Western-educated Elites Research Articles

A Tryst with Colonial Modernity: Science and Rationality in Devaki Nandan Khatri’s Chandrakanta

In this reading of Devaki Nandan Khatri’s Chandrakanta, the paper proposes to engage with the wonder tale in the context of the emergent commercial publishing and rise of varied literary cultures, in the nineteenth century, on the one hand and the indigenisation of imperial scientific discourses on the other. The rise of literary genres like periodicals, journals, novels, romantic fiction, chapbooks provided a productive platform for debating the emergent discourses on science and its impact on the extant religious and cultural processes. Chandrakanta deployed this platform to forge a unique idiom of Hindi that could train its neo literate readers in contemporary discourses on science and rationality. The procedures embedded in the construction of this scientifically attuned Hindi not simply contested the universality of western power but also constructed a new class of western educated (upper caste) elite, who eagerly sought ways of deploying science as a value system that could enrich the indigenous knowledge traditions of India. Chandrakanta further illustrates how these scientific discourses played a significant role in contesting the extant gendered contexts of the nineteenth century. The language of rational modernity seized the language of gender dynamics, seeking to redefine the networks of hierarchies within it.

Caught between the Union Jack and the Nazi Swastika: African Protests over Ambiguous Status under British Imperialism and Potential Transfer to Nazi Colonialism

AbstractResistance to colonial rule is a dominant topic in the historical study of Africa. But resistance to attempted transfer of colonised peoples and territories, to promote peace in Europe, has not gained similar attention in African and colonial historiographies. This article looks at how rumours and reports of Nazi Germany's colonial demands in Africa, and the ambiguous reactions of British officials to them, shaped conversations among colonised peoples about their dignity under British colonialism and in intra-European diplomacy. The article argues that the prospect of Nazi rule and its spectre of slave-labour concentration camps for Africa's Western-educated elites, and other colonial subjects, bound these segments of colonial society closer to British, and French, imperialism than they relished at an uncertain, but critical moment in African and international history. They became the defenders of colonial systems they deplored, and opponents of a ruthless regime they feared.

Return from the USSR: Soviet-educated Africans, politics and work, 1960s–2000s

ABSTRACT During the Cold War, more than 50,000 African students attended tertiary education in the Soviet Union, and tens of thousands studied in other Eastern Bloc countries. The collapse of socialist regimes, however, nourished an assumption that these educational relationships bore meager political or ideological fruits and that their legacy has been insignificant. This paper advances a different assessment. While acknowledging contexts where Eastern Bloc graduates were effectively marginalized, it also highlights others where cultural transfers did occur, and where graduates set up alumni unions and expressed sympathy for the USSR as well as commitment to socialist ideas. Beyond the ideological dimension, the paper argues that the defense of socialism was a means for the graduates to fight back against the Western-educated elites and to defend their own qualifications.

The Dichotomy of Civilization and Barbarism: Its Origins and Evolution

The article researches the historical transformation the dichotomy of civilization and barbarism, which was originally in ancient Greece without pejorative meaning. This dichotomy has become relevant today to justify the classification of states according to their degree of acceptance of “civilization standards,” which are understood as the standards of the European model of development. The main features of the stereotype of the divide between civilization and barbarism, which took shape in the Roman era, have survived to the present. The premise of “civilizational superiority” of European culture is accompanied by a moral depreciation of other civilizations, turning a barbarian into an enemy of civilization with an explicit racist connotation. Civilization itself is seen as a “vaccination” in the process of missionary work. There emerges the concept of “Eastern barbarism,” coupled with the concepts of terra nullis and the innate irrational behavior of the population of these countries, which justify the seizing of territories for a “more rational” resource management. This activity is historically accompanied by colonization and, in the modern world, by forceful forms of “promoting democracy.” According to the logic of the divide between civilization and barbarism, non-Western countries are doomed to imitate and perpetually fall behind, which causes the disunity of society and internal hostility of “second-rate “Europeanized” nations. The Western mentoring has transformed from protectorate to the creation of governance structures that are headed by Western-educated local elites and are designed to change the cultural patterns of society. There was a conception that the world is divided into spheres, in the first circle of which there is a progressive civilized European world, followed by a number of countries similar in structure and values to the European model, and then there is a sphere of barbarism and backwardness. In the contemporary version, this theory presumes the division of states into “pre-modern,” modern, and post-modern states. It the conclusion, it is noted that this divide contradicts to the humane essence of culture and civilization process.

Population crisis, marriage reform and the regulation of male sexuality in interwar Iran

Beginning in the early twentieth century, a discourse on population crisis emerged in the Iranian press. Iran, it was argued, suffered from a small and sickly population, and therefore was unable to fully exploit its natural riches and resources. One suggested solution to the problem was a reformation of the traditional model of marriage, making monogamous, age-appropriate marriage the new norm. This was to provide Iran with numerous robust future citizens, the result of healthy and suitable couples. The article presents the process in which fear of population decline led to a change in the perceptions of ‘proper’ male sexuality, of married life and of love in Iran. It shows how this process influenced gender relations and social relations, preserving women’s subjugation within companionate marriage and constructing men of social groups who practised polygamy and child marriage as corrupt and unpatriotic, unlike Western-educated elite men who adopted companionate marriage.

Global Mental Health: concepts, conflicts and controversies.

This paper introduces, describes and analyses the emerging concept of Global Mental Health (GMH). The birth of GMH can be traced to London, 2007, with the publication of a series of high-profile papers in The Lancet. Since then, GMH has developed into a movement with proponents, adherents, opponents, an ideology and core activities. The stated aims of the Movement for GMH are 'to improve services for people living with mental health problems and psychosocial disabilities worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries where effective services are often scarce'. GMH could be considered an attempt to right a historic wrong. During the colonial and post-colonial eras, the mental health of subject populations was accorded a very low priority. This was fuelled by scientific racism, which alleged that mental illness was uncommon in places such as Africa. As developing nations have made the epidemiological transition, the burden of mental illness has proportionately increased, with research suggesting a massive 'treatment gap' between those in need and those actually receiving formal mental health care. As such, much GMH research and action has been devoted to: (i) the identification and scale-up of cost-effective evidence-supported interventions that could be made more widely available; (ii) task-shifting of such intervention delivery to mental-health trained non-specialist Lay Health Workers. GMH has come under sustained critique. Critics suggest that GMH is colonial medicine come full circle, involving the top-down imposition of Western psychiatric models and solutions by Western-educated elites. These critiques suggest that GMH ignores the various indigenous modalities of healing present in non-Western cultures, which may be psychologically adaptive and curative. Relatedly, critics argue that GMH could be an unwitting Trojan horse for the mass medicalisation of people in developing countries, paving the way for exploitation by Big Pharma, while ignoring social determinants of health.

Winding Road to Modernization

Ozkan’s essay explores the Ottoman road reform of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the context of the reconstruction process of the Trabzon-Bayezid road in northeastern Anatolia. One of the goals of the road reform was to make provinces accessible to the capital city of Istanbul. The state also wanted to facilitate agriculture and commerce. Apart from these general concerns, many aspects of the Trabzon-Bayezid road project related to local needs and demands rather than the central government’s desire to modernize the country. These needs gave rise to both collaboration and tension among a variety of actors at local, provincial, and regional levels. These conflicts in turn gave birth to various struggles related to many political, economic, and social aspects of the road’s construction. These struggles sometimes lasted for decades and were eventually appeased through peaceful means while in other cases they ended up in violent rebellion. No matter what form they took, however, during this process Ottoman subjects gradually developed an understanding that acknowledged their rights as citizens of a modernizing state. Hence, road construction in the long run contributed to the political modernization of the empire and helped the locals actively contribute to the decision-making process. This observation in turn may enable scholars to develop a social perspective of the political processes within the empire that is usually regarded as an arena in which only the Western-educated elites of Istanbul were active.

This Is Our Land: Land, Policy, Resistance, and Everyday Life in Colonial Southern Ghana, 1894–7

The colonial government attempted to implement the Crown Lands Bill between 1894 and 1897 in Southern Ghana. Among other things, it sought to take control of what was described as ‘waste lands’ and later ‘public lands.’ This article focuses on resistance to these bills in which the Aborigines’ Rights Protect Society (ARPS) played a leading role on behalf of Southern Ghana. This was one of many precedents to the build-up of tension between the people and the colonial establishment. Among other things, the article examines the ramblings within a colonial administration that attempted to push through its policies against a background of resolute resistance. This led to reluctance on the part of some colonial officers to enforce the policy. The argument is that there was an effective collaboration between the Western-educated elite and the people of coastal Southern Gold Coast in the resistance to these bills. They used official letters of protests, newspaper articles, editorials, and demonstrations to express their dislike for the colonial land policy. In addition, they sent delegations to the colonial government in their effort to resist the attempt to take over ‘waste lands’ and later ‘public lands.’ Furthermore, this article argues that the conflict had to do with the different conceptions of land. While the colonial government saw it as part of the economic and political trappings of power, the people of Southern Ghana saw land as a cultural and religious resource that gave them the needed connection with the ancestors in their everyday life.

Ambiguities of Loyalism: the Prince of Wales in India and Africa, 1921-2 and 25

Derided by British intellectuals as ‘propaganda of inanity unparalleled in the world’s history’ and as an ‘impertinence’ toward educated Indians, the ‘smiling tours’ of the Prince of Wales to India and then West and South Africa in the early 1920s offer a unique lens through which to explore the largely unwritten history of African and Indian empire loyalism in a comparative frame. Whereas the loyalism of the ‘Black Englishmen’ and their faith in the civilizing mission is generally assumed to have become obsolete after the First World War, the vigorous engagement of western educated African and Indian elites with the symbolism and politics of these royal tours reveals that, however compromised and contested, loyalism retained saliency for many nationalist leaders and intellectuals well into the 1920s and that the idea of imperial monarchy continued to serve as a moral reference point and the embodiment of the freedoms and rights implicit in a liberal empire. Loyalism, expressed as fidelity to the monarch, moreover, is explored in its many guises and aspects, ranging from an expression of deep affective ties to scorching criticisms of administrations that had betrayed the imperial faith and notions of equality of all subjects of the crown. Laying claim to ‘true’ loyalty’, many Indian and African writers compared theirs with what they claimed was the self-serving, narrow loyalty of white settlers and colonial bureaucracies.

Political space for the civil society: The work of two community-based organizations in Kolkata

West Bengal was a pioneer in democratic decentralization in India, but the dominance of one political party and its hierarchical institutional structure have thwarted the scope for effective bottom-up planning in its principal city, Kolkata. Nevertheless, new local organizations have undertaken the task of creating space—social and metaphoric—for the underprivileged. The paper looks beyond normative expectations and analyzes two actually existing civil society organizations to see what civil society actually does or does not do for different people who inhabit the sphere. It demonstrates how one organization—the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC)—succeeded in empowering its target community, whereas another organization—Unnayan—after initial success, failed to sustain itself. Unnayan was an NGO, the leadership of which came from western-educated elites with its grassroots workers being mostly ex-radical naxalites. As Unnayan chose to address issues that related to housing, infrastructure, land tenure, etc. that was part of an already politicized public agenda, it failed to find the needed political space for it to make any significant impact in Kolkata's planning. The paper observes that partisan political class have primarily tried to address issues relating to the mainstream conservative Bengali society and have not wanted to be associated with stigmatized people such as prostitutes. The author draws from the comparison of the workings of both DMSC and Unnayan to argue that the marginalization of the sex workers has prevented them from being incorporated into the mainstream politics, although this has also provided DMSC with the much needed political space for successful collective social action to improve their lives without being co-opted by any political party.

Jim C. Harper II, Western-Educated Elites in Kenya, 1900-1963: The African American Factor

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsJim C. Harper II, Western-Educated Elites in Kenya, 1900-1963: The African American FactorKeith DyeKeith Dye Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 92, Number 4Fall 2007New Black Power Studies: National, International, and Transnational Perspectives A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/JAAHv92n4p586 Views: 5Total views on this site Copyright ASALHPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia (review)

Reviewed by: Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia Guluma Gemeda Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia. Paulos Milkias. Youngstown, New York: Cambria Press, 2006. Pp. xx, 364. Maps. Endnotes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95. Paper. Much has been written about the Ethiopian Revolution, which ended the centuries-long monarchy in 1974 and plunged Ethiopia into a period of violence, famine, and political repression. Many Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian scholars have examined the causes of the revolution, its tumultuous early years, and the devastating long-term consequences. Paulos Milkias's Haile Selassie, Western Education, and Political Revolution in Ethiopia is another scholarly book on this very important moment in modern Ethiopian history. The book is divided into 14 chapters and a postscript. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the historical and theoretical background, respectively. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 analyze the role of modern education in Ethiopia, the penetration of Western cultural influences, and the rise of Western-educated intellectuals, who initially cooperated with the Haile Selassie regime but later turned against it. Chapters 6 through 10 discuss the involvement of French-Canadian Jesuits and United States educators in the development of higher education in Ethiopia, the alienation of Western-educated intellectuals, and the rise of the radical student movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 examine the challenges posed by the students and teachers to the Haile Selassie regime, the widening political protests that engulfed the feudal, autocratic government, and the rise of the Derg (the military junta) and the fall of the monarchy in 1974. Chapter 14 summarizes the main argument of the book. The postscript briefly discusses the political repression during the [End Page 191] Derg era (1974–91) and the coming to power of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1991. In this book, the author attempts to explain the contradictions between modern education, which promoted Western cultural and political values, and the modernizing autocracy of the Haile Selassie government, which consolidated its power after the end of the Italian occupation (1941). Beginning in the mid-1940s, Haile Selassie recruited French-Canadian educators to expand modern education and produce loyal intellectuals who could run the government bureaucracy and manage the economic enterprises. But in the 1950s and 1960s, the emperor increasingly favored American involvement in shaping Ethiopia's higher education. The policy initially led to "a triple partnership: Haile Selassie, the Western educated elite, and the United States," united by mutual interests and interdependence (243). But by the early 1960s, as the modernization policy of the Haile Selassie government failed to produce the desired economic development, and the bond between the emperor and the United States became stronger, the Western-educated elite felt alienated and eventually turned against the regime and its Western backers. Milkias argues that the political crisis of the 1960s and early 1970s was a reaction to the feudal, authoritarian regime, which introduced Western education and values "without changing the intrinsic character pertaining to itself" (245). This book is very well written. The chapters are a bit fragmented but are short and readable. The book draws its overall strength partly from the author's personal knowledge of Ethiopian politics as a student leader in the 1960s and his involvement in some of the major events discussed in the book. Milkias reminds the reader that he knew some of the important political actors in the Haile Selassie government. Although he was a participant in the student movement of the 1960s, he writes dispassionately and with scholarly objectivity. He belongs to a generation of students who believed in dismantling the entrenched feudal order to facilitate the political and economic modernization of Ethiopia. These students were young, radical idealists. They hoped to bring about progress, democracy, and faster economic development. But after the overthrow of the monarchy, they became captives of the Marxist political ideology that they used to attack the feudal autocracy and Western cultural domination. They splintered into rival political groups and [End Page 192] became victims of repression under the Derg regime. The author points out the weaknesses of these intellectuals and the fatal mistakes they made in their attempt to radically transform...

James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey: An African Intellectual in the United States

When men are intellectually greater than others, we learn from their utterances; when they are morally better than others, we learn from their lives. - J.E.K. Aggrey After T. Washington's death in 1915, James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey, sometimes called Father of African Education or Booker T. Washington of Africa, was seen by some of his contemporaries of 1920s as leading proponent of Washington's accommodationist philosophy. Critics demonstrated Aggrey's advocacy of black-white cooperation by pointing to his and black piano keys parable, which he repeated often: You can play a tune of sorts on white keys, and you can play a tune of sorts on black keys, but for real harmony you must use both black and white.(1) W. E. B. Du Bois castigated industrial arts focus of both Washington and Aggrey for putting too much stress on teaching blacks manual skills rather than educating them to think. Actually, Aggrey was critical of both bread and butter and for knowledge sake approaches to education. In lectures on education that he gave in United States and around world, he emphasized that ultimate aim of education was the development of socially efficient individual. Aggrey insisted that he believed in types of education. Sounding very much like Joseph Charles Price, first president of his alma mater, Livingstone College, Aggrey answered his critics with By education, do not mean simply learning. mean training in mind, in morals, and in hand that helps to make one socially efficient. Not simply three R's, but three H's: head, hand, and heart. Aggrey stressed that he wanted all my people to be educated in larger sense. This included girls as well as boys. He believed that No or people can rise half-slave, half-free. The surest way to keep a people down is to educate men and neglect women. If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family.(2) For Aggrey, education was training for development of skills and character which would be required for success in life. He believed strongly that race vindication for both Africans and African-Americans would come from an educated people who could demand equal treatment from whites. It is important to note that Aggrey had a great deal of respect for Du Bois, whom he referred to as Moses of his people. After founding in 1909 of National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Aggrey corresponded with Du Bois, NAACP publications director: I want also especially to be connected if only temporarily with your office in New York this summer to study ins and outs of National Association for Advancement of Colored People. The idea of forming an organization for Africans similar to African-American-focused NAACP, that would protest exploited conditions and racist treatment of Africans, was something that appealed to Aggrey.(3) However, there appears to have been no further communication between these two men.(4) It was in 1920s that James Aggrey gained fame as one of best known recipients of progressive and Christian legacy of late nineteenth century West African intellectual life. For this group of Western-educated elite, their training and education had prepared them to assume leadership roles in their countries after control was wrested from European colonizers. At independence this West African intelligentsia would be natural successors to Europeans because they were better educated than their African rivals, traditional chiefs. After all, they had received a Western education and had been indoctrinated to Western civilization and culture, and now accepted some of its aspects.(5) James Emman Kodwo Mensa Otsiwadu Humamfunsam Aggrey (he later shortened his name) was born, eldest son of eight children, on Monday, October 18, 1875 at Anamabu in British Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). …

COERCING OLD GUARD EMIRS IN NORTHERN NIGERIA: THE ABDICATION OF YAKUBU III OF BAUCHI, 1954

DURING THE 1950S, the British colonial administration in the emirates of Northern Nigeria undertook a panic reform of the Native Authority (NA) system. The philosophy and practice of indirect rule introduced at the turn of the twentieth century by F. J. D. Lugard, the conqueror of the emirates, under which emirs exercised monopoly over the local government system was hastily inverted in favour of a more broadbased system.1 'Rule', with its autocratic ring, was de-emphasised in favour of 'administration' involving consultation and consensus. Most crucially, the hitherto despised western-educated elites were now to be involved in emirate local government as equal actors with emirs in policy formulation and execution, an unpalatable proposition in many emirate ruling circles.2 Emirs who were lukewarm in acquiescing change in their personal and statutory authority were therefore cajolled; those who were apathetic to change were coerced. In this 'scramble' for reform, even those emirs whose loyalty and devotion to the colonial administration had earned them such accolades as Commander of The British Empire (CBE), Member of the British Empire (MBE) or the King's Medal for African Chiefs were not spared. It was felt in official circles that past achievements would simply not substitute for present desiderata; reforms had become not only inevitable for 'good government' but also necessary if the NA system, and thus British colonialism, should survive the pressure mounted by the western-educated elites.3

The Reluctant Duo

T his presentation is based on personal experience during the decade covering the Eisenhower and Ken edy administrations. The value of these personal assessments is high because of the absence at that time of realistic knowledge of each other or broad-based state-to-state relations between the United States and India. It was therefore inevitable that personal experiences, expectations, and, perhaps, prejudices influenced the way Indians and Americans perceived and dealt with each other. This was probably more so earlier than it is now. This presentation draws mainly on introspection into memories of the years when I was growing up, the years of my political socialization, if you will, first as a student among India's Western-educated elite and then as a junior member of the Indian Foreign Service, one who served in Washington in the 1960s. I have also consulted colleagues and friends older than I am and have referred to the copious documentation available on that period. Though some may take issue with specific points, this effort to be honest and plain spoken is not intended to offend anyone. I need hardly add that present company-as is also true of the excellent U.S. ambassadors to India of that period'-are excepted from any generalizations I may venture about Americans as then seen by Indians.

Thailand´s 1978 Constitution and Its Implications

On 24 June 1932 the centuries-old Absolute Monarchy of Thailand was overthrown in a bloodless coup staged by the People's Party composed of Western-educated military and civilian elites. A constitutional government was then introduced into Thailand with the King as Head of the State. An Interim Constitution was promul gated on 27 June 1932 in which a mechanism was devised to ensure that the People's Party would be able to run the country during the transitional period. It was provided that the House of Representa tives, which was a supreme constitutional body, would be composed of members appointed by the People's Party during the first transi tional period. After the country returned to normalcy, it would be composed of two categories of members equal in number and power, for the second transitional period of ten years following the promul gation of the Interim Constitution or until half of the electorate completed their primary schooling, whichever came first. The first category of members would be elected by the people and the second category appointed by the People's Party. This mechanism was later reaffirmed in a new constitution promulgated on 10 December 1932. It can therefore be said that the Thai system of government provided for in the first two constitutions was not a full-fledged parliamentary system; it was a system of military tutelage planned to be in operation for a transitional period of ten years, or less if half of the electorate completed primary schooling before the end of ten years. As the military leaders were unwilling to step down at the expiry of the second transitional period of ten years, the 1932 Constitution was amended for the purpose of extending the period of tutelage from ten to twenty years. The 1932 Constitution was, however, replaced by a new constitu tion which was promulgated on 8 May 1946, at a time when the military leaders of the People's Party were imprisoned as a result of their wartime collaboration with the Japanese. Under this new con

South Vietnam: The Symbolic Nature of Election Campaign Appeals

In a previous study, an attempt was made to determine the extent to which South Vietnamese provincial elites represent a transition or “bridge” between the national elites and the rural values of the majority population by comparing data on the social, educational, political and occupational backgrounds among political leaders and elites supportive of the GVN from both the national and provincial levels. In that study, the conclusion was that a comparison of social background statistics in isolation may be seriously misleading. Western-educated urban elites at the provincial level who are aware of and empathisize with traditional rural concerns can serve as a transitional cultural and political bridge. Indeed a fairly recent study of constituency influence on United States' congressmen indicated that a representative's perceptions of the attitudes held by the enfranchised population of his district was the intervening variable accounting for his electoral behavior as measured by his voting on roll calls. Thus, in the United States, “;;constituency influence is not provided by candidate recruitment but by elite cognitions.”

Saya San and the Burmese Rebellion

This account of the Burmese Rebellion of 1930–1931, and the role of its leader, Saya San, emphasizes the importance of traditional elements in what is commonly regarded as a nationalist uprising. The apparently nationalistic symbols of the Rebellion had magical and protective functions that were not appreciated by the British at the time of the Rebellion. The importance of nationalism in Burma in the 1930s has been overestimated, while the strength and continuity of traditional appeals has been incompletely understood. A comparison of the tactics of U Ottama, a cosmopolitan revolutionary, with the less modern but more successful efforts of Saya San, suggests that the rural Burmese of 1930 were more responsive to symbolic appeals than to programmatic designs for reform. The Western-educated elite of Burma were at first surprised and perhaps embarrassed by the primitive uprising in the countryside, but they eventually embraced the Rebellion and its symbols. Thus the Saya San Rebellion was a key stage in the transition of Burmese nationalism; to the urban elite, it vividly demonstrated the survival of traditional values in the countryside, while proving that a peasant uprising could achieve only temporary success without specific and negotiable aims, which required modern political skills.