British Colonial Government Research Articles

Editors’ Introduction Global Trade in Alcohol and Drugs: Histories of Distribution and Control

Drawing on the new interest in global history, drug and alcohol scholars have increasingly taken an international approach to their topics. The literature on the spread of alcohol and drugs around the world and on the development of international control regimes has grown rapidly.* To capitalize on this growing field, the 4th International Alcohol and Drug History Conference, held in August 2007 at the University of Guelph, cenetred on the theme of Global Approaches. The conference attracted participants from across the world, and paid particularly careful attention to the international trade in drugs and alcohol, the development of the international control regimes, and the impact of colonialism and neo-colonialism on the cultures of drug and alcohol use.This special issue of Contemporary Drug Problems focuses on global trade in alcohol and drugs, and attempts to suppress their use in different national contexts. Another set of articles from the conference is being published in Social History of Alcohol and Drugs. We are very grateful for generous support provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Associated Medical Services, the Alcohol and Drug History Society, the University of Guelph's College of Arts and History Department, and for the labor provided by the anonymous reviewers.Several of the articles focus on attempts by colonial authorities to regulate the sale and production of drugs. Ian Tyrrell examines American efforts to control alcohol and opium in the Philippines. Missionary and temperance groups lobbied hard to have the United States (US) adopt strict controls on opium. These controls provided the U.S. with the moral authority to pursue opium regulation internationally and to strengthen ties with China. By contrast, the lobbyists assumed a pragmatic position towards alcohol and were satisfied by the administration's efforts to control the number of drinking establishments through licensing. Simon Heap examines the difficulties that the British colonial government in Nigeria had in enforcing the ban on local homemade gin, or ogogoro. Import figures of sugar make it clear that illicit distilling was widely practiced despite British efforts to eradicate it. In a similar vein, Ashley Wright's article on colonial Burma demonstrates how British policies from 1826 to 1881 were rife with contradictions and inconsistencies. In pursuit of stable and profitable colonial rule, British opium legislation treated the ethnic groups in Burma differently from one another.Two articles examine interactions between the international drug trade and local communities. …

KILLING THE CONDEMNED: THE PRACTICE AND PROCESS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN BRITISH AFRICA, 1900–1950s

ABSTRACTCapital punishment in British colonial Africa was not just a method of crime control or individual punishment, but an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. The treatment of condemned criminals and the rituals of execution which brought their lives to an end illustrate the tensions within colonialism surrounding the relationship between these states and their subjects, and with their metropolitan overlords. The state may have had the legal right to kill its subjects, but this right and the manner in which it was enacted were contested. This article explores the interactions between various actors in this penal ‘theatre of death’, looking at the motivations behind changing uses of the death penalty, the treatment of the condemned convicts whilst they awaited death, and the performance of a hanging itself to show how British colonial governments in Africa attempted to create and manage the deaths of their condemned subjects.

Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters: An Outrageous Englishwoman and Her Lost Kingdom

For a century the state of Sarawak in north-west Borneo offered a vision of an alternative, romantic, yet still recognisably British colonial regime. Relatively little has been written on the reign of the last of its three White Rajahs, Vyner Brooke (1874–1963, reigned 1917–46), a murky figure yet to attract a biographer. Philip Eade's book, thoroughly researched but aimed squarely at the popular market, is partly a biography of Vyner's socialite wife Sylvia Brooke (née Brett, 1885–1971), and partly a narrative history of the last decades of the Brooke state. Sylvia's life is uncharted territory, so there is plenty of original material here. The second daughter of the prominent courtier Reggie Brett, Sylvia spent her childhood eagerly awaiting the visits of the avuncular W.T. Stead, and her young adulthood corresponding with George Bernard Shaw and J.M. Barrie. Marriage to the soon-to-be Rajah of Sarawak meant passing a few months a year in state in the heat of Borneo, as well as eventually assuming the title of Ranee, and Sylvia's observations on life in Kuching over thirty-five years are valuable. She seems to have played only a minor role in Sarawak politics, however; Eade dwells upon her schemes for altering the succession, but these proved of little ultimate importance. The Ranee spent less of her life in Sarawak, indeed, than in England, the USA and, latterly, Barbados, pursuing literary and social notoriety. The seedy exploits of her father, siblings, and flapper daughters fill a number of pages. We learn an impressive amount about how Sylvia's relatives perceived her (usually without charity), but there is little insight into her character or thought. Surprisingly, her novels and short-story collections, which even on a cursory read reveal a complex web of assumptions and preoccupations, are not examined in detail. The last third of Eade's book is concerned with Sarawak's 1941 constitution and its 1946 cession to Britain—topics covered more authoritatively in R.H.W. Reece, The Name of Brooke: The End of White Rajah Rule in Sarawak (1982)—and for long stretches loses sight of Sylvia altogether. It is perplexing that so much time is spent chronicling diplomacy in a book about the Ranee, who was largely uninvolved in these matters. Eade does, however, bring forth new details on clashes within the Brooke family, and on the relations of the family with Vyner's influential protégé Gerard MacBryan and with the Colonial Office, which will be of interest to specialists. The whole book suffers from a dearth of analysis: understandable in a volume with a non-academic readership in mind, but frustrating nonetheless. Equally disappointing are the unnumbered endnotes, to which one often turns in vain in search of sources. Eade touches on some interesting themes—perceptions of Sarawak and its ruler in Britain and America, the nature of the regime in Kuching, transatlantic social culture, Sylvia's self-mythologising and her attitude towards her subjects—but never expansively enough. Still, his book is a mine of detail about early-twentieth-century Sarawak, and tells us everything we could want to know about Sylvia Brooke's life, except perhaps why she is worth writing about.

The Congrégation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693–1796 (review)

Canadian The Congregation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693-1796. By Colleen Gray. [McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, Series 2, No. 48.] (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2007. Pp. xxxvi, 250. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-77353-227-4.) This work is an exploration of the ways eighteenth-century leaders of the Montreal-based Congregation de Notre-Dame exercised power in economic, social, and religious arenas. The three brief chapters of the first part describe the way the congregation functioned as an institution internaEy and in connection with the surrounding society while the three chapters of the second part focus on three of the women who served as superior from 1693 to 1796. Many of the congregation's documents from this period have been destroyed by fire, but Colleen Gray mines the archival material available to her carefully and creatively. Two appendices provide lists containing biographical data for the congregation's 217 members and twelve superiors during this period. A detailed description of the congregation sisters' living space in the first chapter reveals that while not fully cloistered, they kept well-guarded private space that permitted them to cultivate a deeply personal spirituality This supported what Gray calls their mission in the public world: the education of children in its schools and the spiritual formation of women through confraternities and retreats. While the sisters' intent was spiritual, Gray notes that these activities also served the political function of supporting the society's stability The final chapter of this first part explores how the congregation came to acquire and manage the Saint-Paul, using these business transactions to illustrate the sisters' economic ties with the French and later British colonial governments, as weE as with donors, merchants, workers, and church officials, in particular the bishop of Quebec and the Sulpicians of Montreal. In Gray's view, typical of the twelve women who became superior in the period under consideration was Marie Raizenne, who served from 1778 to 1784 and 1790 to 1796. Born into a farming family from the vicinity of Montreal, she appears to have been elected because of talent, rather than social position. Indeed, she would have needed considerable talent to exercise all her responsibilities as superior: spiritual and moral guidance of the sisters, oversight of their educational endeavors in Montreal and throughout Quebec, management of the Montreal house, and financial responsibility for the entire enterprise. Gray illustrates all these dimensions of the superior's role through the correspondence between Marie-Josephe Maugue-Garreau, superior from 1766 to 1772, and the bishop of Quebec, Jean-Olivier Briand. …

Modes of Cooperation in the Colonial Legal Field: The Case of Mandatory Palestine

The aim of this article is to describe the complex mosaic of interests, values, and relationships in the colonial legal field and their manifestations in the law and legal education system. After presenting four modes of legal interaction between the natives and colonizer and within the local population, we trace the Jewish population's fruitless efforts to preserve its national-cultural identity and a relative degree of legal autonomy while at the same time cooperating with the British colonial regime in Palestine. Our discussion focuses on legal education in Mandatory Palestine, taking the Tel Aviv School of Law and Economics (TASLE), which was established in 1935, as a case study. TASLE's failure to obtain official recognition from the British reveals a fascinating, multi-layered picture of the legal-academic field in Mandatory Palestine. While the local Jewish elite generally supported TASLE's national-cultural ideas regarding the integration of Jewish and modern law, conflicting institutional, political, legal, and academic interests drove it to cooperate with the colonizer in opposing the school's initiative.

Dockside Prostitution in South African Ports

AbstractProstitution 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. However, 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.

Whose crime? Arson, class warfare and traders in Nairobi, 1940-20001

This article concerns the crime of arson at Nairobi (Kenya), which became common in the 1950s Mau Mau Emergency when the British colonial government was attempting to control a growing insurgent movement, the Land and Freedom Army, which used urban African markets as one of its key loci for organization. Many traders were involved in the insurgency and the government used arson to burn them out, before deporting most of them to the reserves in Operation Anvil. The constant struggle over urban space continued after Kenyan independence in 1963, when in the 1990s and later, in particular, arson once again became a key tactic used by corrupt government officials in alliance with developers to get control over prime urban land. The best example is the five-day Gikomba Market fire that destroyed most of it, but not the will of the sellers to rebuild. It is widely believed that the thugs who burned the market did so for hire. Thus, the class struggle continued, embodied in the crime of arson between a privileged class including high government officials and developers and an insurgent underclass bent on survival.

The Political Goddess: Aurobindo's Use of Bengali Śākta Tantrism to Justify Political Violence in the Indian Anti-Colonial Movement

The notion of a goddess being used to inspire young men to throw bombs may at first seem far-fetched. But what if that goddess is Kālī? Fierce Kālī—who stalks proudly through the Bengali imagination, dripping blood, scantily clad in tiger-skin and severed human body parts, slaying and devouring countless demons? Early in the twentieth century, Bengali philosopher and activist Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950), a key figure in the development of Indian nationalism, glimpsed the potential of Kālī-worship as a potential tool of political mobilisation to promote revolutionary terrorism, and forged a movement around the fearsome Tantric goddess that culminated in a rash of revolutionary terrorist acts against the ruling British colonial regime.

THE ENEMY WITHIN: LOYALISTS AND THE WAR AGAINST MAU MAU IN KENYA

ABSTRACTBetween 1952 and 1960, the British colonial government of Kenya waged a violent counter-insurgency campaign against the Mau Mau rebels. In this effort the regime was assisted by collaborators, known as loyalists, drawn from the same communities as the insurgents. Based primarily on new archival sources, this article sets out the history of loyalism, stresses the ambiguity of allegiances during the conflict and argues that loyalism was a product of the same intellectual debates that had spawned the Mau Mau insurgency. The article concludes by stressing the significance for postcolonial Kenya of this history.

Activists on the Fringe: Chinese Intelligentsia in Penang in the Early 20th Century

Activists on the Fringe:Chinese Intelligentsia in Penang in the Early 20th Century Tan Soon Cheng (bio) Abstract From the early days when the Chinese immigrants started to arrive in Penang, until as recently as the first part of the 20th century, the Chinese had participated actively in the economic, social and political development of Penang. Among these pioneer immigrants, there was a group which was small and little noticed, compared to the commercially active traders, planters and laborers. Although not much written about, this group of individuals who contributed significantly to the educational and cultural development of the Chinese community in Penang was remarkably well captured in the book, Nanyang yingshu haixia zhimindi zhilüe [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i.gif"/] (Gazetteer of the Nanyang British Straits Settlements), compiled by Song Yunpu [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="02i.gif"/], a Minguo [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="03i.gif"/] (Republican period) merchant, and published around 1930. This article aims to study this particular group of Chinese in Penang by examining their aspirations and actions, to bring about an awareness of their influence and contribution. Introduction Since Captain Francis Light1 appointed Koh Lay Huan as the first Chinese Kapitan of Penang,2 immigrants from the southeastern provinces of China had been coming to Penang in growing numbers in the early 20th century. Drawn by economic opportunities, they came to clear land, to plant, to mine or to trade.3 To be more precise, from Captain Light's arrival to the year 1930, when the book Nanyang yingshu haixia zhimindi zhilüe (Gazetteer of the Nanyang British Straits Settlements) was published (Song 1930),4 the number of Chinese immigrants in Penang was on a yearly increase (except for the period from 1914 to 1928), reaching two prewar peaks in 1911 and 1929.5 The fact that "the Chinese became the largest racial group of Penang" (Khor 2004: 17)6 was not [End Page 34] perceived without some anxiety. It was at about the same time that the British government passed the Immigration Restriction Ordinance (1928–31) to restrict the entry of adult male Chinese immigrants to Penang, as "it is considered that the entry of such labourers is likely to cause unemployment" (ARSS 1998(9): 698). The anxiety was not with regard to the numbers alone. The British colonial government also stated that "the majority of labourers in the Colony are Chinese and South Indians. The latter are chiefly engaged in agricultural work and on public services, the former in agriculture and every other form of manual labour. Skilled work is almost entirely in the hands of the Chinese" (ARSS 1998 (9): 419).7 One can take this as an official acknowledgment that the Chinese immigrants simply could not be dismissed as unimportant. Yet the British colonial government's attitude toward the Chinese community was one of non-interference. It was only in later years, when the operations and rivalries of the various secret societies associated so closely with the mining and revenue farming activities of the various dialect groups brought so many problems with law and order8 that the British colonial government changed its policy. To manage the Chinese, the British colonial government established the office of the Protector of Chinese in 1877, and started to appoint leaders of the Chinese community as Justices of the Peace (JP), to work as an intermediary between the community and the British government. That in consequence gave the British better control.9 Not only was order maintained, there were some rather unexpected gains as well. It was stated in the 1891 report that after the final settlement of the affairs of the "dangerous" societies, "the Ghi Hin had a balance of over $70,000 after paying all debts, and some little difficulty arose as to the disposal of this large amount." Eventually a donation of $3,000 was given to the Penang Free School, $2,000 was donated to the Pauper Hospital and another $2,000 to the Leper Asylum (ARSS 1998(3): 626). Objective of this Study Among the...

Mixing Matters: Callaloo Nation Revisited

In Todos Somos Primos (We Are All Cousins), his moving introduction to Callaloo's 2004 special issue on Afromestizo peoples in Mexico, Charles Henry Rowell makes a call to expand the concept of African as site; to interrogate identity politics, race, cultural politics, and forms of power; and to explore how these dimensions of diaspora relate to uncharted regions of the African Diaspora (xiii). The goal of this revisionist work would be to broaden the concept and discourse of African from its connotation as a site to encompass its eclipsed historical, cultural, and regional dimensions (Rowell xiv). In drawing attention to the elision of peoples of African descent by scholars and others, and insisting on the recognition of the absent-presence of these communities (xiii), Rowell underscores the need for a deeper and more politically inflected understanding of race, culture, and memory in Afro-Latin American Diasporas. The recognition of absent-pres- ence, however, requires nuanced efforts because race is not simply a regime of visual ascertainment (Rowell xiii). That is, the visual does not necessarily reveal genealogical descent or its myriad symbolic significance; there are multiple and often subtle ways that the African remains vital. Despite centuries of miscegenation and transforma- tion into mestizos, many Mexicans, Rowell explains, identify themselves as Afromestizo; or they acknowledge some relationship with Africa; or they carry Africa in their bodies (xiii), establishing what Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran calls the biological basis of Mexican nationality (qtd. in Rowell xiii). 2007 brings Callaloo to another special issue, one commemorating its thirty year an- niversary as a major literary voice of the African Diaspora. My invitation to contribute to this issue provides an opportunity to consider how key points in Rowell's 2004 call resonate with another major diaspora of the Americas, that of South Asians (Indians, as they are locally called) in the Caribbean. Ending slavery in its colonies by 1838, the British colonial government struggled to meet the needs of sugar plantation production, particularly with respect to a cheap and plentiful labor supply. In the early post-emancipation period, strategies were debated and experimented with: immigrant and indentured labor were brought from such far-flung places as China, Madeira (Portugal), West Africa, other Caribbean colonies, and, after 1812, the United States. The majority of laborers who were headed for sugar plantations, however, arrived as indentured immigrants from India, the colony commonly known at the time as Britain's jewel in the crown. Beginning in 1838 and lasting until 1917, this indenture scheme contracted laborers from such places as Uttar Pradesh, Oudh, and Bihar, and shipped them out of ports in Calcutta and Madras. Over a period of seventy-nine

Damning the Flow

Damning the Flow

A Priceless Commodity: The Politics of Salt Production and Commercialisation in the Cross River Basin of Cameroon, 1916-1961

In the Cross River Basin of Cameroon like in other West African territories, the production and sale of salt in the precolonial era was a vibrant industry involving numer- ous people and trading communities. The exploitation and/or sale of precious salt in some areas was regulated by the village authorities. The British eventually assumed control of this region of Cameroon after the First World War, and instead of supporting this industry, they embarked upon importing salt from other colonial possessions and Europe. Even when World War II affected the supply of salt from these external sources, the British colonial government did not develop the local industry. By 1961, when British rule terminated, this indigenous industry had declined to the extent that the once flourishing brine springs were abandoned in the wild.

The Creation of the British Atlantic world

While scholars of traditional imperial history see the formation of the larger British Atlantic world as a consequence of competing European powers' efforts at nation-building, Atlantic historians see the transatlantic empire shaped more by the motives of a wide variety of subnational groups. Elizabeth Mancke and Carole Shammas have compiled a volume that reflects these different viewpoints concerning the transatlantic experience during Britain's rise to world dominance between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the book's opening chapters, contributors consider the effect of transatlantic emigration, discussing European and African migration and slave trade; the enslavement of Native American peoples; and the ways individuals adapted their national and religious identities in a world of expanding cultural influences. The second section addresses the roles played by trade, religion, ethnicity, and class in linking the Atlantic borders, with essays examining how mariners circulated political and religious news along with trade goods; how British common law supplanted the diverse legal systems of the early colonies; and how Protestant leaders in the colonies challenged the theological assumptions of their European contemporaries. The chapters in the final section address the increasingly complicated legal relationships between the British sovereign and colonial charterholders; the simultaneous establishment of a British colonial government in East Florida and the Royal Gardens of Kew; the popularity of imperial landscape art in eighteenth-century Britain; and the British roots of Pennsylvania Quakers. The Creation of the British Atlantic World provides insight into the competing forces that forged the Atlantic world as well as the reciprocal relationships between the growing British Empire and the individuals, groups, and subnations within that empire.

Ruling continuities: Colonial rule, social forces and path dependence in British India and Africa

The concept of empire has undergone a revival in recent years in the context of debates over American power and hegemony in world politics. Authors such as Niall Ferguson and Deepak Lal have used the British Empire as an exemplar to demonstrate that empires can be benign, engendering social and economic development and enabling democracy. In this article, I argue that British imperialism, far from being benign, in most cases undermined colonial democratisation and development through its focus on maintaining physical order and control and sustaining economic extraction. This is demonstrated by both the budgetary priorities and the political and institutional machinations of British colonial regimes. However, different colonies experienced distinct post-independence trajectories, depending upon the character of indigenous social cleavages, elite strategies, the formation of political parties and movements, and the ability of indigenous leaders to manipulate limited opportunity structures. India's distinctive pathway to democracy would not have been possible had partition not fixed a potentially serious demographic problem by making government institutions inherited from the British suitable to India's social structure. Pakistan's transition to democracy was impeded by partition, which deprived Pakistan of both its central state apparatus and its integrative national party. Transitions to democracy in Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania were blocked by an entrenched history of autocracy, inappropriate government structures and a lack of well-trained political elites. Had British officials done more, earlier on, in these countries to modernise government structures and develop political capacities, they too may have successfully democratised.

"Untold Difficulties:" The Indigenous Press and the Economic Effects of the First World War on Africans in the Gold Coast, 1914-1918

During the First World War, the British colonial government in the Gold Coast vigorously sought to maximize both human and natural resources in support of the imperial war effort. Consequently, the people of the Gold Coast, like most colonized Africans, suffered from, the wartime policies as well as the direct effects of the war.' The Gold Coast had experienced relative economic prosperity before the outbreak of the war. Exports included cocoa, palm oil, rubber, kola, timber, and minerals.1 Ports, railways, and roads -were developed to exploit these and other commodities. In sum, the Gold Coast, despite the uncertainty of the colonial situation, was following a pathway towards prosperity, exemplified by economic boom and rapid urbanization. Also educational developments had paved the way for social change and social mobility.3 Unfortunately, the harsh wartime economic effects halted the wheels of prosperity: overall, the inhabitants of the Gold Coast experienced untold difficulties adjusting to wartime hardships and dislocation.4Two indigenous newspapers, The Gold Coast Leader and The Gold Coast Nation, which were published in the provincial capital of the Central Province, Cape Coast, became a hub of African intellectual activism and anticolonial protest politics. Patronized by the African intelligentsia, the indigenous press provided vigorous anticolonial commentaries on the prevailing conditions in the Gold Coast.5 Three areas of anticolonial criticism emerged in the press: opposition to Governor Hugh Clifford's vigorous implementation of indirect rule during wartime, colonial labor and military recruitment exercises, and the economic effects of the war. Several studies have examined indirect rule in the wartime, but they deal more with the political economy of indirect rule than the effects of indirect rule on the African population.6 A recent study has filled this gap by using African sources, specifically newspapers, to give voice to African perspectives on indirect rule.7 The subject of wartime colonial labor and military recruitment has attracted extensive study, though the sources used are mainly official reports, and consequently, the extant literature deals more with colonial policies than African agency and responses in wartime. Even in cases where the economic impact of the war is examined, there is still a reliance on official sources that emphasize government expenditures and income.9Through the prism of the indigenous press, the present study shifts the focus from government expenditure and income to the impact of the war on the population of the Gold Coast and African perspectives on the effects of the war on economy and society. Both indigenous newspapers took keen interest in the effects of the wartime economy on the people of the Gold Coast. Economic issues addressed by both newspapers in the course of the war were slackening cocoa prices; lack of shipping facilities and space; fall in revenue; stagnation of wages and salaries; scarcity of staple foods and imported commodities, especially from 1916 onwards; and the demographic effects of the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1917-1919. Increased taxation, freight rates, and customs duties equally attracted critical commentary in the press.10 In discussing these topical issues I show that the African intelligentsia, the opinion leaders in the colonial setting, effectively used the press as a composite political platform to articulate wartime economic problems that affected the African population. Due to the organic connection that existed between the indigenous press and the African intelligentsia, I have used both interchangeably to give voice to the extent and form of anticolonial protest and political action during the war.The first section of the study provides a synoptic view of the colonial government's perceptions of the wartime economy, while the second part briefly reviews the literature on the economic effects of the war. The third portion deals with the history of the two indigenous newspapers that served as the African intelligentsia's political platform for the articulation of the wartime economic problems. …

Conjoined to Empire: The Great Depression and Nigeria

The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939, has been largely treated as a period of stagnancy in African history. It was a period in which nothing happened due to the bankruptcy that befell colonial powers and their subsequent preoccupation with economic recovery to the detriment of public works and social projects.1 Many scholars argue that the depression's only remarkable feature is that it was a period of unprecedented exploitation of African resources and peasants as colonial powers sought to transfer the burdens and sacrifices of recovery to Africans. The period is therefore largely portrayed as one that is better forgotten than explained or understood.This interpretive paradigm has largely colored the scholarly commentaries on the depression in Nigeria, Britain's most populous colony in Africa. Consequently, the impact of that economic crisis on Nigerians and on British colonialism in Nigeria has been underappreciated. Similarly, in deference to the notion that the depression represented a lull rather than a watershed, scholars have neither adequately integrated the crisis and its impact into discussions about the legacy of colonialism nor situated the crisis in the literature on decolonization.This paper is an attempt to document and explain the depression experience in Nigeria. It pays particular attention to the impact of the crisis on Nigeria as well as on the economic recovery measures instituted by the British and their consequences. The paper is premised on the hypothesis that an understanding of the depression and its impact on Nigeria is crucial to understanding the economic impact of British colonialism on Nigeria. Such an understanding is also germane to unraveling the crisis of late British colonialism, which culminated in the post-World War II movement towards decolonization.R.O. Ekundare has observed that the Nigerian colonial government reduced some direct and indirect taxes to help stimulate production and export during the depression and suggests that this was also designed to bring some economic relief to the people of Nigeria.1 While this altruistic motive of British economic recovery strategies may be in dispute, Ekundare at least steers clear of teleological explanations in order to unpack the actual economic policies and measures that the British used to combat the depression in Nigeria. His is however a rare, nuanced position, which does not impute British depression-era economic policies with a predatory desire to exploit Africans. Other scholars are not as nuanced, and tend to suggest a more deliberate, sinister economic motive for the responses of the British to the depression's manifestations in Nigeria.' Impoverishment, which was rife during the economic crisis, is presented in much of the literature as both a product and goal of direct British economic agency during the crisis. The spread of poverty is situated in the collapse of prices and in what these scholars regard as harsh tax rates. Bill Freund shows how the collapse of tin mining on the Jos Plateau authorized a regime of labor exploitation on the part of expatriate tin mining companies, enabling them to retrench miners and cut wages. These self-cushioning measures spread poverty and destitution on the Plateau and undermined a vibrant trade in foodstuffs and labor migration linking the economy of the Benue Valley to that of the Plateau.4This paper follows these scholars in affirming the self-interested, self-cushioning recovery strategies of British colonial officialdom and expatriate firms in Nigeria. These strategies had the impact of transferring more wealth and value from Nigerians to the coffers of the British colonial government. Some of this value was removed directly from Nigeria and transported to Britain, such as the case of the currency withdrawals that will be discussed in this paper. But this devastating impact was the incidental consequence of what one might call the advent of a colonialism of the balance sheet during the depression rather than of a deliberate attempt by the British to use the depression as an excuse to impoverish Nigerians. …

Political Gender Equality and State Human Rights Abuse

Feminist theorists argue that more equal societies that are not based on gender hierarchies ought to be less plagued by collective violence. This study tests whether political gender equality is associated with lower levels of personal integrity rights abuse carried out by state agents, such as fewer political imprisonments, torture, killings, and disappearances. Two indicators of political gender equality are used: (1) a dummy indicating that the chief executive of a state is a woman; and (2) the percentage of women in parliament. The impact of political gender equality on personal integrity rights abuse is tested using multiple regression techniques and a dataset spanning most countries of the world during the period 1977–96. Female chief executives are rare, and their tenures are not significantly associated with the level of abuse. The percentage of women in parliament is associated with lower levels of personal integrity rights abuse. Results show both a direct effect of female representation in parliament and an effect in interaction with the level of institutional democracy. These results hold when controlling for the most important factors known or suspected to influence human rights behavior: democracy, leftist regime, military regime, British colonial experience, civil war, international war, wealth, population, ethnic heterogeneity, and regime transition and collapse.

Contested past

SummaryDuring the British colonial regime in the 19th century Western Indologists and missionaries, with the participation of the indigenous scholars who controlled traditional systems of knowledge, formed models for the description of early religious history which was especially inspired by linguistic ideas whose central concept was the so-called ‘Aryan immigration’ into Northern India. This Orientalist historiography concerning events that lay back several thousand years found its way into political and religious discourse in one form or another. These projections developed into highly significant ingredients of the various political, ethnic, and religious movements and parties, such as the Dravidian Movement or the Nationalist Hindu groupings. The present paper tries to map out the corner stones of modern-day discourses concerning Indian pre- and early history which has developed into something of a veritable battle about the past..

'The Land of Murder, Cannibalism, and All Kinds of Atrocious Crimes?': Maori and Crime in New Zealand, 1853-1919

A novel longitudinal profile of Maori crime' from 1853 to 1919 is presented. It constitutes an additional step towards understanding how the indigenous Maori have come to be over-represented in New Zealand's post-colonial criminal justice system. The profile is explained in terms of culture conflict, literal normlessness and pursuit of the illusion of state control. The British colonial government also criminalized Maori whenever they rebelled'. In the statistics presented here, gross violations of human rights and the criminalization of Maori independence are reflected in four distinct episodes: around the mid-1860s, 1881, 1897 and 1911. The analysis points to conflict and critical criminology as the principal paradigms through which the crimes' of the powerful colonial state converted Maori into criminals.