Imposition Of British Rule Research Articles

“As fine a body of men”: how the Canadian Mountie brought law and order to the memory of the Australian frontier

Primary amongst the legal instruments that would implement British law across Britain's Empire were colonial mounted police forces, and one of their shared purposes was to ensure Aboriginal people's compliance to colonial rule. Although the land wars that accompanied the imposition of British rule are an integral part of national historical memory in some parts of the “British west”, Australia and Canada have always been framed by national foundational narratives of peaceful settlement through the rule of law. This article will compare the history and historical memory of colonial mounted police forces in Australia and Canada in relation to their role in subduing Aboriginal resistance to colonial sovereignty. While by the late nineteenth century the operations of Australia's colonial mounted police forces had achieved little purchase in a foundational story of developing Australian nationhood, over the first decades of the twentieth century, the omnipresent image of the Mountie as the foundational figure of Canadian nationhood not only helped to shape a parallel Australian story of a “fine body of men” who brought law and order to Australia's frontiers, but also served both to obscure and to justify the violence in Australia's policing history against Aboriginal people.

Liminal Loyalties: Ottomanism and Palestinian Responses to the Turkish War of Independence, 1919-22

The imposition of British rule in Palestine following World War I did not immediately supplant one imperial system with another or Ottoman identities with national ones. Examining Palestinian responses to the Turkish war of independence, this article argues that the 1917-22 period should be seen as a “liminal” era suspended between imperial systems. Both Kemalists and Palestinians employed a discourse of loyalty to the Ottoman dynasty, Muslim identity, and resistance to European rule to frame their goals. It was only after the creation of the Turkish Republic and the promulgation of the British Mandate, the author argues, that nationalist identities displaced Ottoman ones for both Turks and Palestinians.

Dutch and Afrikaans as post-pluricentric languages

The relationship between Afrikaans and Dutch cannot be captured adequately by the construct of pluricentrism. However, to deny a connection of a similar kind would leave aspects of the historical and current relationship unaccounted for. In comparison to typical pluricentric relations, such as those between metropolitan and postcolonial Englishes, Afrikaans shows more differences from Dutch. This is because there were more non-native speakers contributing directly to the formation of the language, and contact between the colony and metropolis was less extensive, being eventually completely severed with the imposition of British rule on the Cape colony. It took longer for a colonial dialect to stabilise, by which time the Dutch normative reference point was removed. When Afrikaans gained linguistic independence in the early 20th century, a nationalistic agenda also militated against substantial reliance on Dutch as a reference point. However, after linguistic independence, a post-pluricentric relationship emerged, where a new appreciation for Dutch as the source of spelling and vocabulary norms assisted the standardization of Afrikaans. Furthermore, externally reciprocal relations still continue to appear in domains such as literature, and even marketing, signalling an underlying symbolic value. At present, signs of renewed approaches are emerging, although these are unlikely to influence language-internal development.

The influenza pandemic of 1918–19 and the spread of cassava cultivation on the lower Niger: a study in historical linkages

A. G. Hopkins has observed that where new plants and seeds were adopted it was because they were seen as useful additions to the existing range of foods, or because they were regarded as good substitutes to the crops they displaced. This view is confirmed by a close study of the changing food patterns on the Lower Niger since 1520. Prior to 1919, cassava was hardly cultivated on the Lower Niger even though it was widely grown in the neighbouring Niger Delta. This was essentially because the people of the Lower Niger did not consider cassava as a good substitute for yams. However, after 1900 the Lower Niger became the scene of wars of resistance against the imposition of British rule. These wars not only resulted in a constant disruption of the agricultural activities of the local people, they also caused food shortages. The situation was worsened by the First World War and by the pandemic of influenza of 1918–19 which drained the nation's productive capacity and caused an unprecedented food scarcity. Under the circumstances, the people of the Lower Niger were constrained to accept cassava, at least as a supplement to the dwindling stocks of food. And as soon as it was realized that the new crop enjoyed a number of advantages over yams, its cultivation rapidly spread to all parts of the Lower Niger where it began to threaten the older staples. The speed with which this innovation was adapted clearly points to the degree of the food crisis that accompanied the pandemic influenza of 1918–19.