Presented By: Romance Languages & Literatures RLL
The Logistics of Counter-Revolution: Fast Circulation, Slow Violence, and the Transpacific Empire of Circulation
Marxisms Collective Speaker Series 2025: Charmaine Chua, UC Santa Barbara
Workshop: 11am - 1pm
RLL Commons, MLB 4314
Lecture: 4pm - 5:30pm
North Quad, Room 2185
RSVP at our link!
The rise of the global logistics industry has profoundly impacted global workers' struggles by organizing goods movement through a politics of just-in-time circulation. Although scholars have often dubbed this phenomenon "the revolution in logistics," in this paper I argue that the so-called 'logistics revolution' is better understood as a counter-revolution.
As anti-colonial leaders and trade unions in Southeast Asia pursued economic sovereignty during the “Third World’s” transition to independence, they nationalized industry, seized colonial property, and sought to build national shipping and industrial capacity. To contain this threat to private enterprise, US and UK shipping corporations, backed by their states, pursued the globalization of supply chain infrastructures.
Focusing on a swathe of nationalizations of Dutch and British merchant, shipping, and plantation corporations in Indonesia from 1960-66, this talk examines how shipping containerization only became viable when it aided imperial containment strategy. As I argue, bringing the history of logistics into conversation with decolonizing workers' and nationalist struggles in Southeast Asia transforms our understanding of the logistics counter-revolution, positioning it as a reactionary political project that consolidated colonial power into new economic forms.
Tracing the historical conjecture of the rise of logistics with the end of formal empire, I ask: What did the rise of logistics look like from the vantage of the decolonizing of the global south?
RLL Commons, MLB 4314
Lecture: 4pm - 5:30pm
North Quad, Room 2185
RSVP at our link!
The rise of the global logistics industry has profoundly impacted global workers' struggles by organizing goods movement through a politics of just-in-time circulation. Although scholars have often dubbed this phenomenon "the revolution in logistics," in this paper I argue that the so-called 'logistics revolution' is better understood as a counter-revolution.
As anti-colonial leaders and trade unions in Southeast Asia pursued economic sovereignty during the “Third World’s” transition to independence, they nationalized industry, seized colonial property, and sought to build national shipping and industrial capacity. To contain this threat to private enterprise, US and UK shipping corporations, backed by their states, pursued the globalization of supply chain infrastructures.
Focusing on a swathe of nationalizations of Dutch and British merchant, shipping, and plantation corporations in Indonesia from 1960-66, this talk examines how shipping containerization only became viable when it aided imperial containment strategy. As I argue, bringing the history of logistics into conversation with decolonizing workers' and nationalist struggles in Southeast Asia transforms our understanding of the logistics counter-revolution, positioning it as a reactionary political project that consolidated colonial power into new economic forms.
Tracing the historical conjecture of the rise of logistics with the end of formal empire, I ask: What did the rise of logistics look like from the vantage of the decolonizing of the global south?
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