For Export: Buildings for Colonial Commerce in the Asia Pacific

ABSTRACT

A lasting legacy of 19th-century colonialism in the Pacific and Southeast Asia is the fragmented historiography of the region’s colonial architecture. Historical studies of the built environment continue to adopt geographical frameworks corresponding to nation-states that emerged from colonial empires, overlooking the region’s intricate interconnectivity in the late nineteenth century. The establishment of industrial agriculture and commercial shipping routes opened up territories facilitating movement of goods, labour, capital and ideas. Crossing colonial boundaries, networks developed by commercial entities transformed the Asia Pacific region, leaving behind traces in buildings for trade, travel and export-oriented agriculture. This paper focuses on the architectural infrastructure of the interregional operations of the Australian firm Burns Philp, particularly its engagement with large-scale agricultural production: kapok manufacture in Java, copra estates in the Pacific, and wool production in Australia. Trade operations of Burns Philp and other major shipping companies including the Dutch Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij facilitated not only industrialisation of agriculture in Asia Pacific but also the development of tourism. Drawing on two collections of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs of the Pacific and Southeast Asia, the paper examines images of mostly anonymous commercial built forms and reflects on how their production was informed by interconnectivity and movement.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Society of Architectural Historian’s 71^st Annual Conference in 2018, as part of “The Architecture of Commercial Networks, 1500–1900” session co-chaired by G. A. Bremner, University of Edinburgh, UK, and Katie Jakobiec, University of Oxford, UK.

2. Noni Boyd, “McCredie, A.L. & G.,” in Philip Goad & Julie Willis, eds The Encyclopaedia of Australian Architecture (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press), 2012, 438–439. See also Myra Dickman Orth, “The Influence of the ‘American Romanesque’ in Australia,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 34, 1 (March 1975), 2–18.

3. New South Wales Government Office of Environment & Heritage, “Former ‘Burns Philp & Co’ Building Including Interior,” http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=2423729, viewed 14 March 2018.

4. See Caroline Butler-Bowden and Charles Pickett, “Brogan, John,” in The Encyclopaedia of Australian Architecture, eds. Philip Goad & Julie Willis (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 108. The SLNSW Brogan holdings are listed at https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/YzOg8Pv9, accessed 20 December 2021.

5. For an examination of the operation of the USSCo across Oceania, see Frances Steel, Oceania under Steam: Sea Transport and the Cultures of Colonialism, c. 1870-1914 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011).

6. Ken Buckley and Kris Klugman, The History of Burns Philp: the Australian company in the South Pacific (Sydney: Burns, Philp & Co. Ltd, 1981), 3–8.

7. Wayne McPhee, “History and Development of the Australian Wool Industry,” in Australian Woolsheds, ed. Harry Sowden (Melbourne: Cassell, 1972), 9–29.

8. McPhee, “History and Development of the Australian Wool Industry,” 27–28.

9. Philip Cox, “Statement by the Architect,” in Australian Architects: Philip Cox, Richardson, Taylor and Partners (Manuka, A.C.T.: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Education Division, 1988), 7.

10. “Vindex Station,” The Graziers’ Review (16 August 1923), 541.

11. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 10.

12. W. Ross Johnston, “Philp, Sir Robert (1851–1922),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/philp-sir-robert-8040/text14019, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 19 March 2018.

13. Picturesque Travel, No. 3, 1913, 22.

14. Marshall Clark and Sally K. May, Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, Encounters and Influences (Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2013).

15. Julia Martínez and Adrian Vickers, The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labour and Indigenous Encounters in Australia’s Northern Trading Network (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015), 103.

16. Lenora Thaker, Felecia Watkin Lui and Douglas Watkin (2006) Malaytown Stories: First Wave of Torres Strait Islanders to the mainland. Double Wire Productions, Windsor, QLD, Australia (Unpublished). https://nqheritage.jcu.edu.au/729/, accessed online 9 December 2021.

17. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 89-90, quoting an article from The Ironmonger (27 August 1898).

18. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 284–285.

19. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 77.

20. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 262.

21. Buckley and Klugman, The Australian Presence, 65.

22. Buckley and Klugman, The Australian Presence, 2.

23. Buckley and Klugman, The Australian Presence, 142.

24. Anna Kate Brogan, John R. Brogan, A Career in Practice, Bachelor of Architecture thesis University of New South Wales, 1994, 116–129.

25. Our thanks go to Dr Paul Hogben of the University of New South Wales for his generous help in photographing the John Brogan drawings in the Mitchell Library for us, and for making Anne Kate Brogan’s thesis on her grandfather available. Thanks also to the anonymous referee who drew the existence of this thesis to our attention.

26. Martinínez and Vickers, The Pearl Frontier, 83-84. Martinínez and Vickers suggest BP’s Sydney-Singapore service started in 1904, but other sources suggest 1902 or 1903.

27. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 182.

28. Buckley and Klugman, The Australian Presence, 43 & 48.

29. Amanda Achmadi, “The Architecture of Cultuursteisel in Nineteenth-century Dutch East Indies: Built Traces of Colonial Agricultural Industry,” in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 33, Gold, eds. AnnMarie Brennan & Philip Goad, Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2016: 2–12.

30. Peter D Griggs, Global Industry, Local Innovation: the history of cane sugar production in Australia, 1820-1995 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), 81, 130-131, 481.

31. Griggs, Global Industry, Local Innovation, 1–2.

32. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 24–26; 144; 164.

33. Julia Martínez and Adrian Vickers, The Pearl Frontier, 83. For an exploration of the development of upper-middle class tourism in Asia Pacific on the back of shipping routes operated by Burns Philp and KPM, see Paul Walker and Amanda Achmadi, “Advertising ‘the East’: Encounters with the Urban and the Exotic in Late Colonial Asia Pacific,” in Fabrications, 29, no. 2 (2019): 154-183, DOI: 10.1080/10,331,867.2019.1588686.

34. All About Burns, Philp & Company, Limited, their Shipping Agencies, Branches & Steamers (Sydney: John Andrew & Co, 1903), 18.

35. Paul Battersby, To the Islands: White Australians and the Malay Archipelago since 1788 (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2007), 51.

36. Buckley and Klugman, The Australian Presence, 149.

37. Battersby, To the Islands, 61–63.