Urban Ethnic Clusters in the Global South During the Age of Steam

Technological change, imperial expansion, and the spread of capitalism during this period fueled both the world’s increasing interconnectedness and the rapid growth of port cities. The rise of the steam engine in shipping accelerated trade and migration from the 1870s, engraving global inequalities into the urban space of multi-ethnic commodity entrepôts of the Global South—a deliberately loose category gesturing to the project’s turn away from the North Atlantic focus of much of urban history.

Contrary to an older literature that equated globalization with the erosion of difference, the project asks how the era’s intensifying cross-continental networks related to dissimilarities in urban space, considering cities as encapsulations of the knot-like nature of long-distance connections. Drawing on social-science methods developed to study segregation in North American cities, the project redirects scholarly attention to port cities of the Global South as bridgeheads of uneven globalization and laboratories for the negotiation of ethnicity. With its empirical and historical emphasis on ethnic clustering in such cities, the project adds historical depth to discussions concerning the relationship between globalization and a particular form of inequality.

News

• Special Issue Published
  In September 2025, the special issue “Bridgeheads and Breakwaters: The Socio-Environmental History of Port Cities after the Global Turn” was published in Urban History. This special issue is the product of several years of conversations and two workshops… Read more: Special Issue Published
• Second Berlin Workshop
  In January 2023, Freie Universität Berlin hosted the second international workshop as part of the Patchwork Cities project entitled “Bridgeheads and Breakwaters: the Socio-Environmental History of Port Cities After the Global Turn.” The aim of this workshop was… Read more: Second Berlin Workshop
• Public Lecture by Professor Carl H. Nightingale
  On Thursday, July 7th at 18:15, Prof Carl H. Nightingale from the State University of New York at Buffalo will be delivering a keynote lecture on behalf of the workshop “Writing the Social History of Port Cities” hosted… Read more: Public Lecture by Professor Carl H. Nightingale
• Workshop Poster and Programme
  As our first workshop approaches we are happy to share the poster and programme and look forward to seeing everyone in July.
• Upcoming Workshop
  The Patchwork Cities team is delighted to announce that it will be hosting a workshop in Berlin, July 7 and 8, entitled: “Writing the Social History of Port Cities: Comparative Approaches to Urban History in the Global South.”… Read more: Upcoming Workshop

Funding

SNSF (2020-2025)