Achievements of the British Colonial Service: A Retrospective View

This article looks back on the record of the British Colonial Service in Africa, with a particular focus on how it ran Zambia immediately prior to its independence in 1964. The author, a member of that service, argues that, for all their faults, British colonial administrators discharged their duties with dedication, skill and the welfare of the general population in mind. There is, he notes, a need for a better understanding of the positive effects of contact between cultures that British colonial rule engendered in societies such as Zambia.     

Colonial Existence,Home and Nationalism in the Narratives of British Cameroons’ Exiles in the United States

This article explores the personal meanings and public expressions of colonial existence, home and nationalism among exiles of British Cameroons from the standpoints of 11 biographies of British Southern Cameroons’ first-generation exiles living in the United States. Examining their narratives reveals why the exiles actively resist a public categorisation as being Cameroonians. This article provides a new type of research regarding British Cameroons’ exiles and their vision of the restoration of the statehood of British Cameroons, a former United Nations trust territory deserving its separate sovereignty and independence in accordance with the UN Trusteeship Agreement (1946) and UN Resolution 1514 of 1960 on the independence of colonial people. Significant about this study of the narratives of British Cameroons’ exiles is its focus on biography for portraying particular facets of nationalist resistance, including questions relating to the processes that surround the right to define the community one calls home.     

Colonial education and the shaping of Islamism in Sudan, 1946–1956

Abstract

This article assesses the role of British colonial education in Condominium Sudan in shaping the mindsets of Sudan’s first generation of Islamists between 1946 and 1956. Drawing on post-colonial theorists such as Nandy and Bhabha, it contends that the experiences of the pioneers of Sudan’s Islamic movement at institutions such as Gordon Memorial College and Hantoub Secondary School moulded their understandings of both ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’. As a result of their colonial education, Islamists deployed discourses concerning both ‘progress’ and ‘cultural authenticity’ that bore remarkable parallels with colonial essentialism, even as they announced a decisive break with the colonial past. Much like the conventional nationalists, they used the space created by the colonial educational institutions to establish an ideological community that transcended the narrow ethnic and regional divides previously fostered by the British. At the same time, Islamists and colonialists alike shared a contempt for Marxists and ‘deculturated’ effendis, and Muslim Brothers’ aspirations to escape the ‘English jahiliyya’, however counter-intuitive this may seem, bore similarities with the worldviews of colonial officials concerned with preventing what they saw to be the excessive impact of urbanization and modern education on Sudan.     

英国取缔马共的决策过程

1948年6月16日,三名欧籍种植园经理在马来亚北霹雳地区被杀,马来亚殖民当局宣布马来亚部分地区进入"紧急状态".两天后,"紧急状态"覆盖马来亚全境.马来亚殖民当局在宣布"紧急状态"时并没有同时宣布应由哪个政治组织对事态负责.直到7月19日,英国内阁才批准英国驻东南亚首席专员宣布马来亚共产党为非法组织.英国内阁在做出取缔马共的决策时并未掌握马共涉及谋杀事件的确凿证据,对马来亚事态的性质也缺乏把握.     

‘Heart-Beguiling Araby’ on the Frontier of Empire: Early Anglo-Arab Relations in Transjordan

In 1920 the British government of Palestine sent six officers to establish a British presence in Transjordan. Lacking military and financial support, they could not possibly control a country populated by more than 200,000 tribespeople, many of them members of powerful tribal confederacies. The key to explaining why the British chose this unorthodox way to takeover a new territory lies in the special attitude towards Arabia entertained by the British following World War One. British policy derived from an alleged cultural affinity between the British and the ‘Bedouin’, coupled with a colonial tradition of attributing British administrators with a ‘natural’ ability to rule over natives. These two myths gave the British an inflated belief in their ability to rule local society. Drawing on official reports, private papers and local accounts, this article shows that the British grossly misunderstood local conditions and could not deal with the tribal communities that frustrated their attempt to assert British influence.     

The Yemeni Civil War: The Final British–Egyptian Imperial Battleground

When the Yemeni Civil War broke out in September 1962, the British and the Egyptians supported opposing sides of this regional conflict whose outcome would determine the future of their respective Arabian empires. Hostilities in Yemen were not grounded in the superpower competition of the Cold War, but rather were a culmination of an imperial rivalry that began with the 1839 British capture of the port city of Aden to confront the advancing imperial army of Mohamed Ali. By the end of 1967, their colonial rivalry came to a close with their resounding mutual defeats     

BRITAIN AND YEMEN: THE END OF BRITISH RULE IN SOUTH ARABIA THROUGH THE EYES OF A YOUNG POLITICAL OFFICER

This article publishes for the first time selections of the private correspondence (placing them in their historical context) of John G. T. Shipman (1939–2016), who took up his position as assistant adviser in the Eastern Aden Protectorate at the end of 1962 just as the first signs of political and social change were appearing in South Arabia. He served from this position in different parts of the Eastern Aden Protectorate until 1967. Shipman's correspondence allows for an unmediated appreciation of how people on the ground experienced the historical events at the time, including the British withdrawal in 1967, and highlights the extent of their own grasp of the goings-on when contrasted with the historical record. In this sense, the scope of this article is to allow the voice of one of the many British colonial officials to directly narrate their encounters during the last five years of British colonial rule over southern Arabia. The perceptive eye of a young political officer coupled with the ephemeral character of his handwritten correspondence, which providentially survived for more than five decades although it was never intended for publication, offers a fresh insight into the political and social life of the Eastern Aden Protectorate.     

Splitting and becoming double in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness

This article explores Zakes Mda’s fascination with and deployment of the (leit)motif of twins, doubles/doppelgängers, and the notion of duality in his novels. In a close reading of The Heart of Redness, I explore how Mda dramatizes the breakdown of Xhosa society during the colonial encounters with the British and their continued impact on the present. I am also interested in the ways in which this novel animates the tensions between colonial modernity and Africanist traditionalism, while also drawing our attention to societies that do not thrive on the fixed taxonomies of rationalism. Through twinship, the figure of the double, and the notion of duality, Mda’s novel not only illustrates the complexity of the South African colonial experience, but also recuperates a historical episode that has been predominantly relegated to the margins of hysteria and delusion.     

论马来人"第五纵队"问题与马来亚联盟公民权计划

战前,英国一直执行亲马来人路线,而受到英国特殊照顾的马来人在英国人处于危难的时候"背叛"了英国人,这使英国殖民当局极为难堪,也给英国军事征服东南亚增加了不确定因素.虽然从政治和军事上讲,英国人不能允许反马来人情绪广泛流行,但英国必须慎重考虑重建马来亚殖民统治的政治基础,尤其是在英国用军事手段重新占领马来亚时能争取非马来族群的支持是非常重要的.本文认为,公民权计划的制订与"第五纵队"问题的困扰有密切关系.     

Netherlands East Indies: The Large Colonial Surplus of Indonesia, 1878‐1939

Surprisingly few previous contributions to estimates of Indonesia's colonial surplus have been made, all of them using the export surplus method. Having defined the colonial surplus, the export surplus method is rejected here as unnecessary and misleading. The Indies balance of payments data are used critically for the first time. Adding missing items and further analysing an odd but very big private item much larger estimates of the colonial surplus are produced. A comparison with the colonial surplus of British India is made. In all, the new colonial surplus for the Netherlands East Indies is estimated at almost 24 billion guilders, approximately US$10 billion or some US$156 billion in today's terms. Those figures are considered large indeed.     

WHO OWNS INDIA’S HISTORY? A CRITIQUE OF SHASHI THAROOR’S INGLORIOUS EMPIRE

The historiography of Britain's colonial past has always been problematic, shaped by conflicting mythologies about Britain's role as benefactor or exploiter. In the wake of Indian independence in 1947 it was in the interests of India's national identity to present what had gone before as a period of unmitigated oppression challenged by a united people. The consequence was widespread ignorance about the realities of British rule and of the Indian economy prior to and after British rule, exemplified by a current best-seller written by a well-known Indian political figure, Dr Shashi Tharoor, whose main arguments are examined; in particular, his central claim that India was a wealthy nation prior to Britain's colonial intervention reduced to poverty by Britain's ‘depredations’.     

Paradoxes of internationalisation of the Anglophone problem in Cameroon

Historically it is not strange that the Anglophone elites in Cameroon took their case to the international community, since this was a strategy that they employed during the British colonial period. A number of petitions and constant visits were made to the United Nations (UN) by Anglophone elites concerning British neglect of their territory. These petitions were made in the form of presentations before the United Nations in New York or whenever there was a visiting UN mission to the trust territory. Nonetheless, since the early 1990s, the pattern of petitions has changed drastically. Petitions against the new state are different from those earlier petitions against colonialism. The aim of the petitions against the new state has been to draw the attention of the UN and the international community to the injustices inflicted upon minority English-speaking Cameroonians by the ruling government. The Anglophone elites believe that, by making their plight known to the international community, the latter might intervene to restore the statehood of Southern Cameroons.     

The Negev: Land,Settlement, the Bedouin and Ottoman and British Policy 1871–1948

Focusing on the sub-district of Beersheba in British Mandatory Palestine, we examine issues of colonial administration, land use, relations between the government and indigenous nomads and extension of government control over marginal regions. Based on archival primary written sources and maps, we assess British Mandatory policy in the Negev, in the contexts of land ownership, settlement and the Bedouin population. The British Mandatory administration inherited a Southern Palestine Negev region that had been affected by a robust Ottoman policy of increasing administrative intervention, policing, land settlement and overall projection of government power. During 30 years of Mandatory rule, the policy was markedly different. The Beersheba sub-district, which incorporated almost half the area of Mandatory Palestine, was a unique administrative unit, populated almost entirely by nomadic Bedouins. Although the Mandatory authorities foresaw land settlement and sedenterisation as a goal in Palestine, they did not apply their administrative apparatus to fulfil this policy in the Negev, neglecting much of it.     

英属时期印度人移民马来亚的原因及其影响研究

英属时期,印度人大规模移民马来亚。析其原因,当时西方资本主义殖民经济的蓬勃发展和奴隶制的废除是推动印度人大规模移民马来亚的国际背景;移民输出地印度和输入地马来亚当时的政治、经济、社会及人口状况等因素则是推动印度人大规模移民的地区背景。大规模外来移民的结果不仅改变了马来半岛固有的民族成分和社会结构,也为日后马来(西)亚的族群矛盾和冲突埋下了伏笔。     

British Understandings of the Sanussiyya Sufi Order’s Jihad against Egypt, 1915–17

Abstract

This article considers the Sanussiyya Sufi order’s 1915–16 jihad on Egypt from a fresh perspective, analysing British understandings about the attack that soldiers and officials fashioned as the conflict progressed. By incorporating aspects of imperial and Islamic history and a focus on British perceptions, the article presents new directions in the study of the war in the Middle East that move beyond the concerns of older military histories. It analyses three key areas of British thinking in relation to this jihad. First, the belief that local fighters joined the campaign as a result of economic factors, chiefly the famine that swept the Western Desert from November 1915 as a result of an Anglo-Italian blockade, and that the order had little support from the local population owing to their policy of requisitioning goods. Second, the important set of perceptions that the Sanussiyya were pressured by the Ottomans to attack the British as part of their overall call for jihad against the Allied powers. Third, the divided nature of British views around the broader threat posed by the order to Egypt and the wider war effort. Finally, it examines the broader religious and ideological context of the Sanussiyya as an organised reformist Sufi order, engaged in a struggle for resistance to and survival against European imperialism—a struggle that collided with the changed strategic landscape of a region rent by conflict between the Ottoman and British empires from November 1914.     

Legitimite et droit de resistance au xxe siecle: La conscience religieuse et la guerre civile espagnole

SUMMARY

In the early nineteenth century, English common law did not recognize absolute slavery within Britain's borders. Nevertheless, slavery did exist in a number of British colonies. In 1807, thanks to the impassioned efforts of the Anti-Slavery Society, the British Parliament made the slave trade illegal. The Slavery Abolition Bill was passed by both Houses of Parliament and it received royal assent on 29 August 1833, but it did not come into force until 1 August 1834. On that date slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. Yet, despite this ban, there were many exceptions to its automatic application throughout the imperial possessions. A loyal servant of the Crown, the colonial judge Sir John Jeremie (1795–1841), conducted a personal campaign against slavery and racism in the colonies of the British Empire. His reflections, based on the reality of daily colonial life, offered a technical rather than doctrinaire contribution to the success of the anti-slavery cause. Jeremie was to pay a high price for his ideas, however, owing to deep-rooted prejudices and the strong economic influence of the powerful caste of slave traders. His Four Essays on Colonial Slavery was published in 1831. This work had considerable influence on British parliamentary debates, and it was strongly attacked by supporters of slavery. As a jurist and legal practitioner, during his cursus honorum (as lawyer, colonial judge and ultimately his appointment as Governor of Sierra Leone), Jeremie brought a practical perspective in writings to the debates which animated the Westminster Parliament, even after the approval of the Abolition Act. Despite the slave trade being abolished in the British Empire, slavery per se continued to be legal in some form for many decades to come. Hence, the issue of slavery continued to be a subject with which Jeremie was associated for the remainder of his life. Another interesting historical source is Jeremie's correspondence with Members of Parliament and the British government. This constitutes a lively exchange with London and testifies to the enlightened and progressive foreign policy vision of this active member of the Anti-Slavery Society. Sir John Jeremie was also interested in migration and integration-related issues, as can be seen from primary sources such as letters and dispatches. The wide variety of his correspondence bears testament to the battle he fought until his death.     

明防暗退——从香港保卫战前的部署看英国如何操作放弃香港

1941年12月日本进攻港英当局殖民统治下的香港,香港保卫战爆发前英国政府为了保全其帝国整体利益,对香港进行了战略性放弃,"明线"上表现出坚决保卫香港的姿态,"暗线"上却将主要军力撤至战略位置更重要的新加坡。英国在军事上放弃防御香港的同时,又拒绝通过不设防城市的方式避免香港受战火摧残,最终导致香港军民承受了重大伤亡,香港陷入日本的残酷占领和统治。     

The Prisoner Dilemma: Britain,Germany, and the Repatriation of Indian Prisoners of War

Abstract

Between October 1914 and December 1915, nearly 135,000 Indian riflemen—known as sepoys—fought in the trenches of France and Belgium at the battles of Ypres, Festubert, Givenchy, Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres and Loos, suffering some 34,252 casualties. At a prisoner of war camp outside Berlin, Indian revolutionaries and emissaries from the Ottoman Empire attempted to convert the allegiances of the sepoys in their custody with a combination of pan-Islamic and nationalist appeals. Although this campaign ultimately failed, it profoundly shaped British repatriation policy at the end of the war when, cautioned Secretary of State for India Austen Chamberlain, the British could not allow men who had been exposed to ‘strongly hostile influences’ to return home unmonitored. The 1918 armistice and British repatriation policy therefore presented a host of new challenges to Britain’s colonial subjects from South Asia as they navigated the post-war imperial landscape and secured what was most important to them—safe transportation home.     

Fragile frontiers: Sayyid Taha II and the role of Kurdish religio-political leadership in the Ottoman East during the First World War

At the start of the First World War the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the ruling party of the Ottoman Empire, used numerous means to ensure that the Kurdish leaders remained allies. Interpretations of Jihad became a major tool for recruitment of Kurdish soldiers by all sides in the war, including the Ottomans, Russians, British and Kurds, though the tactic had limited success. During this period, several religio-political leaders emerged among the Sufi orders in Kurdistan and created their own regiments that fought alongside the Ottomans. Other leaders sided with Russian and British forces. Among those leaders that did not support the Ottomans, Sayyid Taha II arose as a rational, yet unorthodox political figure. His political maneuvering proved that the frontiers were fragile, fluid and impermanent. The present study aims to show that in the context of the First World War the Kurdish leaders of the time, primarily Sayyid Taha II, vis-à-vis the non-religious notables in Istanbul, were transformed into political leaders by their experiences during and after the war.     

Contested modernity: divided rule and the birth of sectarianism,nationalism, and absolutism in Bahrain

This study argues that political mobilization based on ethnosectarian identities in Bahrain is a modernist product of the contestations that occurred in the period of increasing British colonial involvement in the early twentieth century. Two concepts are utilized. The first is the colonial ‘ethnosectarian gaze’, marked primarily by its underlying epistemology that saw ethnosectarian cleavages as the main analytic units for approaching local political power, practice, and discourse. The second is ‘contested and divided rule’. With the advent of Curzon’s ‘forward policy’ in the Gulf, Britain actively divided sovereignty between itself and the local ruler, with actors on the island faced with two conflicting sources of jurisdiction. The British viewed issues of jurisdiction primarily through an ethnosectarian lens, and increasingly so did other actors, creating an inter-feeding dynamic between ethnosectarianism, nationalism, and divided rule. Two emergent forms of political mobilization are emphasized. The first mobilized based on ethnosectarian identity-specific demands and grievances. The other took an overtly nationalist, trans-sectarian, anti-colonial tone, having its roots in the al-Nahda renaissance that swept the Arab world in the nineteenth century. Thus, colonialism, absolutism, ethnosectarianism, and nationalism went hand in hand, products of a similar period of divided rule, their lingering effects still felt today.