Adhip Amin is a MA student in Historical Studies at The New School for Social Research (NSSR). Adhip’s project, “Oceanic Attachments,” traces repair, breakdown, and delay in the use of coal and water as constitutive of the preparatory apparatus of the transition to steam in the nineteenth century Western Indian Ocean. Through the study of labour that went into the maintenance of steam navigation infrastructure, Adhip hopes to elaborate upon how histories of capitalism, labour, and technology can helpfully be combined with histories of colonialism. By studying steam navigation and the logistics around coal in mid-19th Century Bombay and ports in the Red Sea — Mocha, Aden and Suez, Adhip hopes to demonstrate, in the context of British colonialism, that failure was a central node around which labour was organized to make technology work; where capital is not sealed off but open to constant re-articulation even while attempting to generate various registers for accumulation.