Colonial Issues Research Articles

The Archaeology of Capitalism in Iceland: The View from Viðey

This paper examines the particular nature of Icelandic capitalism as it emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on a recent project investigating the material processes surrounding the rise and fall of an early capitalist venture in the fishing industry, the role of commodities and their intersection with issues of colonialism and nationalism is explored. The study centers on a village community established in 1907 on an island in the bay of Reykjavik, which saw two periods of boom and bust in its short life before the village was abandoned in 1943.

Who owns knowledge? Heritage, intellectual property and access in and to the history of Antigua and Barbuda

This article traces the history of the so-called Codrington Papers, created by the Caribbean governors of the late 17th century called Christopher Codrington, father and son. Their history as a collection, repositories which hold or have held them, ownership of the physical documents, to the factual information they contain, or to their interpretation is all contested within issues of race, colonialism, politics and intellectual authority.

Barbara Ward—Lay Woman Extraordinaire

Barbara Ward—Lay Woman Extraordinaire Jean Gartlan Barbara Ward articulated the great issues of the twentieth century often with a prophetic voice. Analyzing the economic crisis of postwar Europe, she argued for a western association of nations (precursor of the European Union), and very early on her writing chronicled the facts of Soviet hostility. Her most resounding and even revolutionary contribution to socio-economic policy became her signature theme—the obligation in justice of rich nations to share with poor nations. And, again prophetically, she was one of the first international figures to speak out on the necessity of caring for the environment. She was a keen observer, often close to major political figures of her time. But most important to her enlightening and often challenging vision was her deep religious faith. Born in England in 1914 to a Catholic mother and a Quaker father her faith perspective was unusual from the beginning. Raised as a Catholic and a faithful one all of her life, her sense of justice surely had Quaker inspiration. Her upbringing was also unusual for the time in that her father insisted that she have the equivalent education of her older brother. Thus, in her teens she attended a lycee in Paris. She later studied at the Sorbonne and Oxford. My biography Barbara Ward—Her Life and Letters 1 is based on her own writings: her thirteen books, countless articles for The Economist and other publications and, importantly, her letters. The letters, deposited in the Georgetown University Archives, were written to family and close friends. Many were personal but also contain a running chronicle of her public life and her thinking on issues of the time. It is the latter which are quoted. Commentaries on some of her books are included along with boxed quotations from articles or books. Often provocative when written, many are remarkably relevant today. Although she began writing while still a student (an article while at Oxford discussed the place of women students with humor and irony), her writing career began [End Page 9] in earnest with the publication in 1938 of her first book, The International Share-out 2 that dealt with issues of colonialism. It foreshadowed her lifelong concern with developing nations. The following year she joined the staff of The Economist where she remained fulltime for eleven years but never totally severed her ties. Click for larger view View full resolution Barbara Ward, approximately 1945 when she was foreign editor of The Economist. Her first on-the-ground experience of a developing nation came in October 1952 when the Indian Government invited her and her husband, Robert Jackson, to study and assess its "five year economic plan." To this task, Robert brought administrative and development skills, and Barbara went as observer and writer. The following year Robert was appointed chairman of the Volta River Project, a hydroelectric scheme in the Gold Coast, so they would now be living in a colony on the cusp of independence. It was not an assignment they had sought, chiefly because of the difficult climate, but they went determined to do a good job. That same year I began as a volunteer with the Catholic Mission in Accra, the Gold Coast capitol. By a happy circumstance I was invited to stay with the Jacksons the first weeks I was in Accra and returned to their home from time to time during the year so I was able to get to know and observe this brilliant, yet unassuming, woman. One conversation I never forgot. At tea one afternoon she remarked that she found the "parable of the talents" one of the most frightening in scripture. I wondered why someone as accomplished as she was would even bother to reflect on the passage much less find it frightening. It was, I believe, because she was a woman of deep faith with an extraordinary capacity for profound and even unsettling insights. [End Page 10] At the time she was working on Faith and Freedom 3 which she termed "one writer's attempt to wrestle with the angel of history." It is a panoramic view of human history, from ancient times to the present, an account of human...

Australia and the Indonesian Independence

Immediately after World War II, the Indonesian nationalists declared the independence of Indonesia and staunchly opposed the return of the Dutch to the Netherlands East Indies. The Australian Labor government took the position to support the Indonesian nationalist instead of the Dutch. This position was taken based on the rights of self-government for the dependent peoples enshrined in the United Nations Charter and championed by Australia. Besides Australia’s idealism on the colonial issue, the concern for political development in Indonesia was also based on the growing awareness of the consequences this issue might pose to Australian security. Australia’s support for Indonesia put Australia in a different position with the United States and Britain as both countries supported the Dutch. Australia worked hard to settle the ‘crisis’ in Indonesia and brought the Indonesian-Dutch disputes to the United Nations Security Council even it against the US advise. The period of August 1945 to October 1949 clearly showed that Australia’s independence in making decision on its foreign policy away from the influence of the American and British policy in Southeast Asia. The short-lived independence in foreign policy was overturned in late 1949 with the formation of the new Australian government by the Liberal-Country Party.

A Critical-Stylistic Study Of Mind Style And Characterisation In Buchi Emecheta’s "The Joys Of Motherhood"

Although much research has gone into Buchi Emecheta’s literary art, hardly has any statements being made about the situation of mind style in her works. This study, however, considers the critical –stylistic value of mind style in the characterisation of Nnu Ego in Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood. It reveals the author’s deployment of emotive lexis, figurative language, and conversation to depict Nnu Ego’s world of naiveties, selfcontradictions, failures, and frustrations, all adding up to the character’s odd conceptualisation of reality. I claim that Nnu Ego’s portrayal, has, additionally, been used to interrogate feminist, colonial, and classist issues, albeit on a relatively small scale. Keywords : mind style, stylistics, lexicalisation, feminism, colonialism, Buchi Emecheta

Dutch Neutrality in the Pacific: A Dead Letter

The international disarmament debate of the 1920s provided an important opportunity for the Netherlands to raise the international profile of its colonial interests. This paper examines how Dutch participants in the disarmament debate combined the long-lived Dutch principle of neutrality with the different geopolitical situation of the Dutch East Indies. It shows that (1) Dutch delegates did not strictly interpret and apply the principle of neutrality to their colony in the Pacific. This seems contrary to (2) the Dutch perception that the position in Europe was almost identical to the situation in the Pacific. The little attention paid to these different interests in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies arguably developed from (3) a surprising naivety and provincialism concerning the geopolitical position of the Dutch East Indies. These three related conclusions illustrate the unfortunate composition of the delegations to the disarmament negotiations and the ignorance with which the Foreign Ministry intervened in colonial issues, arguably also indicating that Dutch colonial external relations and defence policy were ill-defined and not effectively adapted to the Pacific context.

“They Have Invaded the Whole River”: Boundary Negotiations in Anglo-Dutch Colonial Discourse

This article argues that boundary contestations between competing colonial powers in seventeenth-century North America need to be understood within a global context. Focusing on Dutch and English colonial and metropolitan writings of the mid-seventeenth century, the article outlines a shift in the way territory was understood by the two competing nations. Colonial powers had originally relied on fixed national traditions to justify their acquisition of colonial territory across the globe; yet, by the mid-seventeenth century colonial powers relied increasingly on an emerging legally codified system to describe territory. By situating Dutch and English colonial and metropolitan writings about intercolonial boundary disputes in North America within the context of both national traditional and emerging international legal systems of territory, the article links seemingly local colonial issues to a global network spanning multiple metropolitan centers and colonial peripheries.

German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship, by Suzanne L. Marchand * German Orientalism: The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945, by Ursula Wokoeck

Edward Said taught readers of French and English scholarship and literature to appreciate numerous assumptions about the East they had previously made unthinkingly. Said's notorious neglect of German Orientalism—as insufficiently determined by colonialism—has unintentionally fertilised research in this area too. Marchand deals with scholarly debates at an often quite technical level; Wokoeck looks at academic institutions and careers. Theology is central to both volumes, as is the now undeniable fact that Germany produced an influential Orientalist tradition with very little inspiration from colonial politics. In this way Said's ‘knowledge = power’ equation is played down (e.g. Marchand, p. 19). Marchand tells a chronological story, starting from the universalising horizons of Romanticism and the dominance of early nineteenth-century Philhellenism. In the mid-century period, a philological spirit overcame Oriental studies, to be followed by the ‘Second Oriental Renaissance’ dominated by giants such as Theodor Nöldeke and Julius Wellhausen, who cultivated Arabic and Islamic studies alongside the better-established studies of the Old Testament and ancient Near East. At the century's turn, Orientalism was increasingly asserting itself in what Marchand calls a ‘furor Orientalis’. The New Testament now achieved its own contextualisation against a background of Judaism and Oriental religions—the origin of an important strand in late antique studies. Racist theories on Aryans and Semites proliferated, along with contemporary imperial and colonial issues. Study of art became acceptable, museums increased in number and size, travel became more common, and Orientalists engaged with native intellectuals. An epilogue touches on Weimar, Nazism and the feeble contribution of Oriental studies to post-war multicultural thinking.

The Postcolonial Mainstream

In a review essay for this journal back in 2004, Malini Johar Schueller declared “that the suitability of postcolonial theory to the study of US culture should no longer be a subject of debate” (162). Arguing that “the period of critical isolationism and exceptionalism in American studies is over” (173), Schueller suggested how “the emergent field of postcolonial American studies” (164) was demonstrating “how US cultural history has always been a contradictory set of narratives with an endless entanglement of imperial and colonial experiences, and native resistances” (171). As she observed, the conceptual lines of battle in this theoretical debate were clear enough, with critics who wished to place more emphasis on American engagement with colonial issues—Peter Hulme, Edward Watts, and others—being countered by those who clung in some form to the old tenets of US exceptionalism, whose ethos of republican freedom claimed a special exemption for the nation from imperialist models. This dynamic was complicated by what Jeanne Boydston has described recently as the “doggedly antitheoretical” mindset of many early American cultural historians, who, even when dealing specifically with the colonial period, “still grumble that postcolonial methods offer little more than an esoteric vocabulary and tortured syntax” (1223). No academic method can ever be a universal panacea, of course, but the task now, six years after Schueller’s review essay, is not so much to justify the idea of postcolonial American studies in abstract terms but, rather, to consider what difference such an approach has made, and might make in the future, to the broader Americanist field. As this theoretical strategy has become more academically mainstream, both the risks and the benefits associated with the rotation of American literary scholarship on a postcolonial axis have come more clearly into view.

Early Intimations of Colonialism in the 17th century: William Shakespeare’s Othello and The Tempest, John Fletcher’s The Island Princess, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko

Intimations of Colonialism in the 17th century: William Shakespeare's Othello and The Tempest, John Fletcher's The Island Princess , Aphra Behn's Oroonoko Hilal Kaya Middle East Technical University ABSTRACT Early Intimations of Colonialism in the 17th century: Shakespeare's Othello and The Tempest , Fletcher's The Island Princess , and Behn's Oroonoko analyses the issues of colonialism and their reflections on the literary works of the period. Literary texts displaying travels' and colonialism's influences on literature will be highlighted. Therefore, the importance and purpose of colonialism will be studied through Shakespeare's Othello , The Tempest , Fletcher's The Island Princess , and Behn's Oroonoko . Moreover, the relationships between knowing ‘others' and gaining ‘knowledge'/‘power' will be studied. Moreover, the study will attempt to prove that these above-mentioned seventeenth-century literary texts reflected upon contemporary English political issues and controversies in terms of attaining power.

Japan's Power Shift and Its DPRK Policy

Many serious issues exist between Japan and North Korea (DPRK), such as nuclear, missile, abduction, and colonial issues. Progress on their resolution has been limited. Consequently, the two countries have remained unfriendly neighbors. Their relations recently deteriorated as a result of the DPRK's satellite launch and its second nuclear test in the first half of 2009, and Japan's strong response to them. In the middle of this period of significant tension, in August 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a landslide victory in the lower house elections, ending the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) over the last half a century. This political sea change in Japan has not resulted in major improvements in the Japan–DPRK relations. Yet, the DPJ's stance toward the DPRK's military threat and the Japan–US alliance is different from that of the LDP. So far, the DPJ has opted to avoid following in the LDP's footsteps of strengthening the alliance and expanding Japan's military operations in response to the DPRK's military threat. Instead, it intends to increase Japan's independence from the USA, and reduce US military presence in Japan. Given such intentions, the DPJ seems willing to improve Japan's relations with the DPRK. The question is whether its willingness will be translated into real actions to bring about major improvements.

Towards a Socio-Political History of Archaeology in the Middle East: The Development of Archaeological Practice and Its Impacts on Local Communities in Syria

No longer is Archaeology regarded as a neutral or a purely scientific discipline, but as a process influenced by the aims of its practitioners, who are, in turn, deeply affected by contemporary intellectual, social and political agendas. As well, research undertaken on archaeological practice in non-western settings, that is closely related to colonial issues, has highlighted how archaeology could be a tool of scientific, cultural, political and socio-economic domination (e.g. Diaz-Andreu 2007; Kane 2003; Silberman 1989; Trigger 1984).

Early American Literature and American Literary History at the "Hemispheric Turn"

As several contributors to this issue have noted, the field of early American literary studies was born with the “Puritan origins” model in which the significance of early American (particularly Puritan New England’s) literary and cultural productions was often appreciated mainly in terms of what they contributed to the later national (literary) culture of the US during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During the 1990s, however, early Americanists issued their “declaration of independence” from the literary history of the American nation-state, objecting that the proto-nationalist paradigm is anachronistic and had done a disservice to a full appreciation of the rich and diverse cultural productions of the colonial Americas, which included not only geographical and cultural areas outside Puritan New England (such as Catholic Maryland) but also geographical areas not now part of the US (such as the Caribbean or Canada). One of the ironies of this declaration of independence from the proto-nationalist “origins” model, however, has been that early American literature has once again become British. Early Americanists have redefined their field as the “literature of British America,” engaging in more and more dialogue with their colleagues, not in American but rather in English Renaissance and eighteenth-century studies, while their colleagues in these fields, inspired by the postcolonial studies movement, have been interested in issues of empire and colonialism. Although the rejection of the “origins” model in early American literary studies has greatly energized the field and its

Nurses Across Borders: Foregrounding International Migration in Nursing History

Although the international migration of nurses has played a formative role in increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of the health care labor force, nursing historians have paid very little attention to the theme of international migration and the experiences of foreign-trained nurses, A focus on international migration complements two new approaches in nursing history: the agenda to internationalize its frameworks, and the call to move away from "great women, great events" and toward the experiences of "ordinary" nurses. This article undertakes a close reading of the life and work of Filipino American nurse Ines Cayaban to reconceptualize nursing biography in an international framework that is attentive to issues of migration, race, gender, and colonialism. It was a Hannah keynote lecture delivered by the author on June 5, 2008, as part of the CAHN/ACHN (Canadian Association for the History of Nursing/Association Canadienne pour l'Histoire du Nursing) International Nursing History Conference.

Dionne Brand and Alanis Obomsawin: polyphony in the poetics of resistance

Activist artists Dionne Brand and Alanis Obomsawin have much in common in their poetics of resistance. Brand's writings and documentaries explore issues of displacement, race, gender, and colonialism, revealing a constant determination in giving voice to what was silenced or marginalized by the dominant culture. Similarly, Obomsawin's documentaries show a long commitment to the history of aboriginal people, reclaiming their sovereignty of voice. Making use of polyphony, these two artists contest hegemonic discourses and a nationalist aesthetic that either ignores or appropriates difference. This study discusses the implications of polyphony in Brand's poetry and two documentaries, Sisters in the Struggle and Long Time Comin', and in Obomsawin's documentaries, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance and Rocks at Whiskey Trench. All evidences demonstrate fine specimens of applied poetics, faithful to their ethics of resistance.

WASHING DIRTY LINEN IN PUBLIC

The Edwardian years saw a range of dominion and colonial issues brought to the forefront of public attention by the British press, with the doyens of Fleet Street taking an active part in shaping the popular debate. This paper analyses the agency of the press in the imperial dramas involving the Indian empire, focusing upon leading aspects of the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon. It provides, for the first time, an in-depth study of the national press coverage and its role in the controversy surrounding the downfall and resignation of Curzon in 1905, thereby shedding new light on media perceptions within the metropolis, and detailing the engagement of officials in press manipulation and propaganda. It is contended that it was the domestic context, and the consequences of attacking Curzon in public at Home, along with his failure to mount a successful defence, that were instrumental, though often overlooked, factors in determining his fate.

African film and literature: adapting violence to the screen

Analyzing a range of South African and West African films inspired by African and non-African literature, Lindiwe Dovey identifies a specific trend in contemporary African filmmaking-one in which filmmakers are using the embodied audiovisual medium of film to offer a critique of physical and psychological violence. Against a detailed history of the medium's savage introduction and exploitation by colonial powers in two very different African contexts, Dovey examines the complex ways in which African filmmakers are preserving, mediating, and critiquing their own cultures while seeking a united vision of the future. More than merely representing socio-cultural realities in Africa, these films engage with issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, updating both the history and the literature they adapt to address contemporary audiences in Africa and elsewhere. Through this deliberate and radical re-historicization of texts and realities, Dovey argues that African filmmakers have developed a method of filmmaking that is altogether distinct from European and American forms of adaptation.

Africa's 'agitators': militant anti-colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918-1939

The period between the two World Wars were troubling years for colonial empire. Individuals and organizations called for major reforms and an end to white supremacy and colonial rule, contributing first to local unrest and protest and then to anticolonial activity not only in Africa but the United States and Europe as well. In this compelling history, Jonathan Derrick recounts the opposition to British and French rule practised both by Africans living on the continent and by European anticolonialists and members of the Black Diaspora. He covers campaigns waged by an early incarnation of the ANC and other groups in South Africa who fought against legal and other aspects of white minority rule. He also analyses the Kikuyu protests against the settler regime in Kenya; Marcus Garvey's African American movement and its role in sparking interest in Africa; the Etoile Nord Africaine, formed mainly by Algerians in France, that called for the independence of French North Africa; protests led by European critics against forced labor in Kenya and French Equatorial Africa; and the activity of small militant groups like the Ligue de Defense de la Race Negre (LDRN) in France and George Padmore's International African Service Bureau (IASB) in Britain. Derrick also examines the role of the Comintern and Western Communist parties that were opposed to Western colonialism and ready to support militant action against it. He shows that, although colonial rulers greatly feared the specter of Communism in Africa, actual Communist activity was in fact quite small. The onset of the Second World War pushed colonial issues to the background, but as Derrick argues, in the long term the anticolonialists of the interwar era helped pave the way for later decolonisation.

Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity (review)

Reviewed by: Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity K. Scott Wong Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity. By Paul Spickard. New York: Routledge, 2007. 744 pp. $95.00 (cloth); $39.95 (paper). With this book, Paul Spickard has produced the best single-volume study of American immigration history available today. Using the latest scholarship in a variety of overlapping fields, Spickard provides both an overview of immigration history from initial contact to the present and a revision of the standard approach to American immigration history, the East Coast–based model of European arrival and eventual assimilation. Instead, Spickard provides three models that can be used to interpret the history of immigration, race, and ethnicity in American society: the immigrant assimilation model, the transnational diasporic model, and the panethnic formation model. In each of these models, Spickard points out that "race" and "race-making" are vital to the understanding of how we interpret immigrants and their experience in the United States, while also paying attention to the impact of American colonialism on why and how certain immigrants arrive at our shores. In other words, Spickard rejects the time-worn model of American immigration history as mainly the story of Europeans who came here willingly and eventually discarded their foreignness to become "Americans." By insisting that immigration history take the issues of slavery, racism, exclusion, and colonialism seriously, Spickard paints a much more complex and truthful portrait of the making of America. At the heart of Spickard's approach to studying American immigration history is his insistence that we depart from the notion that immigration history is primarily about Europeans coming to America, and that "American" denotes an "Anglo-conformity" or "Anglo-normativity." Spickard's first challenge to the older paradigms of immigration history is to present a well-argued chapter that depicts the many indigenous groups living in North America when Europeans first arrived. Using a wide array of photographs, maps, and charts, he clearly demonstrates the diversity of the native population during the pre-Columbian period. (The entire book is graced with a wonderful selection of visuals and information-packed charts and tables.) Once establishing that European, and later Asian, immigrants or settlers did not arrive to a "virgin land," Spickard moves to a discussion of slavery and how it affected the construction of race and racism in America. From there, he explains how naturalization legislation favored white males, thus disenfranchising women, blacks, Native Americans, and Asians. At the same time, immigration from Great Britain, Ireland, and northern [End Page 282] Europe created a society that privileged whiteness, which in turn held nonwhite newcomers or those already in the country in contempt. In addition to blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and Mexicans, many Americans held disparaging views of those whom they encountered through conquest, such as Hawaiians and Filipinos, while bringing them under American colonial rule. At the same time, immigrants were arriving from China and Japan, causing more turmoil to the American conception of racial hierarchies. Spickard deftly ties these racial and class tensions to the rise of American capitalism and the conflicts between race, labor, and management. The racial and class conflicts gave rise to exclusionary legislation and the codification of whiteness as the basis for citizenship. In the course of this discussion, he covers the exclusion of Chinese and other Asian immigrants, the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, which created national quotas for all sending countries and declared that those who were ineligible for citizenship could not immigrate. This law drastically reduced the number of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe because of their countries' low annual quotas for immigrants and nearly eliminated all immigration from Asia because they were ineligible for naturalization. Hence, as Spickard points out, by the first third of the twentieth century, the racial hierarchy that determined citizenship and who could become an American was "cemented" through law and exclusionary practices. The cracks in this cement, however, began to show with the impact of World War II. Japanese Americans were rounded up and incarcerated for the duration of the war, but Mexicans were recruited to fill the labor shortage resulting from...

Sinking One's Teeth into Mariama Bâ'sSo Long a Letter: Lessons of Cadmus

Because the myth of Cadmus makes striking use of the image of teeth and involves the issue of foreign cultural penetration, it offers a productive van- tage point from which to view So Long a Letter, for the latter too pays distinc- tive attention to teeth and of course to the issue of colonialism. This article takes the myth as a point of departure in order to highlight the narrator Ramatoulaye's unacknowledged inconsistencies and conflicts both in the cultural and emotional domains. This allows for an increased appreciation of the text's subtleties in characterization, narration, and genre classifica - tion, and it adds to questions about Ramatoulaye's narrative reliability and about too facile an interpretation of this novel's progressive inspiration.