Period Of Colonial Rule Research Articles

The Spell of Oral History: A Case Study from Northern Igboland

My case study is taken from the northern Igbo of Nigeria and focuses on the village-group of Ihuwe, which name is today rendered as Ihube— thanks to its Anglicization during the period of colonial rule. This not-withstanding, the people still call themselves “Ihuwe,” the form I use in this paper. The Northern Igbo area, especially the area around Awka, Orlu, and Okigwe, is commonly regarded as the heartland of Igbo culture and civilization. Ihuwe, in that portion of old Okigwe Division known today as Okigwe Local Government Area (LGA), lies in a region of southern Nigeria that has been identified as having witnessed human activity from very early times, at least from the period of Acheulean culture. It also lies on the geographically and historically prominent Nsukka-Udi-Okigwe cuesta, which archeology tells us entered the Iron Age quite early in African history, no later than about the eighth century BCE. We are thus dealing with one of the areas of ancient human occupation, as well as an area known for its dense demographic profile. It is these features–early human settlement and occupation with its attendant consequence of severely attenuated oral history, dense demographic profile, and being the cradle land of Igbo culture—that help to define the Northern Igbo and mark them out from the Western, Eastern, Southern, and North-Eastern Igbo, believed to be relatively more recent descendants from them.Perhaps another feature that calls for mention here is their political culture. Although, like their other Igbo kinsmen, they could boast of having evolved only micro-, and therefore weak, states (what social anthropologists of the colonial period refused to refer to as states), they had their own special model of these micro-states.

The Making and Evolution of the Buenos Aires Economic Elite in the Nineteenth Century: The Example of the Senillosas

The Making and Evolution of the Buenos Aires Economic Elite in the Nineteenth Century: The Example of the Senillosas

Teaching the History of Architecture in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco: Colonialism, Independence, and Globalization

The teaching of architectural history in North Africa is closely linked to the history of French colonization in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. It was only during the period of colonial rule that architecture was first taught in these countries, and architectural education varied according to the approach the colonizing power adopted in each case. Through a succession of reforms, the educational system was transformed from an exogenous, imported one into an endogenous one, in an effort to respond to the cultural and historical realities of each country. However, the cultural identity born of a long history shared by the three countries led to the convergence of the three systems toward similar objectives, focusing ultimately on the same concerns.' The French conquest of Algeria in 1830 was followed by a systematic annexation that divided the new territory into departments, or administrative divisions, of France. All actions by the new settlers were long-term imperial investments intended to turn the region into a fully integrated part of France on all levels-social, political, economic, and cultural. Cultural differences were not considered instrumental to development, with the assumption that the French civilizing mission would eventually overpower local cultures. The traditional educational system was consequently abandoned, and the Arabic language was relegated to a secondary status and eventually taught as a foreign language, of far less importance than English, German, Italian, or Spanish. With notable exceptions, indigenous youth who had access to schools were discouraged from pursuing higher education; hence, their chances of reaching management or decision-making jobs in the administrative and economic structure tailor-made for the new settlers was restricted.

The Politics of the Forest in Colonial Malaya

The notion that tribal peoples are destructive of the forest environment is not a new one. The political struggles that fostered it are only just beginning to engage the attention of historians. This essay is a preliminary exploration of the experience of the indigenous minorities—the Orang Asli—of peninsular Malaysia during the period of colonial rule. It examines their relationship to the society outside the forest. The politics of the forest it addresses are not narrowly environmental. Indeed, what follows is based on the assumption that the relationship of the aborigines to their environment was transformed, not so much by the changing ecological conditions of the forest as the colonial economy expanded, but by the changing political circumstances of the frontier as the Orang Asli were drawn into a widening orbit of relations with external powers. ‘Orang Asli’ means literally ‘original people’. It is a polite term that took on a legal status from the 1950s. Before then, in common parlance, the aborigines were ‘Sakai‘—a derogatory term synonymous with ‘slave’. The term Orang Asli encompasses three basic types of communities: the Negritos, nomadic hunters and gatherers of the northern forests; the Senoi —whose two main subdivisions, the Temiar and the Semai, together make up the larger part of the Orang Asli population of the central highlands, following more settled forms of swidden agriculture; and the proto-Malays of the south, fishermen and cultivators with a more similar economy to neighbouring Malays.1Their shared history has become an issue of great sensitivity in modern Malaysia, and Malaysian politicians have in recent years bitterly questioned the legitimacy of western criticism of the present circumstances of the Orang Asli. To explain why this is so, I want to examine the preoccupations of British administration during the period when it was trustee of the forests of the peninsula and directly responsible for the welfare of their inhabitants. Three themes dominate the discussion that follows.

Finding a Truer Form: Rawle Gibbons's Carnival Play I, Lawah

The development of so-called ‘Carnival theatre’ in the Anglophone Caribbean has been steady and important. Rawle Gibbons, a young dramatist/director presently heading the recently established Creative Arts Centre at the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies in his native Trinidad, has learned to utilize ritual and festival in his playwriting in increasingly effective ways. I, Lawah is his latest play, and in it he articulates, in theatrical form, a belief in the importance of Caribbean tradition as a revitalizing, invigorating element for the community after the enervating period of colonial rule and the ever-present threat of neocolonial inertia taking its place.

Religious Change Among the Igbo During the Colonial Period

The study of religious change among the Igbo during the colonial era has suffered from two major problems. The first is inadequate awareness on the part of scholars of the nature and strength of Igbo traditional religion. The second is overdependence on the archives of the missionaries in Europe to the neglect of oral evidence in the field. The result of all this is that the degree of religious change among the Igbo during the period of colonial rule has not been satisfactorily demonstrated. After many years of encounter with Igbo religion Christianity spread rapidly. This break-through has been mistaken for intensive christianization. Using oral sources for the most part this article wishes to show that the dominant note in the religious change among the Igbo was adaption and accommodation. It also contends that during the period under consideration traditional religion still ruled the minds of most Igbo to a greater extent than has generally been realized, notwithstanding outward manifestations to the contrary. But what was Igbo traditional religion all about?

Photography in Sierra Leone, 1850–1918

Opening ParagraphIn recent years scholars have shown considerable interest in the early use of photography by non-Western peoples. Research on nineteenth-century Indian, Japanese and Chinese photography has revealed a rich synthesis of European and Asian imagery. These early photographs show how non-Western peoples created new forms of artistic expression by adapting European technology and visual idioms for their own purposes. Because of the long history of contact between Sierra Leoneans and Europeans, Freetown seemed a logical starting point for similar photographic research in West Africa. The information presented here is based on ten years of searching for nineteenth-century photographs made by Sierra Leonean photographers. To locate these pictures, I have visited Freetonians and viewed their family portraits and photograph albums, interviewed contemporary photographers throughout Sierra Leone, and researched in the various colonial archives in England to locate photographs preserved from the period of colonial rule. I have discovered that a community of African photographers has worked in the city of Freetown since the very invention of photography. The article reviews the first phase of this unique photographic tradition, 1850–1918, and focuses on several of the African photographers who worked in Freetown during this period.

V. Problems of Comparison: Colonial India and Indonesia in the Nineteenth Century

On the face of it, there ought to be many similarities between the heyday of imperialism in South and Southeast Asia. Both areas, it can be said, experienced a long period of colonial rule, and in both cases the European regimes grew out of the enterprise of small trading companies who had ventured to the Indian Ocean area in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in search of exotic items for trade. In both cases the subsequent history proves something of a surprise, for who could have foretold that a quest for the odd shipload of spices or of cotton cloth would lead, quite unexpectedly, to very small North European nations establishing dominion over very large and populous areas of Asia. In both cases, the English and the Dutch only gradually became involved in the acquisition of territory in Asia, and their involvement owed less to an aggressive assertion of superior European economic and technological might than to an insidious and creeping entanglement with the indigenous governments they found established. However, in retrospect, as the traditional historiography has it, the English in India and the Dutch in Indonesia became more and more involved in local politics and moved implacably from trade to rule. With the shift in emphasis came new imperial politics. The emphasis which had once been limited to securing tropical products and commodities for resale in Europe, switched t o broader concerns of economic development. Imperial governments were always expected to cover their own costs, and what underlay their activities were attempts to integrate colonial and home economies and to make them complementary to each other.

Religious Change Among the Igbo During the Colonial Period

The study of religious change among the Igbo during the colonial era has suffered from two major problems. The first is inadequate awareness on the part of scholars of the nature and strength of Igbo traditional religion. The second is overdependence on the archives of the missionaries in Europe to the neglect of oral evidence in the field. The result of all this is that the degree of religious change among the Igbo during the period of colonial rule has not been satisfactorily demonstrated. After many years of encounter with Igbo religion Christianity spread rapidly. This break-through has been mistaken for intensive christianization. Using oral sources for the most part this article wishes to show that the dominant note in the religious change among the Igbo was adaption and accommodation. It also contends that during the period under consideration traditional religion still ruled the minds of most Igbo to a greater extent than has generally been realized, notwithstanding outward manifestations to the contrary. But what was Igbo traditional religion all about?

Stock theft and moral economy in colonial Kenya

Opening ParagraphFrom the earliest years of colonial government in Kenya, cattle raiding by Africans against their neighbours, and in particular livestock thefts from European farmers, presented the administration with their most persistent policing problem in the rural areas of the colony. As the period of colonial rule in Kenya was drawing to a close, reported cases of stock theft were once again showing a sharp increase, climbing from 1578 cases in 1955 to 4243 in 1962 (Kenya Police Dept, 1955 and 1962). In a pattern by then familiar to the Kenya administration, this prompted the renewal of demands from the European settler community for more extensive and concerted government action to deal with the activities of the thieves. Settler opinion held that the continuing prevalence of stock theft had much to do with the ‘social prestige’ attached to the crime in many African communities. The unwillingness of the African public to assist in the prevention and detection of stock theft had long been interpreted as a tacit sanctioning of such theft, leading to the conclusion that, within the ‘moral economy’ of many African communities, stock theft was not thought of as a crime at all. ‘After all,’ commented the Provincial Commissioner of the Rift Valley Province in 1959, ‘stock theft is the traditional sport of the young men of many tribes, and the elders cannot be expected to act as kill-joys and stamp it out unless they themselves are liable to suffer.’ This view was applied most readily to the pastoralists of the Rift Valley and western Kenya, the Maasai and Kalenjin, who were commonly involved in crimes of this sort. The belief that stock theft was an acceptable form of accumulation within Kalenjin and Maasai society determined the nature of the legislation put forward by the colonial administration to deal with the crime. Policing and punishment were accordingly based upon the notion of collective responsibility for acts of stock theft, with wide powers to extend collective punishments to families, villages and even entire locations found to be implicated in thefts.

A CERTAIN MYSTERY: HOW CAN FRANCE DO EVERYTHING THAT IT DOES IN AFRICA—AND GET AWAY WITH IT?

Continent. There is hardly any need to point to the fact that regardless of their political regimes-military or civilian, 'progressive' or 'moderate'-the Francophone states of Africa all maintain a particularly close association with their former metropolis: Paris. These ties take many forms and are present at many levels. Some have been institutionalized, as in the financial framework of the 'Zone Franc' or the bilateral Cooperation Agreements; but many other are not easily defined or identified, even if they are known to exist. Indeed, even the term used to describe the nature of this association is unique: 'The special relationship'. It came into being during the last period of colonial rule and was aimed at allowing a certain continuity rather than a complete break with the colonial past. The amazing thing, however, is that today, two decades after independence, this 'special relationship' is still alive, accepted by and acceptable to both France and the Francophones. Moreover, other African countries seek to join this unique system and become members of the Francophone family. Particularly notable among them are the former Belgian colonies of Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire, the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Mozambique, and even Somalia and Sierra Leone.

The Mining Ordinance of Northern Rhodesia: A Legislative History 1924–1958

Shirley Zabel's account of the genesis of the Gold Coast Marriage Ordinance of 1884, published elsewhere in this Journal, demonstrates how much a legislative history can teach us about the way in which colonial law-makers went about tackling the formidable problems which had to be faced in what were still the early stages of modern British administration in West Africa. It is proposed in this article to turn to colonial Zambia and to look at the very different field of mining legislation, concentrating on the middle and later period of colonial rule before and after the Second World War. Compared with the early days in West Africa, bureaucratic techniques had been refined and communications greatly improved. This did not always lead to speed in the legislative process. Zabel has shown that the Gold Coast Ordinance was six years in the making; the Northern Rhodesia Mining Ordinance had a gestation period, including several miscarriages, of no less than thirty years prior to its enactment in 1958, despite the admitted need in the 1920s to replace obsolete legislation dating from the days of British South Africa Company rule. The span of time involved, however, has advantages for the legal historian—an opportunity to examine in relation to a single ordinance the colonial legislative process and the forces which, over an extended period, affected the shaping of a vital piece of legislation. It is hoped also that the fruits of this examination will serve as a useful background to studies of modern Zambian mining law.

THE LOMÉ CONVENTION: A STUDY OF ITS LIKELY BENEFITS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ETHIOPIA

The Convention signed at Lomé on 28 February 1975 between the nine members of the European Economic Community and forty‐six developing countries, known as the ACP States, has been hailed as an important advance in economic cooperation between rich and poor nations. Not only has the number of countries associated with the EEC been raised from the nineteen involved in the earlier Yaoundé Convention, but the ACP countries as a group now appear to enjoy more favourable provisions for trade and aid than those obtained under earlier agreements. Among the new ACP States is Ethiopia, a country neither connected with the EEC through previous arrangements nor having any historical links with Europe apart from a brief period of colonial rule by the Italians during 1936–41. The objective of this paper is to examine the implications of the provisions of the Lomé Convention in relation to Ethiopia. In addition to addressing the major question of local concern, i.e. whether or not Ethiopia is likely to benefit from association, a case study of this country is of more widespread interest. The lessons for Ethiopia may be applicable to other countries with similar circumstances. In addition, on the grounds of absolute poverty the Lomé Convention provides preferential treatment in some areas for certain of the least developed ACP countries, of which Ethiopia is one. The likely benefits of association for Ethiopia may serve, therefore, as an indicator of the extent of the EEC's commitment to assisting the ACP States, and the least developed in particular.