Colonial Government Research Articles

Educator organising in Singapore: protests, progress, and the Singapore Teachers’ Union

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the case of Singapore where there are teachers’ unions but industrial actions are rare. It questions why and how has educator organising, steered by Singapore Teachers’ Union, transformed? Our findings show that historical, political, and socio-economic dynamics have influenced the transformation of STU. For more than seventy years, STU has been a champion, supporter, and advocate of teachers in Singapore through industrial, professional, and social unionism. We argue that the legacy of STU’s struggles, throughout its contentious relationship with the colonial government and collaborative rapport with the local government, has laid the foundation that enables the development of teachers and the high quality of education that the country is currently known for globally. However, persisting residual issues surrounding teachers’ wellbeing due to the high expectations of teachers and teaching call for a review of this state-labour relationship.

Regulation of Corporate Criminal Liability According To Law Number 1 Year 2023 On The Criminal Code

Corporation as a subject of criminal law that can be held criminally responsible is not known in the old Criminal Code. This is because the old Criminal Code is a legacy of the Dutch colonial government whose legal system adheres to the Continental European legal system (civil law). Countries that adhere to the civil law legal system are a little behind in terms of regulating corporations as subjects of criminal law, in contrast to countries that adhere to the common law legal system, which has regulated corporate liability and this has started since the industrial revolution. In Indonesia itself, the regulation on corporation as a subject of criminal law is regulated in the Law outside the Criminal Code. Meanwhile, the new Criminal Code has regulated corporations as legal subjects that can be held criminally liable. As regulated in Article 45 to Article 50, Article 56, and Articles 118 to 124 of Law No. 1 of 2023 on the Criminal Code. Although prior to the enactment of Law No. 1 of 2023 on the Criminal Code there was already Perma No. 13 of 2016 concerning Procedures for Handling Criminal Cases by Corporations and Regulation of the Attorney General of the Republic of Indonesia Number PER-28/A/JA/10/2014 concerning Guidelines for Handling Criminal Cases with Corporate Legal Subjects. Prior to the issuance of the regulation, the Attorney General's Office had first issued Circular Letter of the Attorney General of the Republic of Indonesia Number B-036/A/FT.1/06/2009 regarding Corporations as Suspects/Defendants in Corruption Crimes addressed to the Head of High Prosecutors throughout Indonesia. Thus, Corporations as a subject of criminal law can already be held criminally liable with the strength and legal certainty stipulated in the New Criminal Code.

Under Sundanese eyes; Raden Ajoe Abdoerachman’s journey to Europe

This article examines the travel account written by Raden Ajoe Abdoerachman, the wife of a senior native official, the Regent of Meester Cornelis (Jatinegara), Raden Aria Abdoerachman, who, with his family, was sent at the expense of the colonial government to the Netherlands to study agricultural practices in 1928. The account shows the colonial subject’s admiration for and mimicry of European behaviour and practices, but occasional ironic comments show her ambivalence towards some institutions in the Netherlands while at the same time she also criticises unfair representations of Indonesia.

International Law, Security, and Sanctions: A Decolonial Perspective on the Transnational Legal Order of Sanctions

This article reviews recent literature on sanctions from international law, political science, sociology, anthropology, and history. It shows how the literature during the comprehensive sanctions decade (the 1990s), with a largely critical view on sanctions in the age of globalization, was co-opted by the targetization of sanctions in the sanctions miniaturization decade (the 2000s). It then reviews the sanctions literature in sociology and anthropology during the sanctions enforcement decade (the 2010s), addressing the transnational characteristics of sanctions, their infrastructural materiality in the digital economy, and the deputization of private actors to police their implementation. Last, the article reviews the literature in colonial governmentality to encourage sanctions specialists to take a longer-term view of transnational orders of sanctions. This section ends with a call to decolonize sanctions research—or rather, to question the colonial origins of sanctions as an instrument of world making so that a properly decolonial perspective on sanctions can be elaborated.

Planting Seeds in a New Land

Abstract Around 1,000 Hmong refugees arrived in French Guiana in the late 1970s to found two agricultural communities. They were members of an emerging global diaspora of survivors fleeing the violence of the Laotian Civil War. From the perspective of the French government, the relocation became linked with the contemporaneous “Plan Vert” to develop the agricultural potential of the overseas territories. At that time, a significant percentage of the produce consumed in French Guiana was imported from Suriname. Within a few decades, government support helped the Hmong communities of Cacao and Javouhey to develop into critically important agricultural producers. Today they supply more than half of French Guiana’s produce, which has helped to eliminate dependence on imports from Suriname. In the early 2010s, the Surinamese government collaborated with Hmong leaders from French Guiana to bring a new wave of Hmong immigrants from Laos to Suriname. Their project, mirroring that of the French government nearly 40 years before, was to reinvigorate the agricultural sector by reclaiming land abandoned during the Surinamese Interior War of 1986–92. These waves of Hmong agricultural immigration are part of a long and ongoing history of displacements and mobilizations of groups of people by colonial and postcolonial governments in the Guianas. At the same time, the ongoing success of Hmong communities in the Guianas cannot be wholly attributed to government support: it is as much due to the dynamism and initiative of the Hmong themselves.

Neglected Agents and the Cultural Nexus of Power within Protestant Churches and Associated Institutions in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century in Hong Kong

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Protestant churches in Hong Kong and institutions associated with them played a significant role in the daily lives of the people of Hong Kong. However, the role of ordinary people in the social functions of Protestant churches in Hong Kong during this period has rarely been explored in the previous literature. Interpreting several cases from written archives and oral history archives, this study aims to demonstrate how Protestant churches in Hong Kong held special significance as a public place for the ordinary people of the local community, who played an active role in these churches to serve the local community and derived self-satisfaction from doing so. This study also reveals how these local Protestant churches and the associated institutions emerged as a cultural nexus of power along with individuals who contributed to them to provide different types of welfare and social services to the community, which the colonial government in Hong Kong failed to provide.

Shooting and Fishing Prohibitions in the Water Bodies of Ajmer–Pushkar During Colonial Period: The Case of Marginalised Communities

Popular perception views the colonial regime as totally unconcerned about the notions of propriety and sentiments associated with the native population. Such a view does not bar us from studying colonial governance and the public works that it undertook under normal governance. The case study of fishing prohibitions imposed on the lakes of Ajmer–Pushkar highlights not only the regard that the colonial government had towards the religious sentiments of the masses but also the influence of modern Western ideas of environment conservation. Parallel to this runs the narrative of communal tension that erupts due to the prioritisation of religious sentiments of the majority community by the British State. The poor, whose sustenance is dependent on fishing, find ways to breach the colonial prohibitions, thereby challenging the regime’s authority. Similarly, the representatives of the vegetarian merchant class use their influence to compel the British administrators to take the steps they favoured. No consensus or conclusion is reached due to the complex nature of the whole affair, but the reading of the correspondence that emergence to and from the Chief Commissioner’s Office of Ajmer–Merwara on the subject may give us an insight into the various factors that influenced the functioning of the colonial administration and the diverse kinds of reaction that these elicited from the native population.

The Hokianga Dog Tax Uprising

Why was a seemingly mundane 19th-century fiscal measure—a tax levied on dog owners—met by Māori with widespread repudiation and an armed uprising? The significance of what is known as the ‘Hokianga Dog Tax Rebellion’ is often framed in terms of its apparent quashing by colonial forces in 1898, taken to signal the moment at which Crown sovereignty was finally imposed upon northern Māori. This paper questions the mainstream historical narrative, taking seriously the political stakes of taxation and locating the ‘dog tax’ within a disciplinary colonial regime that sought to interpellate Māori as financially and morally liable subjects. The dog tax was aimed at the protection of sheep, a central pillar of the early colonial economy, but was also viewed as a means of transforming Māori into citizen-subjects of the colonial regime. The doggedness with which colonial officials sought to enforce payment, and the steadfastness of Māori opposition to the tax, illuminate the highly politicised character of taxation in the colonial context. This article is an excerpt from Catherine Cumming’s The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa, to be published by Economic and Social Research Aotearoa in late 2021.

Puddles, creeks, and drainage: connected histories of water and malaria in Zanzibar, 1910–2021

This article draws on a combination of archival and oral sources in order to highlight the connected histories of water and malaria on the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar (Unguja) over the past century. We argue that in both the past and the present, water and malaria have been deeply connected, through the lifecycle of the disease, through control measures enacted, and in how Zanzibari residents continue to talk about the relationship between rain, puddles, stagnant water, and disease. Archival sources show that between roughly 1913 and 1957, the British colonial government managed malaria by managing water. That entailed a focus on watery breeding sites that included attention to both the micro: cattle hoofprints, and the macro: a multi-decade drainage of the tidal creek and surrounding swamp. These water-based malaria control efforts were limited in their efficacy by being geographically restricted to urban Zanzibar Town, and often limited to just the Stone Town area. 98 interviews conducted with Zanzibaris about malaria indicate that people continue to draw strong connections between malaria and the environment (mazingira), and that they most commonly discuss water’s relationship with malaria in terms of puddles (dimbwi/madimbwi), small puddles (kidimbwi/vidimbwi) and stagnant water (maji yaliyotuama).

The Early Development History of the Relationship between Taiwanese Nationalism and Chinese Nationalism

This article aims to sort out the historical context of the first eighty years of the emergence and development of Taiwanese nationalism and explore the relationship between Taiwanese nationalism and Chinese nationalism. Taiwanese nationalism originated during the Japanese occupation. The unequal rule of the Japanese colonial government on the Taiwanese islanders united the Taiwanese people and formed an ideological community. At the same time, the Japanese government brought modern political concepts and environment to the island of Taiwan, providing fertile soil for the development of nationalism. During the Japanese occupation, Taiwan's nationalism was China's nationalism. The people of Taiwan identify with the cultural and ideological traditions of the Chinese nation and hope to return to the embrace of the motherland. However, the Kuomintang government's violent and corrupt rule over the Taiwanese people after liberation greatly disappointed the islanders. They gradually realized that the Kuomintang government was backward and that Taiwan could no longer become part of mainland China. After the February 28th Incident, Taiwanese nationalism further developed. Unlike Chinese nationalism, the Taiwanese formed a new nation of political and cultural self-determination.

Perburuan Harimau di Bali pada Awal Abad XX Berdasarkan Sumber-Sumber Kolonial

Before falling into the hands of the Dutch colonial government in the early 20th century, Bali was quite a foreign and restricted territory for Europeans. This condition slowly changed when the colonial government conquered the local Balinese kingdoms. Tigers' existence in Bali was later known through the records created by Europeans who studied nature and the local community there. This study aims to show the link between the conquest of Bali by the colonial government and the extinction of the Bali tiger. Through historical research methods to examine the literature sources used, this study shows that the expansion of colonial government influence in Bali also played a role in the process of extinction of the Bali tiger. The growth of private plantations in areas home to tigers further increases the potential for conflict between tigers and humans. Similar to Javan and Sumatran tigers, Bali tigers are also often hunted because they disturb and threaten plantation activities, as well as because they are a prey object for sport-hunting enthusiasts. Extinction is inevitable as a consequence of continuous hunting activities for this species.

The Smoke of The Incense and The Roar of The Lion: Confucianism Under The Colonial Political System in Indonesia

<p>This article aims to provide a brief overview regarding the existence of Confucianism as a religion in the Dutch East Indies and its relationship with the colonial ruling regime during the last four decades of Dutch rule. With the overview, it is hoped that the type of colonial policy that was made towards the Chinese ethnic belief could be understood, whether in social or political aspects and also its relevance to world developments that took place at the time. To realise this goal, the method used in this paper is the historical research method which consists of four stages: data search (heuristic), source criticism, interpretation, and reconstruction as a form of final academic presentation. With this method, it is hoped that a short paper can be presented that is arranged in a reconstructive manner and is able to provide answers to research problems. As a final conclusion, this paper reveals that in principle, colonial political interests cannot be separated from the existence of religion in her colony, including Confucianism. Especially the international aspect that began to colour the existence of this religion in the Dutch East Indies colony became the main motivation for the colonial government to determine their policies. In this case, the dualistic nature of Dutch colonial policy can be recognised.</p>

The political ecologies of fire: Recasting fire geographies in British Columbia, Canada

How fires burn across British Columbia (BC), Canada is shaped by settler coloniality, timber capitalism, state forestry regimes, criminalization of burning, and Indigenous resistance. Despite the urgency of confronting the fire suppression paradox embedded in settler colonial fire management laws and practices, approaches to studying fire in Canada that foreground Indigenous law and de-center settler colonial governance is scarce. As political ecologists and geographers working and living in the context of unceded and ancestral lək̓ʷəŋən, W̱SÁNEĆ, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səlilwətaɬ, and syilx territories, we engage with Indigenous feminist scholarship to expose how coloniality and gender intersect in attempts to erase Indigenous sovereignty to structure and naturalize provincial fire policy and its emplaced impacts on Indigenous legal orders. Our analysis contextualizes settler-colonial provincial fire management policy in the purview of Indigenous legal orders to foreground how racial-colonial and gendered politics are obscured when colonial fire and wildfire practices are naturalized. Revisiting key moments in the political development of fire suppression across so-called BC, we contend that the suppression paradox is embedded in and reproduces a colonial logic that widens existing social and economic gaps. These gaps are uniquely gendered, as settler coloniality operates upon patriarchal lines that have actively attempted to erase Indigenous women and Two-Spirit peoples, including the laws and legal authorities that they possess and practice. Considering the 1910 Fulton Commission, we highlight an example of how women and Indigenous people were excluded from the political decision-making structures that shaped colonial fire management practices in BC. These gendered and racialized exclusions bear directly on the exclusion of Indigenous women and gender-diverse folx, and Indigenous legal orders guided by matriarchal lines of fire knowledge.

The History of Togoland Under the British Rule (1914‒1956)

The article is devoted to the history of British Togoland, in particular, the central part of the Volta region (southeast of modern Ghana). The time frame of the study covers the period from the First World War to the incorporation of the Volta region into the Gold Coast. During the pre-colonial period, the region was a zone of active commercial networks, both in the slave trade and in a wide range of goods, which varied according to local and international demand. The ethnic majority living in the region is the Ewe group of peoples. The transition from the German colonial rule (1890–1914) – a short-term, but fundamentally important factor for the history of the region – led to the need of the Bremen missionaries work adaptation to the new conditions, the formation of Ewe’s own synod and political associations. Until 1957, the inhabitants of the central part of the Volta region tried to defend their right to unite the territory of the former German Togoland and maintain contacts with the Germans. The management of Togoland was also complicated by the location of the colonial government’s main office in the Gold Coast: by 1920s the Bremen missionary schools had already been transferred to the Gold Coast Department of Education, and the United Free Church of Scotland had to act as intermediaries between the British colonial government and German missionaries, most of the time remotely.

HOẠT ĐỘNG CỦA TRƯỜNG TƯ THỤC Ở TRUNG KỲ TỪ NĂM 1917 ĐẾN NĂM 1945

Under the French colonial period, in addition to the public school system, the French government has allowed the opening of many private schools to serve political goals and meet the learning needs of the people. To contribute to clarify the current situation of private schools in Annam during the French colonial period, based on documents of the French government including Decrees, Yearbook Reports, statistical documents... the article focuses on clarifying the The colonial government's private education policy from the second educational reform (1917 to 1945), at the same time restoring the private school system in Annam in terms of schools, programs, and studies, etc. On that basis, the author presents a few comments on private education in Annam since the second educational reform (from 1917 to 1945) and compare it with private education in Tonkin, Cochinchina during the same study period.

Catchwater colonialism: reshaping Hong Kong’s hydrology, infrastructure, metabolism and landscape, 1937–1968

Abstract This article explores the development of hydrological infrastructure in colonial Hong Kong between the late 1930s and the late 1960s. Utilizing archival sources in Hong Kong and London, it shows how this infrastructure fundamentally reshaped Hong Kong’s geography. By way of concrete catchwaters and metal pipes, both ‘green’ and ‘urban’ Hong Kong became counter-intuitively interconnected. This interconnection created both unintended consequences and novel opportunities for colonial governance, driving forward natural conservation, state intervention into rural society and the development of new carceral institutions. Exploring these developments provides pivotal insight into the urban history of Hong Kong, with implications for global studies of historical urban political ecology.

‘These days, things have changed’: historicizing current dynamics of climate-related migration in the savannah zone of Ghana

ABSTRACT While climate-related mobility has been part of life in Africa for centuries, existing literature on migration in the context of climate change generally lacks a historical perspective. This paper historicises climate-related migration in the Northern Savannah Zone of Ghana, with specific focus on the Upper West Region, drawing on climate data, a survey of 403 households, and interviews and focus group discussions with farmers. It demonstrates that migration and mobility in the region are rooted in historical patterns established and reinforced through colonial and post-colonial governance. These patterns reflect inequalities created by past and present development policies as well as environmental factors. While environmental change intensifies existing migration patterns, it is difficult to isolate these effects from the economic, social, and political factors which also contribute to migration flows in the Savannah zone. We therefore conclude that migration flows are co-constituted by past and present governance practices, disparities, development policies, and social transformation as well as environmental factors. Analysis and policy narratives that attribute recent migration flows to climate change only are simplistic and blur the effects of past and present structural inequalities and political engagement.

Accounting for colonial domination in Liberal and Fascist Italy, 1912–1941

This article addresses the role played by accounting in the government of the Italian colonies of Africa during the Liberal and Fascist periods. Drawing upon the work of Foucault, Scott and Said and their understandings of governmentality and colonialism, and using a wide range of primary sources, the article contributes to the accounting history literature by showing how calculative practices in the form of colonial budgets and regular censuses of the population helped the Italian government to control activities in its colonies. The article shows how accounting practices evolved under different political regimes in the achievement of different programmes of government. It also offers evidence of the ways in which accounting can be mobilised to enable penetrating interventions in the lives of indigenous populations.

Rain and the colonial streetscape: reading for water in Freetown’s newspaper archive

Abstract Situated on the tip of a mountainous peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa, the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone, receives an extraordinarily high rainfall, heavily concentrated in the few months of the rainy season. Working from this extreme wetness and inspired by recent work in the oceanic humanities, this article reads Freetown’s colonial era newspaper archive for water. It argues that the heavy rain of the West African Monsoon was an important agent in shaping the decaying streetscape of the city, and a broader imaginary of decline, at the turn of the twentieth century. Using vivid descriptions of wetness, nature and disease, African editors, correspondents and letter-writers evoked a sodden modernity to push the colonial government to maintain and improve the city’s street infrastructure and at once to forge an elite urban public in opposition to migrants from the urban hinterland.

The “Evil Spectators?”

Abstract This article rethinks the relationship between opium and empire in twentieth-century Asia. A rich scholarship focuses on the success of anti-opium activists, whose moral crusades gave birth to today’s global drug control regimes. By contrast, I center attention on the lesser-known pro-opium forces, demonstrating how “bad” actors, recognized now as apologists for a dangerous drug, were once essential stakeholders in imperial rule. This article traces the interconnected lives of actors that favored continuing the drug’s legal commerce across Southeast Asia: the merchants, bankers, agents of shipping firms, insurance agencies and warehousing companies as well as employees of colonial industries and governments that sustained opium supply chains from India to British Malaya and French Indochina into the 1930s. Hardly a coherent coalition of profit-seeking actors, these pro-opium forces represented situational allies with linked fates despite diverse opinions, fragmented interests, and ambivalent positions toward their own opium-entangled practices. Understanding their dispersed nature gives scholars reason to revisit the imperial origins of global drug control, while underscoring Southeast Asia’s importance for understanding global histories of drugs and international relations.