The conference explores ideas, experiences, and memories of neighbours and neighbourhoods in the colonial city. 

It brings together historians, sociologists, and urban scholars of the Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa, and South East Asia to discuss new avenues in the research of living together and living apart in colonial cities. 

By exploring the neighbourhood as a site of encounter, conflict, and exchange, this conference moves beyond the lingering dichotomies of colonial urban history: fragmentation vs. encounter, agency vs. coercion, coexistence vs. conflict. Instead, we aim to capture the ambivalence of being neighbours in the colonial city: a fragile, at times tense, at times amicable modus vivendi.

Organised by Avner Ofrath, Norman Aselmeyer, and Cornelius Torp.

In co-operation with the University of Bremen, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and Haus der Wissenschaft Bremen.

Day 1: 21 July 2022  – Venue: Haus der Wissenschaft, Bremen, Olbers-Saal
Livestream (Zoom) | English

10.00–10.30 am (CET) – Welcome and Registration – (Haus der Wissenschaft, 2nd Floor)

OPENING LECTURE

10.30–11.00 am (CET)

Avner Ofrath (University of Bremen) – Urban Violence and Coexistence at the Twilight of Empire

PANEL 1: GOVERNING URBAN SPACES

11.00 am – 12.30 pm (CET)

  • Jennifer Hart (Wayne State University) – Ideal Housing: The Politics of Building and Living in 20th Century Accra
  • Javed Iqbal Wani (Ambedkar University Delhi) – Regulating ‘Hooligans’ and ‘Mawaalis’ in the City: Communalism, Collective Action and the Politics of Public Order in Late Colonial India
  • Geert Castryck (Leipzig University) – From “Ethnic” to Spatial: Overcoming Inter-Community Conflict through the Reorganization of Neighbourhood Administration in Colonial Ujiji (1930s–1940s)

Chair: Norman Aselmeyer (University of Bremen)

12.30–1.30 pm (CET) – Lunch Break

PANEL 2: PLACES OF ENCOUNTER

1.30–3.00 pm (CET)

  • Yasmina El Chami (Anglia Ruskin University) – ‘Collective’ Colonialism: Missionary Competition as Sectarian Project in Nineteenth-Century Beirut
  • Michael Yeo (Nanyang Technological University) – Colonial Towns in the Periphery: The Social Worlds of Sandakan and Jesselton, c. 1900s–1930s
  • Robert Pascoe and Chris McConville (Victoria University) – Bazaar Lives: Communities, Commodities and Urban Reform in Calcutta

Chair: Julia Hauser (University of Kassel)

3.00–3.30 pm (CET) – Coffee Break

PANEL 3: CONFLICT, PROTEST, AND CONTROL

3.30–5.00 pm (CET)

  • Halimat Titilola Somotan (Carnegie Mellon University) – Property Disputes and Everyday Histories in Epetedo, Colonial Lagos, 1927–1946
  • Sugata Nandi (West Bengal State University) – From Unity to Conflict: Nationalism and Communalism in Neighbourhoods of Colonial Calcutta, 1919–1926
  • Norman Aselmeyer (University of Bremen) – Mau Mau in Nairobi: Urban Networks of Unrest

Chair: Cornelius Torp (University of Bremen)

5.00–5.30 pm (CET) – Coffee Break

KEYNOTE LECTURE

5.30–6.30 pm (CET)

Michael Goebel (Freie Universität Berlin) – Did Colonialism Segregate Cities?

Day 2: 22 July 2022 – Venue: Haus der Wissenschaft, Bremen, Olbers-Saal – Livestream (Zoom) | English

PANEL 4: CITIES AND CITIZENS

9.30–11.00 am (CET)

  • Madhu (University of Delhi) – Empowered or Exploited: Migrant Women and Mechanisms of Control in Colonial Cities
  • Mikko Toivanen (University of Warsaw) – Staging a Colonial Capital: Managing Ethnic Diversity through Urban Culture and Public Spectacle in Singapore and Batavia, 1860–1900
  • Larissa Kopytoff (University of South Florida) – Of Boundaries and Banlieues: Citizens, Subjects, and Neighbours in Senegal’s Four Communes

Chair: Julia Lossau (University of Bremen)

11.00–11.30 am (CET) – Coffee Break

PANEL 5: OLD NEIGHBOURHOODS, NEW NEIGHBOURHOODS

11.30 am – 1.00 pm (CET)

  • Elia Etkin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) – Neighbours Living Together and Apart: Intercommunal Dynamics in a Jewish Neighbourhood in Mandatory Palestine
  • Tim Livsey (Northumbria University) – Nigerians and the Ikoyi ‘European Reservation’ in the 1920s and 1930s
  • Monia Bousnina (Université Sétif I) – Coexistence in the Colonial City of Algeria: The Case of the Harat in Sétif

Chair: Nora Lafi (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

1.00–2.00 pm (CET) – Lunch Break

PANEL 6: LOST IN TRANSITION?

2.00–3.30 pm (CET)

  • Rila Mukherjee (University of Hyderabad) – Re-Orienting the Bengal Delta (ca. 1690–1990)
  • Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) – Rage Against the Machine in the Mellah of Fes
  • Nora Lafi (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) – Traumatic Transitions and Forms of Popular Resilience in a Neighbourhood of Tunis from Colonisation to the Aftermaths of WWII

Chair: Avner Ofrath (University of Bremen)

3.30-4.00 pm (CET) – Closing Discussion: Colonial Cities and Neighbour Relations