The Boy-King, the Rebel Queen and the British Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-206
Author(s):  
Priya Atwal

This chapter focuses on the discursive and active power struggles at the heart of the Sikh Empire in the precarious years between the First Anglo-Sikh Wars and the final subjection of Punjabi independence to British rule in March 1849. Building on the previous chapter, it brings to light the gendered tensions at the centre of both British and Punjabi challenges posed to the leadership of Maharani Jind Kaur, mother and regent for the infant Maharajah Duleep Singh. It unravels the ramifications of direct colonial interference into the Lahore government imposed by the Resident, Henry Montgomery Lawrence; the impact of which compounded and exacerbated internal problems that had already weakened the ruling dynasty’s grip on power following the succession struggle between Maharani Chand Kaur and Prince Sher Singh. It provides a new series of arguments about the cultural and imperial politics that contributed to the destabilization of the ruling dynasty’s power and the eventual fall of the kingdom.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 3274
Author(s):  
Jose Rueda Torres ◽  
Zameer Ahmad ◽  
Nidarshan Veera Kumar ◽  
Elyas Rakhshani ◽  
Ebrahim Adabi ◽  
...  

Future electrical power systems will be dominated by power electronic converters, which are deployed for the integration of renewable power plants, responsive demand, and different types of storage systems. The stability of such systems will strongly depend on the control strategies attached to the converters. In this context, laboratory-scale setups are becoming the key tools for prototyping and evaluating the performance and robustness of different converter technologies and control strategies. The performance evaluation of control strategies for dynamic frequency support using fast active power regulation (FAPR) requires the urgent development of a suitable power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) setup. In this paper, the most prominent emerging types of FAPR are selected and studied: droop-based FAPR, droop derivative-based FAPR, and virtual synchronous power (VSP)-based FAPR. A novel setup for PHIL-based performance evaluation of these strategies is proposed. The setup combines the advanced modeling and simulation functions of a real-time digital simulation platform (RTDS), an external programmable unit to implement the studied FAPR control strategies as digital controllers, and actual hardware. The hardware setup consists of a grid emulator to recreate the dynamic response as seen from the interface bus of the grid side converter of a power electronic-interfaced device (e.g., type-IV wind turbines), and a mockup voltage source converter (VSC, i.e., a device under test (DUT)). The DUT is virtually interfaced to one high-voltage bus of the electromagnetic transient (EMT) representation of a variant of the IEEE 9 bus test system, which has been modified to consider an operating condition with 52% of the total supply provided by wind power generation. The selected and programmed FAPR strategies are applied to the DUT, with the ultimate goal of ascertaining its feasibility and effectiveness with respect to the pure software-based EMT representation performed in real time. Particularly, the time-varying response of the active power injection by each FAPR control strategy and the impact on the instantaneous frequency excursions occurring in the frequency containment periods are analyzed. The performed tests show the degree of improvements on both the rate-of-change-of-frequency (RoCoF) and the maximum frequency excursion (e.g., nadir).


2021 ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
I. Vietrynskyi

The paper focuses on the initial stage of the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the process of its establishing as an independent State. The international political context for the development of the country, from the period of creation of the Federation to the beginning of the Second World War, is primarily viewed. The Commonwealth’s international position, its place and role in the regional and global geopolitical processes of the early XX century, in particular in the context of its relations with Great Britain, are analyzed. The features of the transformation of British colonial policies on the eve of the First World War are examined. The specifics of the UK system of relations with Australia, as well as other dominions, are being examined. The features of status of the dominions in the British Empire system are shown. The role of the dominions and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Australia in the preparatory process for the First World War, as well as the peculiarities of its participation in hostilities, is analyzed. The significance of the actions of the First World War on the domestic political situation in Australia, as well as its impact on dominions relations with the British Empire, is revealed. The history of the foundation of the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and its participation in imperial forces on the frontline of the First World War is analyzed. The success and failure of its fighters, as well as the role of ANZAC, in the process of formation an Australian political nation are analyzed. The economic, humanitarian and international political consequences of the First World War for the Commonwealth of Australia are examined, as well as the influence of these consequences on the structure of relations between the dominions and the British Empire. The socio-economic situation of the Commonwealth of Australia on the eve of World War II, in particular the impact of the Great depression on the development of the country as a whole and its internal political situation in particular, is analyzed. The ideological, military-strategic and international political prerequisites for Australia’s entry into the Second World War are being considered.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-246
Author(s):  
Tadd Graham Fernée

This article comparatively examines French and English literature based on two novels published in 1947, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano and Jean-Louis Curtis’ The Forests of Night. Both novels employ the mythic device to construct narratives on the twilight of the British Empire and the German occupied French Vichy regime, respectively, depicting experiences of resistance and collaboration on the eve of and during the Second World War. Both invent a system of symbolic imagery modelled on the Surrealist template in Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine, that turns the classical mythic device still prevalent in the early 20th century (i.e. in Joyce or Eliot) upside down. The revolution in Mythic Imagination follows the Structuralist Revolution initiated by Durkheim, Saussure and Bachelard, evacuating fixed ontological architecture to portray relational interdependency without essence. These novels pursue overlapping ethical investigations, on “non-interventionism” in Lowry and “fraternity” in Curtis. The novels raise questions about the relation between colonialism and fascism and the impact of non-Western mythic universes (i.e. Hinduism) upon the Mythic Imagination. They have implications for our understanding of gender relations, as well as the value of political activism and progress.


boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-121
Author(s):  
Alexander Kazamias

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.


2008 ◽  
pp. 19-48
Author(s):  
Mark C. Hunter

This chapter places the goals and the naval structures of Britain and America into the context of economic development and international relations in the equatorial Atlantic. It introduces the economic status of the Atlantic region in the early nineteenth century, before detailing how British and American naval activity developed power within it. It explores ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ and British imperialism in relation to naval policy-making; the free-trade mentality adopted by the British Empire in the middle of the century and the impact this had on trade with South America and West Africa. It discusses British naval strategy and deployment, American naval policy, and the economic basis of the Anglo-American relationship. It concludes that though America took a protectionist approach to commerce while the British objective sought liberal trade, they avoided diplomatic difficulty by utilising their respective sea powers in order to navigate maritime activity peacefully.


Author(s):  
Tobias Hoßfeld ◽  
Michael Duelli ◽  
Dirk Staehle ◽  
Phuoc Tran-Gia

The performance of P2P content distribution in cellular networks depends highly on the cooperation and coordination of heterogeneous and often selfish mobile users. The major challenges are the identification of problems arising specifically in cellular mobile networks and the development of new cooperation strategies to overcome these problems. In the coherent previous chapter, the authors focused on the selfishness of users in such heterogeneous environments. This discussion is now extended by emphasizing the impact of mobility and vertical handover between different wireless access technologies. An abstract mobility model is required to allow the performance evaluation in feasible computational time. As a result, the performance in today’s and future cellular networks is predicted and new approaches to master heterogeneity in cellular networks are derived.


Author(s):  
David Abulafia

The late twentieth century was one of the great periods of Mediterranean migration. Migrations out of North Africa and into and out of Israel have been discussed in the previous chapter. The history of migration out of Sicily and southern Italy began as far back as the late nineteenth century, and it was largely directed towards North and South America. In the 1950s and 60s it was redirected towards the towns of northern Italy. Southern Italian agriculture, already suffering from neglect and lack of investment, declined still further as villages were abandoned. Elsewhere, colonial connections were important; for example, British rule over Cyprus brought substantial Greek and Turkish communities to north London. Along with these migrants, their cuisines arrived: pizza became familiar in London in the 1970s, while Greek restaurants in Britain had a Cypriot flavour. Not surprisingly, the food of the south of Italy took a strong lead among Italian émigrés: the sublime creation of Genoese cooks, trenette al pesto, was little known outside Italy, or indeed Liguria, before the 1970s. But the first stirrings of north European fascination with Mediterranean food could be felt in 1950, when Elizabeth David’s Book of Mediterranean Food appeared. It drew on her often hair-raising travels around the Mediterranean, keeping just ahead of the enemy during the Second World War. Initially, the book evoked aspirations rather than achievements: Great Britain was still subject to post-war food rationing, and even olive oil was hard to find. With increasing prosperity in northern Europe, the market for unfamiliar, Mediterranean produce expanded and finally, in 1965, Mrs David found the confidence to open her own food shop. By 1970 it was not too difficult to find aubergines and avocados in the groceries of Britain, Germany or Holland; and by 2000 the idea that a Mediterranean diet rich in fish, olive oil and vegetables is far healthier than traditional north European diets often based on pork and lard took hold. Interest in regional Mediterranean cuisines expanded all over Europe and North America – not just Italian food but Roman food, not just Roman food but the food of the Roman Jews, and so on.


Author(s):  
Parvathi Menon

Abstract This article focuses on the period between 1812 and 1834, when the British Empire introduced protection measures to mitigate the suffering of slaves from planter brutality, but also to protect planters from slave rebellion. By examining the impact and influences wielded by Edmund Burke’s Sketch of a Negro Code (1780), this article studies protection as an alliance between the abolitionists and planters who, despite contestations, found in Burke’s Code a means to attain their separate ends. Through the workings of the Office of the Protector, instituted by the imperial authorities in the slave colony of Trinidad, this study examines how it granted slaves the humanity of ‘rights’ against their masters, while also protecting the right to property (in slaves) of the planters. I argue that the paternalistic practice of protection was, as is in the present, at the center of the exploitation of subjugated groups.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-349
Author(s):  
Blaž Zabel

Abstract This article discusses the work of the early Irish comparatists Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, who in 1886 published the first monograph in English in comparative literature. By bringing into discussion Posnett’s lesser-known journalistic publications on politics, the essay argues that his comparative project was importantly determined by the contemporary challenges of British imperial politics and by his own position in the British Empire. The article investigates several aspects of Posnett’s work in the context of British colonialism: his understanding of literature and literary criticism, his perception of the English and French systems of national literature, and his understanding of world literature and classical literature. Recognising the imperial and colonial context of Comparative Literature additionally highlights the development of literary comparisons, which have marked subsequent discussions in the discipline.


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