THE RAJ RECONSIDERED: BRITISH INDIA's INFORMAL EMPIRE AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE IN ASIA AND AFRICA

This provides a detailed explanation of how the Indian Empire was organised and run. But its main purpose is to argue that the British Indian Empire was in fact much larger than historians of the Raj normally realise because the Empire should be taken to include the Gulf Arab states, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, the Aden Protectorate and the British Somaliland protectorate.     

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.     

PROJECTIONS OF EMPIRE: INDIA AND THE IMAGINED METROPOLIS

This article describes how the British first tried to come to terms with India and to rationalise their role by postulating that Indians were at a different stage of the development trajectory. It then considers the development of the debate on good governance and the way in which the Imperial idea found expression in an “architecture of possession” both in India, (especially Lutyens’ Delhi) and in Britain itself. Lastly it assesses the way in which post-Imperial London has evolved.     

ROYAL WRIT AND BRITISH RESIDENCY IN THE SULTANATE OF BRUNEI: A FLUID PARTNERSHIP

The aim of the article is to explore and illustrate some “dynamics of transition” across some six decades of British protection of the Brunei Sultanate, 1906-1967, with particular reference to the interaction of traditional administration and the new system of governance of a Residency, especially in the part of Tutong district that was home to the Dusun/Bisaya ethnic minority.     

MOTIVATION AND MOBILIZATION FOR WAR: RECRUITMENT FOR THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE BECHUANALAND PROTECTORATE, 1941-42

This article traces the process of recruiting Batswana men intothe British army in Bechuanaland during the Second World War.It outlines the motives and political aims that led the chiefsto offer wholehearted support for the war effort and examinesthe attitude of the British administration to African participationin the war. The outlook of the men who were required to jointhe army is also analysed, as are the methods used to inducethem to enlist. Therefore a picture of the recruitment processis created that features perspectives drawn from all levelsof colonial society. The article is a contribution to existingliterature addressing the subject of Bechuanaland during theSecond World War, and to the general literature on Africa andthe war. It focuses more closely on the recruitment processthan has been the case to date and makes extensive use of oralmaterial to provide an African perspective on a process thatis usually viewed from ‘above’.     

THE INDIAN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND THE MAKING OF HINDUS AND MUSLIMS IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR

Article 370 of the Indian constitution gives the northern province of Jammu and Kashmir special status within the union. Today that provision forms a nucleus of fierce political contention between secularists and religious nationalists in India, despite the manifest whittling down of the article's most significant aspects. This development is counterintuitive: the original intent of the article's introduction had no relation to questions of religion. This essay attempts to understand this unanticipated role, as a marker of the state's secularity or lack thereof, the article has come to play in Indian politics. It contends that the seeds were sown even at the time of shaping the Indian constitution of a perspective that viewed the people of Jammu and Kashmir according to their religious affiliations.     

THE PRODUCTION OF HISTORY IN MALAWI IN THE 1960s: THE LEGACY OF SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIETY OF MALAWI AND THE ROLE OF DR KAMUZU BANDA AND HIS MALAWI CONGRESS PARTY

This article joins the debate on culture, history and politicsin postcolonial Malawi. Concentrating on the production of historyin the 1960s, the paper shows how the decade marked the beginningsof serious research, teaching and public discourse of Malawi'shistory. It proceeds to examine factors, such as the existingliterature, which helped to fashion the direction which theplayers, mainly teachers and researchers, took in accomplishingtheir tasks. In this connection the paper considers the mannerin which Harry Johnston, the first person to write widely onthe peoples of the Lake Malawi region, influenced the historiographyof the country. It also evaluates the role of the Society ofMalawi and its publication, the Society of Malawi Journal, inthe production of history. Finally, the article pays attentionto the ways in which the work of historians was affected byPresident Kamuzu Banda and the policies and actions of his rulingMalawi Congress Party.     

WINNING COALITIONS AND ETHNO-REGIONAL POLITICS: THE FAILURE OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE 1990 AND 1995 ELECTIONS IN COTE D'IVOIRE

Why is that former dominant or single party regimes, especiallythose in Africa, have generally survived and even emerged strengthenedafter the introduction of multi-party competitive elections?In Côte d'lvoire since 1990 the ruling party has beenable to win elections by using incumbency to present itselfas the organization most likely to be capable of putting togethera winning coalition. In a society segmented by a multiplicityof cultural and religious divisions and where political poweris a zero-sum game, the logic of democratic representation meansthat no group can afford to be excluded. Yet in the 1990 and1995 Ivorian elections .the opposition attacked die ethnic characterof the government and deliberately mobilized ethnic minorities,regional and religious (Islamic) sentiments. They thereforefailed to escape, in electoral terms, from their extremely localizedstrongholds. Their attempt to mobilize around an anti-foreignerplatform in 1990 rebounded in 1995 when the government itselftook over their ‘ultra-nationalist’ stance by excludingnon-Ivorians from the elections. The consequent exclusion ofthe opposition's favoured Presidential candidate and the failureof the opposition alliance to agree on a non-northern, non-Islamicalternative candidate led to a violent boycott and the eventualcollapse of the opposition alliance.     

THE POLITICS OF LINGUISTIC HOMOGENIZATION IN ETHIOPIA AND THE CONFLICT OVER THE STATUS OF AFAAN OROMOO

The suppression of ethnic identities in order to create homogeneousnation-states is an old strategy used by rulers of multi-ethnicand multilingual states. Perceived as salient markers of ethnicidentities and as obstacles to the cultivation of the feelingof belonging and loyalty to the state by the policy makers,minority languages become the objects of suppression and replacementby the languages of the dominant groups. However, the attemptto homogenize such states, has, in many cases, faced both overtand covert resistance from the targeted groups. Ethnic oppositionto linguistic homogenization is triggered by objective as wellas subjective existential concerns. Putting the Oromo in focus,this essay examines the links between state language policyand ethnic conflict in Ethiopia. It sheds light on the historyof Oromo literacy from the 1880s to the present decade and exploresthe role of language in the ‘nationbuilding’ strategiesof various Ethiopian regimes. Furthermore, the essay addressesthe socio-psychological and integrational consequences of, andOromo response to, the language policies of these regimes aswell as the intermittent attempts made by the Oromo intelligentsiato resist them and to develop and use afaan Oromoo as a mediumfor education, administration, mass media, and the arts.     

THE URGENCY OF LAND AND AGRARIAN REFORM IN RWANDA

The challenges which lie ahead for post-genocide Rwanda's economic,social and political development are closely related throughthe issue of land. The pressure from a high rate of populationgrowth, added to the paucity of economic opportunities outsidethe agricultural sector, is forcing people off the land andinto poverty. Society is under extreme stress. Over the lastdecade the fabric of Rwandan society has been torn, resultingin ethnic and social divisions which culminpted in the eventsof 1994. Since then, new groups have entered the competitionfor land. Decisions concerning land and agrarian reform willunavoidably benefit some groups within this fragmented societywhile disadvantaging others. This article approaches the landproblem from two perspectives: first, by situating its socio-economicdimension in a deeper historical context and second, by consideringit as a specifically contemporary socio-political problem. Thearticle discusses the latest proposals for land and agrarianreform. While pressure on land has, over time, weakened socialbonds, it remains doubtful whether the government has the politicalstrength—in the present unstable national and regionalpolitical climate—to carry out the necessary reinforcementof communal bonds which economic development appears to require.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LIBERTY IN THE ARAB AND ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST

The following papers were the basis for a panel at the annual meeting of the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG) in Washington, D.C., October 23, 1993. See below for the participants' affiliations