The English Interpreters in Dahomey, 1843–1852

ABSTRACT

Commercial and diplomatic relations between Africans and Europeans in West Africa in the pre-colonial period depended on the existence of persons who had sufficient knowledge of both European and African languages to be able to act as interpreters between the parties, and such persons were more usually Africans than Europeans. This article collates biographical information on four persons who served as interpreters to successive British visitors to the kingdom of Dahomey between 1843 and 1852, including official government missions seeking to persuade the Dahomian king to cooperate in the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. The lives of such men may be thought of as involving the ‘transcending’ of ‘boundaries’, not only in acting as brokers in contacts between Africans and Europeans, but also in themselves occupying an ambiguous liminal position between the two. In their role as interpreters, they were subject to contradictory pressures, from the Dahomian state and the various European interests involved in the negotiations, and at the same time sought to advance their own personal interests. Beyond the intrinsic interest of these biographies, this article is conceived as a methodological exploration of the possibility of extracting an African voice and perspective from mainly European sources.     

Re-using ‘uncomfortable heritage’: the case of the 1933 building,Shanghai

This paper opens up a discussion over the processes of forgetting and remembering that occur in the adaptive reuse of quite commonplace buildings that, nevertheless, have been classified as ‘heritage’. For most buildings survival depends upon finding a new economic use once original use has ceased. At this point decisions are also made about what stories are carried forward from the building’s past. The principal case study discussed in this paper is the former Shanghai Municipal Abattoir, a modernist concrete sculpture now branded 1933 Shanghai. The paper delineates how a process of ‘strategic forgetting and selective remembrance’ has been undertaken, negotiating the bloody nature of the building’s past, in its reuse as an upscale commercial venue. Reuse is further considered within the wider frames of a 1920–1930s Shanghai urban branding ‘imaginary’ and as a ‘building of control and reform’ – a category of buildings developed from the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment-thinking. In reflecting upon this negotiation in the heritage making process with potentially difficult past events, we propose the category of ‘uncomfortable heritage’, as part of a wider spectrum of ‘dark heritage’, and conclude with a final reflection upon 1933 Shanghai as a heterotopic space.     

The elderly population of Great Britain: locational trends and policy implications

"The distribution in 1981 and trends during the 1970s of the pensionable age population, of those aged 75 years or more and of pensioners living alone in Great Britain are examined by counties, by county districts and at the intra-metropolitan scale. A pause in the tendency towards the spatial dissociation of the elderly from the remainder of the population is revealed. Many large retirement resorts now have declining elderly populations although rapid growth continues in their suburbs and adjacent rural areas. Rapid increases of the elderly population during the 1970s were seen in several inland rural areas and to a lesser extent in well established new towns and large city suburbs."     

Melting the Cold War Permafrost: Restructuring Military Industry in Scotland

Military industry stands at the confluence of local, national and global processes. This paper examines the restructuring of this peculiar industry in one region, Scotland, from a perspective that takes the geography of production to be a joint, though contradictory, creation. Following the work of Lovering for the UK as a whole, the case of Scotland—often imagined as "militantly proletarian"—allows a specific study of the accumulation strategies of state and capital and the role of organized labor in mediating the spatial fix. Until the early 1990s accumulation was premised on additive "capital widening" strategies. Since then, both "capital narrowing" rationalization strategies and "capital deepening" intensification strategies have been pursued. Through restructuring, the UK military industry attempts to utilize the abstract spaces of the social economy to expediently and opportunistically reconstitute the concrete spaces of production and renegotiate its dependency on the refractory material of proximate living labor. Yet spatial shifts have not uniformly benefited the southern core of the UK military industry. One reason for thecontinuing salience of military industry in Scotland has been the role of a pan-class alliance, "the Scottish lobby," in campaigning against closures and for the allocation of defense contracts. Trade unions have attempted to mediate the contradictions of restructuring by supporting external strategies to retain firm survival in their present localities, even as internally workforce numbers are cut in half and management regimes become more abrasive.     

Turning night into day: transgression and Americanization at the English inter-war roadhouse

In the inter-war Home Counties, the roadhouse, a sizeable country club style location of entertainment and dancing was an iconic destination of consumption and leisure aimed at the wealthier middle classes. These establishments were marketed in newsreels as exclusive and sophisticated but in reality were open to wider groups in a settings that offered anonymity by virtue of their suburban locations. Reflecting this, roadhouses were also used in literature and in cinema as a locus of transgression and danger. Readings of suburbia have concentrated on static analyses of house/home and discussions of suburban mobilities have been confined to commuting, thus reinforcing the centrality of the house. A consideration of mobilities facilitated by the motorcar can produce a more subtle view of the suburban world of the period. In this paper the roadhouse is shown to form part of a new suburban landscape responding to the development of the wider availability of the automobile and to London's new arterial roads. The leisure products consumed at the roadhouse were heavily influenced by American cultural exports but were hybridized for local audiences.     

Death and Burial Customs in Wiltshire.

Lavanis (ballads in the Kannada language) produced a vast body of discourse about the colonizers in Karnataka. They offer us glimpses of colonial relations, perceptions, and representations from the Indian side of the relationship. Such discourse ultimately allowed the British officials and the folk narrators to represent and legitimize both themselves and ‘the other’ simultaneously.     

The red line over European colonialism: comparison of the Macao museum and Hong Kong museum of history after their return to China

Hong Kong and Macao were once European colonies. A unique, hybrid culture of East and West now flourishes in these two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of China. Both cities opened new history museums in 1998, but they adopted remarkably different approaches in their representation of their complicated and politically sensitive history. The Hong Kong Museum of History (HKMH) represents history by closely following the orientation of traditional Chinese nationalism. The postcolonial characteristics adopted by the Macao Museum to reproduce history, in contrast, are likely amongst the richest of all history museums in China. What are the reasons behind the different historical representations by Hong Kong and Macao, which were both promised a ‘One country, Two systems’ policy by the Chinese central authority? This paper argues that both museums reveal two faces of a rising China; the one in Hong Kong emphasises national dignity, and the people’s identification with and loyalty to the nation when it is engaged in state building. The one in Macao emphasises the multiple roles in finding a balanced position to coexist with superpowers, forging friendships with developing countries and building an idealised image of a (re-)rising nation through historical construction. The difference between these two museums indicates the exceptional flexibility of China’s postcommunist regime in engaging in soft power diplomacy.     

Agroforestry on an Active Volcanic Small Island in Indonesia: Prospering with Adversity

This paper draws on the literature on agroforestry, disaster risk reduction, and livelihoods of people on small islands as it applies to a community prospering in conditions of adversity in Kinali village on Siau Island, Indonesia. Siau Island produces between one‐third and one‐half of all nutmeg and mace exported from Indonesia. The Kinali community has adopted strategies that enable it to prosper in spite of the risks of living on a small island with an active volcano. The paper charts the sociocultural dynamics of the village and examines how local coping mechanisms based on an agroforestry economy have assisted villagers in dealing with the multiple hazards and constraints arising from the biophysical characteristics of their island. The paper thus contributes to more informed responses to managing volcanic risk.