Commonwealth Studies Research Articles

Public health, agricultural administration, and colonial policy studies in pre-war Japan: a comparison with imperial and Commonwealth studies in Britain

ABSTRACT Tadao Yanaihara was the most prominent intellectual in pre-war Japan who worked on the study of empire and colonial policy and he seems increasingly to attract a large part of the scholarly attention in English and Japanese literatures on pre-war colonial policy studies in Japan. However, more attention should be paid to figures who belonged to preceding generations such as Shimpei Goto and Inazo Nitobe, because they played significant roles in the early establishment of colonial policy studies in Japan, to which public health and agricultural administration could be considered as central. The interactions between these figures, especially between Goto and Nitobe and between Nitobe and Yanaihara, are important factors in understanding pre-war Japanese colonial policy studies. In addition, a comparison with Britain and an examination of inter-imperial relations between Britain and Japan (particularly the influence of the former on the latter) will help enhance our understanding about characteristics of colonial policy studies in pre-war Japan. This article attempts to advance such understanding.

Economic Inequality and Rural Entrepreneurship: Polly Hill on Rural Capitalism in West Africa

The relationship between economic inequality and entrepreneurship has received the attention of scholars who have advised researchers to ‘use new data and seek new methods to study economic inequality.’ We examine a neglected source of such data and methods, Polly Hill’s The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana (1963) and Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa (1970), which stressed the agency of rural entrepreneurs. According to Hill, economic inequality is synonymous with rural tropical economies. Hill highlights inequality between richer and poorer farmers ignored by development economists. Her approach was cross-disciplinary, with an economics BA and anthropology PhD (supervised by economist Joan Robinson). She was a fellow in African Studies in Ghana and reader in Commonwealth Studies at Cambridge. In keeping with Hill’s cross-disciplinarity, this paper is jointly written by an economist and by an entrepreneurship professor.

Australian Studies at the Lodz University: Co-operation Between the British and Commonwealth Studies Department, University of Lodz, and the Australian Embassy in Poland

The article discusses the history of academic co-operation between the British and Commonwealth Studies Department at the University of Lodz and the Australian Embassy in Poland. Over the years the co-operation took the shape of a regular academic exchange and led to substantial academic, educational and cultural projects on Australia which resulted in a number of book-length studies.

POLLY HILL: CROSSING AND CONTESTING THE BOUNDARIES OF ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AFRICAN STUDIES, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES

Polly Hill spent her long, productive, and at times controversial career crossing and contesting disciplinary boundaries. She graduated in economics at Cambridge, but her doctorate was in social anthropology—with economist Joan Robinson as dissertation supervisor. Her thirteen years at the University of Ghana were initially in economics, then in African studies, and her readership at Cambridge was in Commonwealth studies. As a woman in several male-dominated academic disciplines without a secure base in any (and with distinctive, unorthodox opinions in each), she never obtained a tenure-track appointment despite ten books and fifty scholarly articles. Her books drew attention to the underrecognized agency of indigenous entrepreneurs while herDevelopment Economics on Trial: The Anthropological Case for the Prosecution(1986) critiqued a discipline, disciplinary boundaries, and outside experts, both mainstream and radical.

International Commercial Arbitration Put to the Test in the Commonwealth

The article discusses the Commonwealth Study on international commercial arbitration conducted in 2019. The importance of the availability of international commercial arbitration as a dispute resolution mechanism lies in the link between trade and the accessibility of a dispute resolution mechanism that reflects the needs of cross-border trade. Given that the Commonwealth has a unique legal and trade ecosystem the Study provides a rare opportunity to consider what a best practice modern international commercial arbitration framework should look like to encourage cross-border trade.

The Phenomenon of Clientage and the Organisation of Diplomatic Activities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century

Researchers of the sixteenth-century European diplomacy discuss diplomatic networks and daily life activities of ambassadors conditioned by the development of residential diplomacy. At the same time, historians of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth study diplomatic phenomena of a different kind since a resident mission system was not developed in Poland-Lithuania. The practice of temporary legations persisted and led to the development of distinctive features of envoys’ diplomatic activities during their missions. It also is possible to see different circumstances when looking into the question of the professionalization of Polish-Lithuanian diplomats and their personal qualities relevant to their diplomatic missions. The study of this problem reveals that, in the case of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a relatively strong patron-client relationship occurred as well as close links between the patronage system and organisation of diplomatic activities. Research into the practice of assigning envoys to diplomatic missions makes it possible to establish that almost all lower-rank envoys between the midand last decade of the sixteenth century were clients of the Radziwill family, dominating the political life of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at that time. One of the main tasks of the Radziwill clients nominated as diplomatic envoys was to supply information to their patrons. At the same time, we can also see an attempt to control diplomatic communications with foreign countries. This group of Radziwill clients, who performed various diplomatic missions, is the subject of the analysis presented in this article. I try to determine here the reasons for appointing particular clients as foreign envoys and see how their diplomatic functions influenced their future careers.

“An Archive of Loose Leaves”

This interview provides a rich account of Frank Birbalsingh’s experiences from his early life in colonial British Guiana in the early part of the twentieth century to his continuing work as a literary scholar and critic in diaspora. What is also revealed is a thoughtful critical reflection on the Caribbean, its multiplicity, and its course of change over a lifetime. The discussion also traces Birbalsingh’s migrations to India, Canada, New Zealand, and Nigeria and examines how these journeys have shaped his critical work within the fields of Commonwealth literature, postcolonial literature, and Caribbean studies, situating these shifts and movements within and against the backdrop of histories of decolonization. Birbalsingh’s early years in a plantation colony become prologue to his experience of education as a pathway to migration (a brain drain that still marks Guyanese and Caribbean experience to this day). The interviewers focus on the scholar’s career highlights and finally turn to the space that all wide-ranging departures and journeys beyond the nation encounter (regardless of emotional investments)—the place of exile and diaspora.

Voices of the Commonwealth: An Oral History of the Modern Commonwealth 1965–2012

This article describes a major exercise undertaken by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, to put together an oral history of the modern Commonwealth. The project was set in the context of a wider research agenda aimed at investigating whether the Commonwealth has made any difference globally in policy terms. As part of the exercise, the author, who was the lead researcher on the project, interviewed senior figures within the Commonwealth who played key roles in shaping the destiny of the organization and in influencing policy. The article is a personal account of the exercise.

Zoom In, Zoom Out, Change Lens: New directions in the historiography of decolonisation

Zoom In, Zoom Out, Change Lens:New directions in the historiography of decolonisation Ismay Milford Europe after Empire: Decolonization, society and culture. By Elizabeth Buettner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Cultures of decolonisation: Transnational productions and practices, 1945–70. Edited by Ruth Craggs and Claire Wintle. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. Britain, France and the decolonization of Africa: Future imperfect? Edited by Andrew W.M. Smith and Chris Jeppesen. London: UCL Press, 2017. Decolonization: A short history. By Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel (trans. Jeremiah Riemer). Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017. Historical research on decolonisation has long been plagued by a particular problem of scale. Broad syntheses and overarching conceptual frameworks are desirable, it is generally agreed, as long as they do not obscure local specificities. The problem is that those historians working on the macro scale are considered to be writing histories of decolonisation (and to be well-placed to comment on its historiography), while those carrying out research on the local specificities are considered to be writing, say, a history of mid-twentieth-century Buganda. The former can choose to incorporate the latter, but the latter can only choose whether to enter into dialogue with the grander narratives—which may or may not take heed of their potential contributions. Of course, like many of the traits that the history of decolonisation shares with colonial and imperial historiography more broadly, this is not only a methodological question, but a highly political one, laden with echoes of the power structures it seeks to understand. That is not to say, however, that it cannot have methodological solutions—to some extent at least—a fact to which some excellent publications during the last decade attest.1 These interventions have taken the shape of, firstly, studies of specific decolonisation processes, reread to challenge broad assumptions, and, secondly, histories that centre on other processes or turning points into which decolonisation enters from the margins. Their implications spill beyond their own specificities to the extent that they cannot be ignored by any historian embarking on a "global" synthesis of decolonisation. The four books under review can be understood as being part of a valuable flurry of literature produced in the wake of this intervention. As such, they share a broad interest in questions of scale and analytical lens, an interest that serves to structure the following assessment of these authors' contributions to a rapidly evolving historiographical field. Of course, each book has its own distinct historiographical agenda and explicitly responds to a range of other concerns, but this overarching interest encompasses several common questions and productive tensions that illuminate the state of the field. Some of these are now recognisable from an older literature: a problematisation of the actors and institutions (including the state) of decolonisation, and an exploration of comparisons and connections between colonising powers and between colonies. Others reflect wider disciplinary imperatives: the global and transnational turns materialise here both in the refusal to treat the empire to nation-state "shift" as historical inevitability, and in the insistence on looking outwards in order to tie decolonisation to other twentieth-century narrative threads, such as development and human rights. Others still have long scholarly roots but are now assuming renewed impetus: the unendingly contentious role of, variously, the discursive, symbolic, psychological and non-material in decolonisation. To all of these, we shall return. Of the four books under review, two are edited collections, a format intrinsically suited to the pairing of conceptual threads and specific case studies. Craggs and Wintle's volume Cultures of Decolonisation came out of a conference of the same name at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, in May 2012. The volume is explicitly interdisciplinary, including contributions from curators, architects and art historians, and seeks to consider from a transnational perspective "how culture was interwoven with imperial collapse." Smith and Jeppesen's volume Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa is the output of a 2014 conference at UCL, and is framed around the concept of the future imperfect tense in order to emphasise possibility and conditionality and in bringing to light the specificities of the late colonial shift in the entangled imperial withdrawals of two...

Introduction: Freedom of Information and the Commonwealth

In June 2012 a conference on ‘Secrecy and Disclosure: Freedom of Information and the Commonwealth’ was convened by Dr Mandy Banton and Dr Susan Williams at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Sc...

Book Review: African Struggles Today: Social Movements Since Independence, by Peter Dwyer & Leo Zeilig

Peter Dwyer & Leo Zeilig African Struggles Today: Social Movements Since Independence, Haymarket Books: Chicago, 2012; 260 pp: 9781608461202, $17 (pbk) Peter Dwyer (Ruskin College) and Leo Zeilig (Institute of Commonwealth Studies) present a history and analysis of social movements in African history. They argue that most survey texts in African studies neglect the role of grassroots social movements, tending instead to portray Africa from the perspective of political and economic elites, whether imperialist or anti-imperialist. The result is that politics is reduced to issues of 'governance', and social movements are conflated with 'civil society' (p. 4). Therefore, Dwyer and Zeilig contend that 'social movements--popular movements of the working class, the poor, and other oppressed and marginalised sections of African society--have played a central role in shaping Africa's contemporary history' (p. 1). The authors define social movements as less institutional than 'civil society' or 'interest groups', which tend to address conflicts within existing political frameworks. They argue that social movements can take an institutionalised shape, but that they are often amorphous so to coalesce briefly around a particular issue or initiative before dissolving into wider society' (p. 23). Dwyer and Zeilig therefore make sharp distinctions between subaltern, 'grassroots' movements and predominately urban and donor-dependent NGOs. The latter are often entrenched in the political mainstream and therefore unable to enact meaningful social and economic change. This is not to say that Dwyer and Zeilig discount any usefulness of mainstream NGOs; they merely argue that 'independently minded civil society activists [must] break free of donor dependency and adopt a more critical attitude to the governments they had (in part) helped bring to power (p. 130). This means engagement with grassroots organisations and trade unions. Based on this framework, they present a post-1940s history of Africa divided into three cycles of protest'. First, the post-Second World War movements for independence leading up to the mid-1960s, when most African states achieved political independence. Second, the responses to the first wave of structural adjustment programmes in the late 1970s. Third, the merging of economic grievances with demands for democratic reform in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dwyer and Zeilig acknowledge some of the limitations of 1950s and 1960s African nationalism, noting the role of the educated elite in solidifying state control and 'suffocating' independent working-class politics (p. …

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first and most appropriate acknowledgement is to Mrs Shirley Watson for giving me permission to edit the papers of her father, which I first examined in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library (then located at 28 Russell Square) in July 2005. I am so grateful to Mrs Watson for her generous hospitality in discussing her formidable father, illuminating me with family tales, beckoning memorabilia, and rare photographs, and enlightening me on several points of her father's career and life. As Jennings’ only surviving child she, along with her son, Michael Watson, and daughter, Rebecca Caine, has been gracious enough to provide me with the support I needed to complete this task without ever seeking to control it.

South Africa: how the ANC wins elections

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Note on contributorMartin Plaut is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. In this briefing, he draws on the two months he spent working at the headquarters of the Democratic Alliance in the party's media unit, in the run-up to the May 2014 election.

‘The Oriental Jennings’: An Archival Investigation into Sir Ivor Jennings' Constitutional Legacy in South Asia

AbstractThis article by Mara Malagodi investigates the legacy of British constitutionalist Sir Ivor Jennings (1903–1965) in South Asia. In 1941, when Jennings moved to Sri Lanka, a new phase of prolific writing on the laws of the British Empire and Commonwealth began for him, together with a practical engagement with constitution-making experiences in decolonising nations across Asia and Africa. The archival material relating to Jennings' work on postcolonial constitutional issues forms part of the collection of Jennings' Private Papers held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London. This article seeks to explain why this material has until now remained so under-researched.

The Ruth First Papers Project: digitising the Ruth First archive

Soon after Ruth First was murdered in 1982 an appeal went out for funds to create a Trust in Ruth's name. In the 1980s the Trust found a home for Ruth's papers and documents at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS) in London under Shula Marks' directorship. The hope was that the archive would be part of a centre that would study southern African liberation, continuing work that had been brutally cut short by Ruth's murder in Maputo. In 2012 the ICwS launched the Ruth First Papers Project, which aims to digitise the archive of Ruth's papers. A dedicated website was established where the first selection of documents has been made available for anyone (anywhere) to consult. In this brief introduction, Rockel and Mahon – researchers on the project – describe the process of selecting documents for digitisation and the experience of encountering Ruth in the archives.

Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations and Africa

Once upon a time there was a Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), who was elected into office during the Cold War era because the big powers believed he was just a humble servant to their ...

SCOLMA: A chronology of fifty years, 1962 to 2012

This is a revised and up-dated version of the chronology that originally appeared in ARD 43, 1987 at the time of SCOLMA's Silver Jubilee. It attempts record major incidents, initiatives and publications in SCOLMA's history, and includes failures and false starts as well as successes. It is accompanied by a list of those who have held office on the SCOLMA Committee.1961 Following publication of the Hayter Report (University Grants Committee. Report of the Sub-committee on Oriental, Slavonic, East European & African Studies. London, HMSO, 1961), the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Institute of Race Relations, the Overseas Development Institute and the School of Oriental and African Studies and Institute of Commonwealth Studies in the University of London jointly fund a preliminary survey ascertain what material is available in London and Oxford for the study of African affairs conducted by Miss O.B. Bertie, a freelance researcher. In December, following the completion of the survey, the Royal Institute of International Affairs calls a meeting attended by representatives from nineteen U.K. libraries with Africanist collections.1962 Foundation of SCOLMA on 2nd April: to facilitate the acquisition and preservation of library materials needed for African studies and assist in the recording and use of such materials.First issue of SCOLMA's newsletter, Library materials on (LMA) edited by Donald Simpson.1963 Publication of 1st edition of SCOLMA directory of libraries and special collections on compiled by R.L. Collison, London, SCOLMA, 1963. 122pp. covering 142 collections.Grant of £2,500 obtained from the Leverhulme Foundation allows the engagement of Miriam Alman as part-time Bibliographer work principally on compiling a list of periodicals published in Africa.1964 Publication of Theses on accepted by universities in the U.K. and Ireland, comp. Barry Bloomfield, Valerie Bloomfield and Jim Pearson. Cambridge, Heffer, 1964. x, 74pp., including 1,142 entries.Pilot scheme initiated for the co-operative purchase of publications from Nigeria using the University of Ibadan Bookshop. Ten member libraries participate.Representative of SCOLMA invited serve on the Committee of the African Studies Association of the U.K. (ASAUK)1965 Periodicals published in Africa Parts 1 & 2 issued as Supplements LMA 3(1) May 1965 and 3(2) November 1965.Discussions initiated on a possible U.K. co-operative area specialisation scheme.1966 Area Specialisation Scheme comes into operation on 1st January. Individual libraries agree assume responsibility for a particular country or discipline and make special efforts acquire current publications. Nineteen libraries participate in the country coverage and six in subject coverage.Periodicals published in Africa, Parts 3 & 4 issued as Supplements LMA 3(3) March 1966 and 4(1) July 1966.Publication of U.K. publications and theses on 1963, ed. Jim Pearson. Cambridge, Heffer, 1966. x, 94pp and U.K. publications and theses on 1964, ed. Julia Allen and Anthea Garling. Cambridge, Heffer, 1966. x, 89pp.1967 On the expiry of the Leverhulme Foundation grant, a further grant is obtained from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) for £2,250 enable the continuation of SCOLMA's bibliographical work until June 1969.Publication of U.K. publications and theses on 1965, ed. Anthea Garling, Cambridge, Heffer, 1967. x, 92pp.Publication of 2nd edition of SCOLMA directory of libraries and special collections on comp. R.L. Collison. London, Crosby Lockwood, 1967. vii, 92pp. covering 157 collections.Periodicals published in Africa Part 5 issued as Supplement LMA 4(2) January 1967.Nigerian co-operative acquisition scheme abandoned: increasingly difficult maintain local co-operation. …

Britain and the Commonwealth: Confronting the Past—Imagining the Future

This is an extended version of Philip Murphy's inaugural lecture as director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, delivered on 23 February 2011. It traces the relationship of the UK with the wider Commonwealth over 40 years, paying particular attention to the rhetoric of governments and opposition parties from Wilson and Heath to Cameron. It examines the reasons for the Commonwealth being relegated to a peripheral role in British foreign policy, especially European preoccupations and the issues of Rhodesia and South Africa. It argues that the Commonwealth remains of considerable practical and enormous symbolic importance to the UK. The British government should engage with the Commonwealth more than it has done in the recent past and the Commonwealth should be both open to and critical of its imperial past.

African voices in Imvo Zabantsundu: Literary pieces from the past

This article aims at filling in the gap identified by Opland (1998), that is, the neglect of the contribution made by newspapers to the development of Xhosa literature. In an attempt to address this problem, the article examines selected poems and articles published between 1887 and 1890 in Imvo Zabantsundu under the editorship of John Tengo Jabavu. Jabavu's biographical sketch is outlined in order to shed light on how he became involved in African journalism. Since the focal point at the time was the African vote in the Cape and its impact, the article looks at how poetry was used as a mode of expression, when people fought with pens instead of swords. The article concludes by outlining some of the lessons that can be drawn from the past regarding the development and promotion of African languages in South Africa through the newspapers. Xhosa examples cited in the article are written in the present standard orthography. The data analysed here was obtained by the author's study of past issues of Imvo Zabantsundu, which she accessed at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

The ‘postcolonial Gothic’: absent histories, present contexts1

The concept of a postcolonial Gothic has rapidly gained currency in the last few years. In addition to a special issue of the journal Gothic Studies, an edited essay collection devoted to the topic...