Debt, Trust, and Reputation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schwecke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Trust And Reputation ◽  
Active Interest ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Starting in the late nineteenth century, colonial rule in India took an active interest in regulating financial markets beyond the bridgeheads of European capital in intercontinental trade. Regulatory efforts were part of a modernizing project seeking to produce alignments between British and Indian business procedures, and to create the financial basis for incipient industrialization in India. For vast sections of Indian society, however, they pushed credit/debt relations into the realm of extra-legality, while the new, regulated agents of finance remained incapable (and unwilling) of serving their needs. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, the book questions underlying assumptions of modernization in finance that continue to prevail in postcolonial India, and delineates the socioeconomic responses they produced, and studies the reputational economies of debt that have emerged instead – extra-legal markets embedded into communication flows on trust and reputation that have turned out to be significantly more exploitative than their colonial predecessors.

Colonial Zaytuna: The Making of a Minaret in French-Occupied Tunisia

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-221
Author(s):  
Sihem Lamine
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
French Protectorate

Abstract In March 1892, eleven years after the establishment of the French protectorate in Tunisia, a congregation of ulemas, religious scholars, and students, as well as representatives of the waqf administration (Jamʿiyyat al-Awqāf) gathered in the ṣaḥn of the Zaytuna Mosque to lay the cornerstone of a new minaret. The pre-exiting tower, whose latest major renovations dated from the seventeenth-century Ottoman Muradid times, was deemed hazardous; it was therefore entirely demolished and replaced by a large-scale replica of the nearby Hafsid Kasbah Mosque of Tunis. The new minaret of the Zaytuna Mosque rose in tandem with the Saint Vincent de Paul Cathedral of Tunis, and simultaneously with the nascent French neighborhoods of Tunis outside and along the medina walls. This article explores the intricate and fascinating context of the construction of a monumental minaret in a city that was gradually severing ties with its Ottoman past and surrendering to a newly established colonial rule. It questions the role and aspirations of the French administration in the minaret project, the reasons that led to the revival of the Almohad architectural style in the late nineteenth-century Maghrib, and the legacy left by the re-appropriation of this style in North Africa.

Islamic Identities in Colonial India

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-53
Author(s):  
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British India ◽  
The South ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Subject ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter introduces many of the groups that will form the subject of this book and charts their emergence and development in conditions of British colonial rule. It shows that the traditionalist orientations that enjoy great prominence in the South Asian landscape began to take a recognizable shape only in the late nineteenth century, although they drew on older styles of thought and practice. The early modernists, for their part, were rooted in a culture that was not significantly different from the `ulama's. Among the concerns of this chapter is to trace their gradual distancing from each other. The processes involved in it would never be so complete, in either British India or in Pakistan, as to preclude the cooperation of the modernists and their conservative critics at critical moments. Nor, however, were the results of this distancing so superficial as to ever be transcended for good.

Ethiopian Source Material and Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth Century: The Letter to Menilek (1899) By Blatta Gäbrä Egzi'abehēr

1994 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irma Taddia
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Despite his important political and literary activities, Blatta Gäbrä Egzi'-abehēr is almost unknown to scholars of Menilek's Ethiopia. This historical period is not particularly well researched, and the author stands out as one of the few Ethiopian intellectuals to have written such an important number of literary works focused on nationalistic and anti-Italian feelings. The Amharic/Ge'ez text under discussion, his letter to Menilek written in 1899, is a remarkable document from this point of view because it reveals a strong opposition to colonialism and the Italian occupation of Eritrea. This document is one of the first Ethiopian sources to testify to the growing nationalism and the growth of concepts of unity and independence. It allows us to consider more carefully the beginning of an Ethiopian secular ideology of the modern state. And such an ideology must be placed in the colonial context. The letter to Menilek raises some important questions regarding the new source material in the late nineteenth century available to historians of modern Ethiopia. A translation of the text is given as well as a comment on its historical significance.

SLAVERY AND HUMAN SACRIFICE IN YORUBALAND: ONDO, c. 1870–94

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
OLATUNJI OJO
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Internal Forces ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Economic Inequalities

This article, focusing on the operation and abolition of human sacrifice in eastern Yorubaland, examines a key aspect of the dialogue and conflict between Yoruba chiefs and their opponents – slaves, Christians and British colonialists – during the late nineteenth century. The exchange reflected the position of human sacrifice in the consolidation of economic inequalities and socio-cultural privileges. The article examines this controversy in the context of the broader changes of the era, including the ending of the Yoruba wars and the approach of colonial rule. It analyses the interaction of external and internal forces that produced the eventual demise of human sacrifice.

From Wealthy Entrepreneurs to Petty Traders: the decline of African Middlemen in Eastern Nigeria, 1900–1950

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony I. Nwabughuogu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Export Trade ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
Trust System ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This paper traces the process of the decline of African middlemen in Eastern Nigeria from wealthy entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth century to petty traders after 1930. Four phases are identified in their decline. During the first phase, 1900–5, the middlemen lost only the political control of their trading areas but benefited commercially. The establishment of colonial rule expanded their market. And with the reluctance of expatriate firms to move into the interior, the continued ignorance of the natives of the actual prices of their produce and of imported goods, and the encouragement from the colonial administrators, African middlemen prospered.These advantages were lost during the second phase, 1905–16. As the firms began to move inland from 1905, they traded with the natives and fostered a new group of smaller and dependent middlemen. The middlemen's market began to contract and their wealth declined. Their fortunes worsened during the third phase, 1916–30. With the opening of the Eastern Railway to traffic in 1916 and the increased construction of roads during this period, the firms intensified their penetration of the interior, swallowing up what remained of the middlemen's market. The introduction of produce inspection in Eastern Nigeria in 1928 added more hardships for the middlemen, putting many out of business. And by 1930 the trust system, upon which most middlemen depended after 1916 for raising their trading capital, collapsed, leaving most of them impoverished.Thus, after 1930 African middlemen were no more than petty traders, trading with little capital and making marginal profit. They became incapable of challenging the expatriate firms in the import–export trade as their predecessors had done in the nineteenth century. The firms employed various trade malpractices to ensure that the African traders retained this status until the 1940s.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Arabic Writing Due to European Influence: The case of punctuation

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 117-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Awad
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The spread of foreign languages, especially French, under European colonial rule inspired certain Arabic writers and scholars in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century to look at ways to develop the Arabic language. This happened because they felt that foreign languages had started to overtake Arabic because they were easier to read (ZAKĪ 1901: 2). In this paper, I will discuss the use of punctuation marks in Arabic texts since the mid-nineteenth century as an example of the evolution of Arabic writing due to European influence. I will explain the reasons why punctuation marks were integrated into Arabic texts, quoting Arabic writers and scholars from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. These include Zaynab Fawwāz, the first writer to address the issue of punctuation marks in Arabic writings (FAWWĀZ 2007: 105-107), and ʾAḥmad Zakī who officially integrated punctuation into the Arabic language (ZAKĪ 1912). I will also explain the opposition that came from conservative scholars who were reluctant to change any aspect of Arabic writing. This is because they believed in the sanctity of Arabic as it is the language of the Qurʾān and it represents Arabic identity. Therefore, one should avoid any “borrowing” from colonial languages in order to preserve Arabic identity (MEYNET 1971: 94).Keywords: Punctuation, Arabic writing, ʾAḥmad Zakī, printing, Arabic Renaissance / an-Nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya, transmission of knowledge

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