The ‘Migrated Archives’ and a Forgotten Corner of Empire: The British Borneo Territories

The ‘migrated archives’, previously concealed files related to former colonies of the British Empire, were released over the period 2012–13. The first flurry of academic and journalistic interest, focused on possible revelations of the misuse of colonial power, soon subsided. Nevertheless, the archives have been valuable in enlarging knowledge of colonial policy-making. They have also aided exploration of the interstices between the official records of colonial administration and the often unrecorded life of peoples and communities. In this sense the ‘migrated archives’ are a rich resource in prompting a new look at established historical narratives of the British Borneo territories of Brunei, North Borneo and Sarawak. These territories have received scant attention in the historiography of British colonialism. This has been to the detriment of wider scholarship in studying issues such as the expansion of the wartime colonial state; the ‘second colonial occupation’ and the evolution of post-war British colonial governance; the development of anti-colonialism; the formation of Malaysia; counter-terrorism conflicts; and the nature of the colonial legacy. The colonial period may seem a fleeting phase in the age-old cultural and economic formation of the Borneo states, yet it continues to have contemporary relevance in a strategically sensitive part of the world. This article seeks to show that the Borneo territories merit greater attention from historians of British colonialism and that the ‘migrated archives’, used in conjunction with other sources, can make a significant contribution towards the history of colonialism in a previously neglected area.     

Translation And The Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldûn Orientalist

Despite the increasing interest in translation in the last two decades, there has been no investigation of the translation of historiography and its transformation from one language to another. This article takes as a case study the translation into French of Ibn Khaldûn, the fourteenth–century North African historian. It considers specifically the translation done by William de Slane in the context of the colonization of Algeria. The Histoire des Berbères , the French narrative of Ibn Khaldûn that relates to the history of Arabs and Berbers in the Maghreb, has become since then the source of French knowledge of North Africa. It is upon that French narrative that colonial and post–colonial historians have constructed their knowledge of North Africa, of Arabs, and of Berbers. The article shows how a portion of the writing of Ibn Khaldûn was translated and transformed in the process in such a way as to become a French narrative with colonial categories specific to the nineteenth century. Using a semiotic approach and analyzing both the French text and its original, the article shows how colonialism introduced what Castoriadis calls an "imaginary" by transforming local knowledge and converting it into colonial knowledge. In showing this the essay reveals that not only is translation not the transmission of a message from one language to another, it is indeed the production of a new text. For translation is itself the product of an imaginary, a creation–in Ricoeur's words, a "restructuring of semantic fields."     

The blowback of repression and the dynamics of North African radicalization

The narrative of the historic struggle against colonialism is subject to a high degree of political manipulation in North Africa. Myths, memories and symbols based on the struggle against colonial oppression, whether 'true' or not, provide a latent and continually relevant context for understanding and interpreting contemporary events. For both recent North African immigrants, and second, third and fourth generation immigrants to Europe, contemporary injustices and violence, whether perpetrated in Europe or in the Maghreb, are being understood in this historical colonial context. For some, these myths, memories and symbols may be the reason why they join a peaceful, democratic group to lobby for democracy and political transparency. For a minority of North Africans, these symbols of the past are invoked to justify a jihadist challenge to North African regimes and the West. Based on extensive interviews with North African activists and community leaders, this article will show how the collective memory of the abuse of power by the state, both during and after the colonial era, has created a latent mistrust of the West, especially of France. Political repression in North Africa since independence has created a rupture between what was expected from independence and the realities of political life, and North Africans often ascribe this disappointment to the inherently French character of the regimes which were in power during the 1950s and 1960s. North Africans also believe that this is reflected in the continuing active intervention on the part of the West to support these illiberal regimes in the face of democratic and popular challenges. The subsequent senses of injustice and disappointment, relating to the use and abuse of state power, continues to shape North African political mobilization and, worryingly, has created a latent basis for radicalization among North Africans living and working in Europe.     

‘Operation Legacy’: Britain’s Destruction and Concealment of Colonial Records Worldwide

The end of the British Empire in the mid-twentieth century was accompanied by a large-scale rearrangement of sensitive colonial records worldwide. A great number of these records were destroyed and a sizeable portion sent to Britain to be kept secret. This article advances studies of this policy, eventually code-named ‘Operation Legacy’, by reading the ‘migrated archives’ that have been newly discovered and declassified in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) 141 series. It asks where the policy was decided, for what reason and how it was carried out. Sources suggest that the policy was not planned in the Colonial Office in London and delivered to the colonies in a hierarchical fashion, but, rather, significant elements of the policy were developed in the colonial governments overseas in response to each local context. The general idea was to save Britain’s honour and to protect its collaborators. However, the limitations in terms of time and manpower often prevented the officers from putting sufficient thought into the actual screening of the documents. At the same time, some officers demonstrated a level of historical awareness regarding their actions. The episode reminds us that the official mind as it relates to decolonisation is to be understood not only by reference to the highest levels of strategic planning but also in terms of how it worked at the lower levels, in the colonial administrations on the ground.     

‘It Was Necessary to Do Something With Those Women’: Colonial Governance and the ‘Disposal’ of Women and Girls in Early Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone

The colonial archive offers comparatively few glimpses of the individual lives of enslaved African women and girls brought to Sierra Leone in the nineteenth century and ‘liberated’ under the terms of the British Abolition Act of 1807. This article sets out to do four things: first, to consider what colonial sources reveal about how women and girls experienced and responded to becoming ‘liberated Africans’, and to the ‘disposal’ practices of the Liberated African Department – including schooling, indenture and arranged marriages. Second, it considers what factors might have shaped those experiences. Third, it seeks to make a contribution to the literature on marriage in early colonial Africa by considering whether, and to what extent, British colonial policy towards liberated African women in Sierra Leone meets a modern definition of government-led coerced or forced marriage. Finally, it evaluates the usefulness and limits of official archives, missionary records, court records and the accounts of self-styled British Sierra Leone experts for studying the experiences of women and girls, and indicates potential avenues for further research.     

Spanish colonialism in Morocco and the Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid, 1876–1956

The central aim of the article is to analyse the attitude held by the Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid in relation to Spanish colonial engagement in Morocco from 1876, the year when the Society was founded, until 1956, year of the independence of Morocco and consequent cessation of the Spanish Protectorate. The role of the Society as a driving force behind the colonial process, the mechanisms used in order to influence Spanish society and foreign policy, and the repercussions of the Society's activity will likewise be examined.     

Destroy? ‘Migrate’? Conceal? British Strategies for the Disposal of Sensitive Records of Colonial Administrations at Independence

Publicity given in 2011 to the existence of a Foreign and Commonwealth Office ‘migrated archive’, now known also as the ‘Hanslope disclosure’, following a High Court demand for release of records relative to a case brought by former Mau Mau detainees, led me to explore files already in the public domain which might throw light on British policy towards the ‘disposal’ of locally created records of colonial administrations at independence. This article examines Colonial Office and Commonwealth Relations Office files concerned primarily with Kenya, Tanganyika, Nigeria and the Central African Federation, but which reveal much about policy and practice not only in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in Southeast Asia. Reasons for refusals to pass material to successor independent governments, and the underlying security concerns, are spelled out in the records; some indication of the volume of records destroyed or sent to London is given; methods of destruction and transmission are discussed; deliberate misinformation given to local politicians and officials is admitted; and tensions between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Public Record Office, and between political expediency and archival practice, are revealed. The article continues with a discussion of ultimately inconclusive deliberations led by UNESCO in the 1970s and 1980s which sought the return of, or access to, ‘migrated’ records ‘in the search of historical truth and continuity’.     

殖民地时期美国史研究中的若干重要问题

国内美国史学界对殖民地时期研究相对薄弱,而美国学者的研究则至为丰富。在研究中通常会遇到许多棘手的难题：如何确定殖民地时期在美国历史中的地位?如何看待不同种族和族裔群体的历史作用?如何理解英格兰文化与北美文化的关系?如何解释北美13个殖民地从分到合的变化过程?如何借鉴和利用美国学者整理的历史文献和发表的研究成果?这都是研究殖民地时期美国史所必须处理的问题。     

A ‘New Angle of Vision’: British Imperial Reappraisal of Hong Kong during the Second World War

This paper examines the involvement of British officials at the Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong in the perpetuation of imperial ideals during the Second World War, as well as in the eventual restoration of British rule to the territory. It highlights the debates that were conducted within the camp on issues of post-war reconstruction, as well as the strategies that were devised by the internees in anticipation of the new social, economic and political orders of the post-war colonial world. The paper also highlights similar discussions that transpired within the Changi Camp in Singapore and the Lintang Camp in Sarawak (Borneo) as supplementary case studies. Remarkably, many of these ideas ran in parallel with secret planning in London, where Hong Kong and Malayan governments-in-exile conceived revamped colonial administrations following the envisaged defeat of the Japanese. A number of these wartime schemes were even implemented after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, with significant impact on the phase of post-war British imperial revival.     

In Search of ‘Affectionate Regard’: American Merchant Lobbies and the State during the Atlantic Imperial Crisis*

This article revisits the politics of British merchants trading to North America in the period between 1763 and 1783. Their political success and failure in this critical period have been examined primarily in terms of their impact on the escalation of imperial crisis, with the day‐to‐day operation of merchant politics rarely taken into full account. This article takes an alternative approach of studying the political influence of merchants trading to North America within the context of their interaction with the state. By looking into the organisation, the process of lobbying, and the arguments that the merchants adopted, the article highlights how, in response to many sources of tension and uncertainty inherent within their relationship with the state, they demarcated their own areas of contribution to the shaping of commercial and colonial policy. Through the case study of merchants trading to North America, this article sheds further light on the necessity to understand the evolution of such modern political institutions as commercial lobbies in their specific economic and political contexts.     

States,Money and the Persistence of Colonial Financial Hierarchies in British West Africa

This article contributes to debates about the persistence of colonial hierarchies in global finance by examining the reproduction of key features of colonial monetary and financial systems through the end of formal colonialism in West Africa, with a focus on Ghana. The article draws together engagements with Marxian theories of money and of the colonial state, and an examination of a key period which has often not received sufficient direct attention in debates about colonialism and financial subordination: the breakdown and end of formal colonial rule, roughly between 1930 and 1960. The central puzzle addressed in this article is how, despite the explicit desire on the part of nationalist political leaders to overturn colonial financial systems, these wound up being reproduced through the negotiation of political independence. The article shows how the entanglements of colonial monetary and financial systems with processes of state formation posed severe limits on efforts to articulate a ‘developmental’ colonialism after World War II. Efforts to work around these limits ultimately reinforced the reliance of the colonial and postcolonial state on extractive and hierarchical structures of global finance. In short, the article shows how the contradictory position of the state in colonial capitalism is vital to understanding the persistence of colonial monetary and financial structures.     

Representations as practices: producing a native space in Sarawak,Malaysia

The study looks at historical and contemporary representations of rural native communities in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Through the analysis of representations, the study underlines the production of a distinct space for native rural communities in Sarawak and highlights its material implications. The first part of the paper focuses on representations deployed by the colonial administrations to govern native populations of Sarawak. The consequences of specific representations that produced native territorial communities based on codified customs and ethnic presuppositions are identified. Second, the paper focuses on representations deployed to support a corporate agricultural development project on customary land referred to as the Konsep Baru. It demonstrates that these representations reify essential characteristics of the native space as it was produced by colonial regimes and position native rural communities in duality with modern society. In turn, the scrutiny of representations produced by native land rights advocates in response to problematic forms of rural development in Sarawak highlights the dualisms portrayed in specific accounts and stresses their links with colonial constructions of the native space. Overall the paper suggests ways to reflect on the implication of representations about native communities in Sarawak, as representations are intertwined with development practices.     

The construction and destruction of a colonial landscape: monuments to British monarchs in Dublin before and after independence

Where cities evolve in contentious political circumstances and make the transition from a colonial to a post-colonial state, aspects of the urban landscape such as public monuments, street nomenclature, buildings, city plans and urban design initiatives take on particular significance. Collectively they demonstrate the fact that the city is the product of a struggle among conflicting interest groups in search of dominion over an environment. As one group seeks dominance over the other the urban landscape often becomes the canvas upon which this power struggle finds expression. Public statues in particular serve as an important source for unravelling the geographies of broader political and cultural shifts. These issues are explored here with reference to Dublin City and the monuments erected to royal monarchs before the achievement of political independence in 1922, namely Kings William I (1701), George I (1722), George II (1758) and Queen Victoria (1908). The fate of such monuments in post-colonial Dublin and the ways in which the fledgling state and particular groups within it sought to express their new found power through both the official and oftentimes wilful destruction of these royal statues is then examined. The paper illuminates the power of public monuments as symbolic sites of meaning and explores their role in the construction of a landscape of colonial power. It also demonstrates how monuments become sites of protest, as symbolic in their removal as in their erection.     

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

Public monuments in colonial Nairobi were visual links to the British empire, and served as a means of asserting imperial power. During this period, colonial memories and identities were inscribed into Nairobi’s landscape by the dominant group, the elite of the European population. However, at the moment of Kenya’s achievement of independence from colonial rule, such identities and assertions of power were challenged as statues were removed from the city. This paper examines the forces behind the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape and how this landscape visualised the changing political and cultural contexts of the city. Comparisons are made with the removal of statues from Sudan, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to situate the Kenyan experience. Through a comparative examination of the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape, this paper illustrates how the removal of public monuments from the city was exploited by both the coloniser and the colonised.     

Acts of Faith: Muscular Christianity and Masculinity among the Gogodala of Papua New Guinea

This article examines the way Gogodala men in Western Province experienced colonialism and change not simply in terms of alienation or emasculation but as a dynamic process that reinforced many aspects of their work ethic, bodily capacities and lifestyle. Through an analysis of local narratives and colonial reports encompassing the way Sosola, a Gogodala leader, instigated and negotiated European contact, I discuss how, despite colonial changes, he continues to embody the male way of life or dala ela gi. As the only ‘faith’ based mission to enter Papua prior to World War II, I propose that the Unevangelized Fields Mission's muscular approach to evangelism enabled Gogodala men to determine their own response to Christianity. The early evangelical missionary disposition of demonstrating faith through action, through a reliance on the virtues of physical strength, work and tenacity rather than theological knowledge, resonated strongly with a Gogodala masculinity that was epitomised by displays of strength through work. Rather than rendered powerless by colonial authority, I discuss some of the ways men have experienced and interpret the colonial past in ways that assert the continuing dynamics of dala ela gi.     

Precarious Lives in the Global South: On Being Disabled in Guyana

Most of what is known about disabled women's and men's lives is based on research conducted in the global North despite the fact that 80% of the world's one billion disabled people live in countries of the global South. This article addresses this gap in our understanding of disabled people's lives by examining impairment and disability as outcomes of processes of social embodiment that unfold in an unequal global capitalist order. Drawing on 87 interviews conducted with disabled women and men in Guyana, the article illustrates how colonial and neo‐colonial relations of power and processes of development give rise to material conditions of life such as extreme poverty and male violence that contribute to impairment and disability. The article concludes by discussing the article's contributions, challenges in developing southern perspectives on impairment and disability, and the need to address socio‐spatial injustices experienced by disabled people in the global South.     

Modernity and the Other Woman: Gender and National Identity in the Egyptian Women's Press: 1952–1967

This article looks at depictions of non‐Egyptian women in the Egyptian women's press during the Nasser period, from 1952–1967. A regular and recurring feature of the Egyptian women's press during the 1950s and 1960s, representations of foreign women were products of both global and local struggles. Enabled by a world order increasingly transformed by the political voices of colonial and post‐colonial subjects, such representations were also bound up in Egyptian debates about gender subjectivities, the consequences of state and nation building, and the boundaries of national identity. While they can be read as contributing to the creation of what Chandra Mohanty has called ‘an imagined community of third world oppositional struggles’, they also suggest much about how the liberating, emancipatory possibilities of post‐colonial/anti‐imperialist projects limit their own possibility for realisation.     

Feminist Mediations of the Exotic: French Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, 1921–39

This article considers why and how locality influenced feminists' perceptions of colonised women. It does so through an analysis of how militants and novelists linked with the Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes (French Union for Women's Suffrage, UFSF) perceived the Arab and Berber women of colonial North Africa. The organisation had branches in North Africa, and thus feminists in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are compared to those in France. Where these women lived shaped their understanding of French women's roles in the colonies, along with their opinions regarding the rights to which colonised women could lay claim. Tensions among UFSF members are traced here through the literary figure Elissa Rhaïs, articles in the feminist newspaper  La Française  and correspondence among UFSF members. These sources indicate that while all these French women positioned themselves as mediators of colonialism and women's rights, their precise interpretations of that mediation were consistently influenced by local concerns.