Giolo’s Lament, Pio Abad (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Ashmolean Museum)

Manuela Gressani checks out the Asian cultural and intellectual roots of gameplay, through an Indian Elephant Chess Piece from the late 17th to early 18th century. Chaturanga was first played in 6th century India, a tabletop testing ground for court politicians' imperial tactics. Successive conquests carried the game across continents, leaving distinctly Persian and Chinese imprints, before arriving in Europe as chess. Adapted for local tastes and hierarchies, ivory was swapped with stone and jade, and elephants for bishops and castles. Still, shrunk down to the size of a tabletop board, the Indian Raja, the Persian Shah, the Chinese General, and the European King and Queen, all possessed the same agency as in their respective settings. Picking up these pieces challenges our tendency to associate chess with western intellect and popularity, exposing the layers of European imperialist and orientalist bias that blur our understanding of Asian histories. Beyond a simple game, chessboards, pieces, and rules, are historically socially significant symbols, revealing the complexities of pre-modern global interactions outwith Europe - and the great debt we owe them. You can also read Manuela's full article on the Indian Elephant Chess Piece in Things That Talk, a project exploring humanities through the life of objects. PRESENTER: Manuela Gressani, History of Art MA graduate from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She specialises in the art of the Safavid Empire in the 15th and 16th century. ART: Indian Elephant Chess Piece (c. 17th-18th Century). IMAGE: ‘Chess Piece, Bishop'. SOUNDS: Karpov not Kasparov. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

12 Aug 202115min

Dr. Lou Roper explores the uncharted history of enslaved Africans in England's 17th century colonies, via Philip Lea and John Seller's A New Map of the Island of Barbados. In 1686, Lea and Sellers meticulously mapped the tooth-shaped Caribbean island of Barbados, England's central and wealthiest colony. Great detail was given to ‘every parish, plantation, watermill, windmill, and cattlemill…with the name of the present possessor’. Yet they wholly excluded the island’s most important element - the population of enslaved people of African descent. Peeling back the layers of the New Map uncovers how England's early empire was a private enterprise, with contemporary echoes down to Conservative MP Richard Drax. It also reveals how England's colonies were interdependent and detached from metropolitan involvement by design - and why seemingly distinct, competitive empires often overlapped and fuelled each other. PRESENTER: Dr. Lou Roper, SUNY Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York. He is the co-General Editor of The Journal of Early American History. ART: A New Map of the Island of Barbados, Philip Lea and John Seller (1686). IMAGE: ‘A new map of the Island of Barbadoes'. SOUNDS: Tuk Band. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

29 Jul 202114min

Dr. Sonia Ocaña Ruiz illuminates New Spain at the continental crossroads of colonialism, Catholicism, and Japanese culture from the 16th century, through a Mexican Enconchado of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Mexico City was beating heart of the Spanish Empire in the 16th century, connecting the continents of Asia and the Americas. Exclusively produced in 'New Spain', mother-of-pearl paintings, or enconchados, embody the artistic and religious standards imposed by imperial Europe. But their shimmering façades also reveal how cross-continental flows of goods and peoples informed a uniquely New Spanish cultural identity - perhaps none more so than Japanese lacquers. Few enconchados still survive today. This vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe is a rare final testament to how Mexican and Asian artists received and resisted European cultural hegemony, and how colonial territories were often more cosmopolitan than their imperial cores. PRESENTER: Dr. Sonia Ocaña Ruiz, professor of history at Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco. She is a member of Japón y España: Relaciones a Través del Arte. ART: Mexican Enconchado of the Virgin of Guadalupe (c. 1700s). IMAGE: ‘The Virgin of Guadalupe'. SOUNDS: Manuel de Sumaya. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

15 Jul 202116min

Patrícia Martins Marcos maps out Portugal’s designs for imperial civilisation in the 18th century, through Carlos Julião’s Four Ports Panorama. From urban slaves to street peddlers, the Four Ports Panorama charts the diverse peoples of the Portuguese Empire on a universal path to civilisation, via clothing and Catholicism. Administrators and military men like Carlos Julião used the visual language of mapping to enforce assimilation within an exclusive Portuguese identity. But such maps reflect their makers’ selective sight, revealing how Portugal really occupied a precarious, peripheral position by the 1780s. The Four Ports Panorama exposes the faulty design at empire’s core - that abstract ambitions could only ever be concretised in violence and resistance. PRESENTER: Patrícia Martins Marcos, doctoral candidate in History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, Visiting Scholar at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and Associate Editor at the History of Anthropology Review. She specialises in the history of race, medicine, and visual culture in Portuguese colonialism. ART: Four Ports Panorama, Carlos Julião (c. 1780s). IMAGE: ‘Four Ports Panorama’. SOUNDS: Stealing Orchestra and Rafael Dionísio. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

1 Jul 202116min

Dr. Mallika Leuzinger pictures post-colonial Indian perspectives, through Debalina Majumdar and Manobina Roy’s European photographs published in the Illustrated Weekly of India in 1959 and 1960. In 1959, the Indian twin sisters Debalina Majumdar and Manobina Roy embarked on a six month tour across London, Paris, and Geneva. Keen amateur photographers, and members of the transnational United Provinces Photographic Association, they arrived with their cameras slung over their saris, pointed to capture new places, people, and perceptions for audiences back home. Reversing the dynamics of colonial subjectivity, their street photographs reframed what it meant to photograph and be photographed for pre and post-independence India. But they also exposed the enduring connections of these metropoles and former colonies, revealing how class and colonialism determined domestic expectations of Europe, and left them surprised and disappointed by the realities they viewed through their lenses. PRESENTER: Dr Mallika Leuzinger, Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University, and Visiting Researcher in Gender and Media Studies for the South Asian Region at Humboldt University, Berlin. ART: European Photographs in the Illustrated Weekly of India, Debalina Majumdar and Manobina Roy (1959-1960). IMAGE: ‘A Negro Orator in Hyde Park’, Manobina Roy (c. 1960). SOUNDS: Les Cartes Postales Sonores. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

17 Jun 202117min

Dr. Talinn Grigor sets light to the interimperial identities in 19th century Parsi architecture, through the Vatcha Adaran Zoroastrian Fire Temple, Bombay. Building Bombay was at the forefront of the religious, philanthropic, and political agenda of the Parsis, India’s Persian Zoroastrian ethnoreligious minority. Thousands of buildings like the Vatcha Adaran were commissioned in the ‘Persian Revival’, as the Parsis portrayed themselves as heirs of the ancient Persian Achaemenid and Sassanian Empires. But wealthy patrons also drew from European Gothic Revivalism to solidify their privileged position in the contemporary British Raj. Both foundational and forward-facing, the Vatcha Adaran’s architectural ambivalence reflects the Parsis’ efforts to interpret these particular - often conflicting - interimperial identities. PRESENTER: Dr. Talinn Grigor, Professor and Chair of the Art History Program at the University of California, Davis. She specialises in 19-20th century art and architectural histories of Iran and Parsi India, through the framework of post-colonial and critical theories. She is the author of The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture, published in July 2021. ART: Vatcha Adaran Zoroastrian Fire Temple, Bombay (1881). IMAGE: ‘Bai Pirojbai Dadabhoy Maneckji Vatcha Agiary 1881’. SOUNDS: Pedram Khavarzamini. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

3 Jun 202116min

Dr. Aleksandra Stamenkovic constructs the struggle to unify post-imperial South Slavic identities, through Josip Seissel’s Yugoslavia Pavilion for the Paris Expo in 1937. The collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires in the First World War birthed a new European state – the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. National pavilions at international exhibitions, or Expos, became vital platforms to project the state’s internal unity and external strength on the global stage. Yugoslavia’s prize-winning pavilion for the Paris Expo in 1937 fused contemporary European and classical aesthetics, projecting a progressively modern culture steeped in diverse, Slavic histories. But it was also an identity-construction site, exposing elites’ struggle to create a new, unified, post-imperial identity. PRESENTER: Dr. Aleksandra Stamenkovic, Belgrade-based art historian and independent researcher. She specialises in contemporary Serbian and European architectural history. ART: Yugoslavia Pavilion for the Paris Expo, Josip Seissel (1937). IMAGE: ‘International Exposition dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life, Yugoslavia Pavilion’. SOUNDS: Paniks. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

20 Mai 202116min

Dr. Alison Miller depicts the domestic and feminine faces of 19th century Japanese imperialism, in Kobayashi Kiyochika’s Illustration of the Empress Visiting a Field Hospital (in Hiroshima). The public-facing imperial family was a modern invention to Meiji Japan (1868-1912). Paparazzid in popular woodblock prints, Empress Shōken appeared in battlefields and blossom groves, symbolising Japan’s shifting political landscape. But beyond propaganda, Illustration of the Empress hints at the interplay between printers, publishers, and popular markets, revealing how the public invested and participated in the national, imperial project. Challenging our masculine and overseas stereotypes, this print unveils how different Japanese women constructed the scaffolding of empire on the home front and with soft power. PRESENTER: Dr. Alison J. Miller, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She specialises in modern and contemporary Japanese art history, with a focus on representations of gender, women, and the imperial family. ART: Illustration of the Empress Visiting a Field Hospital (in Hiroshima), Kobayashi Kiyochika (1895). IMAGE: ‘Illustration of the Empress Visiting a Field Hospital [in Hiroshima] (Yasen byōin gyōkō no zu)’. SOUNDS: Difondo. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

6 Mai 202113min