the Food Axis Calorie Transfer 8 Making Invisible Backstairs Prosthetic Trace Free and Unfree Labor Comfort and Menial Labor Escape PART THREE Land Imagination 9 Vantage Abstraction Storytelling 10 Connective Spaces Connectors Screen Threshold Roofline 11 Anomalous Spaces Edith’s Story Verandah as Refuge Verandah as Exposure Anomaly Taxidermic Seams 12 An Aesthetic Episode “A Heap of Jasmines” Duration and Materiality Paths that Connect Flood Rani’s Story 13 Roofscapes Openings Rabindranath’s Story Sociopoetics of Circumscription: Terrace Lives Affective Modalities Terrace as Public Space PART FOUR A Geography of Small Spaces 14 Collections and Containment Grey Zones Containers 15 Portable Geographies Boundary-work Portable Gardens, Maps, and Tools Recollection Contraction of Space Jangal Inhabiting a Map 16 A Good Shelf Bibliomigrancy Tipu’s Library The Material Culture of Reading Vidyasagar’s Library An Encounter A New Figure of Space 17 A Box of Medicine Vernacularization Therapeutic Kit Death and Survival 18 Epilogue APPENDIX NOTES INDEX Plates "Small Spaces recasts the history of the British empire by focusing on the small spaces that made the empire possible. It takes as its subject a series of small architectural spaces, objects, and landscapes and uses them to narrate the untold stories of the marginalized people-the servants, women, children, subalterns, and racialized minorities-who held up the infrastructure of empire. In so doing it opens up an important new approach to architectural history: an invitation to shift our attention from the large to the small scale. Taking the British empire in India as its primary focus, this book presents fourteen short, readable chapters to explore an array of overlooked places and spaces. From cook rooms and slave quarters to outhouses, go-downs, and medicine cupboards, each chapter reveals how and why these kinds of minor spaces are so important to understanding colonialism. With the focus of history so often on the large scale - global trade networks, vast regions, and architectures of power and domination - Small Spaces shows instead how we need to rethink this aura of magnitude so that our reading is not beholden such imperialist optics. With chapters which can be read separately as individual accounts of objects, spaces, and buildings, and introductions showing how this critical methodology can challenge the methods and theories of urban and architectural history, Small Spaces is a must-read for anyone wishing to decolonize disciplinary practices in the field of architectural, urban, and colonial history. Altogether, it provides a paradigm-breaking account of how to 'unlearn empire', whether in British India or elsewhere"-- Provided by publisher