The Indian Voice: Connecting Self-Representation and Identity Formulation in Diaspora

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saima Nasar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
East African ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

AbstractThis article examines a previously overlooked publication titled The Indian Voice of British East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar. Printed in Nairobi between 1911 and 1913, the Indian Voice has been dismissed by some scholars as “insignificant” in the wider context of Kenya’s militant press. As an important tool for discovering, exploring and analyzing the nature of racial hierarchies, diasporic identity and belonging, this article argues that the Indian Voice can be used to understand how “new kinds of self-representation” both emerged and dissolved in early twentieth-century East Africa. By contextualizing the historical significance of the newspaper, it demonstrates how the Indian Voice offers an invaluable means of generating new insights into the complex cultural and political formulations of Indian identities in diaspora. In doing so, this article contributes to remapping the historical perspective of East African Indians within the early colonial period.

Lango Agriculture during the early Colonial Period: Land and Labour in a Cash-Crop Economy

1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tosh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Dry Season ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Cash Crop ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Simple Technology ◽  
The Cost

This article seeks to explain the adoption of cotton-growing by the Langi of Uganda in the early twentieth century, on the assumption that considerations of ‘indigenous economics’ (notably labour constraints and the attraction of competing crops) were at least as important as the more usually stressed factors of administrative pressure, price incentives and petty trading by immigrant minorities. On the eve of the colonial period the Langi were already producing planned agricultural surpluses—principally sesame for trade with Bunyoro.Cotton, which was introduced in 1909, could only have been grown on a significant scale at the cost of sacrificing the trade in sesame. This the Langi refused to do until the early 1920s, when the market for sesame declined and the buying price of cotton rose; partial alleviation of the threat of famine and changes in traditional dry-season occupations were also important. From 1931, however, cotton output in Lango ceased to expand. This stagnation was only partly a result of the Depression; once more the Langi found themselves producing as much as was humanly possible, given an extremely tough environment, a simple technology and a fully stretched labour-force.

Caste-Less Tamils and Early Print Public Sphere: Remembering Iyothee Thass (1845–914)

2021 ◽  
pp. 026272802110348
Author(s):  
Dickens Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of

Responding to the history of Dalit invisibility in print public sphere, this article explores one of the earliest Dalit articulations in print in South Asia during the colonial period. Extending studies on anti-caste thought by foregrounding the Tamil cosmopolis, this conceptualises how the most oppressed by caste engaged with print in the early twentieth century, through studying the works on and of Pandit Iyothee Thass and his movement. The article proposes that these experiments with print opened the chance of a political to emerge, which was otherwise foreclosed, towards wording a caste-less community at this earlier time in Indian history.

‘Even If You Don’t Want to Drink, You Still Have to Drink’

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Invented Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the history of alcohol in Nuosu Yi society in relation to the formal codification of a Yi heritage of alcohol-related culture, and the question of alcohol in Yi health. The relationship of newly invented tradition to older practice and thought is often obscure in studies that lack historical perspective. Examining the historical narratives associated with the exposition of a Yi heritage of alcohol, this study reveals that those narratives are woven from a tapestry of threads with histories of their own, and they therefore shape present-day heritage work. After a brief overview of ideas about alcohol in contemporary discourses on Yi heritage, the chapter then analyses historical texts to argue that many of these ideas are remarkably similar to ones that emerged in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth century contact between Yi and Han communities.

The Meanings Embedded within Childcare Regulations: A Historical Analysis

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Medical Supervision ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Childcare Programs

In response to current discussions about a universal Canadian childcare system (affordable childcare for all families), this article deconstructs the position that childcare occupies in the province of Ontario through the examination, from a historical perspective, of a document that outlines regulations for childcare programs: the Day Nurseries Act. Three discourses are analyzed by tracing them to social and demographic conditions during the early twentieth century: discourses related to the need for medical supervision of children attending childcare centres; discourses that emphasize the relationship between childcare centres and ‘families in need’; and discourses that refer to the need to follow strict programming and behavioural guidelines.

What to do about cows? Princely versus British approaches to a South Asian dilemma

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN COPLAND
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Custom ◽  
Vexed Question

For more than a millennium, cow slaughter has been a source of bitter contention in South Asia. Hindus revere the animal; Muslims like to eat it and, until recently, the cow has been the preferred animal of sacrifice at the Islamic festival of ‘Id-ul-Adha¯. This paper looks at how, over the twentieth century, Indian governments of differing type and ideological colour—British and princely during the late colonial period and Congress nationalist after 1947—have tried to mediate this vexed question. It finds that while policies differed widely, there was a tendency for all governments in the early twentieth century to be guided by social custom and local opinion, so that in the small Muslim-ruled state of Mangrol, which had an official ban, the Muslims who killed cows occasionally for food were never prosecuted so long as they kept their activities discreet—but this ‘discretionary’ option became politically unviable once the country embraced democracy.

scholarly journals Malnutrition in a Modernising Economy: The Changing Aetiology and Epidemiology of Malnutrition in an African Kingdom, Buganda c.1940–73

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Nott
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Lake Victoria ◽  
Protein Energy Malnutrition ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Protein Energy ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Northern Shore

The ecological fecundity of the northern shore of Lake Victoria was vital to Buganda’s dominance of the interlacustrine region during the pre-colonial period. Despite this, protein-energy malnutrition was notoriously common throughout the twentieth century. This paper charts changes in nutritional illness in a relatively wealthy, food-secure area of Africa during a time of vast social, economic and medical change. In Buganda at least, it appears that both the causation and epidemiology of malnutrition moved away from the endemic societal causes described by early colonial doctors and became instead more defined by individual position within a rapidly modernising economy.

scholarly journals Finns in the Colonial World

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Raita Merivirta ◽  
Leila Koivunen ◽  
Timo Särkkä
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The North ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Racial Hierarchies ◽  
Belgian Congo

AbstractUtilizing such concepts as “colonial complicity” and “colonialism without colonies”, this chapter examines the case of Finns and Finland as a nation that was once oppressed but also itself complicit in colonialism. It argues that although the Finnish nation has historically been positioned in Europe between western and eastern empires, Finns were not only passive victims of (Russian) imperial rule but also active participants in the creation of imperial vocabulary in various colonial contexts, including Sápmi in the North.This chapter argues that although Finns never had overseas colonies, they were involved in the colonial world, sending out colonizers and producing images of colonial “others”, when they, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, felt the need to project themselves as white and European (not Russian or non-white, such as Mongols). Finns adopted, adapted, and created common European knowledge about colonized areas, cultures, and people and participated in constructing racial hierarchies. These racialized notions were also applied to the Sámi. Furthermore, Finns benefitted economically from colonialism, sent out missionaries to Owambo in present-day Namibia to spread the ideas of Western/White/Christian superiority and instruct the Owambo in European ways. Finns were also involved in several colonial enterprises of other European colonizing powers, such as in the Belgian Congo or aboard Captain Cook’s vessel on his journey to the Antipodes.

Adaptation of Western Modern Concepts in Modern Korean Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century: Through the Perspective of Science, Efficiency, and Hygiene

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-153
Author(s):  
Myengsoo Seo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Company Housing ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Korean Architecture

This research explores the characteristics of Korean early modern architecture in the early twentieth century. Modern Korean architecture experienced conflicts and continuities between tradition and modernity from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. To evaluate these various influences, this article considers Korean early modern architecture through the perspective of such modern concepts as “science,” “efficiency,” and “hygiene.” These modern concepts emerged first in the West before the nineteenth century, and they played significant roles in constructing a modern society in the West and the East. By investigating how these modern concepts were adopted in Korea in the early twentieth century, this research scrutinizes not only individual architects such as Park Gilryong and Park Dongjin but also newly constructed buildings such as kwansa (official residences of Japanese ministries) and sat’aek (company housing), especially during the Japanese colonial period. Furthermore, this research goes beyond Korean architecture to encompass regional and cultural differences. This research enables early modern Korean architecture to find its identity through the approach of social and cultural contexts, and by comparison with Western architectural culture.

Modernity, Print Media, and the Middle Class in Colonial East Africa

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Emma Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
East Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The One ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

This chapter takes a look at colonial East Africa. On the one hand, the chapter shows that the colonial economy and racial hierarchies of East Africa offered little potential for the growth of an African bourgeoisie. On the other hand, it demonstrates that in the cultural rather than the economic sphere, a slightly different picture emerges. Looking at the Swahili-language government and the mission newspapers of colonial Zanzibar and Tanganyika between the 1880s and the 1930s, the chapter reveals the ways in which a small but growing literate elite in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century East Africa used the medium of print in order to allow them to create “a space in which new collectivities could be imagined and identities constructed.” The particular space offered by newspapers and periodicals thus provided a possibility for African middle classes to create a distinct public sphere and to assert their distinctiveness by rhetorically identifying with, and making a claim of belonging to, an imagined global bourgeoisie.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document