Salutary Lessons: Native Police and the ‘Civilising’ Role of Legalised Violence in Colonial Australia

Over much of the nineteenth century, recurring problems of covert and opportunistic conflict between settlers and Indigenous peoples produced considerable debate across the British settler world about how frontier violence could be legally curbed. At the same time, the difficulty of imposing a rule of law on new frontiers was often seen by colonial states as justification for the imposition of order through force. Examining all the mainland Australian colonies from the 1830s to the end of the nineteenth century, this paper asks how this contradictory dilemma played out through deployment of ‘native police’ and the ‘civilising’ role of legalised violence as a strategy for managing the settler frontier. In light of wider debate about a humanely administered empire, Australia’s first native police force established in New South Wales in 1837 was conceived as a measure that would assist in the conciliation and ‘amelioration’ of Aboriginal people. In the coming decades, other Australian colonies employed native police either as dedicated forces or as individual assistants attached to mounted police detachments. Over time, the capacity they held to impose extreme violence on Aboriginal populations in the service of protecting pastoral investments came to reflect an implicit acceptance that punitive measures were required to bring order to disorderly frontiers.

By tracing a gradual shift in the perceived role of native police from one of ‘civilising’ Aboriginal people to one of ‘civilising’ the settler state itself, this paper draws out some of the conditions under which state-sanctioned force became naturalised and legitimated. It concludes that, as an instrument of frontier management, native policing reflected an enduring problem for Australia’s colonial governments in reconciling a legal obligation to treat Aboriginal people as subjects of the crown with a perceived requirement to bring them under colonial authority through the ‘salutary lessons’ of legalised violence.     

The ‘Wicked Machinery of Government':1 Malta and the Problems of Continuity under the New Model Administration

This is a study focused on the early years of British rule in Malta (1800–13). It explores the application to the island of the ‘new model’ of colonial government, one based on direct rule from London mediated by the continuation of existing laws and institutions. Systemic deficiencies are identified. These tended to undermine the effectiveness of direct British rule. This study also reveals, in the context of legal and constitutional continuity, unresolved tensions between modernity and tradition. The political stability of the island was damaged and the possibility of continued British possession was threatened.     

In “Savage” Company: Sublime Aesthetics and the Colonial Imagination

Edmund Burke’s speeches and writings during the trial of Warren Hastings—from 1788 to 1795—remain one of the most comprehensive assessments of the effects of colonial trade and territorial expansion on Britain’s nationalist self. A rhetorical reading of his prosecution speeches reveals how they affected the public response to the trial by evoking the sublime and framing terror as the basic feature of Britain’s mercantile imperialist agenda in the colonies. Moreover, by associating Hastings’s governance of Bengal with sublime terror, Burke altered the interpretations of virtue and corruption, thus distancing both Britain and India from the rampant profiteering of the East India Company. Burke’s critique of the degenerative influences of commercial imperialism along with the reformulation of his ideas in subsequent colonial historiography is crucial for assessing how the aesthetics of the sublime conferred greater moral force to the sporadic and fragmented reports about the Company’s abuses of power in India.     

“The Central Kingdom” and “the realm under heaven” coming to mean the same: The process of the formation of territory in ancient China

“The Central Kingdom” is pregnant of political implications as well as of geographical and cultural significance. It was believed that whoever controlled Zhongguo (the Central Kingdom or China) would be the legitimate ruler over Tianxia (the realm under heaven or all under heaven). It was the contention for “the Central Kingdom” among the varieties of dynasties, notably those established by the Han-Chinese and the various ethnic groups in the northern borderland, that lead to the alternation of disintegration and unification of the territory. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that the unified “Central Kingdom” composed of a variety of ethnic groups turned into the ideal “realm under heaven” with “the Central Kingdom” at its core, which naturally put an end to the formation of territory in ancient China.     

The Colonial (Dis)order and the (Im)possibility of Redemption: Jeong,Abolition, and Living from the “End of the World”

This article develops the oppositional edge of postcolonial theologies by way of Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial desire for the “end of the world.” It connects W. Anne Joh’s elaboration of jeong – the living in excess of (neo)colonial violence – to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s anti-fascist critique of the godlike desires of European humanism (the sicut deus). The overall aim of the article is to clarify and assess what is at stake in a project of eschatological decolonialism. What might it mean to think theologically about salvation as abolition? And what might it look like to live from the “end of the world?”     

‘Gathered on the Point of a Bayonet’: the Negara Pasundan and the Colonial Defence of Indonesia, 1946–50

ABSTRACT

This article examines the rise of the Negara Pasundan, or Pasundan State: a distinct polity in West Java that was run by the Sundanese - with Dutch consent - during the Indonesian War for Independence (1945–9). The argument engages with several debates connected to decolonisation, examining colonial violence and its perpetrators, loyalty, and the often neglected role of indigenous agency. In contrast with cases where colonial coercion brought local elites and militias to the defence of the European authorities, Sundanese leaders themselves chose to support the Dutch. This support, however, should never be mistaken for loyalty to the Dutch or their empire. Rather, the Sundanese leadership unilaterally renegotiated the Dutch-Sundanese alliance as soon as the fortunes of war shifted. To safeguard the political future of their negara, the Sundanese proved willing to side with the party that initially set out to destroy them and the Dutch: the Republik Indonesia.     

The wives of the ‘first troubadour’, Duke William IX of Aquitaine

The sources which offer insights into the life of Duke William IX of Aquitaine, the ‘first troubadour’, are few and disparate in nature. This study focuses on the conclusions which have been drawn from Anglo-Norman chroniclers' accounts of his clashes with the Church, reportedly over the issue of his adultery, and on Latin poems in praise of the bishop who excommunicated William and whom the duke persecuted. While it is generally believed that the duke married twice, close investigation shows this to be based largely on an error in a nineteenth-century secondary source: it is probable that Philippa of Toulouse was William's only wife. A new reading is proposed of the major Latin verse-compositions referring to the duke's excommunication (1114-17) and it is suggested that the historical evidence concerning the Poitevin claim to the country of Toulouse does not match well with the notion that William attempted to repudiate his wife Philippa, on whom this claim depended.