Liberal Leviathan or Imperial Outpost? J. S. Furnivall on Colonial Rule in Burma

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEIL A. ENGLEHART
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
British India ◽  
Modern Economy ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
The Impact

AbstractJ. S. Furnivall, in his influential account of the impact of British rule in Burma 1824–1948, argues that British officials laid down a Liberal administration that exposed the colony to market forces, monetized the economy and devastated communities. However, there is little evidence that British administrators actually thought in Liberal terms: they relied heavily on institutions inherited from the Burmese monarchy, and when they introduced new administrative methods these were drawn from other parts of British India and only indirectly influenced by Liberalism. Furnivall's view of the ideological origins of British administration, in turn, distorts his reading of the impact of British rule, as illustrated by recent work on the pre-colonial economy showing that it was in fact more monetized and commercialized than he claims. If his account of the pre-modern economy is not viable, Furnivall's claims about the impact of British colonialism in Burma demand re-evaluation.

Another Colonial History: How Cosmopolitan Was Cavafy's Contemporary Alexandria?

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-121
Author(s):  
Alexander Kazamias
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Colonial Oppression ◽  
The Impact ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Alternative Reading

This essay provides an alternative reading of modern Alexandria's social and cultural history as a basis for a better contextualization of Cavafy's poetry. It revisits the watershed year 1882, which marks the city's destruction after its bombardment by the British fleet, using new evidence from a little-known diary by the nineteen-year-old Cavafy. It then examines the overlooked context of Alexandria's late Ottoman cosmopolitanism and shows its decisive contribution to the city's modern culture, including Cavafy's own diasporic ethnic group, the Egyptian Greeks. Finally, the argument reassesses some prevalent misconceptions about the impact of British rule in Egypt, including the problematic view that it purportedly enhanced the city's cosmopolitan life. Instead, the article shows that British colonialism sought to constrain Alexandrian cosmopolitanism, whereas Cavafy, and a circle of radical intellectuals around him, actively defended it through nuanced expressions of opposition to the injustices of colonial oppression in Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece.

‘The Real Value of the Lands’: The Nawabs, the British and the Land Tax in Eighteenth-Century Bengal

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. TRAVERS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Revenue Collection ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Real Value ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Ever since the late eighteenth century, no subject has been more prominent in histories of ‘the transition to colonialism’ in south Asia, than the issue of taxation. In particular, the complex system of agrarian taxation that was developed under the Mughal empire, and further elaborated by various post-Mughal regimes, has often been seen as the defining institution of both the pre-colonial and colonial states. What the British called ‘land revenues’, which included taxes on land proper (mal) and taxes on trade and markets (sair), were the main source of income for both Indian and British rulers. Assessments of the impact of colonial rule have often depended on supposed changes in the tax regime. Since the nineteenth century historians have tended to focus their attention on the relationship between the land tax and structures of agrarian property. They have generally argued that British rule both substantially increased the tax burden, and modified structures of agrarian tenure by splicing together rights of revenue collection and private property in land. But they have focused much more on early colonial policies with regard to private landed property, and less on the issue of the actual tax assessment. This paper takes up the issue of the land tax demand (known as jama in the terminology of Mughal and post-Mughal administration) tracing British debates about tax assessments through the first three decades of colonial rule in Bengal.

Tracing Burma's Economic Failure to Its Colonial Inheritance

2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 725-747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Brown
Keyword(s):  
Rice Field ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Commercial Experience ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
Economic Failure

The extent to which the inheritance of British rule in Burma, including Burmese perceptions of that inheritance, might explain Burma's economic failure since independence is explored. Several factors came into play. One was the ferocious rejection of the economic structures of colonial rule by the Burmese. Another was the failure of Burmese entrepreneurs– who had been in a position to achieve little beyond dominance over the rice field–to emerge during the colonial period. Finally, there were the implications for independent Burma's economic options of the withdrawal of Indian capital, enterprise, and commercial experience, which had been a dominant factor in the colonial economy, at the point when Burma regained its political freedom.

A Rule of Proprietary Right for British India: From revenue settlement to tenant right in the age of classical legal thought

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 345-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
FAISAL CHAUDHRY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Species ◽  
British India ◽  
Indian Land ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Land Control ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractScholars have long debated the impact of the British ‘rule of property’ on India. In our own day it has become common for historians to hold that the Raj's would-be regime of free capitalist property was frustrated by a pervasive divide between rhetoric and reality which derived from a fundamental lack of fit between English ideas and Indian land control practices. While seemingly novel, the contemporary emphasis on the theory-practice divide is rooted in an earlier ‘revisionist’ perspective among late-nineteenth-century colonial thinkers who argued that land control in the subcontinent derived from a uniquely Indian species of ‘proprietary’ (rather than genuinely propertied) right-holding. In this article, I critically examine the revisionist discourse of ‘proprietary right’ by situating it in a broader comparative perspective, both relative to earlier ideas about rendering property ‘absolute’ during the East India Company's rule and relative to the changing conception of the property right among legal thinkers in the central domains of the Anglo-common law world. In so doing, the article significantly revises our understanding of the relationship between property, law, and political economy in the subcontinent from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century.

scholarly journals John Stuart Mill and the practice of colonial rule in India

2020 ◽  
pp. 175508822090334
Author(s):  
David Williams
Keyword(s):  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British State

John Stuart Mill’s justification for British rule in India is well known. Less well known and discussed are Mill’s extensive writings on the practice of British rule in India. A close engagement with Mill’s writings on this issue shows Mill was a much more uncertain and anxious imperialist than he is often presented to be. Mill was acutely aware of the difficulties presented by the imperial context in India, he identified a number of very demanding conditions that would have to be met if Britain’s imperial mission was to be successful, and he was very troubled by the dangers posed to this mission from politics in Britain. Toward the end of his life, Mill become much more pessimistic about the progressive possibilities of British colonialism, in part because of what he thought had happened after the transfer of British rule from the East India Company to the British state. A focus on Mill’s arguments about the practice of British rule in India goes some way to providing a more nuanced account of what Mill thought about colonialism.

Colonial Rule and Modernization in Ballari

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Asra Afrin
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Native People ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Indian History ◽  
British Rule

Colonialism is one of the most important aspects of Indian history and Indian literature. The colonial rule has left its impression in both positive and negative ways. The paper looks at the positive aspects of the British rule in Ballari a District in Karnataka. The paper/article deals with the development that took place during the colonial rule in Ballari. It explores the adoption of modern technology and science and opening of missionary schools at Ballari and its positive impact on the region and regional/native people. The paper shows how the modernization and Westernization made its way in Ballari.

Principles for sharing economy formation in the digital society

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 800-821
Author(s):  
E.V. Popov ◽  
K.A. Semyachkov
Keyword(s):  
Network Effects ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Network Effect ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Society ◽  
Modern Economy ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Impact

Subject. The article addresses economic relations that are formed in various areas of economic application of digital platforms. The target of the research is the modern economy of digital platforms across different economic activities. Objectives. The aim is to systematize principles for share economy formation in the context of the digital society development. Methods. We employ general scientific methods of research. Results. The study shows that the development of digital platforms is one of the most important trends in the development of the modern economy. We classified certain characteristic features of modern digital platforms, analyzed principles for their creation. The paper emphasizes that the network effects achieved through the use of digital platforms are an important factor in the development of the share economy. The network effect describes the impact of the number of the platform users on the value created for each of them. The paper also considers differences in the organization of traditional economy companies and companies that are based on the digital platform model, reveals specifics of changes in socio-economic systems caused by the development of digital platforms, systematizes principles of the sharing economy formation in the context of the digital society development. Conclusions. The analyzed principles for sharing economy development on the basis of digital platforms can be applied to create models for the purpose of forecasting the transformation of economic activity in the post-industrial society.

Islam and Colonial Rule in Lagos

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Olakunle A. Lawal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Islam And Politics ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Process Of Urbanization

IntroductionThis essay provides an explanation of the dynamics of the interactionbetween Islam and politics by placing emphasis on the role played byMuslims in the collision of traditionalism and British rule as colonialismtook root in Lagos. The focus is on the development of a political schismwithin the nascent Muslim community of metropolitan Lagos at the startof the twentieth century up until the end of the 1940s. It highlights therole of Islam in an emerging urban settlement experiencing rapid transformationfrom a purely rural and traditional center into a colonial urbancenter. The essay is located within the broader issues of urban change andtransition in twentieth-century tropical Africa. Three major developments(viz: the central mosque crisis, the Eleko affair, and the Oluwa land case)are used as the vehicles through which the objectives of the essay areachieved.The introduction of Islam into Lagos has been studied by T. G. O.Gbadamosi as part of the history of Islam in southwestern Nigeria. Thisepic study does not pay specific attention to Lagos, devoted as it is to thegrowth of Islam in a far-flung territory like the whole of modem southwesternNigeria. His contribution to a collection of essays on the historyof Lagos curiously leaves out Islam’s phenomenal impact on Lagosianpolitics during the first half of the twentieth century. In an attempt to fillthis gap, Hakeem Danmole’s essay also stops short of appreciating the fundamentallink between the process of urbanization, symbolized in this caseby colonial rule, and the vanguard role played by Muslims in the inevitableclash of tradition and colonial rule in Lagos between 1900 and 1950.

Setting the Stage

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred L. Borch
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
Ethical Policy ◽  
Netherlands East Indies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
The Impact

Explores the role of the Dutch in the Indies from 1595, when sailors from Amsterdam first arrived in the islands, to 1942, when the Japanese invaded the colony and inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Dutch. The history of the Dutch in the Indonesian archipelago is critical to understanding the impact of the Japanese occupation after 1942, and the nature of the war crimes committed by the Japanese. This is because the ultimate goal of the Japanese occupiers was to erase all aspects of Dutch culture and influence the islands. The chapter begins with an examination of the early Dutch settlement of the islands, and the development of the colonial economy. It then discusses the so-called “Ethical Policy,” which sought to unify the islands under Dutch rule and implement European ideas about civilization, culture, and prosperity. The chapter looks at the colony’s social structure prior to World War II and closes with a discussion of the colony’s preparations for war with the Japanese in 1942. A short postscript explains what occurred between August 1945, when the Japanese surrendered, and December 1949, when the Netherlands East Indies ceased to exist.

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