18^th-Century Petitions from Batavia: Untold Narratives in Dutch Colonial History (Vany Susanto)
Batavia, the headquarter of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Asia, was a cosmopolitan city with a diverse population. Trade, forced migration, and slavery had brought a myriad of people from across the Indian Ocean, North East Asia, and the Eastern Indonesian islands, to live alongside the indigenous people of Java. Centuries of mixed marriages among themselves, or between them and the European settlers, had produced generations of mixed-race people that were untamed by colonial categories. The diversity of Batavia’s petitioners was further amplified by the petitioners from other VOC territories - from the Cape, South Africa, to Deshima, Japan. As the VOC’s highest political, legal, military, and administrative body, the High Government of Batavia received petitions not only from the inhabitants of Batavia, but also from the residents of its secondary settlements.

This project brings to the surface the experiences of living temporarily or settling within the VOC jurisdiction. In the 18^th century, Chinese arrack distillers petitioned the city’s government to increase the sale price of arrack, a popular liquor; while Batavia’s boedelmeesteren sought decision on how to divide a man’s inheritance between his legitimate children and those born from his concubine, an enslaved woman. A European woman from Galle, who was convicted of devil worship and poisoning her son-in-law, pleaded for clemency; the same reason an opium retailer from Semarang petitioned, as he was caught selling opium in Surakarta without the government’s permission. A freed Buginese slavin requested her deceased son’s salary; he was a VOC soldier who died in Baros. Veterans begged to be reemployed by the VOC because they could not make a living as free burghers in Batavia. One Moor sailor from Bengal first petitioned the Viceroy of Brazil, then the King of Portugal, before seeking VOC’s mediation in his wage dispute with a Portuguese Captain.

Vany Susanto's study shows that the everyday uses of petitioning in the early modern colonial society extended beyond the political and legal realm.

From a Liminal Place: Historical Research for Urban Futures (Antonia Weiss)
This paper is conceived as an interface connecting the historical research undertaken in the context of Antonia Weiss' PhD project to the practice of designing cities. How can the methods and conceptual frameworks that are employed by historians inform and modify the strategies and techniques used by designers? And how can findings on the gendering of urban environments of the past help us address problems of social inequity in cities today? Departing from her own ambiguous position as a trained architect and a practicing historian, in this paper she will explore the liminal territory between historical research and spatial design. She argues that rather than being peripheral to the practice of ‘making’ cities, historical methods might be the key to imagining and creating more equitable urban spaces.