Introduction: The Accepted History of British Colonial Currency Systems and the Key Questions

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Wadan Narsey
Keyword(s):  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Key Questions

On the Lives of Modern State Law

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Samera Esmeir
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Modern State ◽  
State Law ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Intimate Life ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Key Questions

Modern state law is an expansive force that permeates life and politics. Law's histories—colonial, revolutionary, and postcolonial—tell of its constitutive centrality to the making of colonies and modern states. Its powers intertwine with life itself; they attempt to direct it, shape its most intimate spheres, decide on the constitutive line dividing public from private, and take over the space and time in which life unfolds. These powers settle in the present, eliminate past authorities, and dictate futures. Gendering and constitutive of sexual difference, law's powers endeavor to mold subjects and alter how they orient themselves to others and to the world. But these powers are neither coherent nor finite. They are ripe with contradictions and conflicting desires. They are also incapable of eliminating other authorities, paths, and horizons of living; these do not vanish but remain not only thinkable and articulable but also a resource for the living. Such are some of the overlapping and accumulative interventions of the two books under review: Sara Pursley's Familiar Futures and Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria. What follows is an attempt to further develop these interventions by thinking with some of the books’ underlying arguments. Familiar Futures is a history of Iraq, beginning with the British colonial-mandate period and concluding with the 1958 Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Sex, Law, and Sovereignty is a history of “French Algeria” that covers a century of French colonization from 1830 to 1930. The books converge on key questions concerning how modern law and the modern state—colonial and postcolonial—articulated sexual difference and governed social and intimate life, including through the rise of personal-status law as a separate domain of law constitutive of the conjugal family. Both books are consequently also preoccupied with the relationship between sex, gender, and sovereignty. And both contain resources for living along paths not charted by the modern state and its juridical apparatus.

The Economic History of India, 1857-2010

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tirthankar Roy
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Emerging Market ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Run ◽  
World Markets ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Key Questions

From the end of the eighteenth century, two global processes began to transform livelihoods and living conditions in the South Asia region. These were the rise of British colonial rule, and the integration of the region in the emerging world markets for goods, capital, and labour services, or globalization. Two hundred years later, India was the home to many of the world’s poorest people. India was also one of the fastest-growing emerging market economies of the world. Does a study of the past help to explain the paradox of growth amidst poverty? The book claims that the roots of the paradox did go back to India’s colonial past, when internal factors like geography and external forces like globalization and imperial rule created prosperity in some areas and poverty in others. This revised edition of a popular textbook sets out the key questions that a study of long-run economic change in India should begin with, shows how historians have answered these questions, and where the gaps remain. An essential guide for students of economics, history, and development studies, and a profitable read for anyone interested in India’s economic past.

scholarly journals The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-636
Author(s):  
Noam Maggor
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Regional Autonomy ◽  
Atlantic Trade ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
American Nation

Mark Peterson's The City-State of Boston is a formidable work of history—prodigiously researched, lucidly written, immense in scope, and yet scrupulously detailed. A meticulous history of New England over more than two centuries, the book argues that Boston and its hinterland emerged as a city-state, a “self-governing republic” that was committed first and foremost to its own regional autonomy (p. 6). Rather than as a British colonial outpost or the birthplace of the American Revolution—the site of a nationalist struggle for independence—the book recovers Boston's long-lost tradition as a “polity in its own right,” a fervently independent hub of Atlantic trade whose true identity placed it in tension with the overtures of both the British Empire and, later, the American nation-state (p. 631).

Eurasians in British Asia during the Second World War

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
FELICIA YAP
Keyword(s):  
Racial Politics ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Critical Position ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Second World

One of the most important minorities in the British colonial empire in Asia consisted of those of mixed European and Asian parentage and/or ancestry, or Eurasians, as they were widely known. It is perhaps surprising that despite the voluminous literature written about British colonial communities in the East, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Eurasians and their histories. A closer examination of the members of this marginalised colonial category is nevertheless crucial as they stood at the problematic boundaries of racial politics and identity, and are therefore vital to our understanding of the tensions of empire. The few existing studies of Eurasians in British Asia have tended to focus on the experiences of Eurasians either before or after the Second World War, neglecting the period of Japanese occupation as a significant epoch in the evolution of these communities. In reality, if we intend to unravel the multi-layered history of Eurasians in this region, we must examine the critical position of these colonial communities during this tumultuous period. The nuances of their intriguing wartime relationships with both the British and the Japanese also merit serious attention. With these aims in mind, this article will investigate the compelling experiences of Eurasian communities in Japanese-occupied British Asia, with an especial focus on those who were incarcerated by the Japanese in civilian internment camps in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Rising of the Phoenix: Mitigating Political Risk through Knowledge Management—Behn, Meyer & Co., 1840–1959

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 946-978 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHAKILA YACOB
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
International Networks ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Political Risks ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Phoenix

This article examines how a German firm in the Malay Peninsula—Behn, Meyer & Co.—capitalized on its knowledge management to overcome political risks during the period from 1840 until 1959. During the two world wars, all assets and properties of the Behn Meyer firm were systematically expropriated because of the introduction of the Alien Enemies (Winding Up) Act of 1914 and the subsequent imposition of a ten-year ban by the British colonial administration in the Malay Peninsula. However, Behn Meyer’s resilience and flexible outlook, as demonstrated by its management of political risks during these tumultuous periods, enabled it to rebuild its business interests and reestablish a foothold in postcolonial Malaysia and the region. This article argues that Behn Meyer displayed an exemplary business strategy, utilized its understanding of the geopolitics of the area, and leveraged its local and international networks to ensure its survival and longevity in the most tumultuous period in the history of the world.

scholarly journals The History of the Look-To-The-East Idea in Malaya during the British Colonial Era

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (15) ◽  
Author(s):  
Uqbah Iqbal ◽  
Nordin Hussin ◽  
Ahmad Ali Seman
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Look

Legal Pluralism in Colonial Lagos: The 1894 Petition of the Lagos Muslims to their British Colonial Masters

2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Ostien ◽  
Abdul-Fatah 'Kola Makinde
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Legal Environment ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial

AbstractThis paper is about metropolitan Lagos—under the British only a "township", though long Nigeria's capital. From early in its history the percentage of Muslims living in Lagos has been high, somewhere around fifty percent. There is a long history of attempts by activists among the Lagos Muslims, none yet successful, to persuade the authorities pro tem to establish Sharia Courts for the use of Muslims, to which they could take their civil matters for adjudication under Islamic law. After briefly introducing Lagos, we describe one of these attempts: the 1894 petition of the Lagos Muslims to their British colonial masters, and its outcome, paying particular attention to the pluralistic legal environment in which it was made. This early petition—or rather the facts that it was made, and that it failed, all context having been forgotten—lives on in the thinking of many Nigerian Muslims today as another example of British hostility to Islam, often held to be responsible for the failure of Islamic law to thrive in the predominantly Yoruba southwest of which Lagos is a part. This paper is an attempt to restore the context, and thus perhaps to help improve the analysis of the fate of Islamic law in Nigeria's southwest.

scholarly journals Bodies that Fester in the Holds of the “Coffin Ships”: Postcolonial Neo-Victorianism, Vulnerability and Resistance in Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea (2003)

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Mª Isabel Romero Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Victorian Studies ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Irish Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Imperialism ◽  
British Colonial

The presence of Empire in the Victorian period and its aftermath has become a new trope in neo-Victorian studies, introducing a postcolonial approach to the re-writing of the Victorian past. This, combined with the metaphor of the sea as a symbol of British colonial and postcolonial maritime power, makes of Joseph O’Connor’s novel Star of the Sea a story of love, vulnerability and identity. Set in the winter of 1847, it tells the story of the voyage of a group of Irish refugees travelling to New York trying to escape from the Famine. The colonial history of Ireland and its long tradition of English dominance becomes the setting of the characters’ fight for survival. Parallels with today’s refugees can be established after Ireland’s transformation into an immigration country. Following Judith Butler’s and Sarah Bracke’s notions of vulnerability and resistance together with ideas about ‘the other’ in postcolonial neo-Victorianism, this article aims to analyse the role of Empire in the construction of an Irish identity associated with poverty and disease, together with its re-emergence and reconstruction through healing in a contemporary globalised scenario. For this purpose, I resort to Edward Said’s and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s ideas about imperialism and new imperialism along with Elizabeth Ho’s concept of ‘the Neo-Victorian-at-sea’ and some critics’ approaches to postcolonial Gothic. My main contention throughout the text will be that vulnerability in resistance can foster healing.

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