British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - )

Dark Hour of Secularism: Hindu Fundamentalism and Colonial Liberalism in India

by Jakob De Roover

Co-authored with S.N. Balagangadhara, forthcoming in Making Sense of the Secular: Critical Perspectives from Europe to Asia, edited by Ranjan Ghosh (Routledge, 2012).

History Teaching, Imperialism and Decolonization in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1945-1958)

by Iris Seri-Hersch

PhD dissertation defended on May 17, 2012 at Aix-Marseille Université. Written in French.

Situating the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the wider frame of British imperial history, this dissertation investigates... more Situating the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the wider frame of British imperial history, this dissertation investigates school history in late colonial Sudan. Didactic materials, prescribed contents and pedagogic practices are analyzed against the background of five major developments of the 1945-1953 period: the shifting of British imperialism in Africa towards “paternalist-progressive” policies aiming at preparing colonial peoples for self-government; the polarization of British and Egyptian positions on the Sudanese issue; mounting rivalries between the independentist and unionist wings of Sudanese nationalism; the hasty unification of Northern and Southern Sudan after more than half a century of separate rule; and Northern Sudanese policies of Arabization and Islamization in the South as a tool for achieving “national unification”.
In a second part, the innovative character of post-WWII history teaching in Sudan is assessed by examining earlier patterns of Sudanese school history. History teaching in late colonial Sudan is then compared with history teaching in other territories of the (ex-)Empire (Uganda, North Rhodesia, Nigeria, Egypt, India, Great Britain). Two central postcolonial issues are further explored, namely the decolonization of school historical narratives after independence (1956) and the role of history teaching in fuelling the North-South conflict in Sudan.

Sport, manhood and empire: British responses to the New Zealand rugby tour of 1905

by John Nauright

This article analyzes British responses to the successes of the 1905 New Zealand All Black rugby team in the context... more This article analyzes British responses to the successes of the 1905 New Zealand All Black rugby team in the context of fears of racial degeneration in Britain. It further explores how the British viewed the New Zealand team's innovative style of play including changes to standard formations used in the game as well as specialized positional play. Finally concepts of colonial robust masculinity suggested to British experts that the British "race" was not necessarily in decline in the colonies of settlement as evidenced both by troop performance in the South African War of 1899-1902 and on the playing fields.

Great Britain and the UN Committee of 24

by Helene von Bismarck

op-ed column for the British Scholar Society, May 2012

Cornish Miners and the Witwatersrand Gold Mines in South Africa, c. 1890-1904

by John Nauright

Published in CORNISH HISTORY an online journal in 2005. Online link seems to be missing now. This article forms part of the work of my Masters Thesis at the University of South Carolina completed in 1988.

‘Atrocity Narratives and Imperial Rivalry: Britain, Germany and the Treatment of ‘Native Races’, 1904-1939’

by Christina Twomey

in T. Crook and B. Taithe (eds), Evil, Barbarism and Empire: Britain and Abroad, c. 1830-2000, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2011, 201-25.

The Struggle for Mastery of India: Parliament vs. the East India Company, 1763-c.1800

by Michael Chiarello

Metropole, Colony, and Imperial Citizenship in the Russian Empire

by Alexander Morrison

Kritika, Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History Vol.13 No.2 (Spring 2012) pp.327 - 364

This article reviews recent literature on legal and civic ideas of citizenship within the Russian empire, arguing that... more This article reviews recent literature on legal and civic ideas of citizenship within the Russian empire, arguing that much of it fails to take into account the many legal and administrative inequalities which existed between European and Asiatic Russia, with Central Asia in particular emerging as a separate, military-ruled 'colony', not just in cultural, but also in institutional terms.

Slavery, settlers and indigenous dispossession: Britain's Empire through the lens of Liberia

by Zoe Laidlaw

Zoë Laidlaw, ‘Disrupting Empire: slavery, settlers and indigenous dispossession through the lens of Liberia, 1830-1866’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 13, 1 (April 2012).

Dockside Prostitution in South African Ports

by Henry Trotter

History Compass 6/3 (2008): 673-690

Prostitution has been a staple of dockside social life for centuries. In South Africa, it dates from the Dutch East... more Prostitution has been a staple of dockside social life for centuries. In South Africa, it dates from the Dutch East India Company's establishment of a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope. But unlike other prostitution sectors—streets, brothels, agencies—the women of the dockside sex trade in Cape Town and Durban participate in a global traffic of ideas, diseases, DNA, contraband, and currency through their ceaseless interactions with foreign sailors. They exploit their knowledge of the seamen's languages and cultures so as to more effectively solicit their marks in a competitive and cosmopolitan environment.

Social historians provide passing glimpses of dockside prostitution in their consideration of larger historical themes—Company rule, slavery, British colonial governance, the Mineral Revolution, the Anglo-Boer War, and apartheid—but they have yet to treat it as a distinct analytical category through which to view the past. Yet popular intellectual trends suggest that research into the dockside sex trade would add new dimensions to the histories of cosmopolitanism, gender, globalization, maritime recreation, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

This article provides a quick and accessible introduction to the historiography of dockside prostitution in South Africa.

Charlatans Chicanery

by Mohamed Eno

Thr poem is an excerpt from my forthcoming volume Guilt of Otherness

The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic. The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic.

Traditionalists vs. Reformists: The Struggle for Leadership within the Turkish Community of Cyprus between the World Wars

by Erdem Erginel

Delivered at and published in the Proceedings of the Third International Congress for Cyprus Studies (2000).

Cyprus, during the period between the two world wars witnessed a political struggle between two groups within the... more Cyprus, during the period between the two world wars witnessed a political struggle between two groups within the Turkish Cypriot community:  the traditionalists and the reformists.  When the British took over the administration of the island in 1878, the existing Ottoman establishment aligned itself with the new rulers, in order to consolidate the power structure that served its interests.  The position of the traditional Ottoman establishment in Cyprus came to be challenged with the emergence of a group of intellectuals who were inspired by Kemalism and the principles and policies of the Republic of Turkey.  Calling themselves ‘halkçılar’, this reformist group criticized the traditionalists, particularly for guarding the interests of the British and themselves, rather than that of the Turkish Cypriot community.  The British and the traditionalists tried to contain this political development, but the popular support for the halkçılar continued to grow.  At one point the British realized that they could no longer continue their policy of supporting the traditionalists and so they undertook steps to acknowledge and win the sympathies of the reformists.  Academic research has generally focused on the Greek Cypriot community and its relations with the British or the Turkish Cypriots.  This paper will attempt to discuss the split within the Turkish Cypriot community between the world wars and the British reaction to it, and bring to light and analyze this hitherto unexamined area of Cyprus studies.

Review: The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England by David Porter

by William Coleman

Historians of British Art Newsletter, Winter 2011-12, pp. 18-20

‘Places for thinking’ from Annapolis to Bristol: situations and symmetries in ‘world historical archaeologies’

by Dan Hicks

Slavery and Colonialism: The Worst Terrorism on Africa

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authored with Omar A. Eno, Mohamed H. Ingiriis, and Jamal M. Haji; Published in African Renaissance, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2012.

Humans need not justify terrorism of any kind, regardless of whether one is Muslim, Christian or Jew, because it is... more Humans need not justify terrorism of any kind, regardless of whether one is Muslim, Christian or Jew, because it is the axis of evil and devastation of mankind. However, the deliberate use of the term terrorism in recent decades was carefully selected, mainly, against a certain religion (Islam). The idea was then globally politicized by the Western world. Leaving that scholarly view in its own right, we disagree with the opinion raising terrorism as the devil’s just-born child of evil, when in reality Africans had been terrorized for centuries as slaves and human chattel. Hence the basis for the concept of this thesis: conceptualizing the episode of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ from the broader perspective of its practice from the Middle Passage or the Atlantic Slave Trade. To portray that argument and broaden the scope of the debate over this critically sensitive subject, we divided the discussion into three sections: an examination of what constitutes terrorism and terrorist; history of terrorism and terrorists from an Africa perspective; and the ideological constraints within the subject of terrorism as practiced by the US and its Western allies.

Influence of the history of archaeological thought in South Asia on the understanding of ancient states and empires, including the prevalence of Colonial and Orientalist modes of interpretation.

by Seetal Gahir

Understanding the illegal slave trade during the British occupation of La Réunion (1810-1815)’ In Labache et al (eds.) Identité et Société Réunionnaise. Nouvelles Perspectives, Nouvelles Approches. Paris: Karthala 2004. 21p (in French)

by Heloise Finch-Boyer

The Imperial Locomotive: A Study of the Railway System in British Malaya, 1885-1942

by Tse Siang Lim

Honours Thesis, Department of History, National University of Singapore, 2009

Published in 'Studies in Malaysian and Singapore History: Mubin Sheppard Memorial Essays,' Monograph No. 42 (Kuala Lumpur: The Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2010).

The origin of the British railway system in the Malay Peninsula can be traced to the laying of its first tracks... more The origin of the British railway system in the Malay Peninsula can be traced to the laying of its first tracks between Taiping and Port Weld in Perak in 1885. It was to take another half a century before the network in the British protectorate reached in its fullest extent. Together with the technologies of the steamship and telegraph, the railway revolutionized transportation and communications in the nineteenth century. Its significance within the imperial framework is generally perceived to lie in accelerating economic exploitation and growth through the enhancement of existing infrastructure for agriculture, industry and trade. As some historians have noted, the development of railways in British Malaya was indeed closely connected to the tin and rubber industries and the emergence of an export economy situated on the western coast of the Peninsula.

Nonetheless, the railway functioned not just as a tool which served the colonial economy but also as an instrument of imperial rule in British Malaya as well. British imperial rule in the Federated Malay States (FMS) was consolidated through the establishment of a railway system that connected its constituent states together into a political unit; thus the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR) facilitated the dissemination of British authority. As the railway became a site of imperial contestation and control over sovereignty in the Unfederated Malay States (UMS), the assertion of British dominance over the Peninsula railway facilitated the drawing of these states into the orbit of British imperialism. At the same time, the railway also became a cultural technology of rule as it diminished the indigenous political system of the kerajaan in the Malay states.

L’éclatement du Soudan, déliquescence d’un État «improbable». Étude de la sécession du Sud-Soudan

by Pierre Fermigier

Mémoire de master 1.

I. Les projets coloniaux et l’impossible intégration nationale soudanaise
A. L’histoire des territoires soudanais... more I. Les projets coloniaux et l’impossible intégration nationale soudanaise
A. L’histoire des territoires soudanais et la formation de l’État
1. L’intégration forcée de l’«excroissance» darfouri
2. Le Sud du Soudan, conquête indécise d’un «réservoir à esclaves»
B.La fragmentation soudanaise, solde insurmontable de l’héritage colonial
1. À l’origine de l’ancrage de la séparation Nord-Sud: la Southern Policy
2. La route vers l’indépendance, le chemin vers la guerre

II. Ressources et ingérences étrangères: l’accélération de la décomposition soudanaise
A. Pétrole et eau, le cocktail explosif soudanais
1.La question de l’eau: au cœur des tensions nationales et régionales
2.Du pétrole sur le feu de la dissension nationale
B. L’internationalisation de la crise: le coup de grâce à l’unité soudanaise
1.L’avènement du régime islamiste comme déclencheur de l’ingérence américaine
2.La sécession sud-soudanaise, un succès en trompe-l’œil?

Governmentality, Bio-Power and the Emergence of the Malayan-Tamil Subject on the Plantations of Colonial Malaya

by Richard Baxstrom

Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University. Vol. 14, No. 2. 2000.

With an eye to the importance of ethnicity in the development of modern day Malaysia, this article explores the... more With an eye to the importance of ethnicity in the development of modern day Malaysia, this article explores the historical phenomenon of Tamil labor recruitment and migration to British Malayan rubber plantations between the years 1890 and 1920. During this period, Tamil kangany labor recruiters helped transform South Indian peasants into disciplined plantation workers, serving as catalysts for a process through which Tamil immigrants were remade as human subjects in the new plantation sphere and within the British colonial empire generally. The analytic framework deployed here is Foucauldian, with specific attention paid to how Foucault's concepts of Governmentality and Bio-power can be utilized in colonial studies.