Modernising colonialism: The British Labour movement and Africa

The article evaluates the widely held view that the Attlee governments lacked a distinctive approach to colonial affairs by examining the Labour movement's post-war, institution building activities in Kenya. In Labour's colonial policy deliberations, Kenya was the focus of particular attention and is used as a case study to shed light on the Labour leadership's wider imperial concerns and objectives. From the 1920s, the Labour party advocated that the colonies be encouraged to develop trade unions, co-operatives and local government. Some tentative moves in this direction were made in 1930 by Ramsay MacDonald's administration but it was not until Labour came to power in 1945 that, in response to international pressure and the nationalist challenge, significant steps were taken to promote institutions which would organise the African masses. The argument advanced is that Labour leaders drew on their movement's historical traditions to encourage forms of African economic and political activism which were likely to stabilise colonial rule.     

Contesting Patriarchies: Nlha7pamux and Stl'atl'imx women and colonialism in nineteenth-century British Columbia

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of First Nations (Native) women in the southern interior of British Columbia began to live with and marry white settlers and gold miners. Demographic shifts in both white and Native populations, paired with the precedent of liaisons between fur traders and Native women, contributed to the mobility of Native women. Their departure from indigenous communities was, however, bitterly contested by Native men as well as by white politicians who sought to protect 'racial purity' in the province. Despite opposition, Native women pursued this historically constituted possibility of living within an alternative patriarchy. By the late 1890s, waves of British immigration brought young, single, white women to the province and, in a political climate increasingly hostile to 'miscegenation', male settlers began to marry white wives instead. Thus, ironically, discursive and demographic pressures again closed the window through which Native women had travelled into a different culture. Drawing on colonial records and inferences, this article analyses historical components of agency over several generations of Native women. In the process, it examines ways in which relations of power shifted along the axes of race and gender over 30 years of colonialism in British Columbia.     

Settler colonialism and the nuclear family

Colonial societies revolved around nuclear families. Though they often seemed natural, universal and inevitable, colonial nuclear families were in fact produced through a series of laws and customs that regulated sex and marriage. These legal, social and cultural practices conspired to make the family an adaptable and formidable social institution, both a pillar and a beneficiary of colonization. Hegemonic but not universal, family members were privileged over other members of colonial societies, who not only survived on the margins and in the shadows of colonialism, but also played crucial roles in resettlement societies.     

Review Article:Rediscovering India under the British

O.P. KEJARIWAL. The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India's Past 1784–1838. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp. xiv, 293. $24.95 (US);

TAPAN RAYCHAUDHUM. Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp. xviii, 369. $39.95 (US);

JOAN G. ROLAND. Jews in British India: Identity in a Colonial Era. Hanover, N.H. and London: University Press of New England, 1989. Pp. xiii, 355. $40.00 (US);

NANCY GARDNER CASSELS. Religion and Pilgrim Tax under the Company Raj. Riverdale, Md.: The Riverdale Company, 1988. Pp. xiii, 184. $34.00 (US);

APARNA MUKHERJEE. British Colonial Policy in Burma: An Aspect of Colonialism in South-East Asia 1840–1885. Riverdale, Md.: The Riverdale Company, 1988. Pp. x, 559. $34.00 (US).     

论英国对印度殖民统治体制的形成及影响

从美国独立到拿破仑战争结束这32年时间内,英国调整了对印度的殖民统治政策。受工业革命以及福音教派运动的影响,英国政府改变了过去那种赤裸裸的殖民掠夺、殖民压迫政策,而在表面上代之以为土著人殖民地建立良好的政府,消除暴政、杜绝腐败、发展教育,这在一定程度上促进了殖民地经济文化的发展,从而“充当了历史的不自觉的工具”。英国对印度殖民新的统治体制的形成,对于英帝国的发展壮大意义重大。     

James Mill's treatment of religion and the History of British India

James Mill's History of British India’ (1817) played a major role in re-shaping the English policy and attitudes in India throughout the nineteenth century. This article questions the widely held view that the ‘HBI’ heralded the utilitarian justification of colonisation found for instance in John Stuart Mill's writings. It suggests that James Mill's role as a proponent of ‘utilitarian imperialism’ has been overstated, and argues that much of Mill's criticism of Indian society arose from the continuing influence of his religious education as well as from his links with a network of Presbyterian and Evangelical thinkers. It is only after his death that the colonialist views put forward in the History of British India were re-interpreted in light of his later attachment to utilitarianism.     

英国秘密档案中记载的印度华侨陆兴祺

本文利用了重要的、鲜为人知的中外有关文献 ,深入细致地论述了英国秘密档案中记载的民国初年护理西藏办事长官陆兴祺 ,并兼论印度华侨在维护中央对西藏的主权中所起的重要作用 ,介绍了清末至 2 0世纪 30年代护理西藏办事长官陆兴祺在印度活动时所涉及的重要背景、中外人物、其中的冲突、中外交涉及结果等 ,从而为民国年间的中外交涉以及有关西藏史和印度华侨的研究提供了有益的史料     

Mountbatten,the royal family,and British influence in post-independence India and Burma

One of the unexplored themes in the career of Mountbatten is why more use was not made of his services in similar contexts in the years after his Indian viceroyalty and governor-generalship. This article examines his influence in private and unofficial capacities in his dealings with post-independence India and Burma in the 1960s and early 1970s. In India it considers Mountbatten's efforts on behalf of the Indian princes when Indira Gandhi's government threatened their privy purses and privileges. In Burma it discusses Mountbatten's attempts to persuade Burma to return to the Commonwealth and his influence over General Ne Win, Burma's military ruler. Mountbatten was unsuccessful in both cases. By contrast in Burma, Princess Alexandra was better placed to represent British interests, suggesting perhaps that we should look more closely at the role of members of the royal family in promoting Britain's foreign policy.