Dominion Research Articles

Imperial Incarceration: Detention without Trial in the Making of British Colonial Africa by Michael Lobban

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a British imperial agent with ambitions of conquest, must be in need of a law. Jane Austen’s version has potential wives calculating their attachments with remarkable ingenuity, but they have nothing over the legal acrobatics conducted in the colonies. Lobban’s Imperial Incarceration provides an exhaustive account of the different methods of sanitizing the detainment and deportation of African leaders who threatened British conquest during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Court records overflow with public statements regarding the clear inferiority of the subjects to be pacified, so it is difficult to comprehend why there was such a strong impulse to shine up imperial conquest in the armor of legality. Freudian analysis would suggest a need for collective delusion and/or denial about the sheer amount of suffering and violence involved in spreading British dominion around the world. Or it could be understood as a massive public relations campaign of “lawwashing,” akin to the “greenwashing” of today.In this comprehensive volume, which will serve scholars of colonial legalities for years to come, Lobban has meticulously pieced together archival evidence from the Foreign Office, the Privy Council, and the Colonial Office (among other sources) that displays British attempts to couch the neutralization of indigenous leaders within the terms of “the rule of law.” He recounts the evolving efforts to present the British Empire as beholden to the rule of law even as the records show that so-called courts met without judges, lawyers, or jurisdictional authority.Lobban uses Dicey’s complex notions of the rule of law to establish the presumed—or advertised—principles guiding the actions of the judiciary, the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office, and colonial administrators on the ground. Dicey assigned a crucial role to the public as a safety net, which was to insist upon a common sense of justice when institutions faltered. To balance Dicey’s vision, Lobban also uses the Comaroff’s notion of “lawfare,” that is, law as a tool of conquest and violence in itself.1The book contains rich accounts of the nearly farcical lengths taken to uphold the image of proper procedure and legal authority. An example is seen in the description of a British agent who was sent to Sierra Leone to review the confinement of seven different local leaders to ensure that their sentencing was proper. However, the recommendations for release or continued confinement were based upon his best estimate of how damaging or beneficial each leader might be to British ambitions in the area as opposed to the rectitude of the proceedings.I kept wanting to know what those subjected to these legalities thought of them. Lobban’s account shows the mutual incomprehensibility that these proceedings must have caused. In one example, the court records did not contain any account of the self-defense offered in a case on the Niger Delta, offering only this assessment: “I found it quite impossible to take minutes as is usual at a Court of Inquiry, the vernacular of the natives being so peculiar” (211). I would have loved to hear the natives’ account of the different versions of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act; what peculiar vernacular it was! Alas, these judgments are lost from the archival evidence.I also wanted to hear more about Lobban’s aims in making this remarkable archival excavation. In his conclusion he asks, “Why did an imperial power committed to bringing the rule of law to its wider empire resort to detention without trial so frequently?” (419) He parses through the different situations and unclear jurisdictional authority to find the answers. Another question might be, “Why did they feel the need to pass ad hominem laws to legalize the detention of African leaders?”Lobban gives pride of place to the archives themselves, often letting the records and actors therein speak for themselves. The book is organized both geographically and historically, so it is clear how the different edges of the Empire were wrestled into submission at different junctures in distinct ways. Lobban does not try to assert a grand theory from all of these details, but registers the subtle changes of legality that came with shifts in administrators, the time period, and the local political and social contexts.Surprisingly, even after the thick accounting of “lawfare” in the conquest of Africa throughout the book, Dicey’s version of the rule of law appears triumphant. Cases that grabbed headlines back in London usually received a different treatment than those that did not. The public does indeed matter as the last resort in upholding the rule of law—but only the British public.

The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India-China Border, 1842–1962 by Kyle J. Gardner

Gardner gives us a comprehensive account, at once compelling and authoritative, of what he calls the “frontier complex” along the high Himalayas from its early exploration to the 1962 war between India and China. An initial introductory chapter examines the meanings of frontiers, borders, and borderlands in the context of contemporary theories of space and place. He then proceeds to an account of the precolonial history of Ladakh. This high desolate plateau, Gardner insists, was no “geographic periphery,” but a “religious, political and commercial nexus” sustained by trade (above all in pashmina wool, used in fine shawls) between Central Asia, Tibet, and India (28, 59). The territory possessed no marked borders, only “border points” where kingdoms met and taxes were levied.Tension emerged between two visions of a border for Ladakh as the British began exploring into the Himalayas from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Was it to be a “bounded” territory, with a boundary devised to exclude hostile neighbors from advancing into India? Or were the existing “open” borders to be expanded by developing roads and communication? Boundaries of course, as Gardner describes in a fascinating chapter, require surveys, which are meant to produce maps. But in this remote, arid region, the normal “scientific” trigonometric practices of the Survey of India proved impractical. Hence the British devised what they called the “water-parting principle” whereby the edge of a watershed—in this case that of the Indus River—was used to establish a border (81). But the origins of the Indus lay high on the slopes of unmarked and unclimbed ridges, while the local streams themselves, as one official put it, were of a “tortuous, shifting, and erratic character” (71). As a result, even up until 1947, maps of India included no northwestern borders at all. The “cartographical thinking” that imbued maps with authority had failed (62, 88).Control required communications. In 1850 the British began construction of the Hindustan-Tibet Road, followed in 1870 by the Treaty Road negotiated with the Kashmir maharaja to expand access to Central Asian markets. As acknowledgement of British supremacy, the Kashmir maharaja was obliged to submit an annual tribute of one horse and twelve “shawl” goats. (Alas, taken from their lofty habitat, the goats invariably died.) In any case, by the century’s end British interests had shifted from trade to security. Roads initially meant to facilitate movement had, especially with the growth of Russian encroachment, been transformed into “tools for restricting potentially dangerous ‘trans-frontier’ people” (131). In this new climate of “invasion anxieties,” Boundary Commissions flourished, and adventurers like the “frontier hero” Francis Younghusband set out to “open” Tibet. Still, throughout, “a motley assortment of nomads, traders, and goats” remained as “symbols of the limits of imperial state legibility” (178, 179).The concluding chapter takes the reader into the Independence era. In a time of nationalism, nations required boundaries. A geography integrated into the “geobody” of the nation also demanded, in an era of geopolitical rivalries, “a strong and scientific borderline” (229). This left Ladakh in a paradoxical position as both central to emerging national rivalries and yet as an increasingly isolated and ambiguously defined territory. The outcome was Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1955 drawing of a definite, but undemarcated, boundary line, and the consequent Chinese advance across the Aksai Chin plateau. The 1962 war produced the Actual Line of Control, a border, as Gardner points out, based on no particular geographic principle, but nevertheless one central to the Indian nation, even “something to die for” (253).This impressive volume will engage the interest not only of scholars of South Asia but also of geographers, political scientists, and environmental historians who seek to understand the interplay of geography, geopolitics, and the making of states.

Freedom or Suffering: Post-Partition Memories and Fractured Identity Reflections in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Select Short-Fictions

The liberation of India from British domination in 1947 was the most significant historical event in the South Asian history. Despite the fact that freedom promised only liberty, equality, and fraternity, the only result was widespread violence, which eventually led to British-India being divided into two sovereign dominions (India and Pakistan). This Partition resulted in the loss of houses, properties, friends, relatives, and, most importantly, identity. The purpose of this paper is to look at how Jhumpa Lahiri addresses diasporic concerns, unpleasant partition experiences, and fractured cultural identity in two of her short- stories, “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” and “A Real Durwan”, from her collection, Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri, an Indian immigrant from the United Kingdom, is well aware of the difficulties that immigrants experience in their host country. She has brilliantly depicted the painful consequences of partition in the works described above, especially the bloodshed that occurs during the civil war between East and West Pakistan. The goal of this article is to examine how Lahiri uses these two short stories to emphasize the deceiving features of freedom.
 Green University Review of Social Sciences Dec 2021; 7(1-2): 105-111

The Adverse Effects of British Colonialism on the Culture and Psychology of the Indians: A Postcolonial Study

Colonization implies an all-inclusive and all-pervasive process that brings under its occupation not only the land and wealth of the colonized country but exercises domination over all facets of the life of the people – economic, political, social, educational, cultural and psychological in their exteriors and interiors. With full knowledge of how to perpetrate the colonial rule on the colony permanently, the British colonizers went for superimposition of their own culture on the culture of the colonized with the colonized ultimate object of destroying the native age-old and proverbially rich culture of India. Education being the sure and certain weapon to win the battle of superimposition of a certain culture upon another, the colonialists clamped down an Education Policy on the Indians – a policy potent enough to subjugate the Indians under the yoke of colonialism. They propagated their culture through various cultural mediums including dramatic productions, particularly “promoting Shakespeare’s work in colonial Calcutta reproducing the metropolitan culture as a part of the civilizing mission of the British Raj (Sing, 1996, P. 122). The conquest of the civilizational mission of the British Raj so disrupted the cultural and psychological aspects of the life of the Indians (Bangalis) that the elite (so-called advanced section of the population) gloated in the thought that the colonizers had rescued them from backwardness and it was their duty to prop them in all ways possible to continue their regime free from opposition, intervention and rebellion. This was how colonialism throve on the subservient mindset of the privileged class resulting in the prolongation in the sub-continent of the British domination that had to be annihilated by waging tremendous struggle by the people who could not be gained over by the rosy picture of immense prospects hung up by the colonizers.
 Green University Review of Social Sciences Dec 2021; 7(1-2): 22-34

The British Superiority of the 18th Century British Man Towards Different Ethnic Groups Revealed in Robinson Crusoe

The primary purpose of this study is to see the white British man's ethnic superiority in the eighteenth century revealed in Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Through the attitude of Robinson Crusoe towards the people of color such as Xury or Friday, we can see how proud the British were of their ethnic and racial superiority. The protagonist takes it for granted to enslave the Moore and the black-skinned boy, establishing master-slave relationships. From his perspective, the British were the masters of others, a chosen people by God, and citizens with great intelligence and scientific knowledge, but other ethnic people were inferior races close to primitiveness. However, Crusoe's attitude toward the Spanish is quite different from the attitude he showed towards Xury and Friday. While he placed himself in the position of the master with Xury and Friday, he treats the white Spanish man as if he were one of his colleagues. This proves that the sense of superiority of the protagonist's 'others' is not based on the nation or the country, but on race. The protagonist, who unexpectedly settled on the uninhabited island, is depicted as a heroic figure, not only surviving all kinds of difficulties but also saving the lives of some people. He also restores the Christian faith through the time of loneliness. Nevertheless, his words and attitudes presented throughout the novel cannot overcome the distorted and wrong self-identity, in other words, 'white supremacy', or 'the British supremacy', which was prevalent in the 18th century.

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

The Translocated Body

Young Adult Science Fiction (YASF) assumes added significance in nineteenth-century Bengal, being located within a network of contesting discourses. During its long history, Bangla YASF negotiated a complex set of knowledge systems that frequently focused on the body of the youth. We attempt to understand this discursive space with the help of three paradigms—“technological wonder,” “pedagogic systems,” and “the medicalized body.” We contend that these paradigms were instrumental in voicing subaltern concerns against the regime of British dominance. We examine Jagadananda Roy’s Travel to Venus (1895), one of the earliest works of YASF written during the period, in the context of these paradigms.

Cultural Conflicts in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India: A Postcolonial Perspective

E. M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India is often regarded as a masterpiece. In the novel, Forster focuses on personal relationships rather than political themes like colonization and the dominance of British forces in India. He fosters that love, affection, and intimacy are the ideal vehicles for bringing the native Indian and the Anglo-Indian closer together, but he has a lot of trouble portraying the events since the Indian in A Passage to India keep on desiring freedom from British domination and rule. Colonialism is a form of control that entails the enslavement of one person by another. The British colonized India leaves their mark on many aspects of life and culture. For this purpose, this article would like to examine Forster’s treatment of the colonial concerns between the east and west through the art of characterization and plot construction.

John Clifford, Militant Evangelicals, and the Colonial Model for ‘Secular’ Schools (1870s-1920s)

At the time of the enactment of compulsory primary education, the Baptist minister John Clifford, along with other Evangelical pressure groups, advocated for the enforcement of State-funded secular schooling. They defended a ‘secular’ education, i.e. a curriculum infused with a broad Protestant ethos, which should be bestowed upon all children throughout Britain and its empire. For Clifford and militant Evangelicals, British Dominions offered models of State secular schooling because of the effective separation of State and Church within their realms. This article explores the militant Evangelical views on ‘secular’ education, along with the fights waged against (Roman Catholic) denominational schooling. It explores the arguments that enthusiastic Evangelical imperialists brought forward to defend their vision of the ideal Briton – a Protestant citizen free from clerical influence. It also studies the Roman Catholics’ reactions to Evangelical attacks against their separate school system, and investigates the Manitoba School Issue as a test case confronting two opposing worldviews on education, the State, and the Churches.

Adivasi Interface with Criminal Courts: A Research Study

Adivasi people form the most marginalized strata in Indian society. They are mostly underrepresented and are widely ignored while formulating public policies. The present form of the criminal justice system was an outcome of British domination over the Indian subcontinent and is equally applicable to the Adivasi people in most of the pockets. It is often felt that the justice system is alien to the conditions of this country. Adivasi people who have a unique, distinct culture might have felt the same way about this system as well. Here, in the present research article, the author, after conducting non-doctrinal research, has made certain points regarding the interface between Adivasi and criminal courts. An impactful study with clear policy decisions is the need of the hour in order to stop the marginalization of Adivasi people even in the name of providing them justice. A community that has totally different perceptions about crime and justice must be given the liberty to do justice among themselves.

RUKMANI LAKSHMIPATHI –The First Female Prisoner of Salt Satyagraha

The Freedom struggle of India is not a war of rage or a progression under a single leadership with single propaganda. Though some of our national leaders followed extremism for obtaining freedom from British domination ,our country is known for obtaining freedom by following Ahimsa .Millions of Indians spilled their blood and sacrificed their lives to protect our mother country from the reign of the British crown .Under a prominent leader of our nation, Mahatma , a major population of India followed the principal of non-violence and actively participated in the Indian independence movement .Among all the Female participants of the Indian Independence struggle from Tamil Nadu , Rukmani Lakshmipathi was pioneer lady who raised from the south to hail the Freedom Spirit of the Indians

The Big House in William Trevor’s and Elizabeth Bowen’s Fiction

The relationship between Ireland and Britain is historically as fatefully entangled as that between Korea and Japan. As a symbol of colonial rule by the British in Ireland, the Big House is close to private life of Irish people, so it can be compared to Japanese-possessed civil houses where Japanese civilians lived in Incheon, Mokpo, Gunsan, and Pohang during the Japan’s colonization over Korea. However, British domination of Ireland took place over a longer period of time and shared the same language, so the remnants of Irish colonization were deeper and more difficult to shake off than those in Korea. Guy Felihmann defines the Big House as “the crucible in which two civilizations failed to melt, and yet became inseparable bound together.” The unconditionally antagonizing nationalism toward the colonizer is likely to make a shadow without acknowledging the other s reality in the Anglo-Irish writer Bowen s view. As an Irish patriot who lived most of his life in Britain, Trevor punishes the British past through the tragic lives of the British Irish landlord family. However, mixed with forgiveness and punishment from an Irish perspective, the lyrical beauty of a harrowing history is found in his fiction, This contemplative and flexible attitude toward the colonization is also a foreshadowing of future transnational discourse.

Say's Second Visit to Britain: A Career Turning Point

Abstract Economist turned entrepreneur Say was uncertain about his future in 1814 when he was commissioned by the French government to document British industrial progress at a critical point of the industrial takeoff. This trip offered the opportunity to observe the economic life of a different country and to deepen his knowledge of the economic consequences of parliamentarism or the Corn Laws. He also developed a specific understanding of the changes occurring in Britain stressing economies of scale, the role of coal for steam, and the horrific situation of the working class. As key causes, he identified British naval domination of the seas and, more surprisingly, the general distortion induced by very heavy taxation. Through his travel, Say also imported new views about education that he disseminated in France before turning himself to the teaching of economics, starting, at forty-eight years of age, an academic career.

William Howard Taft and the Philippines: A Blueprint for Empire by Adam D. Burns

Reviewed by: William Howard Taft and the Philippines: A Blueprint for Empire by Adam D. Burns Dean Kotlowski William Howard Taft and the Philippines: A Blueprint for Empire. Adam D. Burns. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2020. ISBN 978-1-6219-0569-1. 189 pp., hardcover, $70.00. William Howard Taft has kept book publishers rather busy over the past decade or so. The Ohio-born president has surfaced in popular histories, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin's sprawling The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013). And academics have spotlighted overlooked aspects of Taft's life; a good example is Lewis L. Gould's monograph Chief Executive to Chief Justice: Taft betwixt the White House and Supreme Court (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014). Taft's time in the Philippines was the subject of Rene R. Escalante's Bearer of the Pax Americana: The Philippine Career of William H. Taft, 1900–1903 (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day, 2007). Now, Adam Burns has written a thoughtful study of Taft's policies toward the Philippines across the Ohioan's entire political career. Burns posits three theses, all more or less persuasive: Taft possessed a vision for the Philippines, he methodically pursued his ends, and he implemented what turned out to be "a failed policy" (2). Motivated by a sense of duty, Taft set aside a promising judicial career to serve on the Second Philippine Commission (1900–1904) and as governor-general of the islands (1901–1903). These assignments transformed the one-time skeptic of imperialism into an ardent champion of US control over the Philippines. Taft deemed Filipinos to be "quiet, lazy, polite, ordinarily inoffensive, rather light hearted people" who were "easily subject to immoral influences; quite superstitious, and if aroused at all exceedingly cruel" (19). Such racism led him to regard the Philippines as ill-suited to either independence or integration into the American metropole as a state. The better course was to give the islands a degree of internal self-government, or "dominion status," and an enduring relationship with the United States modeled after the one between Canada and Great Britain (47). Taft pushed such ideas throughout his political career. As governor-general, he espoused a "policy of attraction" designed to get Filipinos to reject independence and accept supposedly benevolent US rule (19). Taft mingled with Filipinos in a genial way, softened the color line at official functions, and encouraged the construction of schools. He appointed Filipinos to the commission (the colonial legislature's upper house) and cultivated the islands' educated elite and the pro–US Federal Party. To bind the Philippines to the United States, Taft, as president (1909–1913), liberalized trade between the two countries. All the [End Page 161] while, he convinced himself that these policies were good for the Philippines. A true-believing imperialist, Taft, as secretary of war (1904–1908), pushed back when President Theodore Roosevelt broached the possibility of Philippine independence. As a former president, he continued to resist moves in that direction during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. To advocates of independence, he preached delay. Borrowing a phrase from Democrat William Jennings Bryan, Burns labeled Taft "the Great Postponer" (80). Taft's policies proved largely unsuccessful. To be certain, he became well-liked by Filipinos during his governorship. Taft's experience in the Philippines broadened the Ohioan's horizons and padded his resume in ways that American voters found appealing. And talk of dominion status for the Philippines stretched into the 1930s, a fact Burns overlooks—along with the ways in which free trade tied the United States and the Philippines together for over a half century (and skewed the islands' economy). But, as Burns rightly notes, Filipinos found the policy of attraction to be unattractive. A sedition act, designed to quell talk of independence, had the reverse effect. Taft's decision to open the islands to greater numbers of Chinese immigrants, whom he thought worked harder than average Filipinos, spawned resentment. Furthermore, the Federal Party, which—contrary to Taft's wishes—backed statehood for the islands, never won popular support. Taft failed to convince either Filipinos or Americans to...

The Omani Prince in the Search for Protectors. Abdulaziz bin Said’s Struggle for Power and Money in the Time of Growing British Dominance in the Indian Ocean Region

The Omani Prince in the Search for Protectors. Abdulaziz bin Said’s Struggle for Power and Money in the Time of Growing British Dominance in the Indian Ocean Region

Imperial preference before the Ottawa Agreements: Evidence from New Zealand's Preferential and Reciprocal Trade Act of 1903

AbstractIn the Edwardian era, the British Dominions adopted policies of imperial preference amid a period of rising imports from the United States and industrial continental Europe. Hitherto, there has been no econometric assessment of whether these policies diverted the Dominions’ imports towards the Empire, as was intended. This article focuses on New Zealand's initial policy of imperial preference, codified in the Preferential and Reciprocal Trade Act of 1903. New Zealand's policy was unique insofar as it extended preference to only certain commodities and not others. Using propensity score matching, this study exploits the cross‐commodity variation in the extension of preference and finds that, on the whole, the Preferential and Reciprocal Trade Act did not divert New Zealand's imports towards the Empire. However, for those few commodities receiving very high absolute margins of preference (20 per cent ad valorem), a statistically significant effect of the preferential policy is found. Altogether, this case study of New Zealand reveals a contrast between the Edwardian system of imperial preference and the trade‐diverting system of imperial preference that resulted from the Ottawa Agreements of the interwar era.

The Work of Stott & Sons for the Linotype Company at Altrincham 1: The Works

ABSTRACT The architects Stott & Sons of Manchester are chiefly known for their work in designing cotton mills, but in 1896–9 they were responsible for the works and adjoining housing estate of the Linotype Company at Broadheath near Altrincham, Cheshire. This early example of an electrically powered factory, located on an early example of an industrial park, was built for the manufacture of the Linotype hot-metal typesetting machines that had been developed in America. It used mainly American machinery and can be seen as illustrating the loss of British technological supremacy. The main part of the works was of a single storey, built on the weaving shed principle, and fronted by an elaborate office building. Electrical power was generated on site in a large power house containing reciprocating steam engines driving DC generators. The works has now been largely demolished, although the office building has been converted for residential use and a few other features have been retained in the modern redevelopment.

Philo-Semitic Representation of Jewish Nationalism and Identity in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda

This paper explores Daniel Deronda, which is a political novel where Eliot openly takes a stand for the Jewish cause and provides her solution to the Jewish Question. Eliot attempts to reveal through her book that Judaism which seems to have lost its fervour (due to Jewish conversions and expulsions), is not lost and remains at the very core of Jewish hearts and values. Through various instances in the novel, Eliot supports Jewish nationalism and their struggle for identity and rebukes British racial dominance and the literary antisemitic tradition.

The American Bar Association Looks to England, 1924 and 1957

Abstract This article’s overarching claim is that the leading elites of the American Bar consciously defined the legal profession in terms of its relationship to English law and practice during the first half of the twentieth century, although the manner in which they did so evolved over time. The two annual American Bar Association meetings in London in 1924 and 1957, hitherto passed over in the historiography, provide the main evidentiary basis for this contention. In detailing the profession’s conscious, anglophilic self-identification, this article makes five historiographical contributions: first, it underscores a genuine concern among American legal elites regarding procedural inefficiencies at the turn of the twentieth century and qualifies historiographical assumptions that the Association was largely ineffective before 1929. Second, it draws attention to a further preoccupation of the Bar, apparent at both meetings, concerning the rise of the administrative state and builds upon recent work in this area. Third, it highlights a transition in American legal thought vis-à-vis its common law heritage in the decades between the two wars, moving from a Burkean nostalgia in 1924 to a narrower appeal to Magna Carta as the ultimate bulwark against communism three decades later. Fourth, it underscores the growing role of lawyers as international peacemakers and the entanglement of law and politics, especially by 1957. Drawing together all of the aforementioned conclusions, this article’s fifth contribution is to underscore the extent to which legal elites were preoccupied with their status. In holding up the American legal profession to the standards of the English profession, leading American jurists were seeking the equivalent prestige enjoyed by their English brethren. Undoubtedly, this process was symbiotic, with their hosts happy to serve as exemplars at a time when British supremacy, especially in the light of the Suez Crisis, was quickly waning.

Hinterland: The political history of a geographic category from the scramble for Africa to Afro-Asian solidarity

AbstractThis article traces the history of one geographical concept, hinterland, through changing political contexts from the 1880s through the 1970s. Hinterland proved a valuable tool for states attempting to challenge the global territorial order in both the Scramble for Africa and the postwar world of nation-states. In the context of German territorial demands in East Africa, colonial propagandists used hinterland to knit together the first longue-durée histories of the Indian Ocean to cast Zanzibar as a failed colonial power and win control of the coast. In the 1940s, Indian nationalists revived hinterland as a concept for writing about the Indian Ocean, utilizing the concept to link areas far from the ocean to an informal Indian empire that could be rebuilt to its premodern glory through naval expansion. In both contexts, hinterland provided a geographical framework to challenge British dominance on the Indian Ocean. The shifting meaning and usage of the term indicates continuities in territoriality between the Scramble for Africa and postwar internationalism.