On Tuesday 08 October EHLU hosted a talk and workshop where Robin Hartanto Honggare discussed his research on “Architecture, Labor, and the Commoditization of Sumatran Tobacco.” Afterwards looked together at materials related to this subject from Leiden University’s Special Collections.
Between 1870 and 1940, plantation companies in the Dutch East Indies gained huge profits from the export of Sumatran tobacco leaves, a trade item that was mainly used as cigar wrappers. Its quality aside, this tobacco product that was grown in the East Coast of Sumatra received global praise and high valuation mainly because of its uniformity. This talk discussed how this seemingly commonplace characteristic of a commodity was not simply a natural condition but a result of the commoditization process that hinged on both the design of tobacco sheds and the intensification of manual labor across plantation estates enabled under the colonial regime.
Robin Hartanto Honggare is a historian working at the intersection of architecture, environmental humanities, and commodity histories. His current project investigates the extensive network of buildings that enabled commodity production in the Dutch East Indies. Honggare received his PhD in Architectural History from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He also holds a BArch from Universitas Indonesia and a master’s degree in critical and curatorial practices in architecture from Columbia University. His research has been supported by the Graham Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American-Indonesian Cultural & Educational Foundation, and Nieuwe Instituut.
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