The Governor's vale levu: Architecture and Hybridity at Nasova House, Levuka, Fiji Islands

As an integral component of colonial culture, colonial architecture provides a tangible expression of western presence and domination throughout various colonial settings. In tropical colonies, such as Fiji, western architecture was not simply transplanted, but became transformed through the conscious integration of western and nonwestern architectural elements and grammars. Thus hybrid colonial architecture played a significant role within the sociopolitical strategies of both colonizer and colonized elites. Nasova House, the main government building of the autonomous Cakobau polity (1873–74) and British colonial regime (1874–82), provides a unique example of the use of colonial hybrid architecture in late nineteenth century Fiji.     

‘The first duties of persons living in a civilized community’: the Maya, the Church, and the colonial state in southern Belize

In recent years, historical geography has been at the forefront of new scholarship on the spatiality of colonial power and its complex relations with indigenous communities. This literature shows that imperial policies – emerging through state and scientific institutions, cultural practices, and capitalist ventures – required particular ways of conceptualizing, mapping, and organizing spaces and territories which transformed the geographies of indigenous communities, livelihoods, and identities. Through a close reading of archival texts from the late 19th and early 20th century, this paper examines the spatial and political relations between three groups: the Catholic Church, the British colonial state, and the Maya communities of southern British Honduras. Differences between the Catholic Church and the British colonial state – in their aims and approach to winning hegemony over the Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya – were accommodated and assuaged by a tacit agreement: that the Maya must be settled in permanent communities. Colonial power, in both its spiritual and statist modalities, was imminently geographical, and this geography comprised the common ground between Church and state in their approach to the Maya.     

Pillars and perspective: demarcation of the Belgian Congo–Northern Rhodesia boundary

From 1911 to 1914 an Anglo-Belgian boundary commission demarcated the 885 km boundary between the Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia along the watershed of the Congo and Zambezi rivers with a total of just 46 markers. Such low-density boundary demarcation with widely spaced pillars was typical of early British boundary-making in southern Africa. Less than fifteen years later, a second Anglo-Belgian boundary commission was created to re-demarcate the boundary. Not only was it unique for a colonial boundary in southern Africa to be re-demarcated, this second Anglo-Belgian boundary commission worked for six years with a budget that exceeded any previous British boundary commission in colonial Africa. This commission marked the Belgian Congo–Northern Rhodesia boundary on the ground with nearly five times the number of pillars as the first commission, literally etching the boundary in the African landscape. Its techniques of survey and boundary demarcation set a new standard, serving as a model for later British colonial boundary commissions and influencing boundary-making theory through the present day.     

The Professors' Africa: Economists, the Elections of 1907, and the Legitimation of German Imperialism

German economists led by Gustav Schmoller created the KolonialpolitischesAktionskomité (colonial-political action committee) duringthe so-called ‘colonial crisis’ of 1906–1907to promote the German colonial empire at a time when it wassuffering much scandal and criticism. Widely esteemed and enjoyingthe appearance of non-partisanship, they worked closely withthe government of Bernhard von Bülow during the electionsof 1907, arguing that colonial empire was economically and politicallyindispensable and that its financial burdens were bearable.Straddling a position between the economic imperialism of manyGerman liberals and the settler colonialism prevalent in conservativeand radical nationalist circles, they helped secure a middleground that enabled the Bülow bloc and developed many ideasfor colonial reform that came into currency during the Dernburgera (1906–1910). Through lecturing, the mass disseminationof relatively high-quality literature, and the demarcation ofthe new academic sub-discipline known as Kolonialwissenschaft(colonial science), a potent complex of liberal-nationalistambitions was fused with a new ‘scientific’ colonialismthat helped redefine and legitimate a German civilizing missionin Africa and forge an imperialist ideology that gained a nationalaudience.     

Indigenous management of teak woodland in Zimbabwe, 1850–1900

African forests provide the focus for a growing body of historical research. This study draws on economic and environmental history approaches in exploring the exploitation and conservation of woodland, respectively. The main focus of the investigation is the consumption–conservation relationship between pre-colonial African people and the forest zone, an interaction viewed by colonial foresters in Zimbabwe as wasteful and based on religious superstition. In spite of the open criticism of rapacious timber cutting by mining companies and poor farming techniques by settlers, colonial perceptions over time stressed the notion of ‘improvident Africans’ as the prime cause of environmental destruction, in particular, deforestation and erosion. Within the African context, historical forest literature is bound to reject colonial misconceptions regarding the scope of indigenous woodland management. Customary forest practice in the Zambezi teak or Baikiea woodland points towards a better understanding on the subject, informed by a wide range of sources; oral tradition, missionary records, travel accounts and colonial documents. In reconstructing pre-colonial resource use from interviews and archival data, this study adopts a multi-source approach, while guarding against an overly romanticised view of indigenous practice.     

Reverend James Macdonald Auld and the disintegration of traditional leadership in Xhosaland

This article examines the missionary assault on traditionalism and traditional leadership. It also analyses the origins of Columba Mission. The article sets out to unearth the role of missionaries in the colonial assault on traditionalism, using James Macdonald Auld (2 April 1848–5 December 1932) as a case study. It describes the operation of the Columba Mission from its small beginnings in Kentani (Centane today) in 1878 until the annexation of Gcalekaland by the Cape Colony in 1885. The Cape forces reopened Gatyana (Willowvale) to the colonial authorities following the acceptance of an amnesty. Many of the amaGcaleka remained in Xhorha (Elliotdale), including King Sarhili himself. King Sarhili’s vicissitudes at the hands of the colonial government are used as a scaffolding to see Columba in historical perspective. This article puts the spotlight on King Sarhili and James Macdonald Auld, the Presbyterian missionary at Columba, as a vehicle to explore the reorganisation of Centane. The article also broadens its base of sources by drawing on oral history with intent to add materially to our knowledge about the missions at that often opaque moment in Eastern Cape history. In attempting to examine the relations between the traditional leaders, the colonial governing authorities and the missionaries, this article shows the colonial conflict as an ongoing encounter between the missionaries and the heirs of Phalo, i.e. the amaGcaleka and the amaNgqika     

Bulk stable carbon and deuterium isotope analyses of bitumen artifacts from Hacinebi Tepe, Turkey: reconstructing broad economic patterns of the Uruk expansion

This research addresses issue of inter-regional trade for the world's first colonial trading system, the economic expansion of state societies from southern Mesopotamia into southwest Iran and southeast Anatolia, through the use of stable carbon and deuterium isotope analyses of bitumen artifacts. The key goal of the project was to get beyond simply the identification of trade (Schwartz, M., Hollander, D., Stein, G., 1999. Paléorient 25 (1), 67–82) and examine broad regional patterns in the exchange system. To this end, the methodological approach of this research was focused on the reconstruction of general exchange patterns using a large sample set. The results of these analyses suggest the utility of bulk isotopic analyses in the identification of broad regional patterns, serving as a complement to detailed isotopic and molecular work on asphaltene extractions of bitumen (Connan, J., Nishiaki, Y., 2003. Vol. II: Chalcolithic Technology and Subsistence. The University Museum – The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, pp. 283–306). Some of the data indicate changes in the organization of trade at the site of Hacinebi in southeast Turkey and suggest large economic changes in Anatolia associated with the Uruk expansion.     

Asymmetrical international integration and Ukrainian national disunity

This article examines the impact of international integration on ethno-regional relations in multiethnic states. It argues that when ethno-regions in such a state have different geographic patterns of foreign ties, national unity suffers. “Asymmetrical international integration” (AII) hinders national cohesion by reducing the cultural similarity of the ethno-regions, sharpening their disputes over foreign policy, and intensifying their disparate identities. This argument is evaluated using the case of Ukraine. Analysis of a survey distributed to approximately 1000 elites in two key Ukrainian cities in 1994–95, as well as of other data, demonstrates that AII exists, is believed by Ukrainians to weaken national unity, and in fact does weaken national unity.     

From an Inconsequential Legacy to National Heritage: Revisiting the Conservation Approaches Towards the Ottoman Buildings in British Colonial Cyprus

Cyprus came under British control in 1878. At this time the Western-based orientalist mind-set, which saw ‘Ottoman’ as a synonym for stagnation was at its zenith, and this view was strategically disseminated as the European empires expanded. This also coincided with the evolution of the ethnic-nationalism that facilitated the formation of national heritage constructs. By analysing the case of Cyprus, a place which is entangled with British colonial governance as well as revolutionary Turkey, this paper aims to widen the discussion on the conservation trajectory of the Ottoman built heritage in post-Ottoman environments. Approaches to the restoration, interpretation, and management of Cyprus’s Ottoman buildings between 1878 and 1960 are dissected, assessed and categorized through British-era archival collections. The history of conservation practices is contextualised in changing political and professional perspectives, which reveal the role of Eurocentric paradigms of orientalism and nationalism in managing the perception and treatment processes of Ottoman-built heritage.     

Transitions in the Ottoman Waqf’s traditional building upkeep and maintenance system in Cyprus during the British colonial era (1878–1960) and the emergence of selective architectural conservation practices

How did the Waqf, a widespread Islamic historic institution in the non-Western world which promoted traditional building upkeep and maintenance systems, cope with the emerging architectural conservation understandings of the modern era? How did colonial transfers of knowledge, expertise and political considerations influence these systems? The present study explores these questions by examining the case of the Ottoman Waqf (Evkaf) institution in Cyprus. By collecting and analysing archival evidence on conservation projects, initiated during the British colonial period between 1878 and 1960, a model framework of initiation, authorisation and implementation processes of the upkeep of the Waqf maintained properties has been identified. This framework has been used to show the transitional role of the colonial influence at different stages, which finally led to the dissolution of the Waqf system’s sustainable elements, and initiated the emergence of selective architectural conservation practices. By shifting the focus of conservation discourses to look specifically into the background dynamics of the institutional practice, a new argument has been developed. This revealed how heritage conservation practices are negotiated with the existing institutions and how they are transferred and/or transformed at different levels of institutional governance.     

Hegel, war and the tragedy of imperialism

This article contextualises Hegel's writings on international order, especially those concerning war and imperialism. The recurring theme is the tragic nature of the struggles for recognition which are instantiated by these phenomena. Section one examines Hegel's analysis of the Holy Roman Empire in the context of French incursions into German territories, as that analysis was developed in his early essay on ‘The German Constitution’ (1798–1802). The significance of his distinction between the political and civil spheres is explored, with particular attention being paid to its implications for Hegel's theory of nationalism. The second section examines Hegel's development of the latter theory in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), stressing the tragic interpenetration of ‘culture’ and intersubjective recognition. A recurring theme here is the influence of this theory on Hegel's interpretation of Napoleon's World-Historic mission, as that was revealed in his contemporaneous letters. Section three traces the tragic dynamic underlying the discussion of war between civilised states in The Philosophy of Right (1821). Section four examines three other types of imperial action in Hegel's mature writings, particularly The Philosophy of History (1832). These are relations between civilised states and culturally developed yet politically immature societies; colonial expansion motivated by capitalist under-consumption; and conflict between civilised states and barbarous peoples. It is concluded that it is misleading to claim that Hegel glorified conflict and war, and that he did not see domination by ‘civilised states’ as the ‘final stage’ of World History.     

Still Under the Act? Subjectivity and the State in Aboriginal North Queensland

ABSTRACT Both the colonial encapsulation and post‐colonial recognition of North Queensland's Aboriginal population have been achieved through legislative demarcation. This paper explores the way such demarcation has extended the influence of the state within local Aboriginal life‐worlds, focusing on the State of Queensland's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 and the Commonwealth's Native Title Act 1993. Drawing on ethnographic and historical material from Central Cape York Peninsula, and recent anthropological theorization of the state, I argue that anthropologists need to seriously consider Aboriginal claims about what Michel‐Rolph Trouillot calls ‘state effects’. But careful examination of these claims suggests that the state no longer simply imposes its projects on fundamentally distinct Aboriginal life‐worlds. Not only is the state now deeply engaged within these life‐worlds, it is also deeply interwoven into post‐colonial Aboriginal subjectivities.     

After the ‘king of beasts’: Samuel Baker and the embodied historical geographies of elephant hunting in mid-nineteenth-century Ceylon

This paper draws on and develops a range of concepts and methodologies from ‘more-than-human’ and animal geographies to map some embodied historical geographies of elephant hunting in mid-nineteenth-century Ceylon. It focuses in particular on the exploits of Samuel Baker and some of his contemporaries. The paper attends to the attachments, crossings and ethics that passed between hunted and hunting bodies to flesh out the colonial visions of these ‘seeing men’ of empire. It critically engages with existing work on hunting and colonial natural history by examining interwoven human and nonhuman experiences, exploring elephant hunting as a collection of embodied and co-evolutionary processes with complex material histories. Drawing out the importance of embodiment, affect and intercorporeal exchange the paper then reflects on the performance, epistemology and ethics of hunting practice and traces the role played by a code of sportsmanship in orientating and legitimating the ethical sensibility of hunting. In conclusion the paper details what is gained from this style of embodied historical analysis which unsettles any simple spatio-temporal territorialisation of (post-) colonial historical geographies.     

The institutionalisation of ‘colonial geography’ in France, 1880-1940

Between 1880 and 1900, the conjunction of the development of higher education in France with the renewal of colonial expansion resulted in the creation of the ‘colonial sciences’. ‘Colonial geography’ played a key role in the development of these new disciplines, alongside ‘colonial history’, ‘ethnology’, ‘colonial economics and legislation’ and ‘colonial psychology’. This paper considers the social history of this field and of the institutions in which colonial geography was formed. This involves examination of the study of the teaching of ‘colonial geography’ in the universities and French grandes écoles, the gradual professionalisation of scholarship, and the increase in the number of doctoral theses and book publications, which all serve to demonstrate the vigour of the subdiscipline, leading to the emergence of a veritable research community. Under the Third Republic, ‘colonial geography’ in the universities was characterised by great diversity, irreducible to a single or homogenous ‘colonial discourse’.     

The Deserted Village, Slievemore, Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland

The Deserted Village in Slievemore, currently the subject of research by archaeologists and students at the annual Achill Archaeological Summer Field School, consists of 74 buildings of an original 137. A survey of the architecture of the houses, excavation of a selected house, No. 36, and a field survey of the palimpsest of field systems surrounding the village suggest an origin for the village in the Early Medieval Period (A.D. 500–1200). Successive settlements modified, rebuilt, and destroyed much of the fabric of the original settlement, but sufficient diagnostic elements remain to plot tentatively the evolution of settlement up to and including final abandonment in the Post-Famine Period, ca. 1850–1890.     

The World's Oldest Stone Artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their Implications for Understanding Stone Technology and Patterns of Human Evolution Between 2·6–1·5 Million Years Ago

The systematic archaeological and geological survey and excavations at Gona between 1992–1994 led to the discovery of well-flaked stone artefacts which are currently the oldest known from anywhere in the world. More than 3000 surface and excavated artefacts were recovered at 15 localities documented east and west of the Kada Gona river. Based on radioisotopic dating (⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar) and magnetostratigraphy, the artefacts are dated between 2·6–2·5 million years ago (Ma). EG10 and EG12 from East Gona are the most informative with the highest density, providing the best opportunity for characterizing the oldest assemblages and for understanding the stone working capability of the earliest tool makers. Slightly younger artefact occurrences dated to 2·4–2·3 Ma are known from Hadar and Omo in Ethiopia, and from Lokalalei in Kenya. Cut-marked bones dated to 2·5 Ma from Bouri in Ethiopia are now providing important clues on the function of these artefacts. In addition, Australopithecus garhi known from contemporary deposits at Bouri may be the best candidate responsible for the oldest artefacts. Surprisingly, the makers of the Gona artefacts had a sophisticated understanding of stone fracture mechanics and control similar to what is observed for Oldowan assemblages dated between 2·0–1·5 Ma. This observation was corroborated by the recent archaeological discoveries made at Lokalalei. Because of the similarities seen in the techniques of artefact manufacture during the Late Pliocene–Early Pleistocene, it is argued here that the stone assemblages dated between 2·6–1·5 Ma group into the Oldowan Industry. The similarity and simplicity of the artefacts from this time interval suggests a technological stasis in the Oldowan.     

Mummies, maize, and manure: multi-tissue stable isotope analysis of late prehistoric human remains from the Ayacucho Valley, Perú

This paper reports the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of bone collagen, muscle and skin from several late prehistoric–early colonial (AD 1490–1640) mummies from Perú's Ayacucho Valley. The mean of the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of bone collagen are −11.5 ± 1.4 and 11.1 ± 0.7‰, respectively. The mean of the δ¹³C values for Vinchos skin is −11.8 ± 1.2‰ and the mean of δ¹⁵N values is 13.2 ± 0.5‰. The samples of muscle tissue have a δ¹³C mean of −11.9 ± 0.9‰ and a δ¹⁵N mean of 12.7 ± 0.3‰. The data from bone collagen indicate maize was the basis of the region's subsistence economy. A significant correlation between δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of bone collagen (R² = 0.75) is consistent with the preferential fertilization of maize with composted manure. Both skin and muscle samples are consistently enriched in δ¹⁵N relative to paired samples of bone (2.1 ± 0.5 and 1.6 ± 0.7‰, respectively), possibly as a result of short term physiological stress or differential decomposition.     

“A Little Gravy in the Dish and Onions in a Tea Cup”: What Cookbooks Reveal About Material Culture

Six British colonial and Anglo-American cookbooks from the period 1770–1850 provide insights into the ways in which items of material culture often were used in the past. The multiple functions of many items suggest the need for critical reconsiderations of the functional typologies and status markers so heavily relied upon by historical archaeologists, as well as rethinking of gender associations for some items of material culture.     

An ecology of postcoloniality: disciplining nature and society in Malaya, 1948–1957

This paper examines the territorialization of the Malayan rainforest by the British colonial authorities during the Malayan Emergency in the decade prior to political independence in 1957. Through the events of the Emergency the Malaysian rainforest was constructed as a space of fear and violence in opposition to the orderly rule of the state. Disassociation from the forest was the visible criterion of good or bad, and the struggle over land became recast as a moral struggle between good (the state) and bad (the Communists). The military campaign in the forest was accompanied by legislation designed to control and discipline the Malayan population in the urban areas especially those expelled from the forests and forcibly incarcerated in the ‘New Villages’. The result was an ecology that allowed the most efficient monopoly of violence by the state and of the means to discipline its subject-citizens.