British Empire Research Articles

God Lives in the Sun: The Critique of Evangelical Abolitionism in William Blake's “The Little Black Boy”

ABSTRACT Late eighteenth-century narratives of enslavement were, for London readers such as William Blake, an “authentic” source of information about the British Empire's slave trade—the horrors of the Middle Passage, the humanity of the peoples who found themselves in chains, the wonder of the distant lands from which they were ripped. From the 1770s, such texts had begun to give accounts of spiritual redemption through conversion to Christianity, thus legitimizing the voice of the author within European discourse. This essay focuses on one particularly prominent example, Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative (1789), and examines the possibility that Blake's “The Little Black Boy” (1789) is a direct and critical response. The essay argues that Blake's poem speaks not with conventional abolitionist rhetoric, nor with oft-suggested ambiguity, inconsistency, or racism, but rather with intense criticism of the Eurocentric evangelical discourse that came to inform abolitionist campaigns and of the resultant African-European voice constructed in texts such as The Interesting Narrative. In particular, the distorted heaven depicted in the poem is seen as sardonically imitating the liminal space occupied by the African in London—between freedom and slavery, between pastoral religiosity and institutional Protestantism.

From indirect to direct rule? Transnational policy planning bodies and global governance in the COVID crisis

AbstractThe origins of contemporary supra‐national power go back to the second British Empire, which, unlike the first, faced organized labor as a potential revolutionary force. The formation of the Rhodes–Milner Group was meant to better manage the formation of the public mood, and the Boer War in South Africa demanded close integration of imperial affairs. A central figure in the Rhodes–Milner Group, Lord Esher, was also the architect of the Committee of Imperial Defense, created to take up the latter task. Esher's idea of a secretariat confidentially preparing solutions to issues of the day before they emerged in the public domain was introduced into the structure of international organizations after World War I and the Russian Revolution. Escher also laid the foundations of today's model of transnational politics in which groups such as Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission and many others, shape certain areas of consensus before the public is allowed to make its voice heard. In this process, the circumvention of democracy has assumed the nature of an outright assault on it. In the process the World Economic Forum, formally joining forces with the United Nations, has become the most visible supranational body applying direct rule.

English Imperialism: A Structural Form of Colonialism in the Intercultural Communication

English Imperialism: A Structural Form of Colonialism in the Intercultural Communication

A Tale of Three Brothers: Ezra, Meʾir, and Hayyawi Sawdaʾi and the History of an Iraqi Jewish Cinema Business

In Iraq, like elsewhere in the region, cinemagoing became a popular form of leisure in the 1920s and 1930s. The emergence of permanent indoor and outdoor cinemas during this period gave rise to new consumption practices, ways of inhabiting the city, opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs, and the creation of a leisure and entertainment economy that was both modern, international, and Iraqi. In the early 1930s, three Jewish brothers, Ezra, Meʾir, and Hayyawi Sawdaʾi, began transforming their family's wealth from one based in regional trading to a modern cinema business. During the period of British colonial rule, Iraq was forcefully integrated into a global, Western dominated market economy and the brothers tried their hands at several import and local businesses before eventually finding their niche in entertainment. They rented movie theaters, built cinemas, established themselves as prime importers of foreign movies, and left a deep imprint on the Iraqi film industry.

Book Review: A Cultural History of the British Empire by John M. MacKenzie

Book Review: <i>A Cultural History of the British Empire</i> by John M. MacKenzie

Ethnographic collections in Northern Ireland and the Solomon Islands tomako (canoe) at the Ulster Museum, 1898–2023

AbstractThe World Cultures collection at National Museums Northern Ireland is an essential source for the study of Irish collecting in the wider British Empire. The 2022 redisplay of the collection in the Ulster Museum's exhibition, Inclusive Global Histories, is part of a staged engagement with local and source communities. Given the critical importance of the global museum decolonisation work of which the exhibition is an example, a fresh consideration of this ethnographic collection's history is timely. This article reviews the collection within the context of the three museums that have housed it, and investigates how curators within the institution understood, represented and displayed the collection. It does so through a case study of a war canoe (tomako), that was taken from the Solomon Islands, by John Casement, a captain in the Royal Navy, and is the largest and among the most significant items within the collection. The canoe's centrality to the gallery — built around it in 1925 — that now contains Inclusive Global Histories reveals complex social networks between nineteenth- and twentieth-century collectors, curators and photographers, and aids understanding of how global human cultures have been regarded in Northern Ireland's civic life.

THE POLITICAL ROLE OF COMMANDER MARSHALL IN NAJAF, 1917-1918

What Iraq possesses of resources made it vulnerable to occupation, including the British occupation of Iraq, in which the British tried to extend their influence in it and their attempt to expand on the rest of Iraq, including Najaf, which is the main incubator of revolutionary thought, so when sending Commander Marshall to the city of Najaf in order to gain their trust and calm the situation Because there was no revolution against the British, and indeed, Commander Marshall worked on adopting a policy to win the favor of the Najafis, but he did not succeed because the Najafians rejected the occupation.

Museums and the Fashioning of National History in Postcolonial Pakistan

This article uses the deliberations of the Museums Association of Pakistan to demonstrate the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of national history-writing that took place in the wake of Pakistan’s independence from British colonial rule. It repositions museums as an important stage on which new national narratives—and, by extension, new South Asian histories—were generated, rather than their being mere showcases for histories scripted elsewhere or being dismissed as colonial relics. It also draws attention to the individuals and the networks that shaped these histories, widening the net to include more than elite politicians and grand narratives.

“I didn’t know there were so many kinds of people and so many sorts of provincialism in the world’’: Tracking Provincialism Through the Nineteenth-Century Corpus

Abstract Beginning with a full text search for the term ‘provincialism’ across all entries in the OED Online, this article tracks ‘provincialism’ through the digitized fiction of the nineteenth century, eavesdropping on the ways in which the term was used in a dataset of references drawn from 165 nineteenth-century novels brought together from the British Library 19th Century Collection and the Hathi Trust Digital Library. The focus is not on a close reading of a small number of novels, a novel subgenre, or iterations of a single novel, but on a close reading of multiple short, references to the term ‘provincialism’ drawn from a large number of nineteenth-century digitized novels. Attention is concentrated on the textually small, the fleeting yet potent uses of the term deployed by nineteenth-century novelists writing in a mass cultural medium with a local and global reach. The findings offer up a relational and multidimensional picture of the term aggregated from the textually small, as it plays out in relation to class, gender, the city, the four nations of the UK, the British Empire and the wider world.

Motivating Factors in Foreign Volunteering

Twelve Hungarian volunteers have been identified so far among the 2,500 pro-Boerforeign volunteers who were ready to sacrifice their lives in the war between the Boerrepublics and the British Empire (1899–1902). The overwhelming majority of thesevolunteers travelled to South Africa to join the commandos of the Boers following theescalation of the conflict. Tibor Péchy was one of the Hungarian combatants, but incontrast with the other Hungarian volunteers, he had been living in South Africa since1896. This makes him a special Hungarian participant of the Anglo-Boer War. The presentpaper analyses the motivating factors behind Péchy’s enlistment with the Boers.

Sovereignty and imperialism: International business, finance and the position of Sudan in the British empire

This article examines the relationship between Sudan and Egypt during the colonial period to explore how control over international business and finance integrated Sudan within the British empire. We examine how the locus of power and control over these economic factors began to change, and how this altered the position of Sudan. To do this we explore three areas. First, we examine how the field of international relations has considered the question of sovereignty. We use this to problematise how imperial relationships influence notions of sovereignty in the context of a colonial state. Secondly, we examine the business history of Sudan in relation to the structure of the Sudanese economy. Third, we explore how finance shaped the relationship between Sudan and the British empire. Finally, we discuss the implications of the business and financial history of Sudan in relation to the historiography of imperialism and coloniality in the MENA region.

Implications of ideology on school buildings and cultural pluralistic context of Gazimağusa, North Cyprus

This paper aims to answer the pertinent question: What are the implications of ideology on school buildings and the culturally pluralistic context of Gazimağusa in Northern Cyprus? It traces the social and communication qualities of architecture to restructure the architectural identity of schools and the cultural patterns of this city during the British Period (1878–1960). The colonialists relied on education as an ideological tool for perceiving social and economic stability through training a new, educated middle class to replace the existing traditional authorities: Ottoman leaders and Church structures. Their failure to recognize the diverse cultural layers of the context led to unsustainable outcomes. An interpretative case research approach that involved descriptive and historical techniques was utilized to investigate this situation. Ideology had two separate but related consequences in the context chosen at both urban and architectural scales. Resulting in a cultural shift from intrinsic to extrinsic living that contradicts previous cultural alignments of the place. The urban syntax for communal life shifted to exclusivity, and cultural coexistence was divided between Turkish and Greek Cypriots on the one side; on the other, schools copied a globalized character of transformation. Based on contextual perceptions, the study advocates for a creative cultural mix of local and global concepts. The island went through modernization, hosting the two communities under British Colonial Rule who were both struggling with the colonizers on one hand and experiencing ethnic and political clashes on the other; they formed the conditions for a wide variety of school buildings. Within this context, the paper highlights school buildings as an ideological space, symbol, and tool of nationalism and colonization/decolonization.

Australian Selectors in the Nineteenth Century and Discrepancies in Imaginings and Realities: Critical Family History

Queensland became an independent state in 1859, separating from New South Wales. Almost immediately, an ambitious plan on migration was embarked upon in order to attract emigrants to Queensland, above all other possible colony destinations in the British Empire. Henry Jordan was instrumental as the Emigration Commissioner (1861–1866) in devising the land order scheme and Richard Daintree, as Agent-General, wooed, through modern techniques on never-before-seen photography in colour, small capitalists to the isolated outreaches of Queensland, where settlement was encouraged. Life there for those that migrated was, however, vastly different from what either they knew in Britain, or what they expected. But, ultimately, they settled, took possession of considerable stretches of lands, as selectors, or pastoral land owners, with disregard for the indigenous populations there. In this article, I examine one migration story on an ancestor in the nineteenth century, Andrew Milne, from London to Queensland, through the lens of critical settler family history theory. I take up the challenge for historians to question who their ancestors were, since the past is telling of the present, and the perceptions that are longed for in the future selves. Namely, in the construction of the future self, an individual must also confront their past, and the lives of those that preceded them. In particular, in the case of Australia, settlement, colonisation, and the possession of land are not benign, and are not isolated events, but have an impact on the present and future lives of both descendants of those that possessed the land, and those from whom it was taken away. The legacy of racial segregation (through the Stolen Generations), and despite the attempt to ‘close the gap’ since 2008, Aboriginal peoples in Australia still suffer the consequences of objectification and dehumanisation to which they were subjected. The consequences are not only financial and economic, but are visible in health, education, social status, and in their mistrust of public services.

Under the shade of colonialism: Mary Kingsley and her Travels in West Africa

Texts are not independent entities that are detached from their social, ideological, economic and cultural background. They are shaped by their authors who are affected by the discourse of their times. Thus, they make valuable sources in getting more information about social, political, and economic conditions of their periods. Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, as a part of colonial discourse, reflects the colonial world at the end of the Victorian period, which was rich in literature. This was a period during which British Imperialism reaches at its peak and leads to the saying, “the empire on which the sun never sets”. Travels in West Africa, as a travel narrative, serves the interests of the colonizing powers by describing the lives of the natives in West Africa and their lands sometimes using wry humour, unlike some other contemporary fictional works that depict a savage and brutal Africa as the dark continent. Michel Foucault’s theories regarding discourse and power have been used to understand the ideological formations and power relations in the mentioned travel account in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kingsley’s female narrative, with its representation of Africa, echoes the superiority of the white over the black through an embedded ideology in text.

Missionaries and Modernity: Education in the British Empire, 1830–1910

Missionaries and Modernity: Education in the British Empire, 1830–1910

R. K. Narayan's (Post-)Colonial Perspective:

R. K. Narayan (1906-2001) is considered one of the founding fathers of Indian writing in English, along with Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and G.V. Desani, and is best known for creating the imaginary town of Malgudi. Another important feature of his fiction is what both critics and readers call a gentle or light-hearted humour. Humour has often been used to both subvert and survive various forms of political oppression (see Ştefănescu, Tripathi and Chettri). In Narayan, Malgudi, the centre of the action, is both a colonial and a post-colonial town, created and recreated over years and even decades. Since Malgudi can be considered a metonymy of India (see Mukherjee), Narayan’s use of humour as a subversive device, together with his skilful examination of the cultural and colonial context, can be perceived as a poignant criticism of the British colonial system and what it entailed, specifically the suppression of what constitutes ‘Indianness’, the Indian way of life and cultural values. On the other hand, the light-hearted and subversive irony allows Narayan to offer a more profound insight into the human nature as such, while juxtaposing a colonial and post-colonial context.

The Story of the Dilli Durbar of 1911

The Delhi Durbar of 1911 represents a pivotal moment in the annals of British India, epitomizing the zenith of imperial authority and showcasing the opulence and splendor of the British Raj. Hosted in Delhi, the capital of British India, this grand event served as a platform for King George V, the British monarch, to assert his dominion and consolidate control over the subcontinent. This paper extensively examines the significance of the Delhi Durbar of 1911 in the context of both Indian history and the evolution of Delhi, delving into its historical backdrop, the motives driving its organization, its ceremonial intricacies, and its enduring impact on the Indian nationalist movement. The Delhi Durbar of 1911 emerges as a potent emblem of fortitude, defiance, and the unyielding determination of a populace striving for emancipation. It can be asserted that this event remains a watershed moment not only in the narrative of British India, signifying the pinnacle of imperial dominance and providing insight into the intricate interplay between the colonizers and the colonized, but also in the history of Delhi itself, influencing its urban, demographic, and architectural evolution in significant ways. This paper endeavours to establish the Delhi Durbar of 1911 as a crucial focal point for the examination of Delhi's role first as the capital of the British Empire and subsequently as the capital of independent India. The carefully curated Bibliography presented in this paper serves as a valuable resource for scholars and enthusiasts of Delhi, offering a means to consolidate dispersed knowledge about this momentous event and accord it its rightful place in the layered history of Delhi as both an imperial and national capital.

The colonial roots of botany – legacies of empire in the botanic gardens of Oxford and Kew

ABSTRACT Although the involvement of botanic gardens in the colonial expansion of the British Empire is well documented, the public communication of this part of the history of the gardens is not as visible as it has increasingly become in many ethnographic museums, where the topic has been dealt with more actively within recent years. In this article, presenting findings from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the botanic gardens of Oxford and Kew in 2022 and 2023, 1 I show how colonial-era scientific practices are still used in the namegiving of plants, although scientists within the field have become increasingly aware of the importance of recognising Indigenous people and places. 2 Through an analysis of the wording applied in signs and guided tours, I furthermore demonstrate how the colonial legacies of the plant collections of the two gardens are only superficially communicated to their visitors, despite numerous initiatives taking place behind the scenes. 3

The financial legal regulation of the securities market of The People’s Republic of China

The article deals with issues related to the formation and development of the securities market in the People’s Republic of China. The features of the financial and legal regulation of this market are studied, taking into account the concept of «One country, two systems». Attention is paid to the financial and legal regulation of the securities market in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China. The genesis of the securities market of this territory has been studied. The author points out that Hong Kong, being previously a colony of the British Empire, retained the Anglo-Saxon legal system and financial and legal regulation of the securities market independent from mainland China. The article also discusses the further development of the cryptocurrency market in China and Hong Kong. The author notes that at present, due to unfriendly actions towards Russia by a number of foreign states and international organizations, Russian legal entities are becoming more interested in expanding cooperation with China, taking into account the «yuanization» of the world economy, which in turn confirms the need for further study regulation of China’s securities market.

Urban Development in Uttar Pradesh: A Historical Study

This research paper aims to provide a comprehensive historical analysis of urban development in Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest and most populous states in India. By examining the evolution of urban settlements and their socio-economic transformations, this study explores the factors that have shaped the urban landscape in Uttar Pradesh from ancient times to the present day. The paper examines key historical periods, including ancient and medieval periods, British colonial rule, and post-independence development initiatives. It analyzes the spatial patterns, economic activities, governance structures, and infrastructural developments that have influenced urbanization in Uttar Pradesh over time. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the historical processes that have shaped the state's urban landscape and can inform future urban planning and policy-making efforts.