Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Bill Bell

Beginning with the moment in Robinson Crusoe when the castaway rescues a cache of books before the ship goes down, this introduction situates the history of nineteenth-century reading in the intimate connection that is made between itinerant readers and their books. Crusoe is the culmination of a historic tradition and does much to define later perceptions of the place of reading and the formation of later assumptions about the ability of books to provide consolation for readers under strange skies. This introduction goes on to account for scholarly assumptions about the place of texts in the British empire and some of the fundamental approaches to the history of reading that have occupied scholars over recent decades.

Balcanica ◽  
2004 ◽  
pp. 91-158
Author(s):  
Milos Lukovic

With the partitioning in 1373 of the domain of Nikola Altomanovic, a Serbian feudal lord, the old political core of the Serbian heartland was shattered and the feudal Bosnian state considerably extended to the east. The region was crossed by the Tara river, mostly along the southeast-northwest "Dinaric course". Although the line along which Altomanovic?s domain was partitioned has been discussed on several occasions and over a comparatively long period, analyses show that the identification of its section south of the Tara is still burdened by a number of unanswered questions, which are the topic of this paper. An accurate identification of this historical boundary is of interest not only to historiography, but also to archaeology ethnology, philology (the history of language and dialectology in particular) and other related disciplines. The charters of Alphonse V and Friedrich III concerning the domain of herceg Stefan Vukcic Kosaca, and other historical sources relating to the estates of the Kosaca cannot reliably con?rm that the zupa of Moraca belonged to the Kosaca domain. The castrum Moratsky and the civitate Morachij from the two charters stand for the fortress near the village of Gornje Morakovo in the zupa of Niksic known as Mrakovac in the nineteenth century, and as Jerinin Grad/Jerina?s Castle in recent times. The zupa of Moraca, as well as the neighbouring Zupa of Brskovo in the Tara river valley, belonged to the domain of the Brankovic from the moment the territory of zupan Nikola Altomanovic was partitioned until 1455, when the Turks ?nally conquered the region thereby ending the 60-year period of dual, Serbian-Turkish, rule. Out of the domain of the Brankovic the Turks created two temporary territorial units: Krajiste of Issa-bey Ishakovic and the Vlk district (the latter subsequently became the san?ak of Vucitrn). The zupa of Moraca became part of Issa-bey Ishakovic?s domain, and was registered as such, although the fact is more di?cult to see from the surviving Turkish cadastral record. The zupa of Moraca did not belong to the vilayet of Hersek, originally established by the Turks within their temporary vilayet system after most of the Kosaca domain had been seized. It was only with the establishing of the San?ak of Herzegovina that three nahiyes which formerly constituted the Zupa of Moraca (Donja/Lower Moraca, Gornja/Upper Moraca and Rovci) were detached from Issa-bey?s territory and included into the San?ak of Hercegovina. It was then that they were registered as part of that San?ak and began to be regarded as being part of Herzegovina.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
John McLellan

<p>The approximately 18,000 imperial troops who arrived in New Zealand with the British regiments between 1840 and 1870 as garrison and combat troops, did not do so by choice. However, for the more than 3,600 non-commissioned officers and rank and file soldiers who subsequently discharged from the army in New Zealand, and the unknown but significant number of officers who retired in the colony, it was their decision to stay and build civilian lives as soldier settlers in the colony. This thesis investigates three key themes in the histories of soldiers who became settlers: land, familial relationships, and livelihood. In doing so, the study develops an important area of settler colonialism in New Zealand history. Discussion covers the period from the first arrival of soldiers in the 1840s through to the early twentieth century – incorporating the span of the soldier settlers’ lifetimes. The study focuses on selected aspects of the history of nineteenth-century war and settlement.  Land is examined through analysis of government statutes and reports, reminiscences, letters, and newspapers, the thesis showing how and why soldier settlers were assisted on to confiscated and alienated Māori land under the Waste Lands and New Zealand Settlement Acts. Attention is also paid to documenting the soldier settlers’ experiences of this process and its problems. Further, it discusses some of the New Zealand settlements in which military land grants were concentrated. It also situates such military settlement practices in the context of the wider British Empire.  The place of women, children, and the regimental family in the soldier settlers’ New Zealand lives is also considered. This history is explored through journals, reminiscences, biography and newspapers, and contextualised via imperial and military histories. How and where men from the emphatically male sphere of the British Army met and married women during service in New Zealand is examined, as are the contexts in which they lived their married lives. Also discussed are the contrasting military and colonial policies towards women and marriage, and how these were experienced by soldier settlers and their families.  Lastly, the livelihood of soldier settlers is explored – the thesis investigating what sort of civilian lives soldier settlers experienced and how they made a living for themselves and their families. Utilising newspapers, reminiscences, biography, and government records the diversity of work army veterans undertook in the colony is uncovered. Notable trends include continued military-style roles and community leadership. The failed farming enterprise is also emphasised. Going further, it offers analysis of the later years of life and the different experiences of soldier settlers in their twilight years, particularly for those with and without family networks in the colony. The thesis challenges the separation between ‘war’ and ‘settlement’ by focusing on a group whose history spanned both sides of the nineteenth-century world of colony and empire.</p>


Balcanica ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Cedomir Antic

The following article deals with the image of Montenegro, a little country from the south-east European periphery, as perceived by a member of the nineteenth century British political elite. The history of this petty entity, less populated than an average English city, became especially important on the eve of the Holly Places Crises (of Palestine, 1853). A single dispute over the Montenegro-Ottoman border threatened to turn into European war, just a year before the Crimean War commenced. In regard the Montenegrin question, the always sensitive European "balance of power" was upset with the appearance of the unexpected alliance between Russia and Austria. The unique interest of the British Empire then started, for a short period of time, to be tied in with this almost unknown principality. The attitude of British diplomacy to Montenegro, image of the principality reconstructed in the Colonel Hugh Rose's report and its sources, could contribute not only to the advance the history of British foreign relations, but also to the development of the history of Montenegro.


Killing Times ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 185-216
Author(s):  
David Wills

This chapter puts the instant of execution into contrast with the different time frames of the crime itself and of court proceedings. The analysis works through a particular nineteenth-century multiple homicide in France—studied by a team led by Michel Foucault—committed by Pierre Rivière. The case is distinguished by the memoir that Rivière wrote as a justification for his crime but that, in various ways, became part of the crime itself. The murders occurred when “extenuating circumstances” were being accepted as a criminal defense and when psychological testimony was finding its way into proceedings. Both those tendencies extend the crime into the past history of the criminal mind and show how the moment of committing a crime becomes part of a longer narrative—or even literary—fantasy that is in some respects indistinguishable from what we understand as a motive. The chapter ends with a discussion of Kafka’s “death penalty” fiction.


2021 ◽  
pp. 231-236
Author(s):  
Bill Bell

The epilogue rounds off the argument by returning to Crusoe as a paradigm of the act of reading in the British empire. In the hands of different readers not even Robinson Crusoe was as straightforward as it seemed. Despite the fact that the novel has often been read as a manual for empire, it is far more complex than some commentaries would have us believe. Similar ambivalences apply to the lives and minds of many overseas British in the long nineteenth century. While the early twentieth century is commonly thought to have embodied a decline in imperial values, the reading habits of colonial subjects throughout the period would seem to indicate that imperial assurances were less robust than official sources would seem to suggest. The five reading constituencies that are described in the foregoing chapters, all of them in different ways operating within the web of empire, were ones in which individuals often found imperial confidence in its own mission wanting, something that was time and again demonstrated through in their acts of reading.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hedinger ◽  
Nadin Heέ

Transimperial History – Connectivity, Cooperation and Competition This Forum article argues that a turn in empire history is needed, one which we label «transimperial». Whereas national history has been transnationalized in recent decades, the history of empires has, by and large, remained nationalized. Since transnational history, global history, postcolonial studies and new imperial history all offer an abundance of tools to tear down imperial borders and deconstruct nationalized narratives, the moment seems to have come for a shift, namely for what we call a transimperial approach to imperial history. We seek to show how such an approach makes it possible to dynamize and decentralize the history of empires both on the level of empirical research and historiographical narratives. By including marginalized empires we offer a way to overcome British centrism of empire studies. On the methodological level, this contribution seeks to discuss imperial competition, cooperation and connectivity not as separate phenomena but as entangled processes. The point is not to analytically isolate cooperation or competition but to shed light on how they reinforced each other and how connectivity plays into this. The article shows that a key to establishing a transimperial approach is to consider time and space together by focusing on the transformative aspect of competition, cooperation and connectivity in spaces in-between empires. In this article, we highlight transimperial histories avant la lettre, on which such an approach can rely. Finally, we discuss how this approach helps challenge essentializing master narratives in empire studies, be it the one in which the British Empire serves as a model for other empires or the one where the Japanese empire is seen as a mimicry of European imperialism.


1990 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-369
Author(s):  
S. Gunasingam

Since the time South Asia, together with other Asian and African countries, became an integral part of the British Empire, the significance of manuscripts, published works and other artefacts, relating to those regions has stimulated continued appreciation in the United Kingdom, albeit with varying degrees of interest. It is interesting to note that the factors which have contributed in one way or another to the collecting of South Asian I material for British institutions vary in their nature, and thus illuminate the attitudes of different periods. During the entire nineteenth century, the collectors were primarily administrators; for most of the first half of the twentieth century, it was the interest and the needs of British universities that led to the accumulation of substantial holdings in many academic or specialist libraries.


1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Dale

Ever since the discovery there of gold and diamonds in the last half of the nineteenth century, South Africa has engaged the rapt attention of the Western world. The saga of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, perhaps the last of the “gentlemen's wars,” and now the refurbished accounts of the gallant defense of Rorke's Drift in the AngloZulu War of 1879 have been fascinating material for both novelists and film scriptwriters. In addition, the history of South Africa is replete with titanic figures who rank with, or perhaps even above, those from the rest of the continent: the aggressive architect of empire, Cecil J. Rhodes; the redoubtable Zulu warrior, Chaka; the dour, stern-willed President of the South African Republic, “Oom” (Uncle) Paul Kruger; the world-renowned statesman and philosopher, Field Marshal Jan C. Smuts; the founding father of Indian independence, Mohandas K. Gandhi; the compassionate and courageous writer, Alan S. Paton; and the dignified, modest Zulu Nobel Laureate, Albert J. Luthuli. By any standard, South Africa and its leaders of all races have made far-reaching and impressive contributions to the continent, the British Empire, and the world at large.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document