British Colonial Legacy Research Articles

Colonial Legacy and Informal Finance

An influential line of research emphasizes that colonial legacy plays a key role in formal financial development. Can colonial legacy also shape informal finance? We investigate the impact of colonial legacy on informal financial development using a manually georeferenced data set within a credible empirical framework. In the 19th century, Europeans arbitrarily designed colonial borders that partitioned many ethnicities across multiple countries in Africa. Leveraging several spatial regression discontinuity designs across national borders and within British-French–partitioned Cameroon and a unique natural experiment where the same former British colony is compared with two otherwise similar areas with different exposures to French colonization, we discover that former British colonies today have better informal financial development than former French colonies. Exploring the channels, we find that places with a British colonial legacy maintain a style of social control that facilitates information flow, supports private enforcement and market interactions, and promotes strong legal cultures. This paper was accepted by Kay Giesecke, finance. Funding: C. Lin acknowledges the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong for financial support [Grant AoE/B-704/22-R]. J. An acknowledges the general financial support from The University of Hong Kong Start-up Fund for New Professoriate Staff. M. Tai acknowledges the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong for financial support [General Research Fund No. 17500722]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01856 .

Architecture and the Existing Urbanisms: The British Colonial Legacies in Kano, Nigeria, 1909-2000

Architecture and the Existing Urbanisms: The British Colonial Legacies in Kano, Nigeria, 1909-2000

Syncretic Narratives: Ethnic Diversity and Identity Politics in Post-Colonial Malaysia

The account of post-colonial Malaysia is indeed an intricate one, the relationship between the ethnic bunch and identity politics is both dynamic and complicated, creating a syncretic narrative with nuanced understanding of human culture. Delving into the many layers of Malaysia's socio-political landscape to examine the subtle linkages between ethnicity, culture, and power relations. A mosaic of nationalities, each adding to the rich fabric of the country's cultural past. Malaysia is an amalgamation of many customs, dialects, and beliefs, ranging from the Indigenous Orang Asli to the Malay majority, as well as the Chinese diaspora and India. However, underneath the facade of diversity is a crucible of identity politics, where historical grudges and power imbalances collide with current socio-economic realities. The legacy of British Colonialism with its divide and rule strategy, may still be felt in Malaysia's socio-political environment, impacting notions of race and identity today. While attempts to construct a national identity have been made, they frequently collide with notions of ethnic dominance and marginalization, exacerbating tensions and divides within Malaysian society. The quest for a unified national identity is loaded with difficulties, as Malaysia grapples with the complexity of its heterogeneous background while under the constraints of globalization and modernity. Despite the obstructions, there are moments of optimism and resilience as Malaysians traverse the contours of their hybrid identity, gaining strength from the variety that distinguishes their country. Through debate, openness, and a commitment to social justice, Malaysia has the opportunity to break free from identity politics and embrace a more inclusive and equitable future.

Genesis of Education System in Bangladesh

The education system in Bangladesh is primarily derived from the British colonial legacy, imposing a secular philosophy despite a majority Muslim population. This article critically examines the roots and historical development of the education system in Bangladesh, discussing its basic structure and framework while presenting chronological narratives. The study seeks to comprehend prevailing trends by employing content analysis involving historical records, government documents, study reports, and expert opinions. The findings reveal a consistent neglect of religious education at all levels, lacking a foundation in Islamic philosophy. The study traces the curriculum’s evolution from the early Muslim era to current times. Despite efforts to incorporate Islamic education during the Pakistan period and the post-independence era, these initiatives largely faltered. Post-independence, the recommendations of various education commissions primarily reflect the intentions of ruling powers, lacking consistency and failing to incorporate universal values into education policy. The study advocates for a comprehensive review of education policies, curriculum frameworks, and textbooks, emphasizing the identification of gaps and the incorporation of moral and ethical values to foster the balanced growth of individuals.

Ecological Imperialism: The Story of Chars , Tigers, and Refugees in The Hungry Tide

Abstract: Underlining the genealogical tie of Global North environmental aid with colonial forest conservation, this article problematizes the role of such aid in saving Global South ecosystems. Aid carries on the legacies of colonialism and refuses to recognize that colonial history makes humans differentially accountable for ecological devastation. Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide exposes these contradictions as unprotected Bangladeshi refugees living on the chars (deltaic sandbars) of India’s Ganges Delta are pitted against tigers protected by aid. Chars are legacies of British colonialism and the partition of the Indian subcontinent. In this article, the transience of chars offers a framework of inquiry into ecological imperialism that burdens the poor of the Global South.

Curriculum Reform for Social Justice: A Critical Policy Historiography of Transformation in Lesotho, Zimbabwe and South Africa

The call for social justice in education has been echoed across the globe for many decades. However, the dual hatchets of racial and social-class segregation have refused to be buried in the 21st century. Inequalities within and across nations remain pervasive and conspicuous. Tapping into the framework of policy genealogy, this theoretical qualitative historiography teases the evolution of curriculum reform in three post-colonial states – Lesotho, Zimbabwe and South Africa. These three nations share a common legacy of British colonialism and unequal access to education anchored in race, social class, gender and other manifestations of injustice. Using primary and secondary documents available in the public domain, the paper traces and juxtaposes post-colonial curriculum policies initiated in search for social justice and how these policies were implemented at school and classroom levels. The grounded theory emerging from this policy historiography is that the genealogy of curriculum reform policies was dictated by historical circumstances and the unique context of each country, rather than deliberate policy sharing among decision-makers in the three post-colonial states. Although reform policy espouses equitable education, the attainment of social justice in the three nations remains largely a mirage. Only children of the new Black elite are enjoying the fruits of post-colonial curriculum reform by attending expensive and generously resourced former White-only schools, but the poor majority remain marginalised in poorly resourced schools. This study recommends collaboration among policy makers in the three nations so that policy talk may be translated into policy action.

The “Kamerun Idea”: E pluribus unum Cameroon

Abstract Since independence, the “Anglophone” and “Francophone” identities (both legacies of British and French colonialism, respectively) have remained the dominant national identity of Cameroonians. This linguistic national identity was formalized by the adoption of bilingualism at the dawn of independence and the enactment of English and French as the two official languages of the country. Nationalism and national integration in the Cameroonian context therefore revolve around the cohabitation of the aforementioned distinct linguistic and cultural identities, which harbors significant incompatibilities. This article probes into the effectiveness of the cohabitation model of nation-building in Cameroon and attempts a new alternative. A survey was conducted to sample the opinion of Cameroonians on national identity and nationalism in Cameroon. The results indicate there are enormous challenges with the implementation of the cohabitation model, which an overwhelming majority of respondent believe has a negative impact on national integration. A new approach dubbed “Civic-multicultural model” is proposed. This model is based on the “Kamerun Idea,” which is a glaring reminder that before being “anglicized” by the British on the one side of the Mungo river, and “gallicized” by the French on the other side, the inhabitants offshore the “Rios dos Cameroes” were first “kamerunized” by the Germans.

Cultural factors, quality of government and the effectiveness of Supreme Audit Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa

Given the importance of public financial management for people well-being, most countries around the world have Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) as an instrument to help achieve better Public Financial Management. SAIs play a key role in ensuring public management accountability. This paper aims to investigate the determinants of Supreme Audit Institutions’ effectiveness in Sub-Saharan Africa. Models are estimated for a sample of Supreme Audit Institutions from 45 countries. The results indicate that the effectiveness of SAIs in Sub-Saharan Africa is associated with the Institutional Quality of Government which takes into account six dimensions of country governance: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption. In the same vein, SAI effectiveness is found to be associated with institutional and cultural aspects, mainly, the British colonial legacy and the continued adoption of the Westminster SAI model.

Queering the cinematic border of the PRC and Hong Kong: On Fruit Chan’s prostitute trilogy

What would it mean to unsettle the notion of Chineseness from the vantage point of Sinophone Hong Kong cinema? This article examines Fruit Chan’s three films on the figure of the sex worker in his ‘prostitute trilogy’, namely Durian Durian (2000), Hollywood Hong Kong (2001), and Three Husbands (2018). While Durian Durian portrays the friendship between Yan the sex worker and Fan the illegal immigrant girl in Hong Kong, the portrayal of Yan’s more peaceful life back home in Northeast China also subverts the stereotypical idea that Hong Kong is a more desirable city of social mobility for young Chinese women. Hollywood Hong Kong further queers the border of the PRC and Hong Kong through the global border-crossing travels of Hung Hung the sex worker. Finally, Three Husbands most daringly symbolizes the geopolitical tension within Hong Kong by showing how the female protagonist Ah Mui negotiates the power dynamic between her first, second, and third husbands, thus subtly queering the triangular relationality across British colonial legacy, Chinese nationalism, and Hong Kong Sinophone localism. Overall, Chan’s cinematic aesthetic implicates the limit of what can be shown and challenges the shifting boundary of Chinese cinema through the Sinophone analytic of queering borders.

Green Hell: Detention, art, and activism in an English landscape

This paper revolves on the carceral practices of Morton Hall IRC (Immigration Removal Centre) and of the role of visual imagery in the campaigns against them. Morton Hall is located in Lincolnshire, a rural county in England with a long history of agricultural innovation. It observes and debates a sense of the dissonance between institution and location that Morton Hall shared with Manus Island in the Pacific, the site of another postcolonial prison camp also in a beautiful setting. We interrogate how the legacies of British colonialism in the Pacific might help to explain that shared incongruity between function and place. We discuss a public initiative that aimed to give artistic and activist expression to these insights by highlighting the physical, historical, and emotional connections between Lincoln, the surrounding countryside, and the IRC. The aim of this planned event, The Big Walk, was to show that there is no absolute spatial disconnect between places of incarceration and places of freedom. In describing and analysing the cultural legacy of the planned event, curtailed by the 2020 pandemic, we draw on the wider oeuvre of British-Croatian artist, Natasha Davis, which include a film (2020) commissioned to replace the Walk and yet draw attention to the landscape as layered by time and memory, a landscape that yields ups a cross-temporal narrative spored beneath our feet.

Framing Death Penalty Politics in Malaysia

The death penalty in Malaysia is a British colonial legacy that has undergone significant scrutiny in recent times. While the Malaysian Federal Constitution 1957 provides that ‘no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty save in accordance with law’, there are several criminal offences (including drug-related crimes) that impose the mandatory and discretionary death penalty. Using Benford and Snow’s framing processes, this paper reviews death penalty politics in Malaysia by analysing the rhetoric of abolitionists and retentionists. The abolitionists, comprising activist lawyers and non-government organisations, tend to use ‘human rights’ and ‘injustice’ frames, which humanise the ‘criminal’ and gain international support. The retentionists, such as victims’ families, use a ‘victims’ justice’ frame emphasising the ‘inhuman’ nature of violent crimes. In addition, the retentionist state shifts between ‘national security’ and ‘national development’ frames. This paper finds that death penalty politics in Malaysia is predominantly a politics of framing.

Colonial Legacies and (In)security in Africa: A Cameroonian Civil War Perspective

Background: This article systematically analyzes the extent to which British and French colonial legacies influenced the outbreak of the Cameroonian civil war. Drawing on a theoretical argument that associates the likelihood of civil war with the tensions that arise from the challenges of state formation and state-building, this article revisits the process of state formation in Cameroon and argues that the Cameroonian civil war is an artifact of conflicting British and French colonial legacies.
 Purpose: This research aimed at examining the link between the British and French colonial legacies and the Cameroonian civil war.
 Methodology: This study was desk research. Secondary data sources like journal articles, databases, newspaper articles, blogs, monographs, and other internet materials were consulted. These materials were subjected to content validity before being considered and analyzed qualitatively in the study. Tilly’s warfare theory on modern state formation was used as an explanatory tool to deepen the understanding of the links between war and state formation and to better appreciate the impact of British and French colonial legacies on the processes of state formation and state-building in Cameroon.
 Findings: This paper demonstrated that although governance crises heightened tensions between British and French Cameroons, conflicting British and French colonial legacies constitute the root cause of the civil war. Anglophones have been disgruntled with the relatively low rates of investment in the Anglophone regions, political marginalization, the domination of the French language over the English language in official matters nationwide, and the ‘frenchification’ of the Anglo-Saxon education and judicial systems.
 Unique Contribution to Practice and Policy: This article suggests that it is necessary for peacebuilders and policy experts to address colonial factors when designing policies aimed at resolving the Cameroonian civil war. Dealing only with governance crises without addressing the colonial roots of the problem runs the risk of relapse to conflict in the future. Also, because the British and French colonial legacies are at the center of the crisis, there is a need for Britain and France to revisit their terms of relations with Cameroon, galvanize global resources, and harmonize efforts to influence and foster the resolution of the conflict.

Critical Review of Pakistani Current Legislation on Sustainable Protection of Cultural Heritage

This paper discusses the contribution of individuals and their effects on the protection and management of archaeological sites found in the British colonies at the beginning of the 19th Century. Despite all these contributions, the most important bequest is the formation of comprehensive legislation on cultural properties that are still applicable and considered essential to the historic, standing, or ruined, monuments located in Pakistan. It should be noted that Pakistan’s heritage laws are uniformly applicable to all kinds of architectural heritage, archaeological sites, and monuments, irrespective of their nature, state, and classification. This contrasts with the lack of updates and amendments of rules and guidelines for the preservation of heritage sites and monuments across the country from further damages. The paper focuses on the current architectural and heritage management rules and policies of Pakistan, which are based on the British colonial legacy with some (partial) changes introduced since Pakistan’s independence in 1947. Finally, the paper emphasizes the need for the development of advanced management policies and proposed heritage management rules for the preservation of heritage constructions, archaeological sites, and architectural monuments to establish the link between the present and past to remain for future generations.

Girls’ education in Balochistan, Pakistan: exploring a postcolonial Islamic governmentality

This paper explores the status of girls’ education in the schools of rural Balochistan in Pakistan, and examines the dimensions of access, enrolment and retention. In order to explore the complexities of this governmental problem, we will propose the concept of postcolonial Islamic governmentality. Drawing on Foucault’s work on the arts of government, with Dean’s (2010) writing on illiberal governmentalities, and the work of Salehin (2016) on pious governmentality in Bangladesh, we will suggest that postcolonial Islamic governmentalities emerge at the intersections of the legacies of British colonialism in Pakistan’s post-colonial governance; the influence of processes of neo-liberal globalisation in the policies of developing countries by donor countries, development NGOs and the SDGs; and the forms of Islamic governance embedded in the juridical, cultural, social and gender relations of Pakistan as a postcolonial, Islamic state.

Political Stability in Africa: A Cross-National Analysis

The main objective of this paper is to test the influence of Africa’s founding fathers and the impact of British colonial legacy on the political stability of Africa. We relied on a sample of 50 African countries and employed cross-sectional research designs, which covered two separate periods (1960–1989 and 1990–2018). Using logistic regression and OLS estimators and controlling for French colonial legacy, economic development, regime type, ethnic heterogeneity, and ethnic polarization, we found that the founding fathers were conducive to Africa’s political stability between 1960 and 2018. We also found that British colonial legacy had some impact on former British colonies’ stability between 1960 and 2018. In addition, GDP per capita had a significant impact on Africa’s political stability over the two periods.

Edith Wharton Society Panels at the American Literature Association Conference, Chicago, 2022

Edith Wharton Society Panels at the American Literature Association Conference, Chicago, 2022

Health care professionals and the death penalty in India: Ethical obligations and challenges

India, as does the USA, the two largest democracies in the world, with their British colonial legacy, continue to retain and practice the legal administration of the death penalty. The medical professional in the Indian context is expected to supervise the death penalty and certify death after its execution, a role which may lie in contradiction to principles of medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath. The essay reviews the death penalty in the context of legal provisions and moral principles, both across the world and in India. It further goes on to explore the unique position of health care professionals in relation to the death penalty, as well as the conflicting requirements placed upon them. Finally, it also discusses the death penalty with regard to principles of medical ethics. The essay, after examination of the death penalty, finds inadequate reason, post enlightenment, as a means to justice. It places the medical professional in a morally ambiguous situation, and violates the principles of medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath. By involving medical professional in the administration of the death penalty, it also goes against the resolutions passed by the World Medical Association in 2012 and the Indian Medical Association in 2017. An alternate recommendation can be containment with civil labour, enabling the condemned to the right to reform as well as for society to benefit from the sentence. A sufficiently long and apt sentence may be a better, and a more effective deterrent to crime.

American Race Relations and the Legacy of British Colonialism

British colonial policies have led to stratified societies all over the world and America is no exception. But America is unique in transiting to an equal society and constructing the legal framework to achieve a fair society, even though not completely successful. What distinguishes America from other British colonies is the tradition of rule of law. Perhaps this tradition is also the most priceless heritage that the Britain left for America. Currently, racial discrimination and racial equality protests spread across America. This book provides valuable insights for understanding the divided America.

Britain and Hong Kong: the 2019 protests and their aftermath

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine British policy towards Hong Kong from the protests of 2019 through political controversies in 2020.Design/methodology/approachThe paper offers a foreign policy analysis based on a chronological account of the public interventions made by London from April 2019 to the passage of the national security law in the middle of 2020. It discusses the factors which contributed to the UK's positions and looks in more detail at an issue which relates to the British colonial legacy: the status of British National (Overseas) passport holders.FindingsThe paper argues that the UK's policy was influenced by a combination of factors: developments in Hong Kong, the implications of and perceptions about its historical position as the former colonial power, the growing influence of lobby groups in the UK and Hong Kong (especially in agenda setting), and (to a lesser extent) the UK's wider relations with China. In trying to balance these, British policy tended to be reactive rather than strategic. London generally took positions sympathetic to the protest movement and political opposition, characterised in the paper as “soft partisanship”, shifting to clear opposition to Beijing's approach when the National Security Law was announced.Social implicationsThe paper helps to understand international policy towards Hong Kong.Originality/valueThe paper offers the first account of British policy towards Hong Kong during this period and adds to the limited existing literature on the UK's Hong Kong policy over recent years. This case study sheds light on wider questions of international perceptions of developments in Hong Kong during a tumultuous period in the city's history and informs broader studies of foreign policymaking.

Book Review: American race relations and the legacy of British colonialism

Book Review: American race relations and the legacy of British colonialism