MATIC: Materiality of Imperial Crossings during the age of steam (c. 1850-1950)

The MATIC (Materiality of Imperial Crossings during the age of steam, c. 1850-1950) project aims to deepen our understanding of modern colonial empires by exploring the material culture of maritime crossings within the British and French colonial empires during the age of steam (c. 1850-1950).

This project focuses on the personal belongings of steamship travelers to explore the trade of items relevant to journeys at sea, the lived experiences of imperial maritime crossings, the ‘colonial situations’ that arose on board ships, as well as the material circulations that empires facilitated.

Bridging colonial history, material culture studies, and maritime history, MATIC will go beyond the state of the art by demonstrating that materiality was a crucial dimension of imperial ‘lives in transit’, whose study illuminates the social, cultural, and political ramifications of imperial mobility, and fosters new insights into the role of materiality in the imperial archive.

This project further sheds new light on how actors largely absent from written sources – colonized passengers, women, and children – intimately experienced colonial empires.

To accurately capture this global and intimate history, MATIC employs an innovative and interdisciplinary methodology, integrating quantitative methods as well as theoretical perspectives from material and visual culture studies, gender studies, oral history, new mobility studies, and sociology.

In addition to printed sources, it draws on a variety of archival materials from numerous repositories in England and France, surviving artefacts from museum collections, and oral history interviews.

This project will significantly enhance the ER’s professional experience by further diversifying his research methodologies, enhancing his ability to work in a international environment, and enabling him to build a long-lasting international network that includes researchers, curators, and archivists.