Colonial Office Research Articles

Revisiting the Slave Ship Enterprise in Post-Emancipation Bermuda

ABSTRACT This is the first study of the full range of documentary evidence concerning the unintended arrival of the Enterprise in Bermuda in 1835, the earliest incident of an American slave ship entering a British colonial port after the Emancipation Act. The choice for freedom made by 72 enslaved people touched off a tense discussion in Bermuda about the legal status of its human cargo. This challenged the capacity of elite white Bermudians to reconcile their reluctance to accept them into Bermuda with the imagined benevolence they had conjured during Bermuda's own recent emancipation. Bermuda's officials negotiated the degree to which calculated inaction would balance imperial abolitionism with local racial anxieties and American entanglements. Scholars have noted the incident mainly for its geopolitical significance in the post-emancipation Atlantic, but Bermudian and Colonial Office sources emphasize the role of local Black Bermudian communication networks and their knowledge of the law. The archive also reveals that the Enterprise incident encompassed some of the most prominent slave traders and abolitionist families in the United States. Rather than an aberration, in characteristics such as the striking young age of its human cargo, the Enterprise was typical of this phase of the American internal slave trade.

Surveying, mapping, and translating: how property rights were created in Shanghai, 1860–1900?

Abstract From 1860 to 1900, a modern system of property rights emerged in the International Settlement in Shanghai. This paper examines the largely overlooked process by which the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) brought about a system of well-functioning property rights through land surveys, mapping, and assessments. These methods worked hand-in-hand with road planning and construction in facilitating the expansion of the International Settlement to the Chinese-controlled area. Colonial officials, merchants, and Chinese intellectuals worked collectively and sometimes separately to generate knowledge about land and property by translating terms in the Chinese tradition. It argues that the efforts in institution-building and translation helped normalize the definition of property rights as things exclusively owned, strengthening the SMC's control over the land in Shanghai. These processes illuminate the relationship between empire-making and property rights by showing how property rights emerged and functioned in a semi-colonial context where multiple foreign authorities coexisted with the local government. The relatively secure system of property rights, which both foreign and Chinese merchants exploited, formed the foundation of a prosperous Shanghai in the twentieth century.

Unequal Treaty in Practice: A Story about Article 23 of the Treaty of Tientsin

Abstract Despite the wealth of research on cross-border activities between China proper and Hong Kong, little has been discussed about the ‘civil fugitives’ who fled from one side to the other during Hong Kong’s early colonial period. Chinese debtors who absconded to China created jurisdictional problems for Hong Kong. The addition of Article 23 in the Treaty of Tientsin was an attempt to solve this issue, and this article explores what the discussions on Article 23, particularly those from 1905 to 1907 among British colonial officials and diplomatic agents, reveal about the characteristics of colonial jurisdiction under international law. In this case, colonial jurisdiction was limited solely to the territory of Hong Kong. Proposals to amend Article 23 attempted to remove the territorial barrier and establish personal jurisdiction for the colonial government in Hong Kong, similar to extraterritorial rights in Qing China.

Government and Politics in the Gambia, 1816–1866

ABSTRACT This paper explores the key features of government and politics in the Gambia from Bathurst’s foundation in 1816 to the establishment of the British West African Settlements in 1866. Drawing on both contemporary and more recent primary and secondary sources, as well as on information provided by family members of officials and merchants who worked in the Gambia, the paper focuses on two main issues. First, it builds on and develops the work of Anthony Kirk-Greene by exploring the overall characteristics of the three key groups of political actors: senior Gambian government officials; British and Eurafrican merchants and traders; and the local African community. Second, it examines the relations between these groups and how these changed over time. In the case of government officials, it also considers their relations with the Colonial Office and between one another. Where possible, comparisons are made with the other British West African colonies of the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone.

Revolution and Resistance: An Exploration of the Looping Effect in the Moluccas in 1817

Abstract This article explores three instances of the looping effect by studying colonial resistance in the Moluccas in 1817. It focuses on the relations between Dutch colonial officials and the sultan of Ternate in the North Moluccas, and between Dutch officials and the regents of Ambon in the Central Moluccas. The first instance of the looping effect revolves around how Ambonese regents, who adhered to Calvinism, used Christian principles to contest Dutch rule within the Moluccas. This became evident in 1817 when a revolt broke out against the reestablishment of Dutch rule within the Moluccas. The leaders of this revolt used religious precepts of Calvinism, previously introduced by the Dutch, to argue that the reestablishment of Dutch rule should be rejected. The article continues with a second instance of the looping effect, reconstructing how Ambonese rulers used instructions issued by the colonial state in 1818 to mitigate claims from the colonial government. Finally, a third instance of the looping effect can be perceived in how the sultan of Ternate used contracts, signed with the Dutch colonial state in 1817, to request Dutch military assistance against internal uprisings and thereby increased his authority throughout the region.

Understanding the Intellectual Approaches of the Archaeology of ‘Rōhaṇa’ from the 1840s to 1960s: A Literature Review

The archaeology of Rōhaṇa entails a focus on comprehending ‘Rōhaṇa’ from material perspectives. Originating in the mid-19th century CE, this approach evolved with diverse theoretical, methodological, and technological dimensions in alignment with the scholarly context of its time. This paper constitutes an investigation into the available sources explaining the progression of archaeological studies on Rōhaṇa from the 1840s to the 1960s, highlighting the contributions of individuals often identified as British Colonial Officers, Antiquarians, and Archaeologists. While extant research has predominantly centred on elucidating Rōhaṇa, it has overlooked an exploration of the intellectual practices of the scholars involved. Consequently, this paper aims to comprehend the intellectual approaches employed in existing scholarly works on Rōhaṇa. This study uses qualitative methods in secondary research to analyse sources such as published accounts and reports by British officers, archaeological field reports and other significant studies by local scholars. Examining the methodologies, findings, and conclusions of these selected studies reveals their collective contribution to the intellectual understanding of Rōhaṇa from a material perspective. In conclusion, antiquarian methods initially identified Rōhaṇa as the southern administrative division, with Māgama serving as its capital. Subsequently, archaeological initiatives expanded this knowledge through field methods, providing insights into regional settlement patterns. Over time, inquiries into the historicity of Rōhaṇa emerged, evolving the understanding of this region by the mid-20th century.

Thoughts on the ink: a critical discourse analysis of women’s petitions in colonial Ijebu, Nigeria (1918–1953)

ABSTRACT Petitions were a prominent platform of engagement between colonial officers and Ijebu women during the colonial period in Nigeria. Studies on Ijebu women have been silent on how lexical choices in their structured petitions against the colonial government reveal inherent contextual issues. To address this void in scholarship, this study investigates petitions in colonial Ijebu with a view to describing the connection between women, power and protest. Engaging insights from critical discourse analysis, complemented with postcolonial feminism theory, twenty petitions constituted the study population. However, eight petitions were purposively selected to describe patterns of Ijebu women’s resistance against colonial hegemony and their implications for petition discourse in Ijebu land. The study notes that petitions in colonial Ijebu are contextually imbued with lexical choices which covertly negotiate power, threat and resistance. The petitions are replete with covert negotiations of power struggles between the colonial officers and Ijebu women.

Tonga and the British Empire in the Great War: Loyalty and Neutrality

ABSTRACT The historiography of Tonga in the First World War is very sparse. It is dominated by Elizabeth Wood-Ellem’s authoritative biography of Queen Salote (Tupou III). She does not make use of the Colonial Office files stored in the British National Archives and underestimates the threat that the War posed to Tonga’s autonomy in its association with the British Empire. The Tongan government under King Tupou II and Prime Minister Tu‘ivakano felt threatened not by Germany but by Great Britain and by New Zealand. They warmly endorsed British war aims because they could identify them with the defence of small, vulnerable nations such as Belgium and Tonga. They hoped to hold London to that principle. While ostentatiously supporting the war effort, they took no measures against the large German commercial community. Tonga had, legally, to be considered neutral. London required a change in this policy in 1916. At the same time a new, inexperienced, and zealous acting consul, G.B.W. Smith-Rewse, manufactured a political crisis to force the dismissal of Tu‘ivakano and the disempowerment of the king. Wood-Ellem largely ignores this crisis, and it is now almost completely forgotten. Smith-Rewse mishandled it and was not backed by his more cautious superiors. In 1917 a substantive consul, Islay McOwan, took over and restored the close co-operation with the king, which he had established on a previous posting to Tonga. Tu‘ivakano remained prime minister, but strengthened his anti-German rhetoric, which he could now link with the statements of American as well as British aims in January 1918. The new policy survived the unexpected death of Tupou II and the succession of his totally inexperienced teenaged daughter in April 1918. This article will try to show how Tongan autonomy was strengthened by the war and how Tonga was one of the few states to profit from the ‘Wilsonian moment’.

Instrumento para identificar los factores de riesgo asociados a la deserción universitaria

Instrumento para identificar los factores de riesgo asociados a la deserción universitaria

Persecuted Colonial Gambia Chiefs

Through qualitative analysis, the paper examines the soured relationship between Gambian chiefs and their colonial masters against the backdrop of the legal implications of the disciplinary actions the latter meted out to the former. The article commenced with the theme, before addressing the legal concept of due process, which ensures fairness in the dispensation of justice. By disregarding normal standard legal procedures, the provisions of Magna Carter, and legal precedence, the colonial administrators inflicted draconian punishments on chiefs who dared think outside the box. From archival materials, colonial correspondences, and learned journal publications, the paper advanced explanations for the highhandedness of the colonialists, which degenerated into residency restrictions imposed on the chiefs. The absence of separation of administrative powers, caused by an acute shortage of European personnel, resulted in a situation whereby colonial rule in The Gambia amounted to a situation through which rule of man took precedence over the rule of law. The compelling approach resulting from the lack of collaboration among the chiefs and the colonial administrators fomented discord. The case laws cited in the paper indicate that colonialism in The Gambia remained a case of the strong exerting control over the weak, who had no option but to put up with the inevitable consequences of colonial rule. From different learned sources, instances of banishments in history and how the ancient practice was applied to The Gambia received attention with the aim of elucidating how the colonial administrators adopted legal standards which compromised fair play. With primary materials derived from The Gambia National Archive, instances of chiefs who were at loggerheads with the European colonialists was addressed hence, the objective of the paper is to ascertain the causes and nature of the soured relationship. The findings revealed why the local administrators grappled with situations that were at variance with the normal state of affairs in England. This partly account for the seemingly unorthodox tactics adopted while looking into a number of issues. Consequently, the activities of overseas colonial administrators were glossed over by the colonial office and British parliament as Gambians were perceived to be a people in need of civilization. Therefore, replicating the conditions in England in a frontier territory as The Gambıa will be tantamount to an exercise in futility, as they felt that they should be on higher rungs of the civilization ladder before they could comprehend European conditions. Why the situations obtaining in England are not applied hook line and sinker in the frontier territory was demonstrated. The chequered relationships from the perspectives of both parties was analysed leading to the concluding remarks emphasizing the overbearing approach of the colonialists caused by the lack of cooperation resulted in a bone of contention. This caused the standard of justice to depended on the equality of power to compel; and the strong did what they had the power to do while the weak accepted what was inevitable.

Bioclimatic design approach in colonial office buildings architecture in Algeria

This study investigates the interaction between climate and colonial architectural heritage, focusing on the adaptive design strategies employed in office buildings constructed during the colonial period. Utilizing a bioclimatic approach and referencing Mahony's table, the research conducts a comparative analysis between the recommendations of bioclimatic design principles and the responsive design strategies adopted by French engineers during the colonial era. The objective is to determine whether these colonial-era buildings were constructed in accordance with local climatic conditions. The findings of this study shed light on architecture that effectively responds to climate, serving as an important source of inspiration for contemporary designers. This is particularly relevant at a time when the harmonious relationship between modern architectural design and climate challenges has diminished. This research contributes to a better understanding of the integration of bioclimatic principles in colonial architecture, offering valuable insights for developing sustainable and resilient design strategies in the face of current climate changes. By re-evaluating past practices, it proposes a thorough reflection on the importance of designing buildings adapted to environmental specificities, promoting a more ecological and contextual approach to contemporary architecture.

Retaining Chinese Indentured Labour in Interwar British and French Pacific colonies

ABSTRACT British attempts to reform or close down the indentured labour system as it applied to Chinese labourers across the British empire were carried out on an ad hoc basis, one colony at a time. In the southwest Pacific islands indentured labour recruitment was retained into the 1930s and beyond. Between 1920 and 1953 thousands of Chinese workers suffered under penal clauses for labour offences and endured harsh conditions on contracts that often extended beyond five years. This article investigates the means by which colonial authorities in Hong Kong and the southwest Pacific were able to maintain the indentured labour system despite the British Colonial Office preference for abolition. It compares government correspondence, labour contracts and ordinances from Nauru under British-Australian mandate, Western Samoa under New Zealand mandate, and the Anglo-French Condominium of New Hebrides (Vanuatu). It demonstrates that Chinese indentured labourers were retained with only minor changes to their contracts, put in place for the most part so that colonial administrators could avoid national and international censure.

Exceptions to the Abolition of Chinese Indenture: Chinese workers on rubber estates in Interwar British Malaya

ABSTRACT In a 1931 report investigating the status of labourers in British colonies, the Colonial Office declared that the system of indenture had been abolished across Malaya. This claim belied the realities of labour practices on the ground. On plantations, mines and in colonial homes, Chinese workers continued to labour under formal indenture and to endure indenture-like practices well into 1930s. This article explores the slow decline of Chinese indenture in Malaya, concentrating on the rubber industry in the Unfederated Malay State of Kelantan during the interwar years. The Chinese migrant workers that were brought to Kelantan in that era signed contracts for one year with the terms of the contract enforced by colonial administrators. These workers endured poor working conditions and high death rates. Those that sought to escape faced criminal conviction and punishments including fines and incarnation. By showing the continuation of indenture in Kelantan, this article challenges the assumption made by historians that Chinese indenture had ended globally by the early 1920s. It also develops new understandings of the fragmentary and complex process of abolition.

Magahiya Doms and untouchability

Magahiya Doms have historically suffered from the double stigma of criminality and untouchability. They were notified as a Criminal Tribe in 1913 but also came to be recognised as useful for the colonial state due to their role as sweepers and scavengers. The missionaries and colonial officials attempted to order and fix the identities of communities such as these. In this paper, I discuss the concept of touch and untouchability in relation to the caste system in India. I juxtapose the idea of the body proposed by Ambedkar in Annihilation of Caste against the caste body and colonised body. Against the static and closed identity which the state attempted to bestow on the Doms, I seek to understand the body itself as processual, moving and relational. Magahiya Doms resisted colonial moves to stabilise social identities every step of the way. I also discuss the role of the colonial apparatus as a mediator that sought to impose a new order of hygiene. The colonial mechanisms of governance cut off the older ties and relational tendencies and placed themselves and their logistics as chains through which frozen identities could communicate. In this way, they partitioned off bodies and settled themselves as chains connecting the partitioned bodies. After being de-notified as a Criminal Tribe, the Magahiya Doms were categorised as a Scheduled Caste in 1952.

Anglo-German Relations in German Samoa as Reflected in German Reports from the Early Stages of World War I

Contemporary reports by German residents of Samoa to the German Colonial Office indicate that the opening stages of World War I in German Samoa played out in an atmosphere of Anglo-German camaraderie, highlighted by four developments: the petition presented by British residents of Samoa to Colonel Logan requesting that the Germans be treated with the same respect as had been accorded the British in Samoa; Logan’s invitation to all German civil servants to continue their governmental duties; the deployment of a division of New Zealand Engineers to put down the Chinese rebellion against the German plantation managers at Tapatapao; and Admiral Graf Spee’s decision on his arrival in Samoa not to pursue any hostilities against the British occupying forces.

Colonial Canal Built Environment of Multan Punjab: An Analysis of Administrative & Residential Structures

Architectural structures are mirrors of society’s standard of living, norms as well as values, especially the old architectural structures, that are not only the tangible realities rather the providers of the clues to the patterns of living and human sense of understanding including the aesthetic sense. This research aims to analyses about the residential and official built structures of colonial era Multan in this perspective. The study also explores the architectural representation, ornamentation patterns, usage of spaces, and usage of material and climatic aspects of built structures of canal department in colonial Multan. Studying the drawings of the built structures (colonial circuit offices and bungalows of Multan), photographs, original and secondary type of documents are used while analyzing the colonial architecture of canal department of Multan. Analyzing the bungalows, the question taken up is: how different styles of architecture were adopted? and why these residential and official structures were built separately away from local populated area of Multan? Although the structure was developed in the sub-continent, both in terms of form and name, yet an indigenous typology of built environment was adapted and adopted by the Europeans and Bungalows as representative element of colonial built environment were restricted to Europeans. The colonial architecture fulfilled represented the social, environmental and political requirements of administrative European and mercantile class. Among the urban centers in India, Multan was one of the most important canal center that was occupied by the British in 1849 CE. It became an important frontier cantonment station in Punjab and very soon the major canal colony district of the British India. Therefore, the study analyses an important section of colonial continuity as Multan Canal Division still is represented as the agricultural center of Pakistani Punjab and Canal built structure is still functional and used residentially, administratively and for communication and irrigation purposes..

A Decolonisation Delayed and a Case for the Local Approach

Abstract This article investigates the possibilities of the local approach in revisiting traditional historiographical narratives on the decolonisation of Guinea-Bissau, a process which has mostly been analysed from national and imperial standpoints. Drawing from local archival sources from the region of Cacheu, it argues that the transition process at the local level was rather complex, with a new administration that took time to be installed and colonial officials who assured the continuity of administrative tasks. Moreover, local sources demonstrate that the Guinean liberation movement did not have a good knowledge of the region and mobilised local structures to collect information.

Gentlemen, husbandmen, and industrious wives: The role of gender in imagining Indian agriculture

The Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India (AHSI), founded in 1820, remains the most important producer of English-language knowledge regarding the cultivation of plants in colonial India. Members included missionaries, colonial officials, tea and indigo planters, merchants and bankers, as well as the Bengali bhadralok elites of Calcutta and some Indian princes. The writings it produced were highly gendered. Often they focus on how “improving” the political economy and agricultural productivity would create masculine identities, such as gentlemen landowners and industrious peasant husbandman. Yet I also argue that women’s agricultural work was fundamental in imagining this path towards “improvement.” Using descriptions of Indian farming and labor practices from the Society’s meeting minutes and published transactions, as well as additional writings by its members and missionary founders, I show how many European members of the Society viewed women working outside of domestic pursuits as a sign of Indian inferiority. At the same time, many argued for the benefits of women’s work, which they viewed as fundamental in making Indian households more productive. Women and their labor were a lynchpin in creating the idea of the effeminate Indian man as well as the solution for improving him. It was this intersection of race with gender which helped to define agriculture as a discipline much closer to practical knowledge than abstract science. While some European women were able to participate in the Society’s production of scientific knowledge because of agriculture’s practical nature, Indian knowledge (whether from men or women) tended to be openly dismissed as tradition or habit rather than truly practical. The overlap of gender with race consequently helped to create a hierarchy between practical knowledge and tradition.

Dirty Documents and Illegible Signatures: Doctoring the Archive of British Imperialism and Decolonization.

This article uses the surviving records of the Hanslope disclosure to track the British government's efforts to censor colonial archives in the era of decolonization. As staff withdrew from colonies around the world, they were instructed to either destroy or 'migrate' to Britain large quantities of records that held sensitive, embarrassing, or potentially incriminating details about the history of British colonial administration. Some 25,000 files were eventually shipped to the UK in a program called 'Operation Legacy' where they fell into legal limbo and out of institutional memory. Millions more were burned or ditched at sea. This article pursues these archival policies as they gradually evolved from Malaya to East Africa, the Caribbean, and into the post-colonial era. In giving special attention to Operation Legacy's broader temporal and geographic sweep, this article meditates on two key points. First, while colonial officials actively learned from their colleagues in other colonies, they were forced to adapt Operation Legacy to local circumstances. The uneven application of this policy reflected the late British Empire's status as a patchwork of sovereignties in which people were governed differently. Second, while evidence is limited, officials across disparate colonial administrations were bound together by a common impulse. They sought not only to destroy and 'migrate' records but also to doctor files that could then be transferred to newly independent governments. In the end, the goal was to mask the disconnect in the archives between rhetoric and reality-of the alleged aspirations of Britain's 'civilizing mission' and its history of colonial violence, systemic racism, and other inconvenient truths.

Injustice and subaltern environmentalism: tribal ecosystem and decolonial practices in Bhoopal’s Forest, Blood & Survival: Life and Times of Komuram Bheem

ABSTRACT A commitment to engage with the structural and historical processes that result in discrimination and injustice in the utilisation of natural resources and landscapes is an epistemic responsibility that must be achieved in order to imagine a just society in which environmental justice is a feasible possibility. Indian author Bhoopal’s Forests, Blood & Survival: Life and Times of Komuram Bheem (2023), translated from Telugu by P A Kumar, is one such literary narrative that vividly portrays the injustices endured by tribal communities in India at the hands of colonial forest officers, money lenders, capitalist extractive authorities, and other oppressive authorities. In this context, the article explicates this narrative of tribal communities to demonstrate and encourage alternative viewpoints and positions of tribal cultures that may confront the dominance of colonial-capitalist logic as a monolithic framework in environmental discourse. In doing so, the first section discusses the natural environment of the tribes and their way of life, followed by an intervention on the colonial brutality and injustices that tribals have been subjected to, and finally, how their resistance is deemed to be subaltern environmentalism.