The History of Sierra Leone

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gibril R. Cole
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The State ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Economic Exchanges ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial

The geographical boundaries of contemporary Sierra Leone resulted from the intense quest for imperial domains by European powers, specifically by Britain and France, during the 19th-century scramble for colonies. However, the country’s history runs deep into the past. While the peoples of the present-day republic did not have a history of large polities, there were, nonetheless, organized states with social, political, and economic structures, some of them based on conventional understandings of relations between the rulers and their peoples. Agricultural production, local, regional, and long-distance commerce facilitated not just economic exchanges, but also cross-cultural encounters between peoples from near and far. This engendered an integrative process that allowed for population growth and state expansion prior to the arrival of Europeans in the region of West Africa in the 15th century and the subsequent rise of the Atlantic slave trade. While the transatlantic system disrupted the existing political, economic, and social systems, the remarkable resilience of the peoples enabled them to rebound, only to be later subjugated to British colonial rule from 1808 to 1961. British colonialism encountered resistance in one form or another from its initial establishment until 1896, when a civil uprising devolved into a war of attrition between the people of the interior of Sierra Leone and the British colonial state. British rule and control of the colonial economy continued until the post-World War II period, when educated Africans across the continent sought to attain their independence. Sierra Leone’s educated elite organized, albeit along ethno-regional lines, to demand independence, which was granted in 1961. The post-independence experiment in democracy was subverted by political megalomania, the entrenchment of ethno-regionalism, corruption, and frequent military interventions in the state. The use of subaltern youth in the politics of the country by the state ultimately had the effect of producing a group of youths who sought to transform themselves from foot soldiers of the political groups to a military junta through violence, which engulfed the country in a decade-long civil war from 1991 to 2002.

The Elusive Search for Evidence: Evgenii Khaldei’s Budapest Ghetto, Images of Rape, and Soviet Holocaust Photography

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-89
Author(s):  
David Shneer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Social History ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Soviet Jews ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

I began studying Soviet photography in the early 2000s. To be more specific, I began studying Soviet photographers, most of whom had “Jewish” written on their internal passports, as I sought to understand how it was possible that a large number of photographers creating images of World War II were members of an ethnic group that was soon to be persecuted by the highest levels of the state. I ended up uncovering the social history of Soviet Jews and their relationship to photography, as I also explored how their training in the 1920s and 1930s shaped the photographs they took during World War II.

scholarly journals “Imperium in Imperio”: The Corporation, Mining, and Governance in British Southeast Asia, 1900–1930

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
DAVID BAILLARGEON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
State Model ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Corporate Ventures

This article examines the history of mining in British Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the histories of the Burma Corporation and the Duff Development Company, which were located in British-occupied Burma and Malaya, respectively. It argues that despite being represented as “rogue” corporate ventures in areas under “indirect” colonial rule, the contrasting fates of each company—one successful, one not—reveal how foreign-owned businesses operating in the empire became increasingly beholden to British colonial state regulations during this period, marking a shift in policy from the “company-state” model that operated in prior centuries. The histories of these two firms ultimately demonstrate the continued significance of business in the making of empire during the late colonial period, bridging the divide between the age of company rule and the turn toward state-sponsored “development” that would occur in the mid-twentieth century.

Counting Americans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
History Of

By telling how the US census classified and divided Americans by race and origin from the founding of the United States to World War II, this book shows how public statistics have been used to create an unequal representation of the nation. From the beginning, the census was a political undertaking, torn between the conflicting demands of the state, political actors, social scientists, businesses, and interest groups. Through the extensive archives of the Bureau of the Census, it traces the interactions that led to the adoption or rejection of changes in the ways different Americans were classified, as well as the changing meaning of seemingly stable categories over time. Census workers and directors by necessity constantly interpreted official categories in the field and in the offices. The difficulties they encountered, the mobilization and resistance of actors, the negotiations with the census, all tell a social history of the relation of the state to the population. Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups, and on immigrants, as well as on the troubled imposition of US racial categories upon the population of newly acquired territories, the book demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation, and discrimination.

Psychiatrists and psychiatry in late colonial India

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-548
Author(s):  
Shilpi Rajpal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
The State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
History Of

The history of professionalisation of psychiatry in India is an array of parallel histories. The article describes the variegated processes of professionalisation, modernisation and Indianisation and the impediments that colonialism created in their path. It charts the reification of the professional identity of a psychiatrist which was uniquely different from the Western counterpart. The process that began at the turn of the twentieth century was far from complete even on the eve of independence. It argues that psychiatry remained at the margins of medicine and the colonial state maintained an indifferent attitude towards development of the mental sciences. Highlighting contributions of individual psychiatrists and juxtaposing them with those of the state, this article situates psychiatrists as historical actors and how the emergence of psychiatry was enmeshed with political histories of the period.

Rethinking sovereignty with reference to history and anthropology

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Wachspress
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anthropological Literature

While legal practice and scholarship are driven by the use and understanding of complex legal terminology, there has been little effort to incorporate the humanistic scholarship of anthropologists and historians into theoretical or practical accounts of these words and their usages. This paper attempts to historicise and complicate a term that serves as a bridge or meeting point between the legal and the political; sovereignty has been conceptualised since the sixteenth century as both a framing device that produces unity within the state while establishing mutual equality within the interstate order, and as the capacity to make law without being subject to that law. Recent anthropological literature has challenged the personification implicit in political–theoretical definitions of sovereignty, arguing instead for a theory of sovereignty that can be applied to ‘complicated’, post-colonial contexts, where legal orders are plural or overlapping and the state is weak or non-existent. What such critiques cannot explain, however, is how the concept of the ‘sovereign state’ became so central to political discourse on a global scale. This paper draws upon legal historical case-studies concerned with the production of the colonial or post-colonial state or the deployment of ‘sovereignty’ as a justificatory concept in colonial settings. In doing so, this paper argues for understanding sovereignty both as a practice across time and space that organises legal institutions and as a justificatory strategy in the intellectual and social history of those institutions, an approach that allows scholars to draw upon the insights of political theorists, anthropologists and historians. While primarily intended to instigate a broader interdisciplinary conversation, this paper also suggests a preliminary conclusion: sovereignty has historically been deployed as a means of including that which cannot be considered the same, mediating the colonial tension between ‘otherness’ and legal homogeneity.

scholarly journals Czech Film After 1989

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiří Voráč
Keyword(s):  
Social Systems ◽  
First World War ◽  
The State ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Entire Country ◽  
History Of ◽  
Czech Lands ◽  
First World

CZECH FILM AFTER 1989: THE WAVE OF THE YOUNG NEWCOMERS THE history of Czech cinema has been frequently marked and stigmatized, more than the non- industrial and more individual art disciplines, by large historical social upheavals which the Czech lands experienced in this century. During its hundred-year-long history, the Czech film survived five different social systems. Its origins (the first films on the Czech soil were presented by Jan Kříženecký in 1898) are rooted in the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the First World War, it continued its development in a free and democratic Czechoslovak Republic which was after two decades destroyed by the Nazi Germany. A fundamental systemic change occurred in 1945 when the Czechoslovak film was nationalized i.e., that the state (and after 1948 the Communist establishment) completely controlled all film activities in the entire country.(1) After the demise of the Communist dictatorship in...

scholarly journals THE IMPORTANCES OF TELUK ANSON WHARF AS TRANSIT CENTRE OF MERCHANT VESSEL, 1882-1941

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
Bipin Babulal ◽  
Khairi Ariffin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
National Archive ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Agricultural Product ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Import And Export ◽  
British Colonial

This study is about the importance of the Teluk Anson wharf which used to be the transit center of the merchant's vessel in 1882 until 1941. It also was known as a wharf in the British colonial administration since the opening in 1882. The development and construction of Teluk Anson port are very important as a wharf which handles the import and export transactions in the state of Perak, especially as the collection center of tin ore and agricultural product for the districts of Lower Perak and other nearby places. The study is carried out by using the qualitative method which focusing the analysis on the primary sources such as Marine Annual Report, Federated Malays States Annual Report, Perak Annual Report, District Report and Perak Secretariat File which obtained from The National Archive of Malaysia. The study is focusing on the Teluk Anson wharf located in the district of Lower Perak. The findings show that the port of Teluk Anson had a significant role in trading activity, export, and import of merchandise, especially after commercial agricultural revolutions. The wharf of Teluk Anson became the focus of the merchant vessels from the Malay States, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States. In conclusion, the infrastructural facilities which existed in the Teluk Anson wharf towns made this wharf as the main attraction in the Federated Malay States at the early of its opening until the World War-II. The implication of this study shows that the Teluk Anson wharf used to be the important wharf in the state of Perak during the British colonial era.

Rethinking South Asian Media Historiography: Excavating Princely India’s Media Cultures with Reference to Jammu and Kashmir State

2021 ◽  
pp. 239386172110402
Author(s):  
Imran Parray ◽  
Saima Saeed
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Jammu And Kashmir ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
British Colonial

This article, while attempting to rethink the media historiography of South Asia, traces the early origins of press systems in princely India. Focusing on Jammu and Kashmir state, it offers an assessment of socio-political and historical factors which contributed to the trajectory of growth of the press in the state while tracing its relationship with the princely politics, indigenous politico-religious movements, and the British colonial state vis-a-vis an emerging colonial public. The larger aim of the article is to shift focus to media cultures of princely India and bring them onto the centre stage of postcolonial historiography. We argue that such a study of the press systems—which existed in princely states but have hitherto remained a neglected subject—will not only complement the current understanding of postcolonial media studies but substantially offer an alternative reading of the dominant discourse within postcolonial studies. The article maps the webs of patronages, loyalities, struggles and resistance that marked the coming of the periodical press in the state and how they differently shaped its practices, aspirations and outcomes.

The State of the Japanese State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavan McCormack
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Japan ◽  
Client State ◽  
Constitutional Revision

In this his latest work, Gavan McCormack argues that Abe Shinzo’s efforts to re-engineer the Japanese state may fail, but his radicalism continues to shake the country and will have consequences not easy now to predict. The significance of this book will be widely recognized, particularly by those researching contemporary world politics, international relations and the history of modern Japan. McCormack here revisits and reassesses his previous formulations of Japan as construction state (doken kokka), client state (zokkoku), constitutional pacifist state, and colonial state (especially in its relationship to Okinawa). He adds a further chapter on what he calls the ‘rampant state’, that outlines the increasingly authoritarian or ikkyo (one strong) turn of the Abe government in the fifth year of its second term. And he critically addresses the Abe agenda for constitutional revision.

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