Asian Servants for the Imperial Telegraph: Imagining North Australia as an Indian Ocean Colony before 1914

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the officers of the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company provided north Australia with a cable connection to London via Java, Singapore, and India. The telegraph project prompted a new era of colonisation in tropical north Australia and the officers of the company sought to ensure that the north would be shaped according to their notions of Indian Ocean colonial culture. They insisted on employing Asian domestic servants in opposition to White Australian nationalists who advocated restrictions on Asian migration. Like the pearling industry, which was permitted ongoing access to Asian labour, the telegraph company drew on the support of liberal parliamentarians, and leveraged their privileged position as providers of imperial telecommunications to develop an elite colonial counterculture in north Australia.

Social imaginaries of subsea cables: recovering connections between Broome and Banyuwangi

“…In the second half of the 19th century, the resources, security and spatial organization of Indigenous peoples were radically disrupted by installation of the British telegraph system within today’s geographies of Indonesia and Australia (Martinez, 2017: 230–231; Owen, 2016: 298–299). Submarine telegraph cables were laid from Darwin to Banyuwangi in 1871 and from Banyuwangi to Broome in 1889 to link the relatively new telegraph networks in Australia and Southeast Asia.…”

“…In 1937, a leading Japanese telecommunications engineer reported that the Dutch East Indies had become the centre of telecommunications in the East, producing equipment locally in case supplies from Europe were cut (Yang, 2010: 197). From a British colonial perspective too, Java was the ‘intermediary link, passing messages between Australia and London’ (Martinez, 2017: 230). The telegraph network supported an ‘Indian Ocean colonial culture’ (Martinez, 2017: 227) – and ‘the right to rule’ (Rizvi, 2017: 316) – that endured after Australia’s federation in 1901.…”

“…From a British colonial perspective too, Java was the ‘intermediary link, passing messages between Australia and London’ (Martinez, 2017: 230). The telegraph network supported an ‘Indian Ocean colonial culture’ (Martinez, 2017: 227) – and ‘the right to rule’ (Rizvi, 2017: 316) – that endured after Australia’s federation in 1901. This culture’s demand for subordinate Asian staff in the northern regions was in friction with White Australian nationalist calls for the restriction of Asian migration.…”

“…Then, in World War II, all undersea cable connections to Australia from Southeast Asia were severed as Japanese Forces occupied the region (Yang, 2010). Despite this break and the slow collapse of British empire, the cultural, commercial and political legacies of its infrastructure in former Indian Ocean colonies can still be identified (Kerr, 2012; Martinez, 2017; Thomas, 2019).…”

“…Public history of the undersea cable in Broome recalls the names of British supervisors, a boat and Javanese places, while backgrounding and not naming the diverse workforce involved in the project. Meanwhile, history scholars have begun to identify some of the staff and servants left out of the Cable Station picture, such as Marjoeki, a Javanese man who worked in Broome for decades (Martı́nez, 2017: 239–241). Marjoeki stands proudly, looking to Camera, third from left among the people behind the station manager’s family in the 1913 photograph.…”