Colonial Enterprise Research Articles

Double Marginality, Historical Memory, and Trauma in Uzma Aslam Khan's the Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali: A Trauma Studies Perspective

The study analyses Uzma Aslam Khan’s novel, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, using the intersections between post colonial feminism and Cathy Caruth's trauma theory to engage with the issues of trauma, historical memory and double marginality to explore the colonial enterprise. It engages Nomi Ali’s experiences and battles as she lives in postcolonial Pakistan, struggling to come to grips with her identity and past traumas. The intergenerational transmission of trauma among women from different ethnic and religious backgrounds is also the focus of this research paper. This research, therefore, investigates how past traumas, oppression, and patriarchy are represented in this novel concerning their distinctive identities and colonial history. It further tries to explore the notion of double marginality through Nomi Ali’s story, where gender, culture, and historical violence meet. The study aims at exploring the historical memory inscribed on an individual and collective identity, besides describing trauma that makes up the part of women who always form a margin in every sphere. It would deepen the understanding of Pakistani literature in English as contributing to the global debate of trauma, memory, and identity.

A Plum Story? Early Encounters and Colonial Views of the Safu in Central Africa, Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries

ABSTRACT The diversity of edible species originating in Africa is considerable, but the history of their use and domestication remains largely neglected, despite existing historical records. This essay aims to explore attitudes towards safu (Pachylobus edulis), a Central African fruit that defies Western categories. Based on more than one hundred archival documents, this study examines the history of the safu and the tree that produces it as seen by Europeans (German, English, Belgian, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, etc.) present in Central Africa. The documentation collected on safus and safu trees reflects not only local views of the species but also the broader European projects pursued on the continent and the vision of African foodways. Indeed, their valuation is symptomatic of food encounters and hierarchies during colonial settlement. More broadly, it reveals how subsistence and agriculture were viewed in the region: the ubiquity of this fruit tree around villages, as often reported, contrasts sharply with the historical narrative of the absence of African agriculture in the tropics. Finally, it shows how colonial enterprises, despite hindered dispersal and missed opportunities, circulated the species in different parts of the planet.

Can Two Opposing Narratives Be Equally Valid? Reflections on Zreik’s Reflections on the War in Gaza

Abstract The article critically examines the arguments of Raef Zreik regarding the 2023 war in Gaza. It first analyzes the use of the concept of narrative in defending political causes and actions. It shows that due to their subjective nature two opposing narratives can be equally valid as long as they satisfy conditions of internal coherence and fidelity to the facts. It then shows that Zreik’s argument of ‘fragmentation’ is double edged and cannot be used for laying full responsibility on Israel. It then proceeds to criticize the claim that Zionism is a colonialist enterprise and shows that Zionism does not consist of all the basic characteristics of colonialism. Finally, it analyzes the common argument of self-defense as the only justification of starting a war and shows the limitation of such an argument in a theory of war, mainly because in most wars both sides have the right to defend themselves, including the allegedly unjust party. All that remains after showing the weakness of most arguments for this or that side to the conflict is the conclusion that compromise is the only way out of the deadlock, having the virtue of being pragmatic rather principled.

British Colonial Enterprise and the Evolution of Cosmopolitan Towns in Nigeria: The Case of Kafanchan, 1926-1960

British Colonial Enterprise and the Evolution of Cosmopolitan Towns in Nigeria: The Case of Kafanchan, 1926-1960

Notes on the ‘Exceptionalism’ of the Israeli Settler-Colonial Project

Israel’s settler-colonial project stands as a peculiar instance of colonial domination in the modern era, distinguished by its ideological roots in Zionism, a potent blend of mythological narratives, militaristic nationalism, and expansionist aspirations. Unlike traditional colonial powers, Israel operates without a conventional metropole, instead leveraging strategic alliances with Western powers, particularly the United States, to sustain its colonial enterprise. The endurance of this project is inextricably linked to the subjugation and fragmentation of the Arab world, which serves as a wellspring of resistance against Israel’s colonial ambitions, as evidenced by the normalization of relations between Israel and various Arab regimes. Yet, Palestinian resistance has proven resilient and adaptive, persistently asserting its rights, identity, and connection to the land, while exposing the moral bankruptcy of Israel’s colonial dominance. To fully grasp the complexities of Palestine’s past, present, and future, it is imperative to employ a settler-colonial framework, which not only illuminates the specific dynamics at play but also sheds light on the broader implications for understanding and challenging similar structures of oppression worldwide.

The Power and Performativity of Naming

In 1906, the Mikado pheasant, an endemic bird of Taiwan, was discovered as a new species by a British collector. As the creation of this new species was based solely on the examination of tail feathers, it generated excitement among ornithologists and aviculturists, sparking a series of expeditions to collect complete specimens. By following the trajectory of these endeavors and subsequent attempts to reclassify, propagate, and protect the bird, this article explores the power and performativity of scientific naming in both global and colonial contexts. The act of writing and publishing a species description is performative in that it creates a new species by assigning a scientific name that allows it to gain recognition within the scientific community and beyond. It also served to create and maintain the ornithological community—the idealized virtual community of ornithologists, bird collectors, and aviculturists. The history of the Mikado pheasant is part of a larger scientific effort to establish the comprehensive knowledge of the family Phasianidae, which motivated aspiring Japanese ornithologists to exert their acquired knowledge over the avifauna of the Japanese empire. These processes interacted during a time when zoological nomenclature was becoming accessible to non-Western zoologists. The discovery of the Mikado pheasant was the result of a colonial enterprise involving the British and Japanese empires, which converged on the interior of Taiwan and involved the Indigenous people who had settled in the mountain regions. The enduring legacy of the Mikado pheasant’s naming still resonates today.

Recent Dickens Studies: 2022 (Part I)

ABSTRACT This article (part one of two) surveys Dickens scholarship and adjacent work with a special emphasis on Dickens Quarterly. The author’s approach was inspired by the alternating micro- and macro- method of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s Turning Point 1851, and the personal approach of Annette Federico’s But For You, Dear Stranger (My Reading) and Nick Hornby’s Prince and Dickens: A Particular Kind of Genius. The article identifies these key trends: (1) A turn towards artists and scholars’ personal and autobiographical responses to Dickens’s work/life; (2) a reckoning with race and empire, especially how colonial enterprises are felt in London and in novels’ relationships; (3) places and spaces, including how buildings can communicate history or hold meaning; (4) charges of anti-Semitism and treatment of Jews; (5) intense, narrowly focused scholarship on topics like etymology, fungi, rot, historical happenings, both major (Crystal Palace) or minor (a Duke’s balloon trip).

Переосмысление “ответственности по защите” со странами БРИКС: нормативная оценка (на англ. языке)

At a time when the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) concept continues to be an object of widespread controversy, particularly with BRICS countries openly condemning the way it has been implemented by Western states, the question of the future evolution of the norm remains uncertain. While the constructivist literature initially pointed to the consolidation of the norm which was widely accepted by heads of states during the 2005 World Summit, the application has been criticized by Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) for being Western-led and biased, oriented toward regime-change and reminding the world of a new type of colonial enterprise. BRICS members embraced this perspective, and condemned in unison the Libyan intervention for going beyond the scope of its mandate and occasioning greater harm than it prevented. The authors of this article analyse BRICS perspectives on the “Responsibility to Protect” and seek to understand whether the geopolitical formation could, by unifying and building up on contestation mechanisms, contribute to the renewal and rebuilding of this doctrine, thus ensuring its greater credibility. The qualitative investigation is based on the study of interviews conducted with experts from BRICS and some western countries. The findings indicate that if BRICS member states succeed in adopting a common conceptual perspective, the global acceptance of the “Responsibility to Protect” could increase but that all the new checks and balances advocated by them could lead to delays in interventions to prevent human rights abuses moving forward.

The old man by the waterfall: deep entanglements of culture, state-making and geopolitics in Arunachal Pradesh

Arunachal Pradesh, a state in Northeast India, is going through a phase of rapid infrastructural expansion, a phenomenon intensified due to the state’s geostrategic location. Despite the colonial enterprise of frontier-making and the resulting securitisation of space, the presence of the eastern Himalayan frontier has historically infused the region with elements of both steadfastness and dynamism, as its spatial fluidity persists in one form or the other. Meanwhile, despite being situated in a Himalayan corridor, the region finds itself entangled in the contentious politics in which states in South and Southeast Asia are locked. Drawing on ethnographic experiences from two geopolitically sensitive and spatially significant places, Menchukha and Namsai, situated on the eastern Himalayan slopes at Arunachal Pradesh, this article discusses the paradoxical conditions of ‘selective permeability’ (Popescu 2015: 50) that often informs contemporary border regimes, where factors favouring cross-border mobility are weighed against the demands of maintaining territorial integrity. In this context, this article looks at some prominent sites of pilgrimage and religious tourism to understand the differential attention they receive from the state, revealing a complex assemblage of spatial dynamics, cultural logics and geostrategic rationales that operate in geopolitically charged borderlands.

The paradoxical interplay between the British colonial enterprise, masculinity, and reparation in the Caribbean in Lovelace’s The Schoolmaster

Novelist and thinker, Earl Lovelace posits a humanistic revision of postcolonial readings of the concept of reparation in his essays in Growing in the Dark, particularly in “Reparation: For &and From Whom,” and “Working Obeah.” While he does not supplant the fundamental argument that European beneficiaries of slavery should assume some responsibility for the restitution and repair of descendants of Africa, he questions the idea of reparation as an act of dependency, something handed out by the “other,” – be it European or post-independence Caribbean governments. Instead, he imagines reparation to include the agency of the colonial subject who assumes authority and responsibility for his repair. Consequently, while Lovelace recognizes the importance of the social and economic requirements of reparation, he privileges the psychological processes. Earl Lovelace’s, The Schoolmaster provides a useful platform from which to examine the applicability of the author’s reading of the concept of reparation within the framework of repressive and hegemonic framework enforced by the British colonial administration in pre-independence, Trinidad and Tobago. This study investigates the influence of British colonizing policies on the development of masculinity in the pre-independence Caribbean, specifically the ongoing struggle for reparation. Whereas a number of prior studies use the West Indian novel to demonstrate how the crises within masculinities result from patriarchal standards of ownership and control, this study also uses Caribbean fiction to prompt meaningful discussions on the healing of maimed masculinities. Due to the psychological implications encoded in Lovelace’s conceptualization of reparation, this paper, understandably, privileges a psychoanalytic approach.

Discovering ‘Religion’: Nineteenth Century Colonial Attitudes Towards Religious Identity and Difference in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to show how the example of colonial writings in Southeast Asia display, but also complicate, some already identified patterns in how religion, and the world religions paradigm (WRP), alongside such discursive terms as ‘superstition’, were applied to the religious practices and worldviews of indigenous Southeast Asians through the nineteenth century. Such figures as Sir Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd, amongst others, from both the British and American colonial enterprise, are examined in terms of how both Islam and other forms of religiosity are framed in their writings. The paper focuses upon merchants, adventurers, and officials rather than scholars in terms of how they framed these traditions in their writings, and developed influential ways of representing this region and its peoples, which was also created in the process of so-called ‘discovery’. The imbrication of race, religion, and civilisation is critically discussed, alongside how mercantile pragmatics also played into the formation of categories.

Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North: Investigating Stereotypes and the Dehumanizing Effects of Colonialism

Long before colonialism emerged as an imperial project, cultural stereotypes and myths have fed the Western discourse about the Orient. Even during the medieval ages and Renaissance period, the discourse about Muslims and Islam was deeply informed of the distorted images, fabricated views, and overgeneralizations rooted in racial and religious prejudices. These myths were popularized through European art and literature to construct a particular narrative later used to legitimize the imperial designs and economic control of the native people. The research views this dehumanization of people and the vicious cycle of psychological trauma as a direct result of colonial enterprises by imperial forces. Using anti-colonial theories and postcolonialism as a framework of the study and building on the works of anticolonial theorists like Fanon, Memmi, and Césaire, the research seeks to investigate how these dehumanized images form the core of imperial designs and how colonialism dehumanizes people, distorts perspectives, engenders alienation and perpetuates a cycle of psychological violence across cultures and regions.

Deconstructing and Reconstructing Englishness: National Symbolism of the County House in McEwan’s Atonement

ABSTRACT This article extends previous readings of Atonement’s representation of the English country house by examining it in relation to a nostalgic version of Englishness that still appeals to a contemporary audience. It argues that the novel both deconstructs and reconstructs the idea of rural Englishness endorsed by the heritage culture. By disclosing the constructedness of the timeless England, Atonement shows that rural Englishness is crafted out of a fantasy of seamless historical continuity that has never existed. McEwan indicates that the projection of the aristocratic patriarch’s private property as a repository of English values and culture obscures the class and gender oppression embedded in the country-house power structures. The progressive politics of Atonement is further seen in its refiguration of the elitist, exclusive version of Englishness as a more democratic and inclusive form of Britishness. It justifies the vision of multicultural British identity by appealing to the shared past of Heritage England and immigrants from the old empire. This shared past is revealed in the novel through subtle allusions to the hidden connections between English estate houses and Britain’s colonial enterprise.

Settler/Invader Identity and Belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand

This Kaupapa Māori writing inquiry explores “Tāngata Tiriti” (People of the Treaty) as a settler/invader identity term in Aotearoa New Zealand. Derived from the failed policy platform of “biculturalism” and “Indigenous inclusion,” Tāngata Tiriti is a byproduct of neoliberalism and settler/invader colonialism that fails to provide for Indigenous inclusion, mana motuhake (Indigenous sovereignty) and tino rangatiratanga (self-determination). This article argues that Tāngata Tiriti should be abandoned due to the 2014 paradigm shift surrounding Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Te Tiriti) and mana motuhake from the Te Paparahi o Te Raki report and the author’s subsequent research on non-signatory hapū and iwi. Pākehā settler/invader perspectives on Tāngata Tiriti are compared with Tāngata Moana and Asian scholarly understandings. The author advocates adopting Tāngata Moana thinking around letting Māori as mana whenua lead “wayfinding” and “meaning-making” to define allyship and promote a “collective future” together based on Māori constitutional values that are generally universal throughout Pacific cultures. Instead of settler/invader identity constructs and the doctrine of the nation as a White possession, movement toward a collective future must begin from a place of sovereign relationality. The pedagogy of teaching Te Tiriti must change, the ill-conceived Tāngata Tiriti identity must be abandoned, and “New Zealand” as a settler/invader colonial enterprise must end. Our future must be post-settler/invader colonial and post-Tiriti and must recognize unceded mana motuhake or sovereignty.

William Munro Tapp: Colonial Investor and Caius College Philanthropist, 1925–1937

AbstractWilliam Munro Tapp, the largest post-foundation benefactor to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, was a prominent lawyer who directed multiple businesses interested in water utilities, motor car manufacturing, and brewing. That much is acknowledged at Caius today. Yet Tapp was also a director of the sugar refiners Manbré & Garton Limited, and he helped establish a sugar plantation in Kenya. Alongside his involvement in an African estate, he held investments in other plantations and colonial enterprises. He was part of a class of gentlemanly capitalists who participated in imperial expansion and then donated their wealth to British cultural institutions, including colleges and universities. While much public attention has been paid to Cecil Rhodes, this article argues that both Tapp and Rhodes were members of a larger group of men and women who provided their wealth to educational institutions, thereby entrenching the financial legacies of colonialism in universities. By focusing on more minor figures in the British empire, like Tapp, historians can better address the continuities of universities’ financial connections to coerced labour and colonialism across time and understand that private connections and affective attachments between individuals and institutions were as significant as governmental policies in directing the spoils of empire.

Salt, Sovereignty and Law in Colonial India: The Case of Rajputana Salt in the Late Nineteenth Century

This article explores salt as a substance that lay at the heart of discussions around sovereignty, jurisdiction, criminality and control. Tracing salt administration in late nineteenth-century Rajputana, it argues that the colonial state significantly altered existing local contexts of power and control in the princely states where the salt sources lay. It explores how the colonial state, while maintaining a façade of ‘indirect rule’, created jurisdictional spaces for itself within the princely states. In the process, local and regional salt production and the trade circuits of Rajputana were subsumed in the making of an expansive colonial enterprise.

THE DIALECTICS OF MYTH AND HISTORY: EXPLORING AND DECODING THE CIRCLE OF REASON BY AMITAV GHOSH.

The Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh is a celebration of the fictional arras of myth, history, and rationality. It inevitably offers a glowing and an intricate exploration of human life across assorted cultures and topographies. The novel dextrously blends the mythical narratives with historical reasoning and sturdily challenges the conventional restrictions between fact and fiction. Ghosh’s portrayal of the protagonist, Alu, becomes a vehicle to examine the intersections of tradition and modernity, myth and logic, as well as the cultural conflicts that arise rapidly in a globalizing world. The novel, through its non-linear narrative, draws upon allegorical elements from Indian mythology while simultaneously engaging with historical events and scientific ideologies, such as the Enlightenment and colonial enterprise. It thus encompasses the finest tenets of New-Historicism in its journey of human exploration.

From Rescue Mission to Colonial Ambitions: A Reading of Stanley's My African Travels

This study examines Henry Morton Stanley's My African Travels through a post-colonial lens in order to explore how Stanley’s mission of rescuing a missing explorer turns into his colonial ambitions in the interior of Africa. Primarily with a project of finding the missing missionary and explorer David Livingston by name, Stanley sets out on his African journey in 1871. But after finding Livingston, Stanley’s eyes fall upon the plenitude of natural resources and backwardness of the native people that instantly stimulate in him a sense of the possibilities of commerce and Christianization of the natives. Consequently, he makes more explorations, draws maps and fills them with names, fights the locals, and establishes stations at different locations that ultimately turn into European colonies. This study analyzes and interprets his My African Travels as a colonial discourse in that it operates as a tool for the European colonial enterprise. The study employs conceptual terms related to colonial discourse for analysis and interpretation.

Catherine of Braganza during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis: Anti‐Catholicism in the Houses of Commons and Lords, 1678–81*

AbstractThis article evaluates how Catherine of Braganza was scrutinised in parliament during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, 1678–81. During this period, politicians used Catherine as a political pawn to try and pressurise Charles II to secure the line of succession, which included proposals that he should divorce her and remarry, in order to secure the line of succession away from his Catholic convert brother, James, duke of York. The article focuses on how Catherine's 1661 articles of marriage became central in parliamentary debates following the Popish Plot scandal, and the extent to which politicians considered how far they could control Catherine's Catholic household without breaching the articles, or aggravating Portugal. The colonial assets of Tangier and Bombay (acquired by Britain upon Catherine's marriage to Charles), are given serious attention in understanding decisions made by parliament during this period, as removing Catherine as queen threatened to jeopardise Britain's foreign policy relationship with Portugal, as well as its trade networks and aspirations for colonial enterprises. This article, therefore, revisits Catherine of Braganza's reputation and character through the lens of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, and how Catherine's place in the Popish Plot narrative influenced England's international relationship with Portugal.

The Past is a Foreign Country: World Musics Signifying History in/and Elizabethan Drama

Research on global Shakespeare has focused on the ways in which the plays have been adapted for indigenous languages and customs. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which non-British directors have treated the Elizabethan drama. Yet there are a number of works that create direct musical dialogues between Elizabethan drama, history, and the cultures of England's colonies. In Tim Supple's 2003 Twelfth Night, Indian music signifies the divide between Viola and Sebastian's origins and a British Illyria; a 2006 Danish Ur-Hamlet uses music from former British colonies and a faux-medieval score that serve as "an exchange of cultural manifestations." And both the BBC's Virgin Queen (2005) and Kapur's 2007 Elizabeth: the Golden Age use Indian music to represent the empire's colonial enterprises. I examine how these musics function in the context of screen works, and what their use might signify in Elizabethan drama and historical pieces overall.