‘Fugitive Mullahs and Outlawed Fanatics’: Indian Muslims in nineteenth century trans-Asiatic Imperial Rivalries

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1337-1382 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEEMA ALAVI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
World Order ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Political Space ◽  
British India ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Muslim Politics ◽  
Kinship Ties

AbstractThis paper follows the careers of ‘outlawed’ Indian Muslim subjects who moved outside the geographical and political space of British India and located themselves at the intersection of nineteenth century trans-Asiatic politics: Hijaz, Istanbul and the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and Burma and Acheh in the East. These areas were sites where ‘modern’ Empires (British, Dutch, Ottoman and Russian) coalesced to lay out a trans-Asiatic imperial assemblage. The paper shows how Muslim ‘outlaws’ made careers and carved out their transnational networks by moving across the imperial assemblages of the nineteenth century. British colonial rule, being an important spoke in the imperial wheel, enabled much of this transnationalism to weld together. Webs of connections derived from older forms of Islamic connectivity as well: diplomacy, kinship ties, the writing of commentaries on Islam and its sacred texts in unique ways, oral traditions, madrasa and student contacts. These networks were inclusive and impacted by the tanzimat-inspired scriptural reformist thought in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. They were not narrowly anti-colonial in tone as they derived from a complex inter-play of imperial rivalries in the region. Rather, they were geared towards the triumph of reformist Islam that would unite the umma (community) and engage with the European world order. The paper shows how this imperially-embedded and individual-driven Muslim transnational network linked with Muslim politics rooted within India.

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.

Mine the Ruins

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-184
Author(s):  
Petal Samuel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The West ◽  
British Caribbean ◽  
British Colonial

This review essay explores the extent to which the phenomenon of imperial “neglect” proposed in Christopher Taylor’s Empire of Neglect: The West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism (2018) maintains saliency in the wake of national independence throughout the British Caribbean. Through a reading of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, the essay highlights how the market logics of mid-nineteenth-century imperial liberalization continued to animate new forms of West Indian erasure well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While Kincaid deploys arguments of imperial neglect, she refuses the aspirations for repair that neglect implies. By stressing the impossibility of repairing the violence of British colonial rule, her work instead asks, What new forms of thought become possible beyond argumentative frames of repair?

The Bakungu Chiefs of Buganda under British Colonial Rule, 1900–1930

1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Twaddle
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New Situation ◽  
Primary Materials

In 1959 C. C. Wrigley published ‘The Christian revolution in Buganda’. an important essay summarizing a decade of intensive research into Buganda politics during the nineteenth century. There he demonstrated how ‘Ganda society had undergone, immediately before the advent of British imperial power, a genuine revolution, which had brought about drastic changes in ideology and in the structure as well as the personnel of government and that as a result of these [and other] changes it was uniquely fitted to cope with the new situation which confronted it in the last years of the nineteenth century’. This essay seeks to reconstruct an intriguing attempt made by the Bakungu client-chiefs who triumphed in that ‘Christian revolution’ to perpetuate their power in the Buganda kingdom by making further institutional changes during the second decade of the twentieth century. But first it is necessary to discuss the general factors shaping political relationships between these client-chiefs and their European rulers during the first and third decades of this century. In this it is possible to take account not only of several secondary sources published since the appearance of Wrigley's article nearly ten years ago, but also of certain primary materials which have recently come to light.

scholarly journals Memory and the written testimony: the actresses of the public theatre in Calcutta in the 19th & 20th century

Letrônica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Sarvani Gooptu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Women Performers ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Public ◽  
Primary Material ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Bengali Language ◽  
Indian Theatre

Modern theatrical performances in Bengali language in Calcutta, the capital of British colonial rule, thrived from the mid-nineteenth century though they did not include women performers till 1874. The story of the early actresses is difficult to trace due to a lack of evidence in contemporary sources. So though a researcher is vaguely aware of their significance and contribution to Indian theatre, they have remained shadowy figures – nameless except for those few who have left a written testimony of their lives and activities. It is my intention through the study of this primary material and the scattered references to these legendary actresses in vernacular journals and memoirs, to recreate the stories of some of these divas and draw a connection between testimony and lasting memory. ***Memória e testemunho escrito: as atrizes do teatro público em Calcutá nos séculos XIX e XX***As representações teatrais modernas na língua bengali em Calcutá, a capital do governo colonial britânico, prosperaram a partir de meados do século XIX, embora não incluíssem mulheres até 1874. É difícil traçar a história das primeiras atrizes devido à falta de evidências em fontes contemporâneas. Dessa forma, embora o pesquisador tenha uma vaga consciência de sua contribuição e importância para o teatro indiano, elas permaneceram obscuras – anônimas, com exceção daquelas que deixaram um testemunho escrito de suas vidas e atividades. Por meio do estudo desse material primário e das referências esparsas a essas lendárias atrizes em diários e memórias na língua vernácula, pretendo recriar as histórias de algumas dessas divas e estabelecer uma conexão entre testemunho e memória duradouraPalavras-chave: Atrizes; Teatro bengali; Párias sociais; Representação e produção criativa; Memória e testemunho escrito.

Mapping ethnicity in nineteenth-century Burma: When ‘categories of people’ (lumyo) became ‘nations’

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-364
Author(s):  
Aurore Candier
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Space ◽  
British India ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Semantic Evolution

Successive wars and the establishment of a border between the kingdom of Burma and British India in the nineteenth century challenged Burmese conceptions of sovereignty and political space. This essay investigates how European, and more specifically Anglo-American, notions of race, nation, and consular protection to nationals, progressively informed the Burmese concepts of ‘categories of people’ (lumyo) and ‘subject’ (kyun). First, I present the semantic evolution of these concepts in the 1820s–1830s, following the annexation of the western Burmese province of Arakan by British India in 1824. Then, I argue that the Burmese concept of lumyo was progressively associated with the European concept of ‘nations’ in the 1850s–1860s, following the annexation of Lower Burma in 1852. Finally, I uncover developments in the 1870s, when British consular protection extended to several freshly categorised ‘nations’, such as Shan, Karenni, and Kachin.

Administrator-scholars and the Writing of History in Early British India: A review article

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 826-843
Author(s):  
JAMES LEES
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Times

AbstractThe histories of Asian peoples penned by British East India Company officials during the early years of colonial rule—rightly—have long been considered to be doubtful source material within the historiography of South Asia. Their credibility was suspect well before the middle of the twentieth century, when Bernard Cohn's work began to present the British colonial state as one that relentlessly sought to categorize Indian society, and to use the distorted information thus gained to impose its government.However, the histories of these administrator-scholars still retain value—not as accurate studies of their subjects, perhaps, but as barometers of the times in which they were written and also in the unexpected ways in which some continue to resonate in the present. To illustrate that point, this paper will review three recent monographs which deal with the writings and historical legacies of some of the Company's most prominent early nineteenth-century administrator-scholars. These are: Jason Freitag's Serving Empire, Serving Nation: James Tod and the Rajputs of Rajasthan; Jack Harrington's Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India; and Rama Mantena's work centred around the antiquarian pursuits of Colin Mackenzie, The Origins of Modern Historiography in India: Antiquarianism and Philology, 1780–1880.1

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-172
Author(s):  
Nurfadzilah Yahaya
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Advisory Board ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Sepoy Mutiny ◽  
Legal Arbitrage

This chapter recounts how the members of the Arab diaspora attempted legal arbitrage under colonial rule. It analyses the members' expansion and modification of Islamic law, while at other times they policed the boundaries of Islamic law even as mere translators. The chapter tells the story of the surprising involvement of the outsider — the Arab diaspora — in aiding colonialists to accumulate legislative power. The pace of change from the mid-nineteenth century onward was brisk, and the Arab diaspora capitalized on it while attempting to navigate uncertainty and risk. This chapter also investigates how Arab diaspora in Southeast Asia were able to influence the shape of law to a great extent. It takes a look on how concessions to Arabs in the Straits Settlements, in the form of the Mohamedan Marriage Ordinance, and their appointments as members of the Mohamedan Advisory Board after the Sepoy Mutiny subsequently tied them more closely to the British colonial government, along with the rest of the Muslim population in the colony.

Transformations of India after the Indian Mutiny

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Máire ní Fhlathúin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Indian Mutiny

This chapter explores British responses to the events of the Indian Mutiny/Rebellion of 1857, and to the rise of Bengal nationalism towards the end of the nineteenth century. This period is characterised by a British turning away from both ‘home’ and indigenous India and towards an insular colonial mindset. An examination of some representative texts shows that at the same time, the literature of the colony engages in a set of transformative narratives of India and the British role in India. The tropes and themes of depictions of India in the earlier pre-Mutiny period are now co-opted and turned to the depiction of British heroism and British sacrifice, in a process which also involves the incorporation of aspects of a stereotypically Indian character into an evolving ideal figure of British colonial rule, whose femininity makes it paradoxically impossible for her to be accorded a place in the male-dominated society of the colony.

Property’s Guardians, People’s Terror

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (137) ◽  
pp. 54-74
Author(s):  
Gagan Preet Singh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Important Case ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indian People ◽  
Indigenous Institutions ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Police ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Indian Penal Code

Abstract This article explores why victims of cattle theft in colonial north India avoided the police and courts, whose very purpose was to apprehend thieves and to restore stolen property. Throughout colonial rule, victims recovered stolen cattle themselves and with the help of khojis (trackers) and panchayat (indigenous systems). From the mid-nineteenth century onward, however, the British colonial government introduced criminal laws, like the Indian Penal Code and the Indian Evidence Act, and relied on colonial police to enforce those laws. These colonial laws and policing systems proved not only highly ineffective at dealing with theft, worsening the plight of victims while protecting thieves, but they also eroded the authority of indigenous institutions. By revisiting an important case, the Karnal Cattle Lifting Case (1913), the article shows how the institution of colonial police and courts oppressed rural Indian people and how and why Indian people, in turn, avoided colonial justice systems.

The Grooming of an Elite: Malay Administrators in the Federated Malay States, 1903–1941

1980 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeo Kim Wah
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Central Component ◽  
New Order ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Government ◽  
Indirect Rule

Between 1874 and 1888, British colonial rule was imposed on the Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang later collectively called the Federated Malay States (FMS). Based on the various Anglo-Malay treaties, which maintained the fiction that the British Resident was an adviser to the Malay ruler, the British established a form of administration generally known as a system of indirect rule. In this new order, the Malay rulers retained their constitutional and ceremonial role, while the exercise of executive power was held firmly in British hands. In the rush for establishing a modern administration and accelerating economic development late in the nineteenth century, hardly any attention was paid to training Malays to share executive power with British officials at the higher level of government or to compete effectively with Indians, Eurasians, and Chinese for subordinate appointments. This sin of omission began to stir the British conscience at the turn of the century and, for the next four decades, the British pursued a policy of actively promoting Malay employment in the government. This paper discusses the central component of this policy, namely, the training, recruitment, and development of Malay administrators in the FMS.

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