Empire and ethnicity†

ABSTRACT. Historians and social scientists have typically assumed a conflictual or exploitative relationship between empire and ethnicity. On the one hand, empire might be seen (as perhaps Ernest Gellner saw it in Nations and Nationalism) as a superstructure of coercion to which a group of ethnic units were subject. On the other (according to an influential view), empire fabricated ethnicities (tribes or castes) to divide and rule. This article suggests that both of these views are too crude. In the British case at least (and in the modern history of empire, no generalisation that excludes the British case has much value), ‘imperial ethnicity’ was a much more subtle phenomenon. It existed ‘at home’ as one element in a more complex identity. It was a powerful force in British settler societies, where an indigenous identity could not be imagined. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was deeply attractive to some colonial elites in Asia and Africa – at least for a time.     

The China of Tomorrow: Japan and the Limits of Victorian Expansion

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the literature on the mechanisms, rhetoric, and limits of mid-Victorian expansion by asking how far late Tokugawa Japan was subject to forms of British imperialism. In September 1862 a British merchant was murdered on the high road between Edo and Kyoto; a year later, a British fleet bombarded Kagoshima in retaliation. By engaging with John Darwin’s concept of the ‘bridgehead’, this article examines the circumstances in which a lonely death on the frontiers of British commerce could be transformed into a Victorian ‘outrage’. It considers what we stand to gain by bringing an imperial history perspective to bear on what remains, for most imperial historians, a largely forgotten conflict. In positing Yokohama as a bridgehead that could gain only fitful purchase in London, it asks new questions about the conduct of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ and the fault lines of mid-Victorian expansion; the place of Japan in British political imaginaries; the nature of informal empire; and the discourses buffeting British expansion in the turbulent 1860s.     

Khaki Girls,VADs, and Tommy's Sisters: Gender and Class in First World War Britain

Abstract

Since the end of the cold war, and with particular urgency since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, historians and pundits have searched for parallel cases that make sense of the United States' military and economic predominance in the current international order. Many have chosen the British empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the most telling. As Dane Kennedy argues in an article recently published in The International History Review: ‘The United States' immediate predecessor was the British empire, and it should be the first case to which we turn for meaningful historical comparisons.’¹ For Kennedy, the United States, despite coming into existence by breaking away from the British empire, retained many of its institutions and doctrinal traditions. Having marshalled them to new purposes while expanding across the continent, the United States turned its attention abroad. Kennedy shows that, despite the different worlds of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both Britain and the United States built their global power in comparable fashion through the techniques of indirect rule, military strategies geared towards protecting imperial and commercial networks, and ideological claims to universally applicable civilizing missions.     

Character, ‘Ordered Liberty’, and the Mission to Civilise: British Moral Justification of Empire, 1870–1914

In a path-breaking study of the thought of Sir Henry Maine, Karuna Mantena has recently argued that the overthrow, in the second half of the nineteenth century, of the liberal imperialism promoted by Macaulay and James Mill meant that the ‘civilising mission’ became a mere alibi for continued British rule in the empire and that it was drained of all moral content. The article demonstrates, using a wide range of contemporary sources, that, although many British imperialists thought that Asian and African civilisations might never progress to the point of enjoying constitutional government, they did believe that it was the purpose of British rule to bring to their colonial subjects the benefits of what they called ‘ordered liberty’. This they saw as the foundation of Britain's own greatness and as essentially a moral force. Nonetheless, the article goes on to show that one purpose of the civilising mission was to strengthen empire sentiment at home, and thus to underwrite the moral authority of the gentlemanly elites who ran it. The latter feared that the advent of democracy in Britain might otherwise undermine ordered liberty at home and weaken the commitment to the imperial cause.     

"You turn if you want to": The Questions a Pragmatic Political Theology Might Ask of Speculative Realism

Abstract

The question pursued in this article is what might a pragmatic (in the Rortyan sense) political theology ask speculative realists to contribute to its analyses and discussions. The article begins by discussing the potential reservations political theologians might have in employing Richard Rorty as a dialogue partner. It then considers the insights from Rorty that political theologians might value, namely a respect for Western democracy and pluralism, the desire to reform capitalism, and a deeper understanding of the relationship between Christianity and liberalism. These insights are discussed in dialogue with the radical orthodoxy of John Milbank. It is argued that Milbank and Rorty share post-foundational philosophical assumptions but arrive at different political conclusions with regard to democracy and capitalism. The paper makes the case for a pragmatic valuing of democracy and capitalism and a recognition of their Christian heritage.     

The Queen’s Dolls’ House within the British Empire Exhibition: encapsulating the British imperial world

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, designed by Edwin Landseer Lutyens and unveiled to the public in 1924 at the British Empire Exhibition. The Dolls’ House epitomised the characteristics of Britain as a nation and an empire through its English exterior and British world objects within. Marginalised in academic discourses and regarded as a plaything, this article brings the Dolls’ House back to discourses of British material and visual culture as well as Lutyens scholarship. To this end, it analyses how the design and contents of the House encapsulated the British imperial world and materialised Britain’s position in the postwar world.     

The Plural Society: Labour and the Commonwealth Idea 1900–1964

ABSTRACT

The Labour Party founded in 1900 necessarily confronted the imperial nature of the British state, the empire as an economic and military entity, and the inequalities it contained. Yet Labour initially thought on the subject primarily in terms of the liberal objective of the advancement of self-government. It was only in the 1930s, in the writings of Lansbury and Attlee, that more systematic thinking about the empire in terms of global divisions of labour of which the British working class were among the beneficiaries, began to emerge. Tensions between the perceived interests of these beneficiaries and of the working classes of the empire as a whole remained in Attlee’s postwar government. It did, however, begin to develop a reconceptionalisation of the empire as a multi-racial Commonwealth. This facilitated a Labour patriotism around the Commonwealth that reached its apogee in Gaitskell’s weaponising of it as a means of resisting European entry in 1962. Yet the economic and military relations he evoked were already out of date, leaving his successor, Harold Wilson, to adjust to a multi-racial partnership.     

Pascalian Suite. Elements of an Apologia

Abstract

This article considers the thought of Claude Lefort as a response to Leo Strauss. It compares their views on the task of political philosophy as such, and on its specific relation to modernity, religion, and democracy. For Strauss, the revival of political philosophy under modern conditions requires a return to its ancient roots. While Lefort agrees that such a restoration is necessary, he argues that this requires a departure from ancient thought: political philosophy must recognize modern democracy as a new kind of regime, independent of theologico-political norms.     

Imperial Liberalism and Institution Building at the End of Empire in Africa

ABSTRACT

This article discusses political liberalism at the end of empire in British Africa through analysis of British ideas about institution building below the level of parliamentary democracies. It suggests that while processes of institution-building have largely been discussed through the prism of development, they also constitute fruitful sites for the exploration of British ideas about the nature of politically-liberal systems. I argue that new articulations of an imperial liberalism during decolonisation had an energising effect on some Britons within domestic institutions whose expertise was called upon to assist with the development of successor institutions in emergent states. As they engaged in a process of institution-building, these individuals acted in ways that were not only determined by Western liberalism, but also by distinctive British ideas of the appropriate relationship of institutions to the state. I suggest, however, that while their approach to institution building in emergent states reflected deep rooted convictions about the kind of institutions that were essential to the operation of politically liberal systems, these ideals were in tension with more self-interested concerns which could in practice compromise efforts to replicate British institutions.     

From Batticaloa via Basel to Berlin. Transimperial Science in Ceylon and Beyond around 1900

ABSTRACT

Recent historiographies of ‘Science and Empire’ have successfully critiqued older euro-centric narratives. They highlighted how science was ‘co-produced’ through interactions between knowledgeable European and non-European actors in colonial ‘contact zones’, and how this ‘pidginised knowledge’ circulated through networks across various sites within the British Empire. This article shares and expands this approach. By focussing on continental European scholars in Ceylon around 1900, it argues that scientific networks were never confined to a particular empire. Science among Europeans was, rather, multi-lingual, mostly cross-disciplinary and always transimperial. Applying such an approach to the history of science in late colonial Ceylon allows us to uncover entanglements between historical processes that have for too long remained subject matters of disconnected historiographies: the emergence of Buddhist revivalism, evolutionary theories about human origins, the transformation from ‘liberal race science’ to Nazi eugenics in Germany, and the surfacing of British cultural anthropology.     

The Seventy Years War, 1744–1815, and Britain’s Fiscal-Naval State

Abstract

This article argues that we should view Britain as fighting a ‘Seventy Years War’ with France between the battles of Fontenoy in 1745 and Waterloo in 1815. Through years of hot and cold war, Britain struggled to build the military power needed to prevent it from falling under the domination of France. In hindsight, many view the British as inevitable imperialists, confidently building towards their global empire of the nineteenth century. In reality, eighteenth-century Britons frequently fretted about the threat of invasion, military weakness, possible financial collapse, and potential revolution. Historical developments only look inevitable in hindsight and with the aid of the social sciences. The struggle to defend itself in Europe during the Seventy Years War saw Britain develop a ‘fiscal-naval state’ that built a global empire.     

Protection,Federation and Union: The Global Impact of the McKinley Tariff upon the British Empire, 1890–94

This article takes a global historical approach to American protectionism and the British imperial federation movement of the late nineteenth century, showing how US tariff policy was intimately intertwined with the political and economic policies of the British empire of free trade. This article argues that the 1890 McKinley Tariff's policies helped call into question Britain's liberal, free trade, global empire by drumming up support for an imperial, protectionist, preferential Greater Britain. The tariff also speeded up the demand and development of more efficient transportation and communications—technological developments that made imperial federation all the more viable—within the British Empire. This article is thus a global history of the McKinley Tariff's impact upon the British Empire, as well as a study of the tariff's effect upon the history of modern globalisation.     

Minimal State Theories and Democracy in Europe: From the 1880s to Hayek

Summary

This article deals with laissez faire arguments as distinguishable in Europe between the final decades of the nineteenth century and 1914. The focus is on Herbert Spencer and the British ‘Individualists’, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto, and the Frenchman Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Analysis concentrates on the relationship between laissez faire formulations and democracy, the latter amounting to the impact of the extension of the franchise on representative government. All the mentioned authors blamed the mechanisms of democratic government for the contemporary growth in state functions. While Spencer focused on the threat of a new class legislation after the demise of aristocratic power, Pareto and Leroy-Beaulieu viewed the pressure of lobbies and parties as the chief cause of the extension of state interventions. This article also aims to detect similarities and differences with more recent formulations. It is argued that Friedrich Hayek's achievement was to reconcile, against earlier perspectives, laissez faire with democracy. The reconciliation rested on a conceptualisation of democracy as a valuable method or procedure, onto which no values should be grafted.     

Written Differently: A Survey of Commonwealth Constitutional History in the Age of Decolonisation

ABSTRACT

This article provides a survey and definition of the field of Commonwealth constitutional history since 1918, especially during and after global decolonisation. It asks what is Commonwealth constitutional history and how it differs from its English and Imperial counterparts. The article puts forward a working definition of Commonwealth constitutional history and introduces key and diverse writers who illustrate the range and potential of this history. The article provides an historiography and survey of constitutional history in the Pre-Commonwealth and Post-war Commonwealth periods while also assessing the opportunities of Post-British Commonwealth constitutional history. The objective of this article is to show how Commonwealth constitutional history can contribute to the historical study of state power and to see its worth to other disciplines and fields of history. Commonwealth constitutional history is a necessity to examine the politics, power and consequences of the British empire during the long age of decolonisation.     

ASEAN as a “Rules-based Community”: Business as Usual

Abstract

In establishing the ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN political elites emphasised their commitment to the rule of law. The definition of the rule of law adopted in the ASEAN Charter mirrored UN reforms that recognised the rule of law as interlinked with democracy and human rights. This commitment raises questions, given the various tactics employed by the grouping’s authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes to silence dissent. This article critically assesses this apparent shift in regional governance. It first maps the inclusion of rule of law rhetoric in agreements since ASEAN’s foundation, and then examines the form and implementation of dispute settlement mechanisms. It finds that dispute settlement mechanisms have consistently retained the scope for protracted political and bureaucratic negotiation between disputing parties, and “opt out” clauses that enable their contingent application. These findings undermine claims regarding the development of a “rules-based community”, and indicate the continuation of rule by law rather than rule of law. The emphasis placed on ASEAN’s rule of law reforms by elites suggests, then, the rebranding of this political project in support of the ASEAN Economic Community so as to create confidence for investors in the region’s juridical environment.     

'n Radikale Siening van ons Verlede

Abstract

In the early 1920s the British colonial mandate authorities argued that the Iringa Highlands of south-western Tanzania were being underutilised, and thus recommended that the area be settled by Europeans. This article indicates that there are specific historical reasons why the highlands were underpopulated and appeared to be underutilised when British mandate authorities first surveyed the area. In particular the article draws attention to the impact of a consecutive series of wars that ravaged the area between 1890 and 1918. In so doing, an implicit argument is made for a re-evaluation of the centrality of the Maji Maji war of 1905–07 in Tanzanian historiography, and seeks to draw attention to the importance of a number of regional wars that characterised the years of German colonial rule prior to Maji Maji. Furthermore the article highlights the significance of the First World War in coming to an understanding of events in southwestern Tanzania.     

Believing in the USA: Derrida,Melville and the Great American Charlatan

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the relationship between the prophet and the charlatan, particularly as they figure in the contemporary American political landscape. It argues that at moments of democratic political crisis these figures arise and reveal the vacancy of sovereignty within the democratic model. The essay treats Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man along with Jacques Derrida’s writings on democracy and the apocalyptic tone as resources in this endeavor. It considers as well why recent worries over the status of facts in the era of “fake news” have led to critiques of deconstruction.