It housed soldiers, prisoners, factory workers, and oilmen. But this barge’s real cargo has always been the invisible machinery of global capitalism.
Key Points at a Glance
- One barge’s decades-long journey reflects globalization and economic fluidity
- The vessel served in wars, jails, factories, and oil fields across continents
- Historian Ian Kumekawa’s new book explores its story as a symbol of the offshore economy
- From Sweden to Nigeria, the barge illustrates the rise of impermanent, flexible solutions
From housing British troops during the Falklands War to serving as a floating jail off New York’s coast, a single barge built in 1979 has traced a remarkable path through modern history. Now, MIT historian Ian Kumekawa has chronicled its life in Empty Vessel: The Global Economy in One Barge, an inventive new book that distills the abstract forces of globalization into one floating, rusted artifact.
The barge — known at various times as “Bibby Resolution,” “Balder Scapa,” and seven other names — has flown five flags and served owners in multiple countries. But its true identity is that of a nomad in the offshore world: a transitory structure, endlessly repurposed to solve urgent but short-term needs in a deregulated global system.
“The offshore presents a quick and potentially cheap solution to a crisis,” Kumekawa explains. “It is not a durable solution.” Across its history, the barge became a metaphor for this phenomenon. It was always in motion, always just sufficient for the job, and never meant to last. And yet, this very impermanence became its defining role in a global economy increasingly built on mobility and flexibility.
Kumekawa’s account, recently published by Knopf and John Murray, brings together economic history, geopolitical insight, and firsthand reporting. He combines archival records with interviews — including conversations with the barge’s last captain — to piece together a timeline that stretches from Swedish shipyards to Nigerian oil fields. The result is a portrait not just of a vessel, but of an era defined by deregulation, privatization, and the disintegration of territorial boundaries.
After its early life in European waters, the barge served as housing for Volkswagen workers in Germany before being converted into a detention center — first in New York City, then off the English coast. By 2010, it was housing oil workers off Nigeria, having been re-registered yet again in the Grenadines. Each transformation mirrored broader shifts in economic and political trends, from industrial decline to militarization and extractive industries.
“Globalization is more about flow than about stocks,” Kumekawa notes. “And the barge is a great example of that. It’s understood people are going to be passing through.” This constant motion reflects the rise of an economic model that prizes speed, flexibility, and offshore solutions over permanence or rootedness.
But there is a human cost to all this fluidity. Each chapter of the barge’s story includes people — soldiers, inmates, migrant workers — whose lives intersect with this vessel designed not for comfort or stability, but for fast, temporary use. In that sense, Empty Vessel is both a material history and a cautionary tale: a reminder that behind every floating solution lies a complex system of incentives, pressures, and often, dispossession.
“My hope for the book is it reinforces the material dimension of these abstract global forces,” Kumekawa says. With clarity and elegance, Empty Vessel does exactly that, showing how even a single ship can carry the weight of modern economic history.
Source: MIT News
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