High Imperialism Research Articles

Representation of Native Crowd in Alice Perrin’s Short Stories

The paper locates Alice Perrin’s short stories within the historical and literary contexts of the British Raj period and examines the representation of native crowds in order to understand India as a site of Anglo-Indian anxieties even during the period of “high imperialism” of the British Raj. Investigating her stories through the lens of the pragmatic theories of Elias Canetti, Le Bon Gustave, William Reddy, and Ann Laura Stoler, the paper demonstrates that Perrin colludes with the British Raj by nurturing negative emotional experiences via the representation of native crowds. In other words, the paper argues that her stories had imperial functions to play in the Empire and metropolitan Britain: to arrest the interracial romance; to reiterate the imperial policy of noninterference with native beliefs; to undermine New Woman ideals; to keep the memory of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 alive; to hint at the diplomatic use of labour force; and to discourage the dissolution of class and rank hierarchy.

ROMANS AT BESA: NEW LIGHT ON AN ATHENIAN DEME IN THE IMPERIAL PERIOD

Abstract This article presents an overview of Roman citizens registered in the small Attic deme of Besa. The epigraphic record indicates that three Roman emperors—Hadrian, Commodus and Severus Alexander—were enrolled as citizens in this deme, as was the influential eastern magnate G. Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos and several men who dominated Athenian politics during the High Imperial period. We argue that Hadrian's enrolment and repeated sojourns in Athens encouraged various individuals—including two of his successors—to join this deme, but why did the emperor himself choose Besa and not a larger, more important deme in the city's civic centre? Consequently, where did he live while serving as eponymous archon of Athens in 111/112 and later during his visits to the city as emperor? By synthesizing epigraphic, literary, archaeological and environmental sources, this paper offers the first comprehensive examination of Besa and its Roman citizens, highlighting the deme's significance within imperial Athens and the broader Roman empire. Finally, it suggests avenues for further interdisciplinary research in the study of this region of south Attica.

Global Monarchy: Royal Encounters in the Age of Empire

AbstractMonarchy is one of the oldest truly global social structures. On the eve of the imperial age, most of the world was governed by monarchs. But as the European empires expanded, this order was radically transformed. During the long nineteenth century, most non-European monarchies were conquered by imperial powers. Often, European imperial powers abolished them, imprisoning, killing, or exiling local rulers; in other cases, the imperial powers incorporated the conquered monarchies into new imperial orders of indirect rule. Yet, there were some monarchies that survived Europe’s imperial expansion. In fact, every country that retained its independence in the era of high imperialism was ruled by a monarch: Ethiopia, China, Japan, the Ottoman empire, Persia (Iran), and Siam (Thailand). To some extent, these monarchs lived in the same social worlds as their European counterparts, forming a global, status-based community. This article offers some observations on the relationship between the world’s monarchs in the age of empire by focusing on encounters between European monarchs and those of the few non-European countries that retained their independence.

The Making of a Global Icon: Nefertiti’s Twentieth-Century Career

ABSTRACT The characteristic image of Nefertiti is known all over the world. Discovered in 1912 and first exhibited in 1924, her bust has turned into an icon of universal beauty that is globally recognised. How did this transformation happen, from ancient queen to modern beauty standard? How can we explain her worldwide resonance – in places like Germany and Britain, Brazil and Egypt, Bengal and the United States, places with vastly different aesthetic traditions? So far, Nefertiti’s truly planetary career has not yet been explored. This article addresses the worldwide reach of her fame for the first time. This is a story of struggles over legal ownership and restitution; it is also a story about competing beauty standards in a globalising world. But it is more: Claiming Nefertiti was about making claims on modernity. Understanding Nefertiti’s global fame, from German Egyptologists to Michael Jackson and Beyoncé, tells us much about the changing patterns of cultural globalisation, from the era of high imperialism to the neo-liberal global age.

The Small Wars Doctrine of the US Marine Corps and Colonial Experience of the European Powers

The rapid transformation of the current world order excites renewed interest of the expert community in the phenomenon of empire (as a form of the organization of political life). And since the United States plays a central role in this transformation, the history of the Pax Americana, its formation and development, both at the level of the idea and in the field of real politics is of particular relevance. The author argues that clarification of the role and significance of the colonial background in the projection of US military-political power in the late 19th — early 21st centuries allows for better understanding of the theory and practice of international relations both in the era of ‘high imperialism’ and world wars of the 20th century, and in the context of transition from global colonial empires to nuclear superpowers. It may also be instrumental in addressing the deepening contradictions between advocates of a ‘global leadership’ concept and proponents of a multipolar world during the post-Cold War period. In this regard, the paper examines the works of the US military theorists of the late 19th − first half of the 20th centuries that focused on the colonial experience of the leading European powers, as well as the experience gained from interventions involving the US Army and Marine Corps. Special emphasis is given to the concept of ‘small wars’. Building on a wide array of primary sources, presented both by the works of military experts, direct participants in various counterinsurgency operations in the colonies, as well as by the teaching materials and field manuals of the US Marine Corps, the author traces the evolution of this concept which implied establishment of external management and/or control through military and police measures. This allows the author to restore the historical genealogy of current models of internal security promoted in American foreign policy in conditions of proliferating, protracted, and increasingly hybrid civil conflicts. The author concludes that in the interwar period the US law enforcement agencies pragmatically implemented the relevant experience of global empires in Latin American countries within the framework of the Monroe Doctrine, while regarding European powers as political rivals. It is noted that conflicting imperatives of asymmetric and conventional threats to US national security urge researchers and practitioners to revisit after a post-Vietnam period of neglect the approaches of colonial empires to the conduct of small wars and to adapt them to modern conditions. The findings broaden the understanding of the modern leading powers’ approaches to internal security models transfer, as well as of its limits.

On the longevity of visual colonial stereotyping and its influence on twenty-first-century societal and identity debates

This paper engages with current societal identity debates related to select postcolonial southern African circles, whose European origins can partially be traced back to the creation of the colonial photography genre. The contemporary visualisation of non-white Africans in the European landscape is linked to a genre that was born in the times of High Imperialism. As a child of its time, colonial photography laid the foundation for both racist and racial depiction patterns of certain African peoples and what their supposed traits and looks were from the coloniser’s point of view, thereby creating seeing patterns. Until today, social debates and political movements are linked to the visualisation of non-white peoples. This project is about the historical muting of sub-Saharan Africa through stereotypical images and its links to the shaping and maintenance of postcolonial identity debates concerning racialised visualisation traditions in Europe. This repetitive visual blinding is another form of colonial aggression by constantly perpetuating certain image(rie)s and thereby facilitating colonial mentalities. Examples presented below show how far-reaching the colonial photographic stereotypes are by not limiting the scope of seeing traditions to photographs. Instead, other areas of visible everyday spaces like street names, monuments, statues, lawsuits or book covers are included.

Education among Indian Muslims. Jamia Millia Islamia's journal Payām-e taʿlīm

AbstractThe rapid changes caused by high imperialism and modernisation induced an orientation towards the future among the Indian Muslims: where was the community and the nation heading? What did the young generation need, in terms of both character and knowledge, to master the future and to shape it in such a way as to bring justice and civilisation, honour and prosperity to the country?This article aims to investigate how such important, lofty questions on education were translated into everyday pedagogical practices by looking at Payām-e taʿlīm, a journal for children that was brought out by the Jamia Millia Islamia, the nationalist Muslim university and school in Delhi, from 1926 onwards. Payām provided stories, knowledge, and ideas to students of Jamia's own primary and secondary schools, but which was also successfully aimed at a wider geographical spread.

Entangled Colonialisms between Belgium, Congo and the Amazon: The Perspective of Brazilian Diplomats in Brussels (1895-1911)

Abstract: Mention the period of high imperialism (1885-1914) and historians think of the Scramble for Africa. Yet, at the same time across the Atlantic, another scramble was reaching its pinnacle: the one for the Amazon. The partition of Africa has eclipsed the latter in historiography, thus also obliterating the connections that existed between both. This is not exceptional. Daniel Hedinger and Nadin Heé argue that many transimperial connections remain obscured due to the scholarly tendency of "nationalizing" imperial histories. What often gets lost are marginalized and in-between imperial histories. This article investigates one such case establishing connections between the African and the Amazonian scramble: the Brazilian diplomatic position on the Belgian colonization of Congo in relation to the Belgian colonial-commercial involvement in the Amazon, more specifically, in the Acre Crisis (1899-1903). I argue that Brazilian diplomatic actors in Brussels and Rio de Janeiro entangled different forms of colonialism across the Atlantic. These entanglements are important to analyze in order to understand how they shaped and altered the notion of colonial related terminology.

To Maintain or Adjust?: On the Whiteness of Swedish Men in the Congo Free State (1884–1914)

ABSTRACT During the High Imperialism era, it was not unusual that Nordic Europeans took up colonial positions in African colonies. Given the high number of Swedish citizens in the Congo Free State, this paper analyses the written and visual ego-documents of those who worked there as missionaries, soldiers, steamboat captains or traders. The presented sources include diary entries, letters and a photograph. The goal is to establish to which extent Swedish men in particular tried to maintain or adjust their status as white men and how they engaged with being part of an inherently racist colonial system that encouraged notions of white supremacy. Some questions to be addressed are to which extent ego-documents and a micro-historical approach help analyse how Swedish colonisers understood their roles and identities as representatives of white culture and how they communicated those to themselves and other audiences. To which lengths did these men go to practice whiteness when in the Congo Free State and when did so-called contact zones lead to acculturation and acceptance of local habits? How important was the sense of a white identity to them? To this purpose, a set of tools is presented that includes the analysis of private documents in combination with micro-history, whiteness and masculinity studies. Ultimately, a selection of transimperial agents and their sources shows how whiteness was more important than citizenship and how features of masculinity engaged with the former.

Inside the History Lab

For more than two hundred years the Elgin Marbles, pictured on the cover of the March 2023 issue of the American Historical Review, have been the subject of one of the longest transnational cultural disputes in the world. Named after the British aristocrat who oversaw their removal from the Parthenon in what was then Ottoman-controlled Athens, they have been in the collection of the British Museum in London since the early nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1830s, the Greek government asked the British to return the marbles. Those Greek demands have continued to the present day, but the British have been steadfast in their insistence that the marbles were legally acquired and have refused to return them. Very recently, however, a new set of high-profile negotiations between Greece and Great Britain over the Elgin Marbles may finally bring this impasse to an end.1 If the parties do reach a settlement, it would come in the wake of a transformative set of campaigns beginning in the 1970s for the cultural restitution of objects brought to Europe and the United States in and after the era of high imperialism. In Germany, Belgium, France, and the United States, several museums have returned more than a thousand looted artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. French and American museums are beginning to return stolen Khmer antiquities under pressure from the Cambodian government. Protocols have emerged in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and at the United Nations for the return of Indigenous cultural property and remains to tribes and First Nations.2

The Whore and the Madonna: The Ambivalent Positionings of Women in British Imperial Histories on Southeast Asia

This article examines how British imperial historians of the early twentieth century, the zenith of the colonial era, approached the writing of British colonial women into their histories. In the early nineteenth century, hundreds of British women went out to the British colonies in Southeast Asia, yet to date, their stories and experiences have largely been neglected by historians. In general, the nature of the imperial project, with its emphasis on masculinist values of conquest, territorial expansionism and despotic administration, left little scope for the inclusion of women’s experiences and contributions in its histories. This article focuses closely on how British historians of the period of high imperialism approached writing about two prominent women, the wives of an imperialist hero, Stamford Raffles. It shows how conventional assumptions about women were entangled with prevailing gendered ideologies, such as the madonna/whore stereotypes, which in turn were enmeshed with notions concerning Orientalism, class and race. The result was a deeply ambivalent portrayal of these colonial women, which awkwardly brought together divergent elements of sexual scandal, wifely devotion, literary achievement, delicate health, career promotion, emotional care taking and judgments about beauty. These positionings tell us more about contemporary cultural discourses than they do about the women themselves.

Lâle Can, Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire

Reviewed by: Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire by Lâle Can Eren Tasar Lâle Can. Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. Xiv + 257 pp. Paper, $25.00. ISBN: 978-1503611160 This elegant monograph marks a welcome addition to an increasingly sophisticated literature on the hajj during the era of high imperialism, that includes recent contributions by Eileen Kane, Christopher Low, John Slight, and Umar Ryad. Spiritual Subjects shares with these important works a focus on the hajj’s [End Page 358] instrumentalization by empires: Can highlights Ottoman participation in this expanding sphere of geopolitics, with a focus on the Porte’s encounter with the British and the Russians. She opens entirely new avenues of inquiry, however, by shifting our gaze toward everyday life and religion. The author fulfills her stated objective of writing a book about “ordinary people” (p. 31) that brings religion “back into analysis of hajj,” (p. 33) in large part by devoting substantial attention to reconstructing the lived reality of pilgrimage for Bukharans, Kashgaris, and other Central Asian Muslims: “Although networks are often invoked in studies of transimperial mobility and pilgrimage, historians seldom elaborate on just how they work.” One of the book’s achievements is that it offers a window into “the nature of the webs of connection and circulation, the people who animated them, [and] how they operated on a day-to-day level.” (p. 77) At the outset, the author presents hajjis as living, breathing people, by qualifying the imagery of a “decadent” fin-de-siècle Constantinople that served as a kind of Islamic analogue to Silver Age Petersburg, later popularized in novels such as Murder on the Orient Express and Kurt Seyt & Murka: a European metropolis of high-end boutiques and chamber music recitals. The author introduces the reader to a Turkestani hajji named Mirim Khan stating, “The Istanbul that Mirim Khan describes was one that many contemporary travelers and flaneurs of the upper classes would not recognize.” Instead, “in his telling it was a fundamentally Sunni Muslim space” (p. 37). Taking a cue from Mozart, Can dissects Mirim’s memoir with a view to what is being left out: “Some of the work Mirim Khan did to Islamicize Istanbul was achieved via silences” (p. 51). While happy to provide detail on the boorishness of other Central Asian pilgrims, he had little or nothing to say about the city’s large foreign and Christian populations, let alone its over-the-top cosmopolitanism. Instead, Mirim’s Istanbul presents “a point of reentry into a shared world of mosques, pan-Islamic power, shrine visitation, and relics from the Prophet” (p. 51). The upshot is that “despite being a Russian national and legal subject, he felt that he was a foreigner in most of Russia but described feeling at home and among equals in Ottoman Mecca” (p. 63). In the figure of Mirim Khan, Can illustrates the agency pilgrims enjoyed in seeing the world of the hajj on their own terms. Pilgrims such as Mirim had axes to grind, yet the results rarely inspire. Like the era’s empires, many found in the hajj more worldly opportunities. In Chapter 3, we meet a crafty Bukharan named Celal bin Hekim. After leaving his homeland in the 1860s, he settled in Jeddah and made a living helping clients avoid conscription. Perhaps sensing trouble on the horizon, Can suggests, he traveled to Istanbul in 1890 to register at the Russian Consulate. When he was arrested “for a matter involving a slave” the following year, [End Page 359] Celal claimed exemption from Ottoman law as a Russian subject. This was patent nonsense, since the Bukharan Emirate was at the time a protectorate of the Russian Empire, and its inhabitants were not Russian citizens—that Tsarist officials were “loath to recognize Bukharans as Russian nationals in the metropole-did not deter them from ignoring these differences when the subjects in question were in Ottoman lands” (p. 101). Thus, the British and Russian Empires increasingly viewed non-Ottoman hajjis as “unlikely agents of expanding European jurisdiction” (p...

A God Who Can Laugh: Aspects of Hinduism in the Works of E.M Forster and Edward Thompson

The article explores aspects of Hinduism in some writings by British writers E.M.Forster and Edward Thompson in the early twentieth century, and tries to read nuance into the Orientalist project of mapping India. Unlike some writers like Kipling who wrote in the period of high imperialism and created colonial and racial stereotypes, Forster and Thompson seem to be aware of the complexities of Hinduism, of a God who can laugh and play. This article discusses Forster and Thompson’s understanding of and views on Hinduism.

Comic Empires: Imperialism in Cartoons, Caricature, and Satirical Art

Comic Empires: Imperialism in Cartoons, Caricature, and Satirical Art

A Wine a Day …: Medical Experts and Expertise in Plutarch’s Table Talk

Abstract This contribution examines the important role that medical experts and expertise played at convivial networking events in the High Roman Empire, as imagined by a non-specialist in the field, viz. the famous Platonist intellectual Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca. 45–120 CE). An analysis of a number of medical problems discussed in his Table Talk will yield fresh insights into the social and intellectual role which doctors, as members of the educated elite, were expected to play in convivial community contexts and also how popular or common had become certain theories, concepts and beliefs relating to health and healing in the High Imperial era. At the same time, it will give a clearer idea of what was the place of medical experts and expertise in Plutarch’s intellectual programme, and how this interest ties in with his (natural) philosophical endeavours more generally.

Hidden Spaces of Empire: Italian Colonists in Nineteenth-Century Peru

Abstract Among the clichés in modern European history, one of the most common is of Italy as ‘the least of the Great Powers’, unable to punch above its weight in the international arena and classed as a ‘latecomer’ to imperial conquest. In this article, I suggest instead that historians have been looking in the wrong place, and in the wrong period, for evidence of Italian ambition. By concentrating on territorial acquisitions in Africa, they are assessing only a small, relatively unproductive and arguably atypical slice of Italy’s global presence. I argue that even before national unification, and long before acquiring a formal Empire, Italy built a global influence structured by the activities of overseas migrants. Yet, despite the recent ‘turn’ to global history and the stress on diversity in colonial experience, the chronology and geography of the European nation-state still shape our understanding of nineteenth-century Empire. Looking at the hugely successful Italian colony in Peru, at both its commercial and scientific interests and at a violent attempt to establish a settler colony in Chanchamayo, in the Peruvian Amazon, I argue that this Italian world was driven not a nation state but relied instead on a common culture, a culture that was created by a capacity for local assimilation, by Catholic notions of civilisation and by ideas of white racial superiority. Modern imperialism was shaped as much by ‘lesser’ powers, often before – or without – the nation-state, and in continuity with the practices of the early-modern period. Moreover, mundane migrants could be the most successful empire-builders. I conclude with a call to take note of the full and diverse range of nineteenth-century colonial activities, and not to assume the primacy of formal Empires in the period of ‘High Imperialism.’

Archaeological and Chemical Investigation on the High Imperial Mosaic Floor Mortars of the Domus Integrated in the Museum of Archaeology D. Diogo de Sousa, Braga, Portugal

This paper intends to characterize the floor mortar layers (nucleus, rudus and statumen) of the high imperial mosaics of the domus integrated in the Museum of Archeology D. Diogo de Sousa, the oldest roman housing testimonies known in Braga, Portugal. It offers an important archaeological and historical contextualization and first chemical characterization attempt on the mortars. The study of 13 mortar samples was carried out at a chemical level through X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF). All samples presented low lime content when compared to similar studies. A high chemical similarity between nucleus mortars (opus signinum) and chemical composition differences between rudus and statumen mortars was determined, confirmed by statistical analyses. Their composition was distinctly related to the stratigraphic position of each floor mortar layer, following Vitruvius’ model, and to the external conditions and treatments (e.g., capillary rise with soluble salts and application of chemical treatments), to which they were submitted.

Restoring Asia to the Global Moment of 1898

ABSTRACT This article explores the global moment surrounding 1898 to see the way in which the spectre of Japan was rapidly transforming the European imperial powers’ understanding of the region and revealing to them an emerging geography of political affinity then stitching together pockets of Asia. Intra-Asian connections/affinities antedated the appearance of Western interests, were sustained during the long period of Spanish rule, and infused the anti-colonial nationalist movement that culminated in the Philippine Revolution. American Empire: A Global History follows most of the traditional Philippine and American literatures on the period of high imperialism in failing to acknowledge the importance of the Asian setting. While Hopkins's move to bring the larger insular American empire into a single focus is novel and deeply important, the immediate, regional Asian setting of this moment in Philippine history – and American history – should also be restored.

(Post-)colonial Myths in German History Textbooks, 1989–2015

This article examines the evolution of textbook representations of colonialism in two North Rhine-Westphalian textbook series for the Sekundarstufe II since 1989. On the one hand, the article shows that the developing post-colonial discourse in the German public debate had a particularly strong impact on schoolbooks in the mid-2000s. Textbooks reacted quickly to changes in the public debate and have increasingly attempted to deconstruct colonial narratives. However, implicit mental conceptions of African “backwardness” continue to exert some influence even on today’s textbook generation. On the other hand, the article identifies the distortions that appear when colonialism as a global phenomenon is discussed within a curricular framework that focuses on national and European history. Because of the close curricular link between High Imperialism and World War I, textbooks strongly focus on the global rivalry of the European powers, whereas other aspects of colonialism come up short.

Parcelaciones funerarias en necrópolis cordubenses. Reflexiones a partir de dos hallazgos recientes

Este trabajo ofrece una aproximación al paisaje de las áreas funerarias cordubenses de época altoimperial, sometidas a los vaivenes propios de una ciudad viva, en expansión y contracción alternas según las épocas, y objeto más que posible de especulación supuesto el sacrificio que representaba dedicar terrenos suburbanos de enorme potencial económico a fines funerarios y el alto precio consecuente de los loci. Creemos, de hecho, haber detectado ejemplos claros de lotizaciones bien planificadas en forma de recintos y acotados reforzados de forma ocasional mediante el uso de mensurae sepulcri, que analizamos a través de dos sepulcreta especialmente significativos excavados hace solo unos años.