Resistance, Rebellion, and the Subaltern

2021 ◽  
pp. 416-436
Author(s):  
Kim A. Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
British India ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Empirical Case Studies

Often falling short of its putative aims, subaltern resistance has throughout history played a significant role in shaping the political landscape of states and empires. This chapter examines some of the more recent developments, as well as criticisms, of the broader study of subaltern resistance and rebellion within a global context. The empirical case studies are drawn primarily from the European imperial expansion during the long nineteenth century, and from British India in particular, and the discussion focusses on three central themes: violence, rumors, and religion. Considering the centrality of historiographical debates on the key concepts of “resistance” and “subalternity,” the discussion is framed by a critical reading of the work of Ranajit Guha and his classic 1983 book, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency.

Genealogy, authority and Muslim political representation in British India

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-465
Author(s):  
EVE TIGNOL
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
North India ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
Political Realm ◽  
Power And Influence

AbstractThis article reflects on the significance of genealogy for Sayyids and other Muslim elites in British North India by exploring some literary productions and political endeavours of the Aligarh movement. At the end of the nineteenth century, poems recalling the extra-Indian origins of Muslim elites became increasingly popular, as Altaf Husain Hali's Musaddas best exemplified. Translating an anxiety of seeing their power and influence reduced in the colonial world, such nostalgic discourse, intertwining representations of lineage and authority, promptly entered the political realm. The genealogy rhetoric deployed in Urdu poetry played a significant role in sustaining the claims of the leaders of the Aligarh movement as they strove to bolster a cohesive sharīf community identity and secure political leadership during the anti-Congress propaganda of 1888 as well as to obtain advantages from British officials according to their so-called political importance. In this context, this article emphasises that in Aligarh's nostalgic poetry, the greatest political weight was put on belonging to the ashrāf category rather than to the Sayyids, who only occasionally feature in the sources.

Jews and the Criminalization of Madness

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Social Type ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Mental Pathology ◽  
Medical Process

Distinctions between delinquency and illness were ill-defined and problematic, as we have seen in the case of the masturbator Johann A. And it was precisely in this vague grey zone between the two that psychiatry was able to insert itself in defining a new mental pathology. The problem of deciphering the difference between delinquency/criminality and madness was further complicated and given a unique twist in the cases of Jewish patients, whose Jewishness (in the eyes of the asylum) was by definition a kind of criminality and immorality. Jewishness, in other words, represented a category of interpretation distinct from illness, one which, in turn, had become highly politicized in the debates about Jewish emancipation since the eighteenth century. Therefore, when race was used to interpret patient behavior, it constituted a form of thinking outside of the medical domain in the strictest sense. In this way, it was potentially at odds with the medical process, and could, as I will show in two case studies, function to prevent the asylum staff from seeing and treating patients as ill. This chapter thus examines the limits of the medicalization of deviancy— the points where, in contrast to the “illnesses” discussed heretofore (male masturbation, nymphomania, and religious madness), medicine pulled back, seeking explanations for the person in a framework outside of the terms of medicine. That extramedical framework drew from long-standing stereotypes of Jews as immoral and criminal; but it also had a more immediate source in a contemporary trope that united Jewishness and criminality in a social type: the jüdischer Gauner (Jewish crook). Such images of Jews had in turn become part of the political arsenal of those opposing Jewish emancipation on the grounds of an incorrigible Jewish “character.” My argument here runs counter to the few historical works on Jews and insanity, which, consistent with the medicalization thesis, have focused exclusively on the conflation of Jewishness and illness in medical theories. In part, this approach derives from their focus on the second half of the nineteenth century, where the conflation was indeed overwhelming, psychiatry and medicine (as well as other human sciences) having become saturated with racial and degeneration theories.

scholarly journals Feminism and Solidarity on the Left: Rethinking the Unhappy Marriage Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 972-991
Author(s):  
Kirsty Alexander ◽  
Catherine Eschle ◽  
Jenny Morrison ◽  
Mairi Tulbure
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marriage Metaphor ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
Political Solidarity

In the context of efforts to revive and reconfigure the left, fraught solidarity relations between feminism and other left forces are again under the political spotlight. This article revisits the widespread use of the ‘unhappy marriage’ metaphor to characterise these relations, given that metaphors play a significant role in structuring political discourse and action. We argue that the metaphor has been used in uncritical and limiting ways, and turn to feminist reconfigurations of the institutions of marriage to develop a more expansive, reflexive conceptual lens. We then apply this lens to three case studies of left organising in Scotland around the time of the 2012–2014 Scottish independence referendum, showing that the expanded marriage metaphor captures a more complex story of solidarity relations. Nonetheless, aspects of the marriage metaphor remain irredeemable, and we end with a call for the continued development of alternative frameworks that imagine political solidarity differently.

scholarly journals “What Value Should We Attach to All These Petitions?”: Petition Campaigns and the Problem of Legitimacy in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maartje Janse
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Political System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Education Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Context

This article focuses on large-scale petitioning campaigns, or petitionnementen as they were called, organized between 1828 and 1878, including contemporary reflections and debates on this new phenomenon. Although there were only a handful of petitionnementen, they had a remarkable impact—not only on the issues at hand but also on the balance of power between Crown, Cabinet, Parliament, and people. Mass petitions necessarily challenged the political system, whose legitimacy was based on elections under a limited franchise. Based on parliamentary reports, pamphlets, and other sources reflecting on petitioning in general and the petitionnementen more specifically, this article asks how petitioners claimed legitimacy, and how politicians and other observers responded to those claims. Special attention is given to the international context within which Dutch petitioning practices developed. The article focuses on three case studies, representing the major petitioning campaigns of this period: the Southern petition movements of 1828–1830 that were a catalyst for the Belgian revolution (thus reinforcing the association between mass petitioning and revolution), the Anti-Catholic “April Movement” of 1853, and the so-called People’s Petitionnement of 1878, against the liberal education law. Remarkably enough, in the Netherlands it was not progressive reformers, but most prominently conservative Orthodox Protestants who organized petitionnementen.

Health and Disease in the Tropical Zone: Nineteenth-century British and Dutch Accounts of European Mortality in the Tropics

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-339
Author(s):  
Hans Pols
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
Tropical Zone ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
The Tropics

Acclimatisation theories varied depending on the political and social contexts in which they were used. Historians of medicine have argued that the pessimism of physicians practising in British India about the acclimatisation of white settlers in the tropics increased around the turn of the eighteenth century. Both British and Dutch physicians had long commented on the proverbial unhealthfulness of Batavia, but rather than relating this to the tropical climate, they emphasised the unwholesome behaviour of Dutch inhabitants. When Dutch physicians debated the possibility of white settlement in the tropical East Indies in the 1840s, many emphasised the importance of virtuous predisposition and intelligent behaviour in adjusting to the colony’s climate, suggesting optimistically that environmental problems might be resisted.

Warriors and Colonial Wars in Muslim Philippines Since 1800

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mesrob Vartavarian
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
British India ◽  
Global Context ◽  
State Agents ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
The Right

This chapter examines Muslim interactions with colonial and postcolonial Philippine states during protracted armed conflicts. Spanish, American and Christian Philippine state agents attempted to place Muslim peoples into frameworks that fit their respective colonial imaginaries. On encountering resistance, these imaginaries were set in motion and modified in ways that allowed Muslim elites and subalterns to obtain the resources necessary to advance their particular interests. Rather than viewing colonial wars in the Muslim zone as a continuous process of conquest and resistance, I shall show how different Muslim groups attempted to manoeuvre onto the right side of colonial violence. This chapter also places Philippine Muslim war bands in a comparative global context, drawing analogies with nineteenth-century raider polities in the American Southwest, the ‘martial races’ of British India, Palestinian resistance to Zionist settlement and warlord politics in contemporary Afghanistan.

scholarly journals Scandal and Secrecy in the History of the Nineteenth-Century British Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Callie Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
General Picture ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
History Of

Abstract For historians of empire, scandals provide a useful starting point for investigating how the operations of imperial power were contested and reworked in moments of crisis. Yet, existing scholarship on imperial scandal consists mostly of case-studies that do not always reflect on the larger trend of which they are a part. This review draws on six accounts of imperial scandals to produce a general picture of the characteristics and functions of scandals in the historiography of the nineteenth-century British empire. What this comparison suggests is that imperial scandals possessed distinctive stakes and seem, as a result, to have represented periodic ruptures in longer-term patterns of local silence and complicity. Scandals, if used cautiously, can therefore provide evidence to support ongoing discussions about the logic of colonial concealment. At the same time, scandals also remind us that publicity is not a simple cure-all. By including a wider range of actors and non-governmental sources, future studies of scandal might elucidate the political limits of transparency, as well as exploring how imperial subjects negotiated gendered and racialized access to public and political platforms.

scholarly journals Ethnology and colonial administration in nineteenth-century British India: the question of native crime and criminality

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
British India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This paper examines the central role of ethnology, the science of race, in the administration of colonial India. This occurred on two levels. First, from the late eighteenth century onwards, proto-scientists and administrators in India engaged with metropolitan theorists through the provision of data on native society and habits. Second, these same agents were continually and reciprocally influenced in the collection and use of such data by the political doctrines and scientific theories that developed over the course of this period. Among the central interests of ethnographer-administrators was the native criminal and this paper uses knowledge developed about native crime and criminality to illustrate the way science became integral to administration in the colonial domain.

scholarly journals Soundproof Silences? Towards a Sound History of Silence

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 840-867
Author(s):  
Karsten Lichau
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Empirical Case Studies

This article calls for a sound history of silence. Widely neglected within sound-historical research, exploring the manifold sounds of silence not only fills a lacuna in scholarship, but also poses critical challenges to current discussions in the flourishing field of sound history. This theoretical claim is based on empirical case studies from another still unwritten history: the political and cultural history of the minute’s silence, a political commemoration ceremony established in the aftermath of World War I. A practice theory approach makes it possible to understand how silence was produced in specific historical contexts through a complex set of cognitive, emotional, logistical, media, physiological, sensorial and kinesthetic practices that engage (or not) with the official call for silence and make it into success or failure. Conceiving of silence as a complex acoustical practice, the article aims to establish silence as a full-fledged topic of research at the centre of sound history and to inspire research on the historical and contemporary interplay between political structures and sensory or bodily practices.

Disaffected Parties, 1688–1832

2019 ◽  
pp. 44-87
Author(s):  
John Owen Havard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Jonathan Swift ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Detailed Case

This first chapter provides an overview of some of the changing guises taken by disaffected political attitudes between the 1688 Revolution and the onset of liberal governance in the early nineteenth century, examining how these took shape across a range of genres, including Nahum Tate’s poetry, the writings of Jonathan Swift, a 1770 visual print, and the early nineteenth-century periodical Egeria. The chapter attends to historical flashpoints including the fall of Robert Walpole and the movement around John Wilkes (by way of attention to the ‘parties’ assembled around a 1770 theatrical controversy) and concludes with attention to the ‘political science’ and reimagined sympathies that accompanied the transition into nineteenth-century liberalism. The chapter thus provides broad frameworks in which to locate the detailed case studies that follow and introduces this book’s expanded approach to the ‘parties’ of political activity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document