The Intimacies of Four Continents – Lisa Lowe

            Lowe was a dense, slow read that took some time to unpack and comprehend. Sometimes her points were lost upon me, and I felt the need to read sentences multiple times, often. Regardless, her thoughts were provocative, and so blatant that they should have been voiced much earlier than 2015. Our discussion in class (over the first two chapters) aided me in reading the concluding chapters. I believe gaining a better understanding of the way Lowe planned to use her definition of intimacies made her book a more meaningful read.

I came to understand that Lowe was using intimacies to grapple with the settler colonialism, transatlantic slave trade and Indian and Chinese trades in goods and people. Her entry points into deeper understating of these intimacies were captivating. I haven’t heard of the novel Vanity Fair before – I thought for a moment she meant the magazine – so her using the novel as an entry point was intriguing. I almost missed – what I think is the point – of colonial liberalism spreading. The British were able to control trade throughout the world by making events accommodate their efforts. They managed to have their “liberal” political agenda spread because they colonizers were saving people from their barbaric ways. This was a narrative that continued to occur as Lowe unpacked her intimacies of the four continents. There would be a settler that came to a foreign or exotic land that was strange or backwards to them and it need their (colonizers) influence and forward thinking ways. This happened for Europeans in India, Africa, America and even China. The European countries colonized and imposed their rules and regulations on these countries, and ruined them in some way. The way Lowe talked about the “silk dealer” who also deals in the unspoken opium trade that resulted in the silk that was returned was an interesting narrative – that’s usually silenced.

This book was most intriguing in how it told stories. Lowe picked the stories that were silenced to tie in the archival text she read over, which sounded grueling. The stores that impacted these major world events were fascinating, it reminded me of the Trouillots expansion of the Haitian Revolution and it’s larger impact on the global slave trade. She references, the rare, slave authors text The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano to later connect to the text of enlightened scholars of the time, who make no reference to slavery. If they make references to slavery, they are usually less than deplorable. Lowe made frequent references to the lack of acknowledgment or reference to the larger global issues propelling European life in the nineteenth century in texts and larger debate. The early nineteenth century brought the discussion of abolition, emancipation and “free labor,” but references of slave text and horrors of trading in people were never largely discussed in European literature. I also found it interesting that the archives Lowe read had no mention of the European dealing in opium – named silk for archival records – and the abolition of slavery, simply to begin dealing in “free labor” of Chinese labors, or enslaved people who were differentiable. Her interweaving of the major archival events interwoven with the excluded voices was a conventional approach to explaining the intimacies of the four continents.

Lowe’s use of Mill’s works to explain the nineteenth century rational of imperialist free trade and colonialism was clever. Mill took no issue with the fact that he wanted total despotic rule over “some” people, but European people were awarded all of the liberties of governmental rule. Choosing to use Mill’s advocating for further control over the Indian colonies, and eventually getting it in the form of a “Governor-General-in-Council,” showed the cementing of European colonial expansion.

 While this text was a dense read, it brought up a lot of interesting takes on intimacy. Lowe was able to weave larger international intimacies with individual intimacies that impacted or resulted in the other. It was a difficult, yet captivating read.