London's Infrastructure of Import

09 Difference and the Docklands: London’s Infrastructure of Import Elizabeth Bishop 56 By the beginning of the 19th century the British Empire had Elihu Yale, hailed as the founder of Yale University after his donation of West India Docks, were not employed until the mid-to-late 18th century, when “… the tide of commerce—the 57 been embracing contact with difference from overseas for some time. valuable East India goods to Cotton Mather, was one such servant of the life-stream of the capital—began to leave, so to speak, an architectural deposit in its course.”9 Along with the The Empire had grown to include an array of colonies and dependen- East India Company. Yale, then governor of Madras, employed a variety external forces of trade, the increasing chaos of the port itself enacted change on the city.10 Shipping traffic cies and British culture, especially in London, had enjoyed imports of questionable administrative techniques that eventually caused him crowded into the port, including the merchant ships (known as East and West Indiamen), the coal colliers 01 from these territories for years. No longer did England rely on entrepôt to step down from his post and retire to London.5 that traveled between London and other British ports, and lighters, the smaller, flat-bottomed boats used to cities such as Amsterdam and Venice. By 1800 the British Empire had unload the larger ships. In addition to this increased traffic, the Thames was difficult to navigate because of “An elevated view of the West India Docks” (1800), strengthened its naval forces and developed its own import and export As similar as the two major companies were, there were some its tidal nature. An elongated threshold between open sea and the city, the Thames’ daily ebb and flood tides lithograph, by the printmaker William Daniel strategies, and London was becoming an entrepôt city itself.1 Imports very clear differences between them. An obvious distinction is that they (with as much as a twenty foot discrepancy, often leaving muddy riverbed exposed at low tide) complicated that were not previously consumed by the average Londoner found imported different things, from different parts of the world.6 The sug- that relationship. Twice a day the river was a place of flux, of changing currents and reversing flows; neither their way into daily routines: tea, chocolate, coffee, tobacco, and rum ars and rums of the West India Company were heavy, packed in mas- sea nor city. Striated with shipping routes that connected the port to a vast network overseas, the sea was entered the daily diets of many Londoners. Consumption of sugar rose sive hogsheads (for sugar) or puncheons (for rum). As seasonal goods, considered a possession of the British Empire. The wealth of nations (and the cultural difference that accom- drastically.2 Overall patterns of consumption beyond comestibles also harvested from the monoculture created by the British in the Antil- panied it) flowed into London via the conduit of the Thames. changed, affecting many areas of daily life. Horn buttons, ostrich feath- les, massive amounts had to be stored in London to satisfy year-round ers, indigo dye, and a host of fabrics such as chintzes, calicos, muslins, demand. The East India Company, by contrast, imported China, tea, Yet before any “architectural deposit” was made, a crisis point had to be reached in the port. In the and silk had become more commonly available and affected clothing silks, calicoes, cottons, and other fabrics, coffee, spices, manufactured years leading up to the announcement of the architectural competition for a warehousing masterplan for the choices. As patterns of consumption changed, the urban fabric of the goods, diamonds and other precious stones, ivory, and shells from ports West India Company, the port drew so much traffic that it nearly ceased functioning. Within this confusion, city likewise changed to accommodate them. The docklands, where im- in India, China, and Indonesia.7 Trade was seasonal in the sense that there were few mechanisms of control. Identities were fluid: pirates impersonating customs officers raided ports entered the city, were altered noticeably as London reorganized trade winds blew in more beneficial directions at certain times of year, ships, gangs of thieves in league with the crews of merchant ships plotted heists of cargo, and the day laborers its fabric to absorb cultural differences in the form of imports. This is but the growing season was largely irrelevant. These high quality lux- that were hired to unload the ships pilfered unimpeded. The scale of theft ranged from what fit in a pocket to particularly apparent at the West India Docks, where a new species of ury goods were sold not in markets but in showrooms which were ap- the stealing of entire ships and their cargo.11 There was no established and reliable means of receiving imports. warehouse urbanism began to take root.3 pended to the warehouses in the 19th century; wealthy clients or other The British East and West India Companies and their investors lost money due to these depredations, and merchants could bid on goods in semi-public sales that were held in the ships’ captains began turning away from the port. Something had to be done to remedy the chaos on the river. Import companies like the British West India Company and the Sale Room in the East India House, the building that also served as the British East India Company (chartered as early as 1600) were at the headquarters of the East India Company.8 The import companies themselves often operated on the fringe of legitimacy, verging into acts of forefront of the increase in imports to England. Based in London, they piracy when beneficial. In the early 1700s, when the East India Company was becoming increasingly power- nevertheless controlled large portions of the Empire overseas. Both In this sense, one particular species of urbanism grew out of ful in India and the West India Company was mechanizing sugar production in the Caribbean, piracy was not companies were separate from and not controlled by the state, enabling the East India Company’s imports. But the warehouse urbanism that a new concept. For years England had issued letters of marque to pirates, effectively changing their title to them to engage in a variety of activities, not always within the law.4 this study considers is that of the West India Company at the West India “privateer”, and enabling them to engage in low-grade aggressions against other nations with the blessing The East India Company, for example, acted as a government in In- Docks, from the time an architectural competition was held in 1799 to of the state, a practice tolerated and encouraged as inexpensive, covert war.12 Neither pirates nor privateers dia, building cities, ports, and establishing other infrastructure, along the completion of the project in 1802. Before the boom in imports in were technically organs of the state or part of its apparatus of war, but a knowingly duplicitous national sov- with maintaining a standing army. Similarly, the West India Company the 19th century, London’s waterfront did not contain a variety of large ereignty (through the guise of private gain) allowed them to attack the navies and merchant fleets of rival controlled islands in the Caribbean, altering the land and ecosystems, scale warehouse buildings. As architectural historian John Summerson nations when necessary.13 Technically they were free agents, interested only in profit. This fluctuating iden- building structures, and taking on governmental roles. Even if the com- notes, Georgian London did not have many building typologies specifi- tity enabled the pirates to engage in a mutable sovereignty, backing whichever state proved the most profit- pany was acting in a legal manner, though, its servants (as employees of cally designed to accommodate commerce. Large masterplans for ac- able, when feasible. Reciprocally, the state could choose to support or revoke support of the pirate’s actions the East India Company were known) could act in duplicitous manners. commodating imports, like the complexes of warehousing built at the as needed. In the late 16th and early 17th century, as the British Empire became more powerful with better Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/thld_a_00210 by guest on 28 September 2021 Warehouse: Storage, Processing, Sorting, Laundering To Central From Colonies London Quay Staging & Road Connections Entrance Basin Wet Dock To the Sea 02 03 04 London Docklands Sectional diagram of the West India Dock enclave showing the movement of Diagram of the proposed warehouse urbanism on the Isle of Dogs showing imports through the site. warehousing surrounding the import dock to the north of the export dock. Tilbury Reach 58 defined spatial boundaries, the state found it increasingly difficult to The development of the gibbet and Execution Dock established dictated a sequence of ships entering the wet dock, berthing at the quayside, and systematically unloading 59 find a use for the alternative sovereignty of pirates.14 the state’s new lack of tolerance for piracy. In Discipline and Punish: The cargo [figs.2,3]. Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault writes of a similar strategy in 18th In fact, pirates became a hindrance to the activities of the century France: “The body of the condemned man was…an essential In this enclave that both enabled a particular species of piracy (the duplicity of the West India Compa- state, and merchants (especially the British East India Company) began element in the ceremonial of public punishment.”17 In Kidd’s case, the ny) and protected against other illicit activities, the metrics of trade influenced the form of the structures.

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