Louis XIII, Richard I, and the Duchess of Devonshire: Nineteenth-Century Jews in Fancy Dress Costume

Images ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Michele Klein

Abstract In the nineteenth century, fancy dress activities and their material record formed part of the mise-en-scène of the Jewish elite’s self-fashioning. Family photographs and press reports of Jews in costume cast new light on the visualization of wealthy Jews. These Jews actively participated in the fancy dress culture of the elites, a popular form of cultural expression that was deemed a powerful way to convey social messages. In the British Empire, Europe, and North America, affluent Jews negotiated their feelings of solidarity and difference among non-Jews. They explored and articulated their self-image and group identity by appropriating others’ history and culture in public and private dressing-up amusements. Fancy dress, this article argues, enabled Jews to question who they wanted to be and communicate their desires to their Jewish and non-Jewish peers.

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 225-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart J. Brown

In the early nineteenth century, many in Britain believed that their conquests in India had a providential purpose, and that imperial Britain had been called by God to Christianize India through an alliance of Church and empire. In 1813, parliament not only opened India to missionary activity, but also provided India with an established Church, which was largely supported by Indian taxation and formed part of the established Church of England. Many hoped that this union of Church and empire would communicate to India the benefits of England's diocesan and parochial structures, with a settled pastorate, parish churches and schools, and a Christian gentry. As the century progressed, the established Church was steadily enlarged, with a growing number of bishoprics, churches, schools, colleges, missionaries and clergy. But it had only limited success in gaining converts, and many Indians viewed it as a form of colonization. From the 1870s, it was increasingly clear that imperial India would not become Christian. Some began reconceptualizing the providential purpose behind the Indian empire, suggesting that the purpose might be to promote dialogue and understanding between the religions of the East and West, or, through the selfless service of missionaries, to promote moral reform movements in Hinduism and Islam.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clark

The 1890s were a key time for debates about imperial humanitarianism and human rights in India and South Africa. This article first argues that claims of humanitarianism can be understood as biopolitics when they involved the management and disciplining of populations. This article examines the historiography that analyses British efforts to contain the Bombay plague in 1897 and the Boer War concentration camps as forms of discipline extending control over colonized subjects. Secondly, human rights language could be used to oppose biopolitical management. While scholars have criticized liberal human rights language for its universalism, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberals did not believe that rights were universal; they had to be earned. It was radical activists who drew on notions of universal rights to oppose imperial intervention and criticize the camps in India and South Africa. These activists included two groups: the Personal Rights Association and the Humanitarian League; and the individuals Josephine Butler, Sol Plaatje, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Bal Gandadhar Tilak. However, these critics also debated amongst themselves how far human rights should extend.


1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Rodger

This article is the revised text of the first W A Wilson Memorial Lecture, given in the Playfair Library, Old College, in the University of Edinburgh, on 17 May 1995. It considers various visions of Scots law as a whole, arguing that it is now a system based as much upon case law and precedent as upon principle, and that its departure from the Civilian tradition in the nineteenth century was part of a general European trend. An additional factor shaping the attitudes of Scots lawyers from the later nineteenth century on was a tendency to see themselves as part of a larger Englishspeaking family of lawyers within the British Empire and the United States of America.


Author(s):  
Lisa Williams

Scotland is gradually coming to terms with its involvement in slavery and colonialism as part of the British Empire. This article places the spotlight on the lives of African Caribbean people who were residents of Edinburgh during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I discuss their varied experiences and contributions: from runaways and men fighting for their freedom in the Scottish courts to women working as servants in city households or marrying into Edinburgh high society. The nineteenth century saw activism among political radicals from abolitionists to anticolonialists; some of these figures studied and taught at Edinburgh University. Their stories reflect the Scottish capital’s many direct connections with the Caribbean region.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-246
Author(s):  
Jely Agamao Galang

Abstract Between 1837 and 1882, the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines deported “undesirable” Chinese—vagrants, drunkards, unemployed, idlers, pickpockets, undocumented, and the “suspicious”—to various parts of the archipelago. Deportation, in this context, refers to the transportation or banishment of individuals deemed “dangerous” by the state to different far-flung areas of the islands or outside the colony but still within the Spanish empire. Deportation primarily served as a form of punishment and a means to rehabilitate and improve the wayward lives of “criminals.” This paper examines the deportation of “undesirable” Chinese in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Using underutilized primary materials from various archives in Manila and Madrid, it interrogates the actors, institutions and processes involved in banishing such individuals. It argues that while deportation served its punitive and reformative functions, Spanish authorities also used it to advance their colonial project in the islands. Chinese deportees formed part of the labor supply the state used to populate the colony’s frontier areas and strengthen its control over its newly-acquired territories.


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