Church,State, and the Holy Land: British Protestant Approaches to Imperial Policy in Palestine, 1917–1948

British Protestants had long held to the notion of a legitimate Protestant interest in the Christian ‘Holy Land’, a concept that helped bolster Britain's political claim to Palestine in the aftermath of the First World War. Evangelical Protestant visions of the return of the Jews to their biblical homeland encouraged imperial support for Zionism and helped define the unique conditions of British mandate rule. But once the British actually assumed power over Palestine, British Protestants began to find themselves seriously at odds over their moral and political obligations in the new possession their interests had helped to shape. This article explores three broad Protestant attitudes towards the question of Britain's policy towards Palestine during the mandate period, demonstrating the ways in which Lambeth Palace, Protestant metropolitan mission institutions, and Protestant church workers in Palestine itself developed radically different conceptions of their religious and political responsibilities in what they regarded as their ‘Holy Land’.     

The Influence of ‘Benthamite’ Philosophies on British Colonial Policy on New Zealand in the Era of the Treaty of Waitangi

Most of the recent historiography on the British presence in the South Pacific in the first half of the nineteenth century rightly reflects the dichotomy of private commercial enthusiasm for imperial expansion set against a backdrop of official hesitance and vacillation over any possible enlargement of the empire—a stance manifested in Britain's stance on New Zealand prior to 1840. However, such analyses, which emphasise the reactive, unplanned and incremental extension of British interests and involvement in New Zealand, tend to bypass consideration of the particular philosophical influences that helped to shape British colonial policy during this time. This article surveys those social philosophies formulated by Jeremy Bentham—and advanced by his followers—which prescribed a distinct form of colonial intervention and government. It focuses specifically on Bentham's utilitarianism, and his notions of colonial trusteeship, and explores how these ideas insinuated their way into British colonial policy relating to New Zealand in the 1830s, culminating in the Treaty of Waitangi (1840).     

‘Martial Races’ and ‘Imperial Subjects’: Violence and Governance in Colonial India, 1857–1914

This essay explores the specificity of colonial violence in India. Although imperial and military historians are familiar with several instances of such violence—notably the rebellion in 1857 and the 1919 massacre at the Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar—there is a broader, and arguably more significant, history that has largely escaped attention. In contrast to metropolitan European states, where sovereignty derived, at least in principle, from a covenant between subjects and government, the sovereign power of the colonial state was always predicated on the violent subjugation of ‘the natives’. However, while violence was integral to colonialism, such violence was never a purely metropolitan agency: most of those recruited to serve in the colonial military were, themselves, Indian. Exploring the history of the imperial military in South Asia after 1857, the paper outlines the complex and rather ambiguous relationship between the colonial state and its ‘native armies’.

résumé ?Cet article se penche sur la spécificité de la violence coloniale. Malgré des exemples familiers—comme la grande révolte de 1857 en Inde ou le massacre de Jallianwalla Bagh à Amritsar en 1919—il y a une histoire plus large et plus importante qui a échappée à l'attention des historiens. Contrairement aux états européens ou la souveraineté dérivait en principe du moins d'un contrat social entre les acteurs sociaux, le pouvoir souverain de l'état colonial restait fondé sur la subjugation violente des indigènes.     

‘Layered Networks’: Imperial Philanthropy in Birmingham and Sydney, 1860–1914

Traditionally, histories of philanthropy have adopted a nationalist focus. Influenced by new imperial history, this article seeks to move beyond national borders by placing metropolitan and colonial philanthropic practices in a single frame of analysis. This approach facilitates not only a comparison of philanthropic activities in two specific sites, Birmingham and Sydney, but a broader analysis of how philanthropic practices in both sites were shaped by ideas in constant flow between Britain, its colonies and the wider world. Evidence from various charities in Birmingham and Sydney reveal the existence of ‘layered networks’ spanning the local, national, imperial and global. As such, this article aims to extend the work of transnational/cross-border histories and geographical networks, by retaining a sense of the local.     

Imperial Eyes: Imperial Spies. British Travel and Espionage in Southern Arabia, 1891–1946

From the late nineteenth century, a number of British travellers ventured far from the comforts of the colony of Aden, that lone imperial seat in southern Arabia, into the unknown, neighbouring worlds of the Hadhramaut and Turkish Yemen. This article traces a number of those remarkable journeys and their aftermaths, to uncover that the relationships which these travellers held with the British government varied greatly. Some were actively encouraged to travel while others found rather less support from government officials. Archive material is employed to investigate a number of ventures made into Yemen and the Aden Protectorates by British travellers from the 1890s to 1940s and the value of certain travellers to Britain's imperial project in Arabia.     

‘High Standard of Efficiency and Steadiness’: Papua New Guinea Native Police Guards and Japanese War Criminals, 1945–53

ABSTRACT

Drawing largely on archival records, this paper examines the Australian use of a detachment from the Native police force to guard the Australian war criminals' compounds for Japanese war criminals established at Rabaul and Manus Island, both in the Territory of New Guinea, from 1945 to 1953. Australia was the only Allied country in the immediate post-war period to utilise civilian police as guards for Japanese war criminals, let alone to draw principally upon Indigenous personnel. While Australian views of the Indigenous population remained paternalistic, if not outright racist, throughout this period, the use of the Native police opened up some small space for more complex perceptions of questions of racial difference. Yet, the Native police detachment to the Australian war criminal compounds has been, until now, generally overlooked in the broader history of the Native police forces of Papua and of New Guinea.     

‘Homes’ and being ‘at home’ in New Zealand: women's place-making in internationalised higher education

Research on students' experiences in internationalised higher education largely assumes students' autonomy and privileges their public selves. New Zealand research is no exception. Little attention has been paid to students' lives beyond classroom contexts; how national policy and institutional practices shape students' everyday experiences and ‘home’ lives similarly and differently. In addition, gender is afforded scant attention or considered only as a secondary concern, and people whose partners or family members are international students are invisible. This article endeavours to address the relative inattention to gender in international education research and the invisibility of women whose partners are international students. It draws on data from interviews with 17 women involved in a broader doctoral research project during 2005 and 2006. The women were either migrant or international students or had partners enrolled as international students. The article uses ‘home’ as a lens for examining women's situated and transnational place-making and factors that promoted or precluded a sense of belonging in New Zealand. It draws connections between women's accounts of ‘home’ and feeling ‘at home’, and broader politics, policies and institutional practices in New Zealand higher education.     

Patriotism,Self-Interest and the ‘Empire Effect’: Britishness and British Decisions to Invest in Canada, 1867–1914

This paper builds on the growing body of literature on the British World, which has shown that people in the dominions had a strong British identity and their claims to Britishness were recognised by people in the British Isles. It attempts to gauge the extent to which this British World identity influenced the global allocation of British capital. Much of the existing literature on British investment in the dominions dismisses the possibility that the pattern in Britain's capital exports was significantly affected by imperial patriotism. This article will suggest that imperial sentiment did indeed influence the destination of British capital exports. Imperialist sentiment influenced the legal and political institutions of the dominions in ways that encouraged British investment. Moreover, imperial ideology may have influenced investors' decisions in ways that the existing historiography does not adequately explore: at least some British investors may have been willing to accept a lower anticipated rate of return because they valued the psychological satisfaction of investing in territories that happened to be part of the British Empire. This article compares the experience of British investment in the United States, which has an ambiguous relationship with the British World, with that of investment in Canada with a view to understanding the impact of the British World identity on investment patterns.     

Imperial Outposts and the War Beyond: Singapore,Hong Kong and the British Empire’s Land Force Contribution to the Korean War

Histories of the British Empire’s strategic outposts in the Far East have traditionally focused on their traumatic loss to the Japanese adversary during the Second World War. Only in the past decade-and-a-half have historians begun to examine the post-Second World War importance of these outposts to the continued defence and security of Britain’s empire in the Far East. In taking this line of historical enquiry still further, the article examines how Singapore and Hong Kong were used to project British military power, specifically army deployments, across the Far East, and far beyond the imperial frontier, in support of Britain’s involvement in the 1950–53 Korean War and therefore in pursuit of the empire’s foreign and defence policy objectives. It adopts an essentially operational analysis to this end, relying on operational and army ‘ground-level’ sources from the records of the Colonial, Foreign, and War Offices at the British National Archives. It uncovers the hidden workings of the mechanisms of imperial military power projection through strategic outposts, which ranged from training to logistical support to the exercise of command and control, and how these mechanisms and outposts were utilised by the British Far Eastern land forces involved in the Korean War. In so doing, the article sheds much valuable and original light on the historical importance of these strategic outposts to imperial defence.     

Sentiment vs Strategy: British Naval Policy,Imperial Defence,and the Development of Dominion Navies, 1911–14

This article examines British naval policy towards imperial defence and the development of autonomous Dominion navies in 1911–14. It shows that the Admiralty's main goal under the leadership of Winston Churchill was to concentrate British and Dominion warships in European waters, and ideally in the North Sea, to meet the German threat. Churchill's approach to naval developments in the Dominions was also shaped by his desire to fulfil the Cabinet's policy of remaining strong in the Mediterranean Sea. He made some concessions to sentiment in the Dominions, but his attempts to create a coherent imperial policy for the naval defence of Britain and its empire were ultimately unsuccessful. By 1914 it was clear that the Dominions would not provide the additional warships Britain required for the Mediterranean, and on the eve of war the Admiralty was beginning to prepare an imperial naval strategy that more accurately reflected the Empire's capabilities.     

A ‘New Deal’ for the Kurds: Britain's Kurdish Policy in Iraq, 1941–45

The Mulla Mustafa revolt of 1943–45 threatened to undermine the authority of the already vulnerable Iraqi government. In formulating a response, both the Iraqi prime minister and the British embassy wanted to prevent Kurdish nationalists from appropriating the revolt for their own ends. Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, the British Ambassador to Iraq, called for a ‘New Deal’ for the Kurds, encouraging development and investment in Kurdish areas as a means of drawing them under the control of central government authority. Iraqi Minister Majid Mustafa offered similar suggestions for infrastructure projects. In this instance, British and Iraqi priorities aligned and both hoped that reform would appease the Kurds and strengthen the Iraqi state. Britain's Kurdish policy during the Second World War demonstrates the continuing tension, dating back to the Mandate period, between its commitment to a united Iraq and the paternalistic sense of responsibility for the Kurds felt by many of its officials, in particular, the political advisers posted in the northern provinces. Despite British and Iraqi attempts to dismiss the Mulla Mustafa revolt as an ‘isolated tribal uprising’, it has entered the Kurdish narrative as a transformative moment in the Iraqi Kurdish national movement.     

‘An Alternative to Imperialism’: Leonard Woolf,The Labour Party and Imperial Internationalism, 1915–1922

This article examines writings by the British Labour Party theorist Leonard Woolf on international government, imperialism, and the League of Nations. Woolf was a leading member of a group of party officials who supported a deepening commitment to the League of Nations in the immediate post First World War period. Woolf, and his colleagues in the Labour Party, argued that transforming the practice of economic imperialism in European colonies would help to ease tensions between the European powers. The result of such arguments was to present empire as a canvas for displaying an improved sense of European virtue. In particular, abandoning the practice of economic imperialism could instead allow colonial powers to meet their responsibility to ready colonial peoples for self-government and full participation in the global economy. The reforms proposed by Woolf and his Labour Party colleagues could be considered a last gasp of early twentieth century British imperial internationalism.