British Colonial Policy Research Articles

British Colonial Education in the Indian Subcontinent (1757-1858): Attitude of Muslims

This article investigates the British colonial education imparted in the Indian Subcontinent during the priod 1757-1858, keeping in view the Muslim perspective. The objective is to comprehend the complex and diverse ways in which Muslims responded to British education throughout the colonial era, which were influenced by revolutionary and reactionary movements ignited by British domination. Muslims developed a complicated relationship with colonial education as a result of tensions heightened by the repression of indigenous concerns and the disregard for the acquisition of Islamic values. This study aims to comprehend the purpose of British education in the Indian subcontinent, analyses competing Muslim ideologies surrounding colonial education, uncovers factors influencing Muslim attitudes toward education during the British rule, and also analyses the differences in how different groups of Muslims responded to British education throughout British colonialism. For this purpose, this study uses a qualitative research methodology to investigate historical sources and determine the factors contributing to the hostile and defensive views of Indian Muslims regarding colonial education. The findings demonstrate the complex effects of British colonial policies, underlining the conflicts brought about by the disregard for Islamic knowledge and the fallout from the Sepoy Revolution. The study depicts varying responses to western education and competing ideologies among Muslims in India and underscores the significance of placing Muslim views in the larger sociopolitical context of colonial India. It also emphasises how critical it is to comprehend Muslim viewpoints on colonial education to dispel myths and promote a nuanced awareness of the historical legacies that continue to influence educational practices in post-colonial cultures.

Girls’ education in Colonial India: a critique on the trajectory of Savitribai Phule in the twenty-first century India

ABSTRACT Savitribai Phule, the first female school teacher in India, with the support of her husband and mentor, Jyotirao Phule pioneered a pivotal role in educating Indian girls in the nineteen-century Colonial India. Her philosophical underpinnings and activism for the education of the girls and the oppressed classes in India are still relevant and inspiring even today. This article primarily intends to reassess the trajectory of her philosophy, policy reforms and pedagogical practices towards girls’ education in the nineteen-century Colonial India even when the demand for compulsory primary education was not raised in India, in the light of twenty-first century India. Before delving into the whole spectrum of her trajectory, it retraces the British Colonial policies pertaining to the provision of girls’ compulsory schooling in Colonial India against which the missionaries, British philanthropic and Savitribai together with other Indian reformers made a series of efforts towards girls’ education in Colonial India.

African states and conflicts: a study of Northern Zone of Plateau State

Since the 1960s, African states have passed through different conflicts with reasons such as politics, ethnic, religious, and resource-based conflicts such as border or land disputes, and several other causes. The Northern Senatorial zone of Plateau State, Nigeria has witnessed several violent conflicts between 2001 and 2023 with several scholars assessing the immediate causes and its impact without looking at the remote causes. This study examines the history of conflicts in the Northern Plateau Senatorial zone and its persistent nature with its root causes. The study adopted history research method, which comprised primary and secondary sources. Data was obtained by the researcher from oral interviews in the Jos metropolis and across Plateau North. Also, books and Journals from the University of Jos and the National Library Jos branch provided quality data. The conflict in the Northern Plateau comprising five out of the six local council areas evolved from instances of clashes and skirmishes as a result of spontaneous ethnic and religious provocations and reactions to planned attacks between Christians and Muslins in Jos North and South starting from 2001, guerilla-style reprisals, cattle rustling, herder/farmer clashes across Bassa, Riyom and Barkin Ladi LGAs. The study found out that the root cause of conflicts in the Northern Plateau was the British colonial policies of the 1900s, which led to the massive influx of immigrants that settled permanently in Jos North and South, Barkin Ladi, Riyom and Bassa LGAs. The study discovers that the conflict in Northern Plateau has led to pervasive insecurity of lives and property, as evidenced by the spate of cattle rustling, armed robbery attacks, assassinations, and ethnic and religious feuds coupled with the seeming helplessness of security agencies to handle criminal attacks on civilian populations in Riyom, Barkin Ladi and Bassa LGAs. The study recommends that security can be secure if freedom and justice are allowed to reign through arresting perpetrators and punishing them severely, allowing freedom of economic, political and social participation for all citizens of Plateau State without ethnic or religious discrimination.

African Agency and Colonial Committees at Fourah Bay College

Fourah Bay College was the first Western-style university to be established along the West African coast in 1827. Primarily used to train missionaries and traders operating in British West Africa, it remained one of the premier educational establishments, overlooking the docks of Cline Town in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Following the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts and civil unrest in the aftermath of World War II, British colonial policy began to fund a series of secondary and tertiary education institutions. Modeled on the new University of the West Indies, these new universities adopted the residential college dorm typology coupled with the latest modernist architecture designed to enhance climatic comfort.A new campus was proposed for Fourah Bay, and in contrast to earlier precedents, the architectural approach was to be more humble and less monumental. Following a masterplan by London-based architects Norman and Dawbarn, the much smaller and relatively unknown British practice of Frank Rutter was appointed to design most of the campus buildings. The centerpiece is a large concrete tower named after John F. Kennedy, symbolic of the shifting political posturing for control and influence. Following Independence in 1961 and with increasing technical aid offered to neighboring Ghana and Nigeria from Socialist Eastern European powers, Fourah Bay College demonstrated how these political attempts for influence were directly played out through these newly formed institutions. Fourah Bay College also reveals the African agency in appointing architects and who was able to control the procurement processes and design teams. Rutter was dismissed as ‘college architect’ by a small contingent of newly qualified Sierra Leonean architects eager to ensure local appointments and architectural expressions were given opportunity. The campus, with its impressive architectural structures and innovative solutions, mirrors the political flux and shifting global power structures of the late 1950s and early 1960s, along with the local agency of Freetown architects and their quest to shape the future.

Postcolonial Bangladesh and neocolonial assimilative literacy practices: the case of private schools and English language programmes

This paper explores the ways in which neocolonial and assimilative literacy practices colonise the psyche of students through private schools and English language teaching programs in Bangladesh. Colonialist education in British India was designed to produce collaborators and not critical thinkers and to create a new breed of Indians who were Brown in the skin but British in the mind. This paper attempts to understand the impact of neocolonial literacy practices in the psychic colonisation of present-day Bangladeshi students. The research involved conducting a critical discourse analysis of pedagogic materials like syllabi, the Norwood Report of 1943 (a key policy document of British colonial educational policy), and seven institutional websites involved with current literacy practices in Bangladesh. This paper shows that schools following British curricula are creating eclectic identities of students whereby they are compelled to contend simultaneously with an embodied ‘superior’ English cultural capital against an ethno-national ‘Brown’ and ‘inferior’ Bangladeshi ethos. Suggesting possibilities for resistance, the paper thus exposes the colonial elements embedded in literacy practices and developing English language proficiency among Bangladeshis.

Busoga states amalgamation and ethnic formation, Uganda Protectorate, 1900 to 1950

ABSTRACT Contrary to the common perception of colonialism as an exercise of power within the context of ‘divide and rule’, this study foregrounds Ali Mazrui’s concept of ‘unite and rule’ as another fundamental aspect of British colonial policy in East Africa. Unable to implement indirect rule in the multifarious Busoga states, the British colonialists were compelled to adopt the policy of unprecedented amalgamations, thereby creating a single ethnic identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. Overtime, Busoga came to be perceived as a territory of the Basoga: one of the major ethnic groups in modern Uganda. The rise of the Abataka Associations as opposition groups to the politics of states amalgamation enhanced the Basoga ethnic identity. However, the transition from the pre-colonial independent states to a single Basoga ethnic identity is hardly historicised in previous scholarship. This qualitative study therefore uses primary sources of archival materials in the Uganda National Archives and Jinja District Archives and five key informant interviews to historicise the primacy of agency in the process of Busoga ethnic formation between 1900 and 1950.

Meehan’s Mapping of the Derwent River in Van Diemen’s Land, 1803–04

In 1804, the Irish convict-turned-surveyor James Meehan drafted a map (Monmouth 0) of the area around Britain’s new settlement in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania, Australia). This map describes the terrain and vegetation and guided decision-making by the colonial government for the first few years of the colony’s existence. Despite its importance, it was neither copied nor distributed further than the immediate land it described. For the first time, it has been fully transcribed so that we might examine the fine details. This article argues that despite remaining as a manuscript map, Monmouth 0 is a perfect demonstration of British colonial land management policy as it directed the colonial effort to make their presence permanent on the island of Van Diemen’s Land.

The Formation and Practical Dilemma of Hong Kong's Executive-Led System from the Perspective of British Colonial History and Policy

Hong Kong, as a particular administrative region of China, practices a very different system from that of mainland China, in which Hong Kong practices an executive-led approach in the distribution of government power. The formation of this system has very much to do with the more than 150 years of British colonial rule and its policies in Hong Kong. The focus of this paper is how Britain, as the suzerain state, exerted its influence on the colony and eventually made Hong Kong an executive-led system. Also, this study examines the dilemma of the executive-led system in Hong Kong today and the reasons for the hole's formation. This paper finds that Hong Kong's Executive-led system is essentially an extension of the Governor's system. It is the result of the influence of various policies during the British colonial rule in Hong Kong

Colonialism, Migration and the Emergence of Urban Spaces in Colonial Nigeria

Arguably, urbanisation, which entails spatial, social, and temporal phenomena, is a social process describing how cities grow and societies become more complex. From this point of view, urbanisation is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. The process of urbanisation in Nigeria began in the pre-colonial period and continued during the colonial and post-colonial periods. However, the factors or conditions that facilitated urbanisation in each historical epoch of urbanisation in Nigeria have changed over time. This paper interrogates the effect of colonialism on the emergence of urban spaces in Nigeria between 1900 and 1960. It argues that migration, which constituted one of the main drivers of the emergence of urban spaces in Nigeria during this period, was promoted by the introduction of the British colonial policy of the administration. The main trend of internal migration during colonial Nigeria examined in the paper involves a drift from the rural areas and the lesser towns to the new urban centres of commerce and administration which developed in response to the establishment of formal colonial rule. This trend of internal migration was witnessed in different parts of Nigeria such as Lagos, Ibadan, Ogbomoso, Osogbo, Benin City (all in Western Nigeria); Onitsha, Enugu, Calabar, Port Harcourt (all in Eastern Nigeria); Kano, Jos, Makurdi, Zaria, Sokoto and Kaduna (all in Northern Nigeria) between 1900 and 1960. It concludes that the physical spaces in these cities have had a fundamental significance for the host communities, migrants and for host/migrant relations.

The Role of French Algeria in American Incorporation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico

This article argues that France’s conquest and subsequent legal treatment of Algeria as an integral part of France, though without French citizenship for Algerians, served as a transnational precedent for US incorporation of former Spanish colonies in the early twentieth century. While the United States also drew lessons from British colonial policy, as scholarship has shown, France’s republican empire offered particular tools, which scholars have not studied, for US courts to designate Filipinos and Puerto Ricans like French Algerians. In essence, French Algeria provided an example for US jurists to create an imperial category for new territorial peoples as neither US citizens nor foreign subjects but as “nationals.” The article draws principally on the so-called Insular Cases, US newspapers, and political documents. The article exposes transnational connections between the United States and France in constructing empires of white freedom, no less important than imagined Anglo-Saxonism at the time.

Home grown modernity: gardens and urban development of Bangalore under the princely state of Mysore, 1881-1947

ABSTRACT This paper illustrates how the princely state of Mysore used gardens and horticulture for shaping the urban development of Bangalore between the late-19th and mid-20th century. Despite being constrained by the British colonial regime's policies of indirect rule; the Mysore State drew on an approach to modernisation and urban development which their pre-British predecessors had initiated during the eighteenth century. Between 1881 and 1947, it pursued this home-grown modern approach in Bangalore City by using gardens and horticulture to expand urban industry and shape the urban landscape, establishing Bangalore as one of the most progressive cities in British India.

(Landlord) Theory from the South: Empire and estates on a Punjabi Frontier

AbstractTheory has occasionally shaped agrarian transformations. Utilitarian theory, for instance, influenced British colonial land revenue policies, while modernization theory spurred, via the Green Revolution, the development of capitalist farming across the global South. Yet scholarship, when it has probed the mediation of theory in agrarian change, has largely centred on the intellectual activities of Western figures. In this paper, I examine an under‐appreciated theorizing actor: landlords in the global South. I explore landlords' concept‐work in the former “Punjab Frontier,” a region where Baloch chiefs collaborated with the British Raj to acquire localized magisterial powers, a paramilitary apparatus, and immense “landed estates” (jagirs). To overcome various crises, certain chiefs engaged with various imperial concepts—namely, property, race, progress, contract, and freedom—and re‐arranged their estates. By showing how these elites creatively embraced these concepts to maintain a colonial‐fortified hegemony, I also challenge those who overstate the emancipatory and decolonial possibilities of theory from the South.

Comparison of German, British, and French colonial education policies in Cameroon and impacts

Comparison of German, British, and French colonial education policies in Cameroon and impacts

British colonial policies and the challenge of national unity in Nigeria, 1914-2014

The symbolic importance of the 1914 amalgamation in Nigeria’s history is not in doubt. It was the year that the British colonial administration brought the culturally diverse peoples of Nigeria together under one central administration. However, 100 years after the amalgamation, Nigeria has been unable to build a nation or run the semblance of a modern state despite abundant natural and human resources. Harmonious co-existence between and among the country’s constituent parts has proved most elusive. Relying on primary and secondary sources, this paper critically examines the nexus between the 1914 amalgamation and the British colonial policies that followed, on the one hand, and the challenge of national unity and harmonious inter-ethnic relations in Nigeria’s centennial on the other. It argues that the challenge of national unity in post-colonial Nigeria had its root in the nature and structure of the country’s foundation laid by the British in 1914. It posits that the way that Nigeria was structured by the British, the colonial policies under which the country was administered, and the nature of the transfer of power from Britain to Nigeria, bore the destructive cancer of imbalances that the British deliberately inculcated into the Nigeria project. These resulted in fault lines and fissures that have made it difficult for the constituent parts of post-colonial Nigeria to cohere. The paper submits that Nigeria’s lopsided colonial structural foundation, which is still being maintained, has remained a severe challenge to national cohesion and harmonious inter-ethnic coexistence in post-colonial Nigeria.

British Colonial Land Use Policies and Housing Development in Lagos

This paper highlights the changing pattern of town planning and housing development in Lagos between 1900 and 1960, a period that witnessed the implementation of several colonial housing policies. Existing scholarship has overlooked the role that colonial land use policies played in the uneven town planning and housing development in Lagos. Drawing on a large body of colonial records and secondary sources, this paper analyses the impact of the British colonial government policies on housing development in colonial Lagos. Archival sources collected from the National Archive of Nigeria, Ibadan, and The National Archive (TNA), Kew, and secondary sources were critically engaged through a qualitative historical method. The uneven and combined development concept is deployed in depicting the biased housing development policies of the British government in Lagos. The British colonial land use policies impacted negatively on physical planning and housing development in Lagos. Colonial town planning schemes, sanitation regulations, and building laws precipitated the contemporary problem of uneven development that has impeded inclusive development in Lagos.

ROLE OF COLONIAL CHIEFS IN THE ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE NANDI, 1902-1963

The British colonial policy of indirect saw the introduction of new forms of leadership among the Nandi in Kenya. Among such new offices were that of the colonial chief, which played an intermediary role in reconciling the economic interests of the colonialists and the natives. Yet, despite their significant role, the contribution of colonial chiefs to the economic transformation of the Nandi has not been documented properly. Available literature largely vilifies these chiefs as agents of a repressive colonial system. Yet, there are signs that the Nandi chose to retain the names and legacies of some of these chiefs, suggesting the chiefs could have made some positive contribution to society. The study thus examined the role of colonial chiefs in economic transformation of the Nandi, Kenya from 1902- 1963. The periods were deemed significant because 1902 was when the chiefs’ ordinance was passed while 1963 was the year Kenya got independence. The study employed the Elite theory and PrincipalAgent theories. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The target population comprised former colonial chiefs, Nandi community elders, current chiefs who knew the history of their office of chieftaincy in the community. The inclusion criteria comprised variables such as geographical distribution, age and command of historical knowledge of the Nandi colonial chiefs. Data was collected using a questioning guideline, interviews and secondary sources. Therefore, apart from the respondents, the primary sources included archival material on colonial and post-colonial chiefs as well as their roles, collected at the Kenya National Archives in Nairobi and Kakamega, and the information from the County Government offices. Oral interviews were tape-recorded. Secondary sources were obtained from research libraries in Kenya and subjected to content analysis. Data from the interviews and document analysis was analysed thematically. Data from the questionnaire was analysed using descriptive statistics. It was found that the colonial chiefs also played a significant role in the economic transformation of the Nandi through enhanced agriculture, trading and taxation. The study has underscored the importance of proper documentation of the nature of Kenyan communities in the pre-colonial period. There is need to harmonize the different narratives that speak of the different facets of the Nandi origin, migration, settlement and their socio-economic as well as social organization in the pre-colonial period. Such information will provide a clear backdrop for understanding the positive and negative impact of colonialism, including colonial chiefs on the community.

The Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme: A Site of Change and Conservatism

By focusing on the notorious Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, this paper examines the evolution of British development policy in an East African colony throughout the pre-and post-war eras. I begin by detailing the historiography of writing on the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, connecting the shift in tone and focus of historians to broader trends in academia and perceptions of Africa, and then continue to provide an overview of pre-war colonial policy in Tanganyika. After laying out this framework, I highlight the profound impact of World War Two on British thought and the ways in which this translated to development policy, accounting for the general support for the Groundnut Scheme. Finally, this paper details the progressive breaks from Britain's previous approach to colonialism in Tanganyika while also addressing the persistence of conservative, regressive mindsets. Ultimately, this paper serves to highlight the contradictory nature of British colonial policy during the mid-twentieth century.

‘It Was Necessary to Do Something With Those Women’: Colonial Governance and the ‘Disposal’ of Women and Girls in Early Nineteenth‐Century Sierra Leone

ABSTRACTThe colonial archive offers comparatively few glimpses of the individual lives of enslaved African women and girls brought to Sierra Leone in the nineteenth century and ‘liberated’ under the terms of the British Abolition Act of 1807. This article sets out to do four things: first, to consider what colonial sources reveal about how women and girls experienced and responded to becoming ‘liberated Africans’, and to the ‘disposal’ practices of the Liberated African Department – including schooling, indenture and arranged marriages. Second, it considers what factors might have shaped those experiences. Third, it seeks to make a contribution to the literature on marriage in early colonial Africa by considering whether, and to what extent, British colonial policy towards liberated African women in Sierra Leone meets a modern definition of government‐led coerced or forced marriage. Finally, it evaluates the usefulness and limits of official archives, missionary records, court records and the accounts of self‐styled British Sierra Leone experts for studying the experiences of women and girls, and indicates potential avenues for further research.

Famine of 1943 in Bakarganj and British Colonial Policy

In the vast literature of Bengal famine of 1943, it is hard to offer new insights about that vicious source of mass misery. Local history may mark a significant departure here, as it provides scope for an in-depth study of both the origin and course of the famine. Bakarganj was called the granary of Bengal, which used to supply rice to other regions even in the driest years due to its large production. But the famine of 1943 gravely affected this district. The present study shows how it was the colonial measures that played a vital role in intensifying the famine in Bakarganj. The government’s led to: hoarding of rice and serious shortage of food supply. The article concentrates on four aspects of the government failure: inappropriate warning system, callous purchase policy, lack of effective government inspection and a policy of disaster denial.

Multi-ethnic societies in transition to independence: the uneven development of colonial schooling in Cyprus and Singapore

ABSTRACT The article seeks to formulate a comparative framework that explains the uneven development of schooling in Cyprus and Singapore during the British colonial rule. It specifically focuses on the moment of transition to independence and on the role played by ideas and the interaction of ideas in the evolution of social institutions. The overall argument put forward is that the divergent ideational and institutional dynamics of schooling in the two settings at the moment of decolonisation were the outcome of the intersections of British colonial education policies, locally-indigenised cultural heritages, and relations with other nation-states in the region. These complex intersections permitted and, at the same time, constrained certain readings and re-readings of the continental European idea of mass schooling over time.